Browsing by Subject "Blogging"
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Item Examining the Blogging Habits of Agricultural Leadership Students at Texas A&M University: Understanding Motivation, Use, and Self-Efficacy(2013-05-31) Bumguardner, Kalee MarieBlogging is a form of social media, and student engagement is at the center of blogging. The benefits of blogging include being easy to create and maintain, making writing easier to share, encouraging students to write outside of the classroom, and supporting group collaboration. The findings suggest students are more passive in their blogging experiences, as the data found students generally read blogs more than they wrote blogs. The Unified Theory on Acceptance and Use of Technology and self-efficacy theory were used as the framework for the study. This study sought to explore agricultural leadership students? motivations for blogging. Student responses indicated on average they read blogs less than once a month. Students typically reported a preference for informal writing even if they did not blog. Teacher training could be used to increase awareness among educators about the benefits of blogging. Educators must be able to convey the benefits of educational blogging in terms of its ease and benefit for student acceptance.Item An exploration of bloggers' behavioral characteristics and preceived credibility of blogs(2007-12) Ahn, Hongmin; Lee, Wei-Na, 1957-This study investigates blogging phenomenon by identifying the behavioral characteristics of bloggers. Specifically, this thesis seeks to develop comparative descriptive profiles of non-bloggers and bloggers that include perceptions and experience of blog opinion leadership, ongoing involvement within the blogosphere, innovation as personal traits, perceived credibility of blog, and general computer knowledge and skills. Results from the study indicate less evidence than expected of blogging behaviors as prominent Internet activities. Further, the distinctive behaviors of opinion leadership involvement by bloggers were observed, whereas bloggers were not much different from non-bloggers in terms of other characteristics such as innovativeness and computer knowledge and skills. The study also found that Internet users perceived blogs to be less credible than traditional media or other online forms. Suggestions for future study in blogging phenomenon are provided.Item Exploring U.S. agricultural commodity organizations’ use of blogs as a communications tool(2012-08) Moore, Maddee; Meyers, Courtney; Irlbeck, Erica; Burris, ScottCommunication technology can be used to change individuals’ views to promote change in cultural, behavioral, and psychological beliefs. For these changes to happen, people need be able to ask questions, process the information in an active environment, debate and discuss the subject matter, and apply the information presented. Blogs and other forms of communication allow people to be involved in the communication process. The purpose of this study was to explore how agricultural commodity organizations use blogs as a communication tool. The researcher accessed these blogs by purposively selecting U.S. agricultural commodity groups from two agricultural associations – the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) and the American Agricultural Editors’ Associations (AAEA). This study used a descriptive, qualitative research design consisting of in-depth interviews with nine blog authors of selected U.S. agricultural commodity groups. The results indicated that the organizations started blogging to communicate with a variety of publics. U.S. agricultural commodity organizations used some online analytics and supporting social media outlets to measure blog success, but the organizations had not predetermined who are their target audiences. The results for this study provide an understanding of how organizations are utilizing blogs, which will provide insight for others in the agricultural industry who may decide to use this technology.Item Indie music blogging: An examination of culture, fandom and community through online discourse(2010-12) Miles, Stephanie; Peaslee, Robert M.; Chambers, Todd; Johnson, TomThe Internet is becoming a primary source for cultural groups to socialize and communicate about a particular area of interest. Independent music blogs provide a space for disseminating cultural information regarding indie music and festival activities. This analysis uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus to examine the content and fan interactions on independent music blogs over the course of a festival event. Blogs are explored as a field within which certain individuals interact and gain power through online discourse. Results of this study indicate that bloggers use exclusivity and discovery to gain status within the indie music blogging community. In addition, fandom and in-group versus out-group were common practices found in the blog and Twitter postings.Item iTrak : a social mobile diary and web blogging utility for travelers(2013-05) Dao, Tung Thanh, active 2013; Aziz, AdnaniTrak is a combined mobile and web application that takes advantage of the GPS to allow travelers to share their experience while travelling. The application gathers GPS data and broadcasts it via a web interface or social networks such as Facebook to update user’s status during a trip. iTrak is also equipped with other features such as writing notes or recording video journals to offer a rich experience and provide an interactive diary, along with a real-time tracking ability, for travelers.Item Medium.com as a contender in the participatory web(2015-12) Masumian, Adib Edward; Hughes, Joan E.; Resta, Paul EThis Master’s report represents the culmination of a self-study that lasted from January to May 2014, wherein I set out to evaluate the standing of Medium.com—an online communal blogging platform—as a contender in the participatory web. I conducted the original self-study with a fixed scope and a certain set of goals in mind. Based on feedback from my instructor and peers, however, I have endeavored to build upon my prior research by further analyzing my personal experience with Medium’s participatory aspects, taking my previous conclusions in a new direction, and using the benefit of a year’s hindsight—between the present day and the time when I finished the first version of this paper—to see how far Medium has come. This Master’s report, therefore, will be split into two parts. The first, entitled “The Original Self-Study on Participatory Web Activities,” will feature a complete and unaltered report of the original research I carried out last year. The second, “Another Look,” features a) a review of the updates Medium has implemented over the past year, which have allowed for greater discoverability for Medium’s published content and richer modes of interaction between its users; b) a snapshot of Medium’s userbase and incoming traffic as illustrated by data analytics; c) a revisiting of Medium’s participatory aspects and list of best practices for engaging with the service; d) a review of Medium’s competition; e) an updated conclusion that synthesizes the foregoing items. From these assessments, I have concluded that Medium is continuing to take steps to become the ideal communal publishing platform where anyone can publish and be discovered, and that the site is consolidating its status as a major player in today’s participatory web.Item "Still alive and kicking" : girl bloggers and feminist politics in a "postfeminist" age(2013-05) Keller, Jessalynn Marie; Kearney, Mary Celeste, 1962-This dissertation refutes the notion that contemporary girls are uninterested in feminism by exploring how teenage girls are engaging in feminist activism as bloggers. Using a feminist cultural studies approach I analyze how girl bloggers produce feminist identities and practices that challenge hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal cultural politics. I employ feminist ethnographic methods, including a series of in-depth interviews with U.S. -based girl feminist bloggers and an online collaborative focus group, as well as a discursive and ideological textual analysis of girl-produced feminist blogs. Using these methods, I privilege girls' voices while proposing a model for conducting feminist ethnography online. In doing so, I demonstrate how girls' feminist blogging functions as an activist practice through networked counterpublics, intervening in mainstream and sometimes even commercial public space. I position this activism within a lengthy tradition of American feminism, analyzing how my participants remain in conversation with feminist history while simultaneously responding to their unique cultural climate. Finally, I argue that we must recognize the political importance of girls' feminist blogging by theorizing it as an emergent citizenship practice that makes feminism an accessible discourse to contemporary teenage girls.