May 22, 2022

This Day Live (Nigeria): TETFund Targets Two Billion Pages of Research Materials

This Day Live (Nigeria): TETFund Targets Two Billion Pages of Research Materials. “The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has begun a two-billion pages drive to accelerate the ongoing digitisation of thesis across 100 least digitised institutions. Inaugurating the committee on yesterday in Abuja, the executive secretary, Sonny Echono, said the need for a National Academic Research Repository (NARR) necessitated the project, given that numerous research outputs were lying dormant in libraries across tertiary institutions in the country.”

Research & Opinion 0
April 26, 2019

World Leaders a-Twitter: Communication Platforms and Agenda-Building During the 2018 NATO Summit (U of Colorado Boulder Thesis)

University of Colorado Boulder thesis: World Leaders a-Twitter: Communication Platforms and Agenda-Building During the 2018 NATO Summit. “Twitter is a thriving microblogging service with growing prominence in the political sphere. In this study, I examine the differences between Twitter communications and verbal communications by three heads of state and government in relation to the most recent NATO Summit in July 2018. Through a three-step analysis, including descriptive statistics, content and tone analysis, and comparative analysis, the study investigates Twitter’s influence on content and tone and its agenda-building capacity for face-to-face summits.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 12, 2018

Bepress: FIU Shares Thesis Digitization Project and Lessons Learned

This is from the end of August, but it’s a great project so in it goes. From Bepress: FIU Shares Thesis Digitization Project and Lessons Learned . “Late in 2016 Florida International University’s Digital Collections Librarian, Rebecca Bakker, began a lofty and ambitious project: seeking permissions from over 4,300 alumni to post their theses and dissertations to FIU Digital Commons. The repository now includes about 80% of the works she has investigated…. Bakker detailed her project in a presentation at last year’s Digital Commons Southeast User Group IR Day, describing working with the institution’s general council to determine what permission from alumni would look like, to the wide variety of ways that Bakker located authors, to the messages she sent and the ways she tracked responses. Take a look!”

New Resources 0
August 31, 2018

The Highest Form of Like: Snapchat, College Students and Hyperpersonal Communication (Marquette University)

A Marquette University Thesis: The Highest Form of Like: Snapchat, College Students and Hyperpersonal Communication. “The purpose of this study explores how college students engaged with others on Snapchat and how that differed from other Social Networking Sites (SNS). Social Information Process (SIP) Theory was applied as a framework for understanding the effects of time-limited (disappearing) messages and extended conversations that can lead to “hyperpersonal” communication, a form of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) that surpasses the level of affection and emotion of Face to Face (FtF) interaction. In a series of focus groups, college students explained how they used Snapchat and other SNS and the effects it had on interpersonal communication. The participants described emotional interactions with others on Snapchat which they characterized as more authentic and in-the-moment than other SNS and that reflected hyperpersonal communication.” The entire thesis is available for download.

Research & Opinion 0
June 26, 2018

Nova Southeastern University: Using Twitter as a Pedagogical Resource to Teach First-Year Composition

Nova Southeastern University: Using Twitter as a Pedagogical Resource to Teach First-Year Composition. “This study examines the incorporation of Twitter in a first-year composition classroom, and addresses the following question: ‘How can using Twitter as a pedagogical resource to teach writing benefit both students and professors?’ The study employs mixed-methods, including surveys, textual analysis of student tweets, and an interview with the professor to assess the application and outcomes of using Twitter.”

Research & Opinion 0
May 19, 2018

Explaining Animosity Towards the Roma: A Case Study of Twitter Communication in Italy during the Refugee Crisis (CUNY Thesis)

CUNY Thesis: Explaining Animosity Towards the Roma: A Case Study of Twitter Communication in Italy during the Refugee Crisis. “Italy is known for hostile treatment of the Roma, one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Europe. This paper seeks to understand what is causing Italians to talk negatively about the Roma on Twitter. Statistical analysis is performed utilizing the data mined from Twitter along with other variables. The study finds that Roma population, foreign population, and number of refugees all have significant effects on the total number of tweets or the average negative sentiment of tweets. The results indicate that native Italians may group minority groups all together and regard them as “others”. Although the research design has some flaws in the data mining and sentiment analysis process, the study shows promise. I suggest that social scientists utilize social media data to analyze social or cultural phenomena.” This thesis […]

Research & Opinion 0
December 3, 2017

Dina Chang at Iowa State University: Gratifications associated with Snapchat usage among young people: Uses and gratifications analysis

From Dina Chang at Iowa State University: Gratifications associated with Snapchat usage among young people: Uses and gratifications analysis. “Social media has become an everyday media diet for media users, especially young generations. Previous studies have focused on the use of Facebook and Twitter, but there is a dearth of research on newer social media such as Snapchat despite its fast growth and adoption in recent years. This study applies the uses and gratifications approach to Snapchat in order to identify what activities younger users are likely to do while using Snapchat, to investigate what kinds of gratifications are associated with Snapchat usage among young people, as well as to test whether there are gender differences in gratifications of Snapchat usage.”

Research & Opinion 0
October 23, 2017

Engadget: Stephen Hawking makes his doctoral thesis available online

Engadget: Stephen Hawking makes his doctoral thesis available online. “Ever wondered how Stephen Hawking saw the universe as a doctoral candidate, when his theories about black holes were just coming into fruition? You don’t have to hear about it second-hand — you can now go straight to the source. The legendary cosmologist has published his 1966 doctoral thesis online for anyone to read, making it available to the public for the first time. Hawking is posting his work in hopes that it’ll spark interests in both space itself and sharing research. ‘I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet,’ he said.”

New Resources 0
June 19, 2017

Thesis: Relationship Between Social Anxiety & Facebook Surveillance

A thesis from the Portland State University Library: Relationship Between Social Anxiety & Facebook Surveillance. “The advent of social media has created a new type of information seeking to reduce uncertainty: extractive information seeking, which refers to when people seek information about their target by perusing their online social media profiles. The social compensation hypothesis suggests that those who suffer from social anxiety in face-to-face contexts might use a computer-mediated communication context (such as Facebook) to mitigate their face-to-face anxiety. The goal of this study is to find a relationship between general social anxiety (GSA) and interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES), a type of extractive information seeking. Results from this study indicate that while there is a positive relationship between general social anxiety and extractive information seeking, the relationship was not statistically significant.”

Research & Opinion 0
May 15, 2016

Thesis: Sentiment Expression on Twitter Regarding the Middle East

A thesis from Byron Boots at the University of Montana: Sentiment Expression on Twitter Regarding the Middle East. ” In this research, I am looking at scholarly works, journalism sources, and other reports to learn more about some of the ways Twitter has been used as it relates to the Middle East and better establish context for my data analysis. This information helps guide me in performing realtime sentiment analysis – or opinion mining – on Twitter data using open-source sentiment dictionaries with machine learning algorithms to provide highly accurate analysis of emotional response as it relates to the Middle East.” The thesis is only 14 pages long and I feel like he barely scraped the surface with this analytical research. However, Mr. Boots does go over the tools he used to get the tweets and perform an analysis, so if you have any interest in Twitter mining/analysis this is […]

Research & Opinion 0
March 6, 2016

University of Madras Theses Database Having Trouble Getting Off the Ground

I mentioned last week the Indian institute of Science was putting together a digital library which includes theses. Unfortunately a thesis digital library at the University of Madras is not having the same success. “An ambitious project to upload all Ph.D theses of research scholars of the University of Madras has failed to take off due to lack of policy push from the authorities concerned. The database of theses would not only provide research scholars an easy access to reference materials but also prevent plagiarism.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
February 29, 2016

Indian Institute of Science Assembling Large Digital Library

The Indian Institute of Science is creating a huge digital library. “The process of digitisation began six years ago. So far, the IISc has digitised 2,500 books and as many theses. Now, 10,000 bound volume journals and more than 5,500 titles are available online. … The library has more than 8,000 theses and at least two lakh books, according to Puttabasavaiah, deputy librarian at the IISc.” (A lakh is 100,000.)

New Resources 2

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