Affecting public opinions via social media--opinion leaders use of Weibo

This thesis analyzed opinion leaders' use of Weibo to investigate their online behaviors, and to see if gender and fields of expertise will affect opinion leaders' use of Weibo. The study will help people to better understand how opinion leaders in China use Weibo for their daily information consumption and communication, and will give us suggestive answers to the question of how to use Weibo to spread information effectively. Through online observation and content analysis, this study categorized the general online behavior patterns of opinion leaders' use of Weibo, and found that gender is positively correlated to the externality of the tweets and the aggressiveness of the tweets, while fields of expertise is negatively correlated to tweets' popularity. The study contributes to the current literatures by bringing new understanding to agenda setting theory, the concept of gatekeeping and agenda melding in the digital age, and the findings may help us better understand how opinion leaders in China consume and communicate information on Weibo, from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives, and shed light on the influence of opinion leaders' gender and fields of expertise on their communication behavior on Weibo

Tailoring the Wettability of Colloidal Particles for Pickering Emulsions via Surface Modification and Roughness

Pickering emulsions are water or oil droplets that are stabilized by colloidal particles and have been intensely studied since the late 90s. The surfactant-free nature of these emulsions has little adverse effects such as irritancy and contamination of environment and typically exhibit enhanced stability compared to surfactant-stabilized emulsions. Therefore, they offer promising applications in cosmetics, food science, controlled release, and the manufacturing of microcapsules and porous materials. The wettability of the colloidal particles is the main parameter determining the formation and stability of Pickering emulsions. Tailoring the wettability by surface chemistry or surface roughness offers considerable scope for the design of a variety of hybrid nanoparticles that may serve as novel efficient Pickering emulsion stabilizers. In this review, we will discuss the recent advances in the development of surface modification of nanoparticles

Networked narratives on Humans of New York: A content analysis of social media engagement on Facebook

Humans of New York (HONY) is a popular Facebook page which has more than 13 million fans. The posts on HONY are termed as networked narratives, which are stories told on social media with technology affordances enabling story co-construction between the story tellers and the readers. A content analysis (N = 390) was conducted to examine the popular topics on networked narratives and its impact on social media engagement as represented by the number of likes, the number of shares, and likability of characters featured in the post. Results revealed a set of topics of the networked narratives were associated with social media engagement. Also, the tone and the length of posts were associated with social media engagement

A Tale of Two Sources in Native Advertising: Examining the Effects of Source Credibility and Priming on Content,Organizations, and Media Evaluations

In the strategic communication field, native advertising has been hailed as the next big trend. However, this type of marketing technique may negatively affect the perceptions of brands as well as media outlets that provide such content due to its obscurity of persuasive intent and ambiguity of the content source. The current study examined these issues by conducting a 2 (priming: presence vs. absence) × 2 (media credibility: high vs. low) × 2 (corporate credibility: high vs. low) factorial between-subjects experiment. A total of 500 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the online experiment. Findings suggested that priming of native advertising information would significantly improve users’ ad recognition and change their content perception. In addition, a series of three-way interaction effects suggested that the interaction between the two types of source credibility (media and corporate) tend to work as a function of priming of native advertising information, which could completely change individuals’ perception of the ad content and evaluation of the media source in the future, but not their future corporate evaluation. Important theoretical as well as practical implications have also been discussed in this article

Molecular Characterization of LKB1 of Triploid Crucian Carp and Its Regulation on Muscle Growth and Quality

Liver Kinase B1 (LKB1) is a serine/threonine kinase that can regulate energy metabolism and skeletal muscle growth. In the present study, LKB1 cDNA of triploid crucian carp (Carassius auratus) was cloned. The cDNA contains a complete open reading frame (ORF), with a length of 1326 bp, encoding 442 amino acids. Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that the LKB1 amino acid sequence of the triploid crucian carp had a high sequence similarity and identity with carp (Cyprinus carpio). Tissue expression analysis revealed that LKB1 was widely expressed in various tissues. LKB1 expressions in the brain were highest, followed by kidney and muscle. In the short-term LKB1 activator and inhibitor injection experiment, when LKB1 was activated for 72 h, expressions of myogenic differentiation (MyoD), muscle regulatory factor (MRF4), myogenic factor (MyoG) and myostatin 1 (MSTN1) were markedly elevated and the content of inosine monophosphate (IMP) in muscle was significantly increased. When LKB1 was inhibited for 72 h, expressions of MyoD, MyoG, MRF4 and MSTN1 were markedly decreased. The long-term injection experiment of the LKB1 activator revealed that, when LKB1 was activated for 15 days, its muscle fibers were significantly larger and tighter than the control group. In texture profile analysis, it showed smaller hardness and adhesion, greater elasticity and chewiness. Contrastingly, when LKB1 was inhibited for 9 days, its muscle fibers were significantly smaller, while the gap between muscle fibers was significantly larger. Texture profile analysis showed that adhesion was significantly higher than the control group. A feeding trial on triploid crucian carp showed that with dietary lysine-glutamate dipeptide concentration increasing, the expression of the LKB1 gene gradually increased and was highest when dipeptide concentration was 1.6%. These findings may provide new insights into the effects of LKB1 on fish skeletal muscle growth and muscle quality, and will provide a potential application value in improvement of aquaculture feed formula