Browsing by Subject "Internet"
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Item 2000 Twin Cities Area Survey: Results and Technical Report.(Minnesota Center for Survey Research (MCSR), 2001) Minnesota Center for Survey ResearchItem 21st Century media effects: choice, predispositions, and their impact on agenda setting and priming.(2009-12) Holmes, Justin WhitelyIn the past 25 years, we have seen a massive shift to communication technologies that allow increased choice of content for citizens. Using an experiment, this study explores the relationship between individual differences, increased choice, and media effects such as agenda setting and priming. It finds that increased choice greatly attenuates both attention to political news and subsequent priming and framing effects.Item Assessing the Digital Presence of Rural Minnesota Businesses: Basic Methods & Findings(University of Minnesota Tourism Center, 2012) Daun, Tara R.; Muessig, HansAre businesses in greater Minnesota using the Internet to sell themselves?Item Blandin Community Investment Partnership: Networking for the Future(2002) Wikstrom, JanItem A Comparison of a Web-based versus Face-to-Face Social Support-enhanced Weight Loss Program in Nurses: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial(2016-05) Sabo, JulieAbstract Background: Over one third of the United States population is classified as obese or overweight and obesity rates have remain unchanged over the last decade. Obesity and being overweight is the fifth leading causes of deaths globally. Lifestyle changes involving diet and activity can be difficult to initiate and even more difficult to maintain. Therefore, achieving and maintaining weight loss remains difficult for many overweight and obese people. Preliminary studies have shown success with weight loss programs that use social support methods other than face-to-face, such as individual support via telephone calls or remote personal support via web-based methods, as an adjunct intervention for weight loss. Objective: The aims of this study were to determine the feasibility and efficacy of a web-based (WB) versus face-to-face (F2F) social-support enhanced weight loss intervention. Method: Registered nurses who had a body mass index (BMI) of over 25 kg/m2 were asked to participate. Participants were randomized to either WB or F2F social support- enhanced weight loss intervention. All participants followed the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension, and attended 12 weekly sessions with a social support component delivered via web-based or face-to-face. End points for feasibility were attendance, adherence with nutrition diary, and satisfaction level. End points for efficacy were weight, BMI, blood pressure (BP), and waist to hip ratio (WHR), and were measured at weeks one, five, eight, and twelve. Data were analyzed for between group differences using non-parametric tests. Results: A total of nine participants were enrolled in the study. Participants were all females, with a median age of 42.5 years in the F2F group and 36 years for the WB group. There were no differences between groups for the feasibility end points of attendance, adherence, and satisfaction levels. There were no differences between groups in all efficacy endpoints of anthropomorphic and BP measurements (except WHR) for all time points. WHR was significantly different between groups, with better outcomes in the WB group. The median weight loss in the WB group was 2.4 kg, and the F2F group 3.8 kg. The change in BMI for the WB group was 0.80 kg/m2 and for the F2F group 1.54 kg/m2. Conclusions: The similar feasibility endpoints of attendance, adherence, and satisfaction levels suggest that a WB social support-enhanced weight loss intervention may be acceptable and feasible alternative to a F2F social support-enhanced weight loss intervention. Conclusions regarding efficacy cannot be formed due to the small sample size and lack of power to detect clinically meaningful differences between groups. The lack of differences between groups is encouraging, and two participants in the F2F group achieved clinically meaningful weight loss of 4.7 and 14.6 kg. Overall findings of this study are consistent with previous studies. Continued studies in web-based methods of social support as an adjunct intervention for weight loss are needed.Item The Development of a Technology-Infused 5th-8th Grade Earth Science Curriculum Focusing on Caves(2014-10) Grunwald, Noelle JTraditional interpretive and educational programs within the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, have been developed on the principle that when people interact firsthand with the tangible resources found within National Park Service (NPS) sites they come to understand the meanings, concepts, stories, and relationships pertaining to these places better. While a direct physical connection to America's national parks is desired, it is not always feasible. As a result, the NPS has embraced the Internet and the World Wide Web as a valuable and effective tool to reach out and engage visitors, specifically those who may never set foot inside a park's boundaries. Many sites within the national park system are adapting technology to enhance place-based learning in park settings and at a distance (USNPS, 2006). The purpose of this study was to address the current programming needs of the interpretation and education division staff at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota by developing a curriculum that utilized the Internet and educational technology to reach out, engage and provide memorable and meaningful learning experiences regarding caves and karst topography to formal educators and their classrooms. A technology-infused 5th-8th grade earth science curriculum focusing on caves was developed and evaluated by both formal and nonformal educators.Item Divergent Narratives on Chinese Internet Censorship: Western-centric versus Local Perspectives(2021-05) Deutmeyer, DanaChinese Internet censorship refers to the Chinese government’s policies that attempt to control the circulation of online information. Internet censorship as a focus of study produces multiple, incongruent perspectives, especially among Western academics and authors. This thesis discusses “black-and-white” and “shades-of-grey” perspectives of Chinese Internet censorship. “Black and white” perspectives present Internet censorship as necessarily being oppressive, and are informed by Western-centric biases rooted in an ideologized, essentialized view of democratic principles and Orientalism. “Shades of grey” perspectives emphasize understanding censorship from a local perspective, including how it prompts the development of certain online behaviors. Under the umbrella of Chinese censorship lies various aspects, including the goal of the government to prevent collective action, as well as the underlying motivation of producing a shared understanding of reality. It also includes how netizens experience Internet censorship, how they react to it, and the influences it has on online culture. Importantly, this discussion of Chinese Internet censorship also considers how the West interprets it, which is usually in a very critical manner, as censorship is viewed as antithetical to Western-centric essentialized values of democracy and freedom.Item From print to pixels: exploitation of the Internets potential by evangelical print periodical publishers(2013-10) Trouten, Douglas JamesThis study explores exploitation of three potentialities of the Internet (interactivity, hypertextuality, multimediality) by member publications of the Evangelical Press Association, and the extent to which degree of exploitation by a publication is related to editorial independence and resource level. It develops and applies a content analysis coding scheme for measuring exploitation of Internet potentialities, and presents findings from a survey of editors. The study concludes that editorial independence is positively related to higher levels of website interactivity and hypertextuality, and finds that higher-resource publication websites are more likely to feature multimediality. The study recommends steps publications can take to increase their exploitation of the Internet's potential, within existing constraints of resources and organizational philosophy.Item GIS and the Internet: Tools for Neighborhood Access to Information(2003) Pittman, Shane LutherItem The implications of Internet filters in secondary schools.(2008-04) Finsness, Lisa SchneiderPresident Bill Clinton signed the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) into law in 2000, requiring schools and libraries to install specific technology that blocks Internet access to visual [not text] depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors. Advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union as well as many educators voiced concern that this law would infringe on intellectual freedom and countered that it was far better to teach students to be effective users of information than to "censor" the Internet. Advocacy groups also began investigating whether CIPA affected students' ability to access information they needed for school. This study explores whether Internet content filters block information secondary students' need to complete Minnesota Academic Standards, and if they do, how teachers and technology administrators react. Professional development in media and information literacy and the extent to which teachers prepare their students in these areas also were examined. Participants for this study were district technology administers and teachers who taught those subject. Data collection included surveys, in-depth interviews, and systematic URL checks. This study can be used as a baseline to further examine the effect Internet content filtering might have on a students' ability to access information. Additionally, findings also may influence school districts to examine how well their teachers are prepared to teach the media and information literacy skills their students need to be effective users of information.Item Maker Made: Creating a Silicon Place in Berlin, Germany(2016-12) Phillips, LeonoreDrawing on the inspiration that Silicon Valley provides, this dissertation is about the way Silicon Allee in Berlin Germany is made by workers, students, bureaucrats and even the larger population of Berlin. Silicon Allee is a community; it’s a matrix of interconnected people, machines, ideas, places and words that are changing, connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting; maintained through webpages, text messages, classrooms, university spaces, meetups, camps, tweets, coworking sites, coffee shop talk and offices. In this age of ultra-information and continuous connections that can span the globe in seconds, Berlin’s Silicon Allee is also embedded in a larger culture of computing that both ignores and reinforces boundaries. I use this dissertation to explore the way that these boundaries are made, unmade and revised both locally, nationally and globally through discourses on and practices of work.Item Optimal size for Online asynchronous text-based focus group discussions: a mixed methods study(2014-11) Hatten, James EdwardFor over six decades, focus group discussions have been a popular and effective methodology for qualitative researchers. Focus group interviewing is a specific type of post-positivistic qualitative research that uses groups of people and a set of predetermined questions directed to a specific conversation to elicit valuable data. Traditional focus groups are conducted face-to-face with participants and moderator all at the same venue. In the past 20 years, Internet technologies have given rise to online focus group discussions. However, as the method of conducting online focus groups has increased, scant research exists in the literature wherein optimal practices are examined in an effort to work toward a standardized form of the approach. This mixed methods dissertation study advances the field of online qualitative research toward a clearer understanding of the online asynchronous focus group methodology in answering the key research question: What is the optimal size for online asynchronous text-based focus group discussions? Using a comparison of online focus groups conducted in an evaluation of a PK-12 educator professional development workshop, it examines the yield differences of group size for six variables of interest: depth of discussion, breadth of discussion, retention rates, participant interaction, adherence to topic, and disclosure of sensitive information. Additionally, comparable qualitative data were analyzed in two areas: participant reactions and researcher/moderator notes. A total of eight online asynchronous text-based focus group discussions were conducted in the evaluation, each with the researcher as moderator and each normalized with the same questions, moderator interaction, and length of time. Three focus groups were classified as small (4-6 participants), three as medium (10-13 participants), and two as large (17 participants). In total, 84 educators (teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, and support staff) completed the four days of online discussion, answering questions about the workshop they attended. In addition, participants responded to a discussion question regarding experiences in the online focus group and completed a post-discussion survey. Analysis of transcripts, notes, survey results, content, and statistics showed significant differences exist between the three treatment sizes. Medium-sized groups were found to be the most optimal of the treatment groups. While large groups yielded similar content results, the participant feedback and researcher indicated the large treatment was more taxing on them for what resulted in a similar net yield of data. Small groups were lacking in interaction and the depth and breadth of text-based conversation of either of the larger groups. Small group participants and the researcher also noted frustrations of the smaller group.Item Oral history interview with Robert Braden(Charles Babbage Institute, 2014-11-19) Braden, RobertThis interview with internet pioneer Robert (“Bob”) Braden briefly covers his education in physics before concentrating on his long and distinguished career in computer science. He served at the computation centers of Carnegie Institute of Technology and Stanford University before joining UCLA as Manager of Programming (1968-1974) and later serving (1975-1986) as Project Director for Software Research. In 1986 he became a Supervising Computer Scientists and Project Leader at the Computer Networks Division of USC’s Information Sciences Institute, where he continues to serve. From its inception (in 1981) he was a member of Internet Activities Board (IAB) and served as IAB Executive Director for a half decade. He was long-term member and Chair of the End-to-End Task/Force Research Group (1984-2005). In these roles he made fundamental contributions to internet protocol standards. Braden is an ISI Fellow and an ACM Fellow.Item Oral history interview with William A. Wulf(Charles Babbage Institute, 2015-06-23) Wulf, William A.Computer security pioneer and past President of the National Academy of Engineering William Wulf briefly recounts his childhood, early education, and developing research interests before addressing how he came to develop a strong interest in computing and completed a doctorate (the first computer scientist doctorate) at the University of Virginia under one of the department’s founders (and the sole founder of the computer center) Alan Batson. The bulk of the interview is on his years as a faculty member in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Virginia, and his founding and leadership of start-up Tartan Laboratories, and his service in directing NSF’s CISE and as President of the National Academy of Engineering. Among the topics discussed are BLISS, C.mmp, HYDRA, key meeting with Al Gore on the Internet, teaching, and the digital humanities. Professor Anita K. Jones also participates in the interview. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”Item A Preliminary Qualitative Analysis of Home Schooling on Stormfront(2021-05) Maxwell, JosephIn recent years, attention to radicalization has focused in on how extremist ideology may be replicated within the family, and passed on intergenerationally (Avdeenko & Siedler, 2017; Riany et al, 2018) Little research explores radicalization within the family unit itself (Spalek, 2016). To gain insight into extremist family units, qualitative methodology was used to explore online posts pertaining to family on Stormfront, a prominent white supremacist website. This project followed case study methodology. A webcrawler was used to collect posts from the board. Thematic analysis was used to organize and analyze data. Homeschooling was found to be a prominent topic within education; all posts within the homeschooling domain were brought under further analysis to derive their intended purpose for further understanding their context. Three themes were identified within the data: Replicating White Nationalist Framing, A Call for Urgency, and Academic White Flight. The analysis of the posts’ purpose revealed that majority of posts, 73%, were intended to find or share resources for homeschooling.Item The relationship of scaffolding on cognitive load in an online self-regulated learning environment(2010-11) Danilenko, Eugene PaulScaffolding learners in self-regulated learning environments is a topic of increasing importance as implementation of online learning grows. Since cognitive overload in hypermedia environments can be a problem for some learners, instructional design strategies can be used to decrease extraneous load or encourage germane load in order to help learners effectively use their cognitive resources. A scaffolding strategy to support learning in potentially confusing environments is to provide high level information in advance of the learning tasks in the form of an instructional organizer. In 2007-2008, 244 participants completed an online self-directed brief health education course on sexual health randomly receiving one of three pictorial graphic organizer scaffolds, concept, procedural, or metacognitive, in advance of the start of the course. Participants rated the course's cognitive burden and their intentional efforts as very low. The low burdens suggest that the online course was easy to use and navigate and the tasks were minimally challenging. Consistent with prior research, these results confirm that organizers are useful to reduce extraneous cognitive load only when multimedia environments are confusing or disorganized, concepts and material are unfamiliar, and learning materials are challenging. Analysis of learning and reflection outcomes indicate that even in a low-burden course, use of a metacognitive organizer might be beneficial in supporting short and longer term reflection. No significant differences were seen with a learning outcome.Item The relationships between internet usage and acculturation of the Horn of Africa immigrants in the United States(2013-02) Woldeab, DanielThe purpose of this study was to investigate Internet usage and its relationship with the acculturation of the Horn of Africa immigrants residing in urban Minnesota. Technology has and continues to be a cultural amplifier; in just two decades from its initial availability to the general public, the Internet has made geographical differences practically irrelevant, making the world a virtual small village. Social interactions that were once only possible face-to-face can now take place online. This innovation in communication plays a crucial role in the acculturation process of immigrants, allowing them access not only to social media platforms, but mapping tools, translation websites, online banking, video sharing sites and many other potentially empowering resources that affect how they encounter life in their new environments. This study utilizes Berry’s bi-dimensional theory of acculturation to investigate the relationship between Internet usage and acculturation. Berry’s four dimensions of acculturation provide a theoretical guideline for this study. Also employed here are communication theoretical perspectives in studying Internet usage and acculturation. The participants were 292 Horn of Africa immigrants attending English language classes in adult education programs in the upper Midwestern part of the U.S. A series of multiple regression analyses are used to determine the unique contribution of each variable in predicting acculturation. The study revealed statistically significant relationships among Internet social-networking usage and dimensions of acculturation. The most powerful predictor of Internet usage was level of education, often achieved prior to immigrating to the U.S. Internet usage did contribute to integration, the most successful strategy for acculturation of immigrants from this group. Perceived English language competency alone accounted for 15% of the variance in integration and 17% of the variance in assimilation. Based on these findings, path models for Internet usage and acculturation are proposed. Further, implications for both research and practice are discussed.Item The Role of parental mediation in children’s consumer socialization on the Web.(2010-07) Shin, WonsunUsing consumer socialization as a theoretical framework, this study investigated the nature and the role of parental mediation in children's responses to and interactions with online advertising. Specifically, it aimed at (1) determining antecedents of parental mediation; (2) examining parent-child co-orientation to different forms of parental mediation; and (3) exploring the relationship between parental mediation and children's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to online advertising. Surveys conducted with children aged 9-12 and their parents/primary caregivers in South Korea revealed that (1) parenting styles and family communication patterns were closely associated with parental mediation; (2) parent-child dyads did not highly agree on any types of parental mediation; and (3) parental mediation and consumer socialization outcomes in the online advertising context were weakly associated. Implications of findings and suggestions for future research were discussed.Item SECIA - Environmental Inventory.(2002) Da Gama Rose, Mark-AnthonyItem Towards a networked gatekeeping theory: Journalism, news diffusion, and democracy in a networked media environment(2014-01) Ernste, Thomas JohnThis dissertation describes the development of a networked gatekeeping theory for the study of an increasingly internet-mediated news diffusion process. Prior gatekeeping research provides a rich theoretical and methodological framework for investigating and illuminating the process through which certain events and issues on an international, national, and local level become the mediated messages that reach the public. Towards a framework for reconceptualizing gatekeeping theory in which I incorporate principles of graph theory and social network analysis, I describe the development of a more participatory but still asymmetrically structured networked gatekeeping process that is forming according to the communication infrastructure afforded by the internet and its associated technologies. In particular, this dissertation focuses on the implications of these developments for both the practice of and research about news diffusion, journalism, internet-mediated communication, and democracy. In an empirical study of the Twitter-based news ecology of a large Midwestern metropolitan area, I conduct a case study using primarily social network analysis methods that uncovers insights about the patterns that emerge within this dynamic participatory news construction and diffusion process. The findings of this dissertation can be useful for media scholars, media practitioners, and for anyone with an interest in understanding the evolution of the new media of the public sphere.