Courting Disaster: An Analysis of Federal Government Twitter Usage during Hurricane Sandy Resulting in a Suggested Model for Future Disaster Response

abstract: ABSTRACT This dissertation examined how seven federal agencies utilized Twitter during a major natural disaster, Hurricane Sandy. Data collected included tweets between October 26-31, 2012 via TweetTracker, as well as federal social media policy doctrines and elite interviews, to discern patterns in the guidance provided to federal public information officers (PIOs). While scholarly research cites successful local and state government efforts utilizing social media to improve response efforts in a two-way communications interaction, no substantive research addresses social media’s role in crisis response capabilities at the federal level. This study contributes to the literature in three ways: it focuses solely on the use of social media by federal agencies in a crisis setting; it illuminates policy directives that often hamper federal crisis communication response efforts; and it suggests a proposed model that channels the flow of social media content for PIOs. This is especially important to the safety of the nation moving forward, since crises have increased. Additionally, Twitter was adopted only recently as an official communications tool in 2013. Prior to 2013, social media was applied informally and inconsistently. The findings of this study reveal a reliance upon a one-way, passive communication approach in social media federal policy directives, as well as vague guidelines in existing crisis communications models. Both dimensions are counter to risk management and crisis communication research, which embrace two-way interactivity with audiences and specific messaging that bolsters community engagement, which are vital to the role of the PIO. The resulting model enables the PIO to provide relevant information to key internal agencies and external audiences in response to a future crisis.Dissertation/ThesisCrisis Tweet Text and DataDoctoral Dissertation Mass Communication 201

Now again

Now Again is a participatory performance made up of a series of individual and group activities that create opportunities to notice how we fit and shift in our environment. Reflecting the dance histories of the artists, the variable dynamic possibilities of the city are brought into focus through specific ‘scores’ that, as propositions for engagement, activate simple movement patterns or observations. The aim is to allow responsive noticing of the immediate environment, but also to enliven it in unexpected ways. Individuals who are participants and observers, dedicated or incidental (passers-by), become part of the disclosure of the physical and the social. The rigid structure of the city is re-imagined as a fluid, choreographic entity invested with organic qualities. Performances move between a series of city locations, each with differing activities. Designated ‘nodes’ in the city grid (certain streets, a square, a doorway, footpath, a hole in a wall or a particular tree), have been chosen for their imaginative, affective, or energetic resonances. These are ‘mapped’ by the perambulatory, physical, sensory, and relational engagement of all participants. This is a collective dance created through noticing the feelings and patterns of the physical self in the built, natural, and social environment. In some sites, the artists perform, while in others they lead a participative performance. Ephemeral, self-led, performance experiments designed to disappear into the fabric of the city, will also be invited. A mobile app enables audience participation. The app employs GPS data to trigger information specific to that site (written prompts, sounds and scored provocations)

INNOVATIVE DIGITAL START-UPS AND THEIR VENTURE CREATION PROCESS WITH ENABLING DIGITAL PLATFORMS

Start-ups have gained media attention since Google, Facebook and Amazon were launched in the 1990s. The book Lean Start-up, published in 2011, was another important milestone for digital start-up literature. As unicorn companies emerge around the world, topics highlighted in the news include the vast amount of capital that digital start-ups are raising, the ways in which these digital ventures are disrupting industries, and their global impact on digital economy. However, digital start-ups, digital venture ideas, and their venture creation process lack a unified venture creation model, as there is a gap in the re-search on entrepreneurial processes in a digital context. This research is an explorative study of the venture creation process of innovative digital start-ups that examines what is missing from entrepreneurial process models in a digital technology context and investi-gates how early stage digital start-ups conduct the venture creation process, starting with the pre-phase of antecedents and ending with the launch and scaling of the venture. The research proposes a novel process model of innovative digital start-up venture crea-tion and describes the nature and patterns of the process. A conceptual model was devel-oped based on the entrepreneurship, information systems, and digital innovation litera-ture and empirically assessed with a multi-method qualitative research design. The data collected from semi-structured interviews, internet sources, and observation field notes covered 34 innovative digital start-ups and their founders. Interviews were conducted in-ternationally in high-ranking start-up ecosystems, and the data were analysed with the-matic analysis and fact-checked by triangulating internet data sources. The contribution to entrepreneurship theory is a new illustrative model of the venture creation process of innovative digital start-ups, including the emergent outcome of the process having a digi-tal artefact at its core (e.g., mobile apps, web-based solutions, digital platforms, software solutions, and digital ecosystems). Digital platforms and their multiple roles in the process are presented, as well as the role of critical events as moderators of the process which trigger new development cycles. During the venture creation process, the recombining of digital technologies, modules, and components enabled by digital infrastructures, plat-forms, and ecosystem partners represent digital technology affordances. This recombina-tion provides opportunities for asset-free development of digital venture ideas

Report on understanding the main opportunities and barriers to SME engagement with the youth labour market

Providing employment opportunities to young people between the ages of 16 and 24 is critical to improving their economic prospects, economic growth and social cohesion more broadly, and it necessitates looking more closely at the role that SMEs can and do play in filling this gap. A study commissioned by the EY Foundation found that while SMEs are destinations for young people, a number of perceived barriers stand in the way of these businesses engaging more fully with the youth labour market. Improving employment prospects for young people will depend on addressing these barriers

Sing Together! Choral Singing as a Supplementary Training Method for Actors

Voice and speech training for the actor has traditionally defined itself as distinct from the vocal training of the musical theatre or opera singer. The separation in philosophy and practice by trainers of actors and singers reflects the resultant capabilities and proclivities of our performers. Those performers generally sing or act, and if asked, will sometimes do both, but may damage their voices in the process. This study aims to explore and reveal how actors may develop a greater sense of courage and trust, have easy access to breath, find freedom in their bodies and voices, become better listeners and therefore more engaging actors, uncover untold depths of characterization, unearth resonance that communicates easily, and discover the music of rhythm and melody in their spoken voices, all through the use of ensemble singing in the actor\u27s voice and speech classroom

Department of Computer Science Activity 1998-2004

This report summarizes much of the research and teaching activity of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College between late 1998 and late 2004. The material for this report was collected as part of the final report for NSF Institutional Infrastructure award EIA-9802068, which funded equipment and technical staff during that six-year period. This equipment and staff supported essentially all of the department\u27s research activity during that period

Virgil Ortiz: American Indian Artist, Representational Trickster, and Identity Shapeshifter

This study opens the door for a re-thinking of how discourse shapes American Indian representation and identity. As such, contemporary American Indian artist, Virgil Ortiz, his art, and the discourse surrounding both art and artist are examined to reveal the strategies and tactics employed in his constitution of a politics of representation that broaden the spectrum of considerations of American Indian identity. Critical invention is the orientation through which two methodological approaches are intertextually applied. A critical rhetorical approach is employed to analyze both the vernacular discourse produced by Ortiz and the dominant discourse constructed by the dominant culture. Sorrells (1999) theoretical and methodological approach to reading intercultural imagery is also applied to conduct a visual analysis of Ortiz’s art. To contextually frame an understanding of Ortiz and his work, a literature review and a historical chapter are included. The literature review details the linking of American Indian cultural identity, collective identity, and cultural sovereignty to the production of American Indian art; examines art and American Indian identity; and investigates art and the production of a politics of representation. The historical chapter reveals the poetics and politics of American Indian discursive constructions by both the dominant culture and American Indians. The theme of sadomasochistic dominance and submission (SMDS) is explored in Ortiz’s art to understand how it communicatively operates through vernacular discourse. Ortiz’s marketing through branding and personal branding is analyzed to understand how Ortiz both subverts and complies with the dominant culture’s current entrenchment in commodity capitalism and in stale American Indian representations. The measure of representational sovereignty that Ortiz asserts is evident in the mediums and the media in which he participates. This study reveals that Ortiz produces a counter discourse that disturbs hegemonic notions of American Indians; promotes more prismatic considerations of American Indian identity, rather than one-dimensional stale stereotypes or two-dimensional restraining binaries; and offers alternative American Indian archetypes for consideration. Ortiz draws from the mainstream to the margins and the surface to the subterranean to create a politics of representation that promotes an understanding of multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, and multiple American Indian identity articulations, which move American Indians closer to signification self-sovereignty