Freedom’s New Fight

Reviewing, Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (2004

Media uses and social representations of climate change

A survey study with Portuguese participants (N=614) was carried out to investigate the relationship between practices of media consumption, the use of other sources of information, and social representations of climate change. Results show a moderate level of knowledge about climate change, a high level of concern and a high level of perceived risk towards the potential effects of climate change, emotionally negative images associated with climate change, and low frequency of climate-friendly individual behaviour. News media are reported to be the main sources of information on climate change and are positively assessed in terms of credibility. Practices of media consumption are a predictor variable of individual mitigation actions, behavioural intentions, concern about climate change and, in a smaller degree, knowledge about climate change. However, they have little impact on risk perceptions and on the emotional valence of the images associated with climate change.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

The Power of Positivity in the #ConserveWater Movement on Twitter

This poster looks into how authors on social media uses rhetoric to affect the perception and promotion of the #conservewater movement. This study used content analysis and analyzed 100 tweets from the 2018 year looking at who the author of each tweet was, what the tone of the tweet was, the function of the tweet, if there were any attachments and more. The findings gathered were overwhelmingly positive

College Students\u27 Social Media Uses and Affective Correlates

Given the high prevalence of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety among college students, research on social media use, a salient feature of the modern college experience, is increasingly warranted. While research documents a link between negative psychological symptomology and social media use, few studies have examined what specific patterns of use may be more or less harmful than others. Therefore, the present study investigated whether specific types of social media use (socially oriented uses, information seeking uses, and entertainment uses) are more or less strongly associated with affective variables (depression, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect). Utilizing four hierarchical linear regression models, we examined the degree to which the different types of social media use account for the variance in our four affective criterion variables. Contrary to our hypotheses, none of the three types of use were significant predictors of depression, anxiety, or positive affect (ps\u3e.05). However, both social and information seeking use were found to be significant predictors of negative affect, such that higher social use predicted lower negative affect (B= - .218, t(197) = -2.198, p \u3c .05) and higher information seeking use predicted higher negative affect (B= .240, t(197) = 2.706, p \u3c .01). These results suggest that while these three types of social media use may not have differential relationships with specific symptoms of psychopathology, social and information seeking use do seem related to more global experiences of negative affect. Further, while the link between information seeking and negative affect reflects findings in other research on news exposure, our findings on social use and lower negative affect were unexpected given prior documentation of a link between socially oriented uses and increased psychological distress and depression symptoms. Our findings suggest that the relationship between socially oriented use of social media and negative affect is likely more complex than previously suggested, with the possibility for both harmful and beneficial impacts of interacting with others online. Implications of these findings and directions for future research will be discussed

Expressive Violence: The Performative Effects of Subversive Participatory Media Uses

International audienceThis article discusses the communication strategies employed by 8 school shooters who used participatory media to frame their acts as well as their identity. By resorting to content analysis of 78 self-produced videos and 101 portraits, the findings show how audiovisual communication can be used to trigger the performative aspects of cultural scripts of contemporary forms of expressive violence and thus institutionalize a social movement (i.e. school shooting subculture). These proceedings produce association to a subversive movement, providing a political connotation to the act and a renewed positive identity.Cet article analyse les stratégies de communication développées par huit auteurs de fusillades scolaires qui ont utilisés les médias participatifs pour médiatiser leur projet meurtrier et leur identité. Basés sur 78 vidéos et 101 autoportraits photographiques, les résultats révèlent comment ces participations audiovisuelles peuvent être déployées en exploitant les ressorts performatifs du script culturel de ces formes de violence expressive. Les auteurs de fusillade révèlent l’existence d’un mouvement subversif des fusillades scolaires en y associant leur projet de passage à l’acte pour lui confèrer une portée politique et travailler positivement leur identité

Patients’ Computer-Mediated Communication Media Uses and Gratifications in Healthcare

The proliferation of the Internet and the number of devices connected to it has resulted in widespread use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) media in healthcare. According to a 2011 Pew Internet Study, more than 59 percent of adults have searched online for health information (Fox, 2011). What is not clear in literature is why patients seek health information online and why patients share health information online. This study informs the academic and practitioner community on the motivations and barriers for seeking and/or sharing health information online by providing a rich explanation of such behavior through an interpretive exploration involving patients who engage in such behavior

Illusions of Control: Media Uses and Preferences Among University Students

Uses and gratifications theory and the situational theory of publics are used to frame an analysis of media uses and preferences of university students. Results of a survey of university students (n=202) reveal that students reported different levels of use and preference for e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging with campus leadership and their own instructors. Students who considered themselves more active in campus issues preferred newspapers, magazines and UT websites to obtain more information about the university. Professional recommendations on maximizing communication effectiveness between universities and their students include using UT websites, text messages and campus and Knoxville newspapers to share troublesome news announcements, and Facebook and Twitter updates to share good news announcements

“Seeing but not believing”: Undergraduate students’ media uses and news trust

Young people often encounter the news on social media while engaging in social and entertainment practices. Despite relying on social media for news, youth see online information with suspicion and as less trustworthy than traditional news media. While many factors contribute to the widespread decline in news trust, the relationship between youth news media uses and their trust in the news remains unclear. This article seeks to understand how Portuguese undergraduate students describe their news trust, and how these perceptions relate to their media uses. We draw on a mixed-methods study using a survey (N = 562) and focus groups (N = 45) with students from diverse disciplines, between 2016 and 2017. The findings reveal a paradoxical relationship between students’ media uses and news trust. Students mistrust online news but stay informed through social media. This is explained by emotional needs as well as perceptions of the news combining optimistic and critical stances. This study suggests further research on what news trust means for young people on social media.This article is the result of a PhD fellowship (SFRH/BD/94791/2013), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, National Strategic Reference Framework, and the Operational Human Potential Program

The locative dystopia

Locative media uses portable, networked, location aware computing devices for user-led mapping and artistic interventions in which geographical space becomes its canvas. The discourse of locative media gestures to a convergence of the digital domain and geographical space, and the course it plots towards this future demands not only that data be made geographically specific but also that the user - if not defined by their location - at least offers up their location as a condition of entering the game. In this respect, not to mention its choice of tools, locative media operates upon the same plane as military tracking, State and commercial surveillance, forcing a consideration of how locative media might challenge, or be complicit with such forms of social control

College Students’ Use of Digital and Traditional Media: Uses and Gratifications Approach

In the higher education field marketers need to better understand how to keep abreast with the trends of their current and future audiences. With ever-evolving technologies, students’ have multiple methods in which to acquire campus related information. The aims of this study were to discover what communication methodologies students employ when learning about campus information and what methodologies they employ when actively searching. Based on a uses and gratifications framework, this study involved conducting an online survey to compare college students’ use and level of influence from traditional or digital media marketing. The findings of this study show that both past and present methods of marketing communications’ are utilized to search for information, with different intentions on each. This survey specifically explored the use of media among the student population at the Rochester Institute of Technology