New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations

Marketers and public relations professionals today are confronted with an astounding array of new communications channels. Internet-based social media tools like blogs, podcasts, online video and social networks are giving voice to the opinions of millions of consumers. While mainstream media continues to play a vital role in the dissemination of information, even these traditional channels are increasingly being influenced by online conversations. The "new influencers" are beginning to tear at the fabric of marketing as it has existed for 100 years, giving rise to a new style of marketing that is characterized by conversation and community. Marketers are responding to these forces with a mixture of excitement, fear and fascination. They're alarmed at the prospect of ceding control of their messages to a community of unknowns. Yet at the same time they're excited about the prospect of leveraging theese same tools to speak directly to their constituents without the involvement of media intermediaries.The Society for New Communications Research set out to conduct an examination of how influence patterns are changing and how communications professionals are addressing those changes by adopting social media. The goals were to discover how organizations:Define new influencers;Communicate and create relationships with them;Use social media to create influence; andMeasure the effects of these efforts.Another goal of the study was to use these discoveries to offer a set of recommendations to professional communicators

Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines

The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for humans to comprehend. Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and what it might reveal. Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U

The Exploration Of Self Construction Through Art

This thesis investigates the different outlets of starting a conversation with people about our contemporary dilemmas, while exploring influences from historical and modern views. I do this by elaborating on the importance of discourse in making art and how these conversations can impact and widen our lives and understandings. Within these discourses, topics surrounding controversial issues such as gender disparities, social acceptability, race inequality and body images are brought up. My main arguments explore the importance of self-construction and the limitations and influences that the outside world might bring forth, the impact and results of speaking out and how it can help in the progression of our society, the fabrication of oneself and what that includes, and lastly how to effectively challenge mainstream ideas and beliefs. In all, I explain how these different sectors of my life have strengthened the content of my work and what it means to be able to educate people and myself throughout

Professional Preparation in a Caring Christian Institution: Experiences of Holistic Change in the Lives of Students who do not Profess Christian Faith

Many Christian tertiary educators deeply long to see holistic transformation in students\u27 lives. This qualitative study grew out of the desire to discover whether students who are not Christ-followers, but who apply to study within an overtly Christian context, experience such change. This second of two articles investigates what specific changes respondents observed in relationship to God, Christian faith, others, and self, linking to the institutional vision of being transformational and relational, as well as when in relation to their program, and through what means any changes occurred. It also discusses recommendations from the participants on how to enable non-Christ-followers to participate more meaningfully in a Christ-centered educational context, facilitating a study experience that is more enriching, positive, and transformative

Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.Comment: In Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Application of Digital Information & Web Technologies (ICADIWT), India, February 2014 (6 pages, 3 figures

Hierarchical Propagation Networks for Fake News Detection: Investigation and Exploitation

Consuming news from social media is becoming increasingly popular. However, social media also enables the widespread of fake news. Because of its detrimental effects brought by social media, fake news detection has attracted increasing attention. However, the performance of detecting fake news only from news content is generally limited as fake news pieces are written to mimic true news. In the real world, news pieces spread through propagation networks on social media. The news propagation networks usually involve multi-levels. In this paper, we study the challenging problem of investigating and exploiting news hierarchical propagation network on social media for fake news detection. In an attempt to understand the correlations between news propagation networks and fake news, first, we build a hierarchical propagation network from macro-level and micro-level of fake news and true news; second, we perform a comparative analysis of the propagation network features of linguistic, structural and temporal perspectives between fake and real news, which demonstrates the potential of utilizing these features to detect fake news; third, we show the effectiveness of these propagation network features for fake news detection. We further validate the effectiveness of these features from feature important analysis. Altogether, this work presents a data-driven view of hierarchical propagation network and fake news and paves the way towards a healthier online news ecosystem.Comment: 10 page

Non-believing Students at a Christian Tertiary Institution: What Drew Them, What They Expected, and What They Found

Many Christian tertiary educators share a passion to see holistic transformation in students’ lives. This qualitative study grew out of the desire to explore whether students who are not Christ-followers, but who apply to study within an overtly Christian context, experience such change. It investigated why they chose to apply, their initial expectations, the positives and challenges of their lived experiences, and self-perceptions of any holistic change. While geographical proximity appeared to be the strongest motivator, many did experience holistic change during their time of study. The most daunting challenge appeared to be the biblical critique required in assignment and class work, the time required for that, and the stress involved. My hope is that this study might add to our understanding, and highlight ways in which educators can work more fruitfully with students who do not share our Christian faith

eWOM & Referrals in Social Network Services

If a few decades ago the development of the Internet was instrumental in the interconnection between markets, nowadays the services provided by Web 2.0, such as social network sites (SNS) are the cutting edge. A proof of this trend is the exponential growth of social network users. The main objective of this work is to explore the mechanisms that promote the transmission and reception (WOM and referrals) of online opinions, in the context of the SNS, by buyers of travel services. The research includes some research lines: technology acceptance model (TAM), Social Identification Theory and Word-of-Mouth communication in virtual environment (eWOM). Based on these theories an explicative model has been proposed applying SEM analysis to a sample of SNS users’ of tourist service buyers. The results support the majority of the hypotheses and some relevant practical and theoretical implications have been pointed out for tourist managers

Reinforcing attitudes in a gatewatching news era: individual-level antecedents to sharing fact-checks on social media

Despite the prevalence of fact-checking, little is known about who posts fact-checks online. Based upon a content analysis of Facebook and Twitter digital trace data and a linked online survey (N = 783), this study reveals that sharing fact-checks in political conversations on social media is linked to age, ideology, and political behaviors. Moreover, an individual’s need for orientation (NFO) is an even stronger predictor of sharing a fact-check than ideological intensity or relevance, alone, and also influences the type of fact-check format (with or without a rating scale) that is shared. Finally, participants generally shared fact-checks to reinforce their existing attitudes. Consequently, concerns over the effects of fact-checking should move beyond a limited-effects approach (e.g., changing attitudes) to also include reinforcing accurate beliefs.Accepted manuscrip