Category: Research

My experience with computers began in 1985 as I learned the beauty of Logo on a Packard Bell computer at the vocation school and the ability of a turtle to move through an electronic field by giving the turtle directions. I’ve enjoyed writing programs for computers in BASIC, simple JAVA and ActionScript for years. The connection to the world of cyberstudies came from my first experience on a bulletin board system (BBS) during my middle school years. I got to see virtual interactions on a textual level. Little did I know that I would be studying those interactions for my doctorate later in life.
Twitter and its Impact on American Governance

Twitter and its Impact on American Governance

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I was happy that one of my articles was selected for Communication Currents, an amazing produced by the National Communication Association. Communication Currents is an online web magazine of the National Communication Association. This site is designed to translate current communication scholarship published in scholarly journals of the National Communication Association. Working from recently-published journal articles, Communication Currents makes scholarship available …

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How Networks Make Networks

How Networks Make Networks

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As Monty Python Flying Circus used to say, “Now for something completely different!” I am going to attempt to define two complex concepts and attempt to connect those concepts to the everyday world of social media. Those two terms are infotaxis and stigmergy. Both refer to a similar natural function, that is changing embedded information in an environment …

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Microblogging

Microblogging

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Microblogging (Jaiku, Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, identi.ca, et al.) is considered a minimalist communication tool designed to fit the needs of an end-user. This channel allows the user to post information 140 characters at a time, which are called tweets. This configuration of characters could be as simple as textual information to a complex command line …

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Cybersecurity and You!

Cybersecurity and You!

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It seems that I’ve been focusing a lot on security and fraud on microblogging sites. However, there is more online than microblogging sites, despite my attraction to the concept. As a way of approaching cybersecurity, I finished reading the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency final report. It is …

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Virtual Ethnographies Revisited

Virtual Ethnographies Revisited

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The last three months of the research process will be the virtual ethnography research method. I will talk to ten students from each of the universities based on the interview pool or if there is attrition in the pool, a new group of students from those who took the survey based on the selection protocol …

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Surveys Revised

Surveys Revised

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The first method that will be used for this triangulation study will be a survey designed to look at the overall superstructure that defines this online social network. This survey will be designed to observe the individual habits of first-year students with regards to their Facebook usage and the individual’s perception of status and self-worth …

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Context of My Research for the IR9.0 Colloquium

Context of My Research for the IR9.0 Colloquium

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The purpose of this proposal is to describe the focus of my dissertation, which will be observing incoming traditional first-year students to Midwestern universities, whose hometowns are small towns and see how those first-year students use Facebook as a coping mechanism. The paper will begin with an in-depth discussion of my research interest and a …

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Involvement and Engagement

Involvement and Engagement

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To expand on the themes of involvement and engagement, Arend (2004) looks at how technology not only presents more opportunities for student-faculty interactions but also how those interactions promote a deeper and richer understanding of the course material. However, there is very little additional research citing the effect of technology on the broader construct of …

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Webs of Learning Opportunities

Webs of Learning Opportunities

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For student development theory to fit into the context of this dissertation research project, it is crucial to focus on the academic environment as a web of interaction and, more importantly, as “webs of learning opportunities.” Benjamin et al. (2007) looked at the first weeks of the first year of college as the foundation of …

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The Self Online

The Self Online

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The self online borrows on the work done by Henri Tajfel, John C. Turner and Sherry Turkle. Tajfel and Turner approached the self online through the development of Social Identity Theory, which looked at the concept of the self as a different construct depending on the social environment, the group dynamics, the means used to …

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