Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item “In All Their Diversity": Examining Participation, Funds of Knowledge, and Identity Representation in Art-Based Social Media Posts(2024) Hernly, Kenna; Clegg, Tamara; McGrew, Sarah; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many art museums are currently facing issues of inequity at every level, including in collections, staffing, audiences, and engagement practices. In this dissertation, I hypothesize that one way to address these issues is by altering engagement and learning practices, which are traditionally grounded in didactic, expert-led approaches. In this multiple-method, three-paper dissertation, I use The Museum Challenge (TMC) – a social media challenge to re-create works of art with household materials – as a case study of participatory art engagement. This large-scale, global challenge, which was initiated by the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, relied on participatory engagement practices with digitized museum collection objects. To better understand the implications of TMC for participatory art engagement, I combine quantitative data on 81,086 Instagram posts from the first four months of the challenge and qualitative data from post samples and interviews with participants in TMC. As others who have researched social media use in art museums have found, these platforms can afford visitors and remote users alike the ability to choose what is important to them and to engage with art museum collections in a self-led, playful manner that is not always encouraged by the museum environment, especially for adults (Budge, 2017, 2018b, 2018a; Budge & Burness, 2018; Villaespesa & Wowkowych, 2020). My findings predominantly speak to three things: 1) Participants drew on slow-looking and embodied learning as they re-created art, often in an instinctive way connected to their funds of knowledge; 2) Participants offered their interpretations of artworks, adapting art for our times and in some cases challenging norms to represent their individual and group identities; and 3) Participants found joy in the process, learning and building a positive and supportive community that has had a lasting impact. My research presents an example of audiences showing museums what they want and challenging expert-led interpretations to adapt art for our times and, in the process, representing themselves “in all their diversity” (Wong, 2012, p. 284; Ebben & Bull, 2022).Item Social media crowdsourcing for rapid damage assessment following sudden-onset earthquakes(2021) Li, Lingyao; Baecher, Gregory; Bensi, Michelle; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rapid appraisal of damages related to hazard events is important to first responders, government agencies, insurance industries, and other private and public organizations. While satellite monitoring, ground-based sensor systems, inspections, and other technologies provide data to inform post-disaster response, crowdsourcing through social media is an additional and novel data source. In this study, the use of social media data, principally Twitter postings, is investigated to make approximate but rapid early assessments of damages following earthquake disasters. The goal is to explore the potential utility of using social media data for rapid damage assessment after sudden-onset hazard events and to identify insights related to potential challenges. This study defines a text-based damage assessment scale for earthquake damages and then develops a text classification model for rapid damage assessment. The 2019 Ridgecrest, California earthquake sequence is mainly investigated as the case study. Results reveal that Twitter users rapidly responded to this sudden-onset event, and the damage estimation shows temporal and spatial characteristics. The generalization ability of the model is validated through the investigation of damage assessment for another five earthquake events. Although the accuracy remains a challenge compared to ground-based instrumental readings and inspections, the proposed damage assessment model features rapidity with large amounts of data at spatial densities that exceed those of conventional sensor networks.Item Illuminating Children's Scientific Funds of Knowledge Through Social Media Sharing(2019) Mills, Kelly; Ketelhut, Diane J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The ubiquitous use of social media by children offers a unique opportunity to view diverse funds of knowledge. Connecting learning to students’ funds of knowledge is particularly important for non-dominant learners, who experience tensions between home, community and school science cultures. This study is embedded in a research project which iteratively designed a social media app to be integrated into a science learning program which engaged families in science in their community. I conducted an exploratory case study on children’s use of a social media app for science learning and found that three focal learners (ages 9-14) often shared scientific funds of knowledge through social media in an after-school learning program and in their homes and communities. Their teachers connected some scientific funds of knowledge they shared on social media to formal science concepts. However, other scientific funds of knowledge were not obvious by observing the posts alone. Rather, these tacit funds of knowledge emerged through the triangulation of posts, interviews and observations of their learning experiences in the life-relevant science education program. The findings suggest implications for the design of technology and learning environments to facilitate the connection of children’s implicit and more unconventional scientific funds of knowledge to formal science concepts. I build on these findings to explore how teachers can bridge funds of knowledge shared on social media to scientific practices in formal learning environments with a case study of three teachers from a diverse urban middle school. Using the framework for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), I seek to understand how to best support teachers to draw upon student’s funds of knowledge through social media sharing and connect them to formal scientific concepts. The teachers struggled to engage in dialogue with their students about their posts, missing opportunities to gain contextual information about students’ funds of knowledge, in order to facilitate connections to science concepts. These findings suggest that aspects of usability, policy and teacher beliefs are necessary to consider in order to promote the recognition of children’s funds of knowledge through social media sharing in formal learning environments.Item Mind the gap: Connecting news and information to build an anti-rape and sexual assault agenda in India(2017) Guha, Pallavi; Chadha, Kalyani; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation will examine the use of news media and social media platforms by feminist activists in building an anti-rape and sexual assault agenda in India. Feminist campaigns need to resonate and interact with the mainstream media and social media simultaneously to reach broader audiences, including policymakers, in India. For a successful feminist campaign to take off in a digitally emerging country like India, an interdependence of social media conversations and news media discussions is necessary. The study focuses on the theoretical framework of agenda building, digital feminist activism, and hybridization of the media system. The study will also introduce the still-emerging concept of interdependent agenda building to analyze the relationship between news media and social media. This concept proposes the idea of an interplay of information between traditional mass media and social media, by focusing not just on one media platform, but on multiple platforms simultaneously in this connected world. The methodology of the study includes in-depth interviews with thirty-five feminist activists and thirty journalists; thematic analysis of 550 newspaper reports of three rapes and murders from 2005-2016; and social media analysis of three Facebook feminist pages to understand and analyze the impact of social media on news media coverage of rape and the combined influence of media platforms on anti-rape feminist activism. The introduction of social media platforms in newsroom influence coverage of rape and sexual assault on women, and assess the reasons behind selective media and public outrage against rape and sexual assault. In this dissertation, I also focus on the intersectional identity of feminist activists and how they align their offline anti-rape activism and inequalities of caste, gender, class, digital access and literacy. As a recommendation of this study, I created a beta version of an app, which will support anti-rape feminist activism and rape coverage by bridging the information and coverage gap of rape and sexual assault.Item INFORMATION TRANSPARENCY AND USER BEHAVIOR IN EMERGING ONLINE MARKETPLACES: EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND OPEN INNOVATION MARKETS(2013) AL-HASAN, ABRAR; Viswanathan, Siva; Lucas, Hank; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Web 2.0 and social media have significantly increased the amount of information available to users not only about firms and their offerings, but also about the activities of other individuals in their networks and markets. It is widely acknowledged that this increased availability of information is likely to influence a user's behavior and choices. However, there are very few systematic studies of how such increased information transparency influences user behavior in emerging marketplaces. My dissertation seeks to examine the impact of increased information transparency - particularly, information about other individuals - in two emerging platforms. The first essay in my dissertation compares online "social" marketing on Facebook with "non-social" marketing and examines their relative impacts on the likelihood of adoption, usage and diffusion of an "App". While social marketing - wherein a user gets to see which of her other friends have also "liked" the product being marketed- is one of the fastest growing online marketing formats, there are hardly any studies that have examined the value of the social aspect of such marketing. I find that social marketing is associated with increased app adoption, usage, and diffusion as compared to non-social marketing. The study also uncovers interesting tradeoffs between the effects of different types of "social" information on user behavior outcomes. The second essay examines the behavior of contestants in an open innovation design marketplace, wherein firms seek solutions from a crowd through an online contest. The study examines how the availability of information about other contestants as well as the availability of feedback information provided to others by the contest holder, impacts a focal contestant's behavior and outcomes. I find that contestants adopt different strategic behaviors that increase their odds of winning the contest under the different information-transparency regimes. The findings have interesting implications for the design of online contests and crowdsourcing markets. Overall, my dissertation provides a deeper understanding of how the visibility of different types of information in online platforms impacts individual behaviors and outcomes.Item The Social Coast Guard: An Ethnographic Examination of the Intersection of Risk Communication, Social Media, and Government Public Relations(2012) Levenshus, Abbey Blake; Liu, Brooke F.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The contemporary communication context includes heightened risk, increasing the need for dialogic or relational risk communication with key stakeholders. Scholars have identified social media's potential to improve dialogic communication, yet governments may face challenges when using social media, particularly in a risk communication context. This study explored social media use in "the complex communication context of risk communication" (Sellnow et al., 2009, p. 53) within the under-studied U.S. public sector and applied a complexity and relational theoretical framework to explore the intersection of government public relations, risk communication, and social media. Questions focused on how government communicators in high-risk environments perceived the public sector context influences their risk communication and social media communication; how they viewed social media's role in risk communication; the extent to which they engaged in social-mediated relational risk communication; and, how they planned and executed social media communication. An ethnographic case study of the U.S. Coast Guard's social media program was conducted, including analysis of 205.25 participant observation hours at the headquarters social media office, 10 interviews, and 49 documents. Findings suggest that organizations with risk-related missions or responsibilities may have a "risk communication mindset" that spurs and constrains social media communication and integrates social-mediated risk communication into ongoing public affairs. Intersecting, overlapping influences within public sector contexts also influenced social media strategies and tactics. Data suggest a continuum exists between organizations participating in and hosting social media engagement. Findings suggest moving toward a multivocal conversational relational communication model that encompasses the distributed public relations model (Kelleher, 2009). The dissertation adds depth to the human conversational voice construct (e.g., Bruning, et al., 2004; Kelleher, 2009; Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007) and online relational maintenance strategies by offering a behind-the-scenes understanding of why and how government organizations can be engaging and conversational hosts via social media by inviting audiences to engage without organizations having to maintain conversations. The study offers practical recommendations such as reducing blog content to increase efforts using more engaging platforms like Facebook; increasing use of visually-rich and engaging content; cultivating internal relationships to improve personnel compliance and participation; and, improving strategic integration and evaluation.