Positive and Negative Effects of Social Media on Adolescent Well-Being.

Social media use is rapidly growing among adolescents, studies cite that the rates of “constant use” doubled from 2015 to 2018 (Anderson & Jiang, 2018; Lenhart, 2015). Social media use can have a serious negative impact on areas of well-being including feelings of depression, anxiety, fear of missing out, body image, bullying and sleep. Mojtabai, Olfson and Han (2016) cite the problematic use of mobile phones and social media applications as one of the trends aligning with the increase in major depressive episodes. Conversely, use of social media can promote positive feelings of well-being including creating a sense of community, providing access to needed health information, helping create new relationships and maintain existing ones and offering a platform for self-expression and creation of self-identity. The purpose of this study was to compare the positive and negative impacts of the top four social media platforms used by adolescents on 14 areas of well-being. SPSS was used for data analysis to compare well-being scores for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Analysis was also completed to see if there was a relationship between time spent online and perceived well-being. Consistent with research, the majority of adolescents cite that their smartphone is the primary way they access social media. YouTube was identified as having the most positive impact on adolescent well-being while Instagram was perceived as having the most negative. Time spent online indicated a weak, positive correlation to well-being with only YouTube

Online parental accounts regarding a multimodal intervention for neurobehavioral disorders : A qualitative descriptive study

ABSTRACT The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to describe parents’ experiences of the Brain Balance Program, as revealed in their online writing. This study provides a description of parents’ experiences in a way that highlights what participating in the program was like, asserts their judgements about this program, describes the impact of the program on the parent and child and describes the parents’ motives for doing the program and motives for writing about the experience. Six online documents were chosen that were information rich and showed a maximum variation of viewpoints. The sample of online documents were written by parents and retrieved from online sources in November, 2012. Basic Qualitative Descriptive research (Merriam, 2009) was used to design the study and qualitative content analysis was used to produce the findings. Content analysis is “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1278). The findings provide a thick description of parents’ perspectives on their experience of helping their child through a multimodal program for neurobehavioral disorders. Limitations, implications and areas of future research pertaining to the study are discussed. This study can inform parents’ decision making around interventions and provides support for further research in biomedical and cognitive rehabilitative approaches for neurobehavioral disorders

Unmute This: Circulation, Sociality, and Sound in Viral Media

Cats at keyboards. Dancing hamsters. Giggling babies and dancing flashmobs. A bi-colored dress. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video. Over the final decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first, these and countless other examples of digital audiovisual phenomena have been collectively adjectivally described through a biological metaphor that suggests the speed and ubiquity of their circulation—“viral.” This circulation has been facilitated by the internet, and has often been understood as a product of the web’s celebrated capacities for democratic amateur creation, its facilitation of unmediated connection and sharing practices. In this dissertation, I suggest that participation in such phenomena—the production, watching, listening to, circulation, or “sharing” of such objects—has constituted a significant site of twenty-first-century musical practice. Borrowing and adapting Christopher Small’s influential 1998 coinage, I theorize these strands of practice as viral musicking. While scholarship on viral media has tended to center on visual parameters, rendering such phenomena silent, the term “viral musicking” seeks to draw media theory metaphors of voice and listening into dialogue with musicology, precisely at the intersection of audiovisual objects which are played, heard, listened to. The project’s methodology comprises a sonically attuned media archeology, grounded in close readings of internet artifacts and practices; this sonic attunement is afforded through musicological methods, including analyses of genre, aesthetics, and style, discourse analysis, and twenty-first-century reception (micro)histories across a dynamic media assemblage. By analyzing particular ecosystems of platforms, behavior, and devices across the first decades of the twenty-first century, I chart a trajectory in which unpredictable virtual landscapes were tamed into entrenched channels and pathways, enabling a capacious “virality” comprising disparate phenomena from simple looping animations to the surprise release of Beyoncé’s 2013 album. Alongside this narrative, I challenge utopian claims of Web 2.0’s digital democratization by explicating the iterative processes through which material, work, and labor were co-opted from amateur content creators and leveraged for the profit of established media and corporate entities. “Unmute This” articulates two main arguments. First, that virality reified as a concept and set of dynamic-but-predictable processes over the course of the first decades of the twenty-first century; this dissertation charts a cartography of chaos to control, a heterogeneous digital landscape funneled into predictable channels and pathways etched ever more firmly and deeply across the 2010s. Second, that analyzing the musicality of viral objects, attending to the musical and sonic parameters of virally-circulating phenomena, and thinking of viral participation as an extension of musical behavior provide a productive framework for understanding the affective, generic, and social aspects of twenty-first-century virality. The five chapters of the dissertation present analyses of a series of viral objects, arranged roughly chronologically from the turn of the twenty-first century to the middle of the 2010s. The first chapter examines the loops of animated phenomena from The Dancing Baby to Hampster Dance and the Badgers animation; the second moves from loops to musicalization, considering remixing approaches to the so-called “Bus Uncle” and “Bed Intruder” videos. The third chapter also deals with viral remixing, centering around Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video, while the fourth chapter analyzes “unmute this” video posts in the context of the mid-2010s social media platform assemblage. The final chapter presents the 2013 surprise release of Beyoncé’s self-titled visual album as an apotheosis to the viral narratives that precede it—a claim that is briefly interrogated in the dissertation’s epilogue

The distinct evaluation of information in a new managerial function of information – decision

The function defined as information-decision can be considered today the central function of management; we believe that the option for a compromise of the type: prognosis of product or service, organization, information - decision, stimulation and control better responds to the new managerial conditions. Any decision primarily means correct information, in order to be able to choose. Surprisingly, from the old Greek term entropis to the actual managerial information it is not such a long way and stages of the new function of information-decision emphasise the continuous interdependences between information and decision, as well as a large number of characteristic features as a result of a necessary compromise in contemporary management.information-decision, entropy, redundancy, managerial information and decision

The distinct evaluation of information in a new managerial function of information – decision

The function defined as information-decision can be considered today the central function of management; we believe that the option for a compromise of the type: prognosis of product or service, organization, information - decision, stimulation and control better responds to the new managerial conditions. Any decision primarily means correct information, in order to be able to choose. Surprisingly, from the old Greek term entropis to the actual managerial information it is not such a long way and stages of the new function of information-decision emphasise the continuous interdependences between information and decision, as well as a large number of characteristic features as a result of a necessary compromise in contemporary management

The distinct evaluation of information in a new managerial function of information – decision

The function defined as information-decision can be considered today the central function of management; we believe that the option for a compromise of the type: prognosis of product or service, organization, information - decision, stimulation and control better responds to the new managerial conditions. Any decision primarily means correct information, in order to be able to choose. Surprisingly, from the old Greek term entropis to the actual managerial information it is not such a long way and stages of the new function of information-decision emphasise the continuous interdependences between information and decision, as well as a large number of characteristic features as a result of a necessary compromise in contemporary management

Information technology support for transformation in higher educational institutions in South Africa

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been in a state of change, and in South Africa, the term “transformation” is used to describe the changes occurring. These changes have implications for the structure, processes and focus of HEIs, and as such have implications for Information Technology (IS/ICT) support for HEIs. IS/ICT support for organisations is predicated on several factors, such as effective informational and technical support at all levels of the organisation, but especially support for the strategic goals of the organisation (alignment). For organisations in a state of rapid change other issues need to be considered, such as flexibility, and new and diverse information and communication needs. This paper investigates the use of Information Technology to support HEIs in transformation. The research examines factors that make HEIs less amenable to rationalist techniques such as mixed management styles and a “different” value chain. The difficulties for IS/ICT support of HEIs at all managerial levels is discussed, especially the issue of alignment with institutional goals. Thereafter, transformation of HEIs and the possibility of IS/ICT support in achieving the ill-defined goal of transformation is examined. The research uses management and IS/ICT theories such as the widely used and reported Porter’s value chain, Anthony’s information model, and Minzberg’s organisational model to suggest an analysis model for HEIs (Applegate, McFarlan and McKenney, 1996; Minzberg, 1979; Ward and Peppard, 2002). Furthermore, from the analysis of the literature, a model of antecedent factors for successful HEI transformation supported by IS/ICT is proposed. The research makes use of a comparative case study approach in which 3 (three) South African HEIs are investigated through the “lens” of the developed model. The major finding of the research is that the potential use of IS/ICT support for HEIs is not optimal in the three cases examined. Results of the analysis suggest that: • IS/ICT alignment with organisational goals at HEIs is low and holistic IS/ICT strategic management is lacking. The areas of Knowledge Management and Communication Management are conducted informally and Knowledge Management, especially, is not fully exploited. • The greatest area of concern is the lack of IS/ICT support for academic management, where academics are increasingly required to perform administrative and managerial tasks. • The merger/incorporation information needs have not caused major system problems, but other intangible aspects of the mergers/incorporations could be better supported by IS/ICT. The research concludes with a set of actions that should ensure a higher level of support, amongst which are the more holistic management of IS/ICT especially for Academic management needs, and particularly the use of IS/ICT in innovative ways to overcome the challenges of the “transformed” Universities: There are areas of excellence but the full possibilities afforded by technology are not exploited maximally in support of transformation. Research suggests that the reasons for this are mainly the lack of holistic strategic management of IS/ICT

Access Denied

A study of Internet blocking and filtering around the world: analyses by leading researchers and survey results that document filtering practices in dozens of countries.Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens—most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in more than three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of an accelerating trend. Internet filtering takes place in more than three dozen states worldwide, including many countries in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Related Internet content-control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions. Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each two-page country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.ContributorsRoss Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva [as per Rob Faris], Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, Jonathan Zittrai