UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Audience Engagement: An Artist-Researcher's Approach to Meaningful Concert Experiences(2024) Jansen, Madeleine Anna; Stern, James; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As classical music concert attendance wanes, much attention has been given to improving and sustaining audience engagement. This doctoral dissertation investigates audience experience at classical music performances from the perspective of the performer. Using a mixed-methodology of arts-based research and qualitative research, I organized and performed seven violin and piano recitals in which I experimented with different types of venues, repertoire, and modes of communication. Data results based on written surveys from 81 concert attendees, as well as semi-structured interviews with numerous other attendees, revealed that audience members engaged better with performances when concert conditions promoted feelings of inclusivity. This finding is consistent with other literature in audience research, but this study contributes a more nuanced discussion from the perspective of the performer of venue choice, programming, and verbal contextualization of the music.Item WHAT'S IN A "LIKE"? INFLUENCE OF NEWS AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT ON THE DELIBERATION OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE.(2014) Oh, Soo-Kwang; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a mixed methods study of the influence of the "like" feature on how people discuss and understand online news. Habermas's notion of the public sphere was that an inclusive, all-accessible and non-discriminating forum enables participants to deliberate on topics of concern. With increased interactivity and connectivity introduced by new media, commenting features have been heralded as a means to expand and accommodate discussions from audiences. In particular, by allowing people to provide feedback to each other's ideas via "up-voting" and indicating popular "top" comments, the "like" button shows promise to be a quick and convenient way to increase participation and represent public opinion. This dissertation, however, questions whether this is true. It raises concerns about the new media landscape, asking whether the resulting digital culture helps in the proper functioning of the public sphere. To address these questions, this dissertation adopts a mixed methods approach consisting of the following: 1) Framing analysis of "top" comments and sub-comments that were posted in response to articles about recent presidential elections, examining how audiences' framing of issues influences discussions and what strategies were used to increase "likable" traits; 2) ranking analysis of chronological order, testing whether chronological order of comments is a significant factor for number of "likes," regardless of content; 3) controlled experiment, testing assumptions about cognitive and behavioral responses from individuals regarding the "like" feature and how they perceive public opinion; and 4) focus group sessions with college student news audiences and interviews with media professionals, making in-depth inquiry about people's attitudes and perceptions of "likes." Furthermore, this dissertation paid attention to cultural differences, and compared the U.S. to Korea, with its advanced information technologies and highly utilized online commenting forums. Findings from each of the four methods as well as triangulation of the results showed that "likes" and "top" comments influence people's perceptions of public opinion. The problem was that these "top" comments were "liked" due to certain "likability" factors that had nothing to do with substantive issues and contributed little to the discussion. Also, avid commenters and "likers" tended to hold more extreme viewpoints, therefore promoting skewed perspectives. Moreover, the "top" comments may suggest priority of the ideas promoted in those top comments over others, thus hindering a full deliberation on topics in the public sphere. Across the findings, intercultural differences in both perspectives and behaviors were observed between U.S. and Korean data. Specifically, Korean participants showed higher susceptibility to "likes" and various characteristics regarding "likable" factors as well as "top" comments. The ideals of the public sphere can and will be important for how public opinion can be garnered in the digital setting. Nonetheless, this dissertation posits that the public sphere functions differently in the digital environment and thus its parameters and concepts need to be rethought. Because the public sphere is an abstract ideal, it lacks practicality and adaptability; it requires additional theorization based on cultural differences, various contexts under which audiences' new engagement take place, and rapidly changing technologies and modes of usage within digital culture.Item Essays on high-status fallacies(2012) Malter, Daniel; Goldfarb, Brent; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation comprises three essays. Each essay challenges some of the commonly held beliefs about and provides novel insights into the role of status in markets. In essay 1, I study the causal effect of producer status on the price premiums producers are able to charge for their products, the underlying cause for this premium, and producers' incentives to invest in quality under a fixed status hierarchy. In essays 2 and 3, I investigate on the organizational and individual level, respectively, how high-status affiliations affect an audience's evaluation of a social actor's identity. The contribution of these papers lies in highlighting reasons for, mechanisms through, and conditions under which high-status affiliations become a liability. Essay 1 addresses the recent debate about the causality, cause, and consequence of returns to status on the organizational level. I exploit the \textit{grand cru} classification of chateaux of the M\'{e}doc created in 1855 as an unambiguous and exogenous status signal. I study its effect on wine prices and the incentive to invest in quality over a period of time during which information about producer and product quality has become increasingly munificent. As for the causality of status effects, I find evidence for causal returns to organizational status, but these returns are substantially overestimated if quality and reputation are not accurately controlled on the product level. As for the cause of status effects, I find that uncertainty is not a necessary condition and the taste for high-status products is a sufficient condition for returns to organizational status. As for the consequence of status effects, I find that higher-status producers' greater incentives to invest in quality are insufficient to enforce a separating equilibrium in producers' quality choices. The study cautions that causality claims in the status literature hinge upon proper identification, that returns to status can have alternative root causes, and that status hierarchies need not enshrine the quality hierarchy among producers. In essay 2, I propose that an organization's growth potential may suffer if its identity is confounded with or eclipsed by the high-status organizations with which it collaborates and competes. I devise two network measures to capture the degree to which identities are confounded or eclipsed. The theory is then tested with data on U.S. venture capital firm syndication between 1995 and 2009. The more a VC firm's identity is confounded with the identities of co-syndicating high-status firms, the smaller is the likelihood that it is able to raise a new fund. Further, the likelihood that an eclipsed identity hurts a VC firm's chances to raise a new fund increases in the firm's status. These findings suggest that in status-based market competition an organization needs to justify its identity claim by distinguishing itself from the established elite. Essay 3 picks up on anecdotal evidence that some audiences discount actors with strong high-status affiliations. This contradicts the extant literature, which in its overwhelming majority finds that an actor's chance to find audience approval for his identity increases in the strength of his high-status affiliations. In this article, I develop a unifying theoretical framework that is able to reconcile such seemingly contradictory effects. I propose that the optimal strength of high-status affiliations depends on an audience's taste for uniqueness/conformity in identity and the audience's uncertainty about the actor. An experiment shows that taste and uncertainty have interdependent effects, suggests that the extant status literature rests on implicit assumptions about audience taste, and highlights two conditions under which strong high-status affiliations are detrimental. Studies of rank mobility in academia and in a fraternity provide corroborating evidence for one of these conditions. Conformity-seeking audiences penalize too strong high-status affiliations if their uncertainty about the actor is high. The implications for identity design and social structure are discussed.