DOCSLIB.ORG

Real-Time Detection and Sorting of News on Microblogging Platforms

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Real-Time Detection and Sorting of News on Microblogging Platforms PACLIC 29 Real-time Detection and Sorting of News on Microblogging Platforms Wenting Tu David W. Cheung Nikos Mamoulis Min Yang Ziyu Lu Department of Computer Science The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam, Hong Kong fwttu,dcheung,nikos,myang,[email protected] Abstract J. L and J. Yang, 2011; F. Z. et al, 2012). As an in- stance, (F. Z. et al, 2012) assumes that bursty topics Due to the increasing popularity of microblog- ging platforms (e.g., Twitter), detecting real- in microblogs correspond to events that have attract- time news from microblogs (e.g., tweets) has ed the most online attention. To find such events, recently drawn a lot of attention. Most of the this work uses a model to detect busty topics, as- previous work on this subject detect news by suming that a global event is likely to follow a time- analyzing propagation patterns of microblogs. dependent global topic distribution. Although detec- This approach has two limitations: (i) many tion methods relying on the propagation characteris- non-news microblogs (e.g. marketing activi- tics of microblogs are based on reasonable assump- ties) have propagation patterns similar to news tions, they have certain limitations. First, some mi- microblogs and therefore they can be false- ly reported as news; (ii) using propagation croblogs not related to news have very similar prop- patterns to identify news involves a time de- agation characteristics as news microblogs. For ex- lay until the pattern is formed, therefore news ample, a microblog with a promotion or a gift may are not detected in real time. We propose follow a similar propagation pattern as a popular an alternative approach, which, motivated by news event. Second, propagation behavior can on- the necessity of real-time detection of news, ly be analyzed after a microblog has been posted for does not rely on propagation of posts. More- a certain amount of time. Previous work on news de- over, we propose a real-time sorting strategy that orders the detected news microblogs us- tection based on propagation knowledge cannot per- ing a translational approach. An experimen- form real-time detection, since propagation knowl- tal evaluation on a large-scale microblogging edge can only be obtained a period of time after mi- dataset demonstrates the effectiveness of our croblogs are published. Some works explicitly men- approach. tion that trying to detect microblogs using propaga- tion knowledge in a short time reduces the effective- 1 Introduction ness. For example, in (G. L. et al, 2010), experi- ments on Twitter data show that using 1-day prop- Microblogging platforms (e.g., Twitter or SinaWei- agation knowledge can mainly detect topics related bo) have become very popular and their role as news to daily activities; only by using a 2-days history this media has been recognized. As people actively talk method can detect some real emerging topics. about what is happening, microblogs are the place where the first-hand news appear. Actually, over Therefore, using propagation characteristics is not 85% of the leading topics on Twitter are news by a good idea if the objective is to detect news as soon nature (H. P et al, 2010). as possible. An additional challenge is how to sort Most of the recent works on news detection from and present the newborn news microblogs according microblogs rely on using temporal patterns of propa- to their importance, Most of the current news de- gation (G. L. et al, 2010; R. G. and K. Lerman, 2010; tection platforms sort the microblogs by their pub- 462 29th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation pages 462 - 470 Shanghai, China, October 30 - November 1, 2015 Copyright 2015 by Wenting Tu, David Cheung, Nikos Mamoulis, Min Yang and Ziyu Lu PACLIC 29 lication time or their popularity. However, at any suggest directions for possible future work in Sec- point in time, there can be lots of newborn news mi- tion 4. croblogs all of which have close publication time; thus, sorting them by the publication time may fail 2 Our methodology to show important news on the top. Besides, as we Our system includes three modules. In a training mentioned before, newborn news microblogs have session, the News-microblog Expert Detection mod- limited prorogation information; thus, it is very dif- ule detects a set of microblogging users who active- ficult to access the popularity of newborn news mi- ly post news microblogs. The posts by these experts croblogs. In this paper, we propose an alternative forms the training corpus of news microblogs, used system for detecting and sorting microblogs with to train the other two modules: the Expert-ensemble news in real time. Our framework does not rely Classifier and the BAV Sorter. The Expert-ensemble on any propagation knowledge. Our system consists Classifier (Section 2.2) is used to classify newborn of three modules: news-microblog expert detection, microblogs to news or non-news. It combines base news microblog detection, and news sorting. We ob- classifiers constructed from the experts’ corpus by serve that there exists a group of expert users, whose considering the professionalism and activity degrees microblogs are all of a single type (e.g., news). In of experts. The BAV Sorter module (Section 2.3) the first module, we apply a methodology for select- provides a new representation method for news mi- ing expert users based on their professionalism and croblogs and employs a value transfer strategy to de- activity. By simulating the training corpus as the mi- fine an importance score for each new post classified croblogs by the experts, the second module builds an as news by the Expert-ensemble Classifier. After ensemble classifier to detect news microblogs. The the system has been trained, the newly posted mi- ensemble model combines weak classifiers trained croblogs can be classified as news/non-news by the from the corpora of different experts into a strong Expert-ensemble Classifier, and those posts detected classifier. Moreover, it can be updated with low cost: to be news can be ranked according to their impor- once an expert posts some news microblogs, we only tance by the BAV Sorter module. In the remainder of need to update the module corresponding to its cor- this section, we describe in detail the three modules. pus instead of the whole model. The third module defines a score for each detected news microblog, 2.1 News-microblog Expert Detection in order to rank these microblogs. In this module, Since microblogging data are large and they are up- we firstly propose a novel text representation called dated at a high rate, it is not possible to manually Behavior-Actor-Venue bag of words (BAVbow) for label them. As an alternative, we propose an auto- news microblogs which consolidates the most infor- matic corpus construction method, motivated by the mative text from them. Then, we apply value trans- observation that there exists a group of users whose fer with confidence on the BAVbow representation, microblogs are of a single type only. In the news using the scores of the training corpus to rank the domain, some real-world examples include: @头 new microblogs whose scores are unknown. 条新闻 (#breaking news#) from SinaWeibo and We conduct experiments on data obtained from @BBCWorld from Twitter, which always post news the microblogging service SinaWeibo, one of the microblogs. Next, we present our methodology for most popular sites in China, used by well over 30% finding out these users which we call news experts. of Chinese Internet users, with a similar market pen- The selection strategy considers two characteristics etration as Twitter. The effectiveness of each module of users: professionalism and activity. is verified based on information collected by a group of users. 2.1.1 Expert Candidates Retrieval via User The remainder of this paper is organized as fol- Profile lows. In Section 2, we introduce our methodology Microblogging platforms have a very large num- by discussing in detail the news detection framework ber of users and it is impossible to analyze the mi- and the three sub-modules. Section 3 presents our croblogs written by all of them. Thus, it is neces- experimental analysis. We conclude the paper and sary to select a subset of them, which is expected 463 PACLIC 29 to include the news experts. Search for news ex- priateness. The selection is based on the follow- perts will then be confined to this subset. There are ing rules: (i) microblogs posted by experts should two types of data that describe a user: his/her profile focus on the type we are interested in (i.e., news), and the microblogs he/she posts. Profile informa- (ii) experts should be active, so that they provide tion can be divided into three parts: (i), Description: time-relevant microblogs to be used in training our This part includes usernames and other descriptive classification model. Thus, a candidate expert is data given by the users themselves. (ii), Author- more professional if a large percentage of his/her ity: Microblogging platforms provide verification- microblogs belong to the type. The more active the s for some users, called verified accounts. Verifi- expert is, the more up-to-date his/her corpus is and cation is currently used to establish authenticity in the more adaptive it is to newborn microblogs. Twitter. The verified badge helps users toward dis- Based on the above, we define the professional- covering high-quality sources of information. (iii), ism and activity degree of each candidate. To mea- Influence: A natural feature that indicates the influ- sure the professionalism of a candidate ec 2 EC , ence of a microblogging user is the number of fol- we need to use a classifier which indicates whether lowers, since this number indicates how many peo- a post by ec is a piece of news.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Versatility of Microblogging
    www.spireresearch.com Side Click: The versatility of microblogging Microblogging is well-established globally as a way of keeping in touch with others about events occurring in their lives in real-time. Popular microblogging sites include Twitter in the U.S., Tencent QQ in China and Me2day in South Korea. Twitter has 140 million active users1, while China’s Tencent QQ has a staggering 721 million active user accounts2, ranking only behind Facebook in terms of being the most used social networking service worldwide. Microblogging allows users to combine blogging and instant messaging to post short messages on their profiles3; including small and conversational talk, self-promotion, spam and news 4 . On a deeper level, microblogging has altered the way people consume and generate information – not only democratizing the broadcasting of information but also enabling it to be done in real-time. Connecting to stakeholders There are several benefits to integrating microblogging into a business’s regular stakeholder communication regime. Consumers who “follow” a company’s products or services would be the first to know of any promotions. The company also benefits through obtaining prompt feedback and suggestions for improvement. A concerned investor 1 Twitter turns six, Twitter Blog, 21 March 21 2012 2 QQ Continues to Dominate Instant Messaging in China, eMarketer Inc., 27 April 2012 3 An Insight Into Microblogging Trends And Toolbars, ArticlesXpert,21 January 2012 4 Twitter Study – August 2009, PearAnalytics.com, August 2009 © 2012 Spire Research and Consulting Pte Ltd would want to be the first to know of any important news which might impact her returns.
    [Show full text]
  • How Generation Y Talks About Sustainability on Tumblr Yeu Olivia
    Yeu Olivia Han Microblogging the Environment Spring 2013 Microblogging the Environment: How Generation Y Talks About Sustainability on Tumblr Yeu Olivia Han ABSTRACT Environmental discourses represent how people understand complex environmental issues and create material consequences in policy, human behavior, and society. On microblogs, users exchange small amounts of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links. Little research exists on the relationship between environmental discourse and microblogs, so I ask why environmental discourse takes the forms it does on the microblog Tumblr, by examining discursive content, form, and context. I coded 102 blog posts, conducted 3 interviews with bloggers, and performed discourse analysis on 8 posts. I identified environmental problem solving, which privileges human agency and seeks solutions within current political economic systems, as the most common form of environmental discourse on Tumblr. I found that Tumblr microblogs used little technical language, had many “shares” and “likes,” and communicated in a subjective tone. These features make environmental discourse accessible to a wide audience, allowing for broad diffusion of environmental information and encouraging collaboration. In the neoliberal context we lack the correct frames for understanding environmental issues. Instead of arguing about whether the science is right or wrong, policy makers should determine what to do about these issues and when to act. Though Tumblr is a part of and reflects aspects of neoliberalism,
    [Show full text]
  • Microblogging Tool That Allows Users to Post Brief, 140-Character Messages -- Called "Tweets" -- and Follow Other Users' Activities
    MICRO-BLOGGING AND PERFORMANCE APPS AND SITES Instagram lets users snap, edit, and share photos and 15-second videos, either publicly or with a private network of followers. It unites the most popular features of social media sites: sharing, seeing, and commenting on photos. It also lets you apply fun filters and effects to your photos, making them look high-quality and artistic. What parents need to know • Teens are on the lookout for "likes." Similar to the way they use Facebook, teens may measure the "success" of their photos -- even their self-worth -- by the number of likes or comments they receive. Posting a photo or video can be problematic if teens are posting to validate their popularity. • Public photos are the default. Photos and videos shared on Instagram are public unless privacy settings are adjusted. Hashtags and location information can make photos even more visible to communities beyond a teen's followers if his or her account is public. • Private messaging is now an option. Instagram Direct allows users to send "private messages" to up to 15 mutual friends. These pictures don't show up on their public feeds. Although there's nothing wrong with group chats, kids may be more likely to share inappropriate stuff with their inner circles. Tumblr is like a cross between a blog and Twitter: It's a streaming scrapbook of text, photos, and/or videos and audio clips. Users create and follow short blogs, or "tumblogs," that can be seen by anyone online (if made public). Many teens have tumblogs for personal use: sharing photos, videos, musings, and things they find funny with their friends.
    [Show full text]
  • Automatic Hashtag Recommendation for Microblogs Using Topic-Specific
    Automatic Hashtag Recommendation for Microblogs using Topic-specific Translation Model Zhuoye Ding Qi Zhang XuanJing Huang School of Computer Science, Fudan University, 825 Zhangheng Road, Shanghai, P.R.China {09110240024,qi_zhang,xjhuang}@fudan.edu.cn ABSTRACT Microblogging services continue to grow in popularity, users publish massive instant messages every day through them. Many tweets are marked with hashtags, which usually represent groups or topics of tweets. Hashtags may provide valuable information for lots of applications, such as retrieval, opinion mining, classification, and so on. However, since hashtags should be manually annotated, only 14.6% tweets contain them (Wang et al., 2011). In this paper, we adopt topic-specific translation model(TSTM) to suggest hashtags for microblogs. It combines the advantages of both topic model and translation model. Experimental result on dataset crawled from real world microblogging service demonstrates that the proposed method can outperform some state-of-the-art methods. TITLEAND ABSTRACTIN CHINESE 基基基于于于特特特定定定话话话题题题下下下翻翻翻译译译模模模型型型的的的微微微博博博标标标签签签推推推荐荐荐 微博服务变得越来越流行，用户可以通过微博提交大量的及时信息。很多条微博被用户通 过标签标记，这些标签代表了微博的话题类别。标签可以为很多应用提供有价值的信息， 比如检索，情感分析，分类等等。微博的标签本应该由用户自行标记，然而，根据统计只 有14.6%的微博包含标签。在这篇论文中，我们提出了一种基于特定话题的翻译模型，来 为每条微博自动推荐标签。此模型综合了话题模型和翻译模型的优点。在基于真实微博语 料的实验中，我们提出的方法超过了很多经典的方法。 KEYWORDS: Microblogs, Tag recommendation, Topic model. KEYWORDSIN CHINESE: 微博，标签推荐，话题模型. Proceedings of COLING 2012: Posters, pages 265–274, COLING 2012, Mumbai, December 2012. 265 1 Introduction Hashtags, which are usually
    [Show full text]
  • Constructing and Performing an On-Air Radio Identity in a Changing Media Landscape
    CONSTRUCTING AND PERFORMING AN ON-AIR RADIO IDENTITY IN A CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by David F. Crider January 2014 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Nancy Morris, Advisory Chair, Department of Media Studies and Production Dr. Patrick Murphy, Department of Media Studies and Production Dr. Donnalyn Pompper, Department of Strategic Communication Dr. Catherine Hastings, External Member, Susquehanna University ii © Copyright 2014 by David F. Crider All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT The radio industry is fighting to stay relevant in an age of expanding media options. Scholarship has slackened, and media experts say that radio’s best days are in the past. This dissertation investigates how today’s radio announcer presents him/herself on the air as a personality, creating and performing a self that is meant for mass consumption by a listening audience. A participant observation of eleven different broadcast sites was conducted, backed by interviews with most key on-air personnel at each site. A grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. The resulting theoretical model focuses on the performance itself as the focal point that determines a successful (positive) interaction for personality and listener. Associated processes include narrative formation of the on- air personality, communication that takes place outside of the performance, effects of setting and situation, the role of the listening audience, and the reduction of social distance between personality and listener. The model demonstrates that a personality performed with the intent of being realistic and relatable will be more likely to cement a connection with the listener that leads to repeated listening and ultimately loyalty and fidelity to that personality.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:1403.5206V2 [Cs.SI] 30 Jul 2014
    What is Tumblr: A Statistical Overview and Comparison Yi Chang‡, Lei Tang§, Yoshiyuki Inagaki† and Yan Liu‡ † Yahoo Labs, Sunnyvale, CA 94089, USA § @WalmartLabs, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA ‡ University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 [email protected],[email protected], [email protected],[email protected] Abstract Traditional blogging sites, such as Blogspot6 and Living- Social7, have high quality content but little social interac- Tumblr, as one of the most popular microblogging platforms, tions. Nardi et al. (Nardi et al. 2004) investigated blogging has gained momentum recently. It is reported to have 166.4 as a form of personal communication and expression, and millions of users and 73.4 billions of posts by January 2014. showed that the vast majority of blog posts are written by While many articles about Tumblr have been published in ordinarypeople with a small audience. On the contrary, pop- major press, there is not much scholar work so far. In this pa- 8 per, we provide some pioneer analysis on Tumblr from a va- ular social networking sites like Facebook , have richer so- riety of aspects. We study the social network structure among cial interactions, but lower quality content comparing with Tumblr users, analyze its user generated content, and describe blogosphere. Since most social interactions are either un- reblogging patterns to analyze its user behavior. We aim to published or less meaningful for the majority of public audi- provide a comprehensive statistical overview of Tumblr and ence, it is natural for Facebook users to form different com- compare it with other popular social services, including blo- munities or social circles.
    [Show full text]
  • Personalized Hashtag Suggestion for Microblogs
    Personalized Hashtag Suggestion for Microblogs Juan Xu, Qi Zhang, Xuanjing Huang School of Computer Science, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing, Fudan University f13916430285, qz, [email protected] Abstract. In microblogging services, users can generate hashtags to categorize their tweets. However, a majority of microblogs do not contain hashtags, which has intrigued active research on the problem of automatic hashtag recommenda- tion for microblogs. Previous work conducted on this problem mostly does not take the user’s preference into consideration. In this paper, we propose a novel personalized hashtag recommendation method for microblogs based on a proba- bilistic generative model which exploits users’ perspectives on microblog posts for hashtag generation. Our experiments on a real microblogs dataset show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods. We also show some case studies that demonstrate the advantages of considering both the content and user’s personal preferences for hashtag suggestion. 1 Introduction Microblogging services overload us with information, bombarding us with thousands of tweets, blog posts, and status updates every day. For example, Twitter, one of the most popular microblogging tools, has grown rapidly, with an estimated 200 million users generating 400 million tweets per day recently1. To cope with the volume of infor- mation shared daily, hashtags ¡akeywords prefaced with “#” in microblogging services ¡ahave been introduced to help users categorize and search for tweets. Past empirical research shows that hashtags can be useful in many applications, including sentiment analysis [1, 2], breaking event discoveries [3], query expansion [4], etc. In the spectrum of industry, Google started supporting Google+ hashtags in search queries on Sep 25, 20132.
    [Show full text]
  • Atom: Horizontally Scaling Strong Anonymity
    Atom: Horizontally Scaling Strong Anonymity Albert Kwon Henry Corrigan-Gibbs Srinivas Devadas Bryan Ford MIT Stanford MIT EPFL Abstract Atom is an anonymous messaging system that pro- This scalability property has enabled Tor to grow to handle tects against traffic-analysis attacks. Unlike many prior sys- hundreds of thousands to millions of users [3]. However, the tems, each Atom server touches only a small fraction of the fact that Tor provides low-latency anonymity also makes the total messages routed through the network. As a result, the system vulnerable to a variety of deanonymization attacks [9, system’s capacity scales near-linearly with the number of 17, 31, 44, 56, 74, 75]. servers. At the same time, each Atom user benefits from In this paper, we present Atom, an anonymous messag- “best possible” anonymity: a user is anonymous among all ing system that takes important steps towards marrying the honest users of the system, even against an active adversary best aspects of these two architectural strategies. Like Tor, who monitors the entire network, a portion of the system’s Atom scales horizontally: adding more servers to the network servers, and any number of malicious users. The architectural increases the system’s overall capacity. Like mix-net- and DC- ideas behind Atom have been known in theory, but putting net-based systems, Atom provides clear security properties them into practice requires new techniques for (1) avoiding under precise assumptions. heavy general-purpose multi-party computation protocols, Atom implements an anonymous broadcast primitive for (2) defeating active attacks by malicious servers at minimal short, latency-tolerant messages.
    [Show full text]
  • A Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures
    McCracken, Allison. a Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 2RPP a tumblr book McCracken, Allison. a Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 2RPP McCracken, Allison. a Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution 2RPP a tumblr book platform and cultures Allison McCracken Alexander Cho Louisa Stein Indira Neill Hoch EDITORS University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor McCracken, Allison. a Tumblr Book: Platform and Cultures. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution Master Pages Copyright © 2020 by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, Indira Neill Hoch, editors Some rights reserved This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Note to users: A Creative Commons license is only valid when it is applied by the person or entity that holds rights to the licensed work. Works may contain components (e.g., photographs, illustrations, or quotations) to which the rightsholder in the work cannot apply the license. It is ultimately your responsibility to independently evaluate the copyright status of any work or component part of a work you use, in light of your intended use.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Microblogging Hashtags for Learning Enhancement
    Form@re, ISSN 1825-7321 © Edizioni Erickson, www.erickson.it Questo articolo è ripubblicato per gentile concessione della casa editrice Edizioni Erickson. Understanding microblogging hashtags for learning enhancement Malinka Ivanova Technical University OF SOFIA, College of Energetics and Electronics Summary The use of hashtags in Twitter messages is growing among the educational community for various reasons. Exploring and understanding how hashtags can facilitate learning and self-learning organization is the main aim of this paper. Several online available tools for hashtags management are examined and their recognition and utilization can assist knowledge gathering and learning network constructing. Keywords: microblogging hashtag, learning, social network, hashtag management tools. Form@re, ISSN 1825-7321 © Edizioni Erickson, www.erickson.it Numero 74, Volume 11, pp. 17-23 Form@re – Open journal per la formazione in rete Introduction Microblogging platforms provide interactive channels for information broadcasting and sharing in private or professional aspect in less than 200 characters. Their potential for learning occurring in collaborative atmosphere, forming groups and communities of interests are seen by researchers and educators (Grosseck and Holotescu, 2008; Borau, Ullrich, Feng and Shen, 2009; Gómez-Sanz, Fuentes-Fernández, Cosío and Mestras, 2010). One of the most exploited microblogging tool is Twitter which emerged in July 2006 with its first prototype and after eight months already had about 94000 users (Snider, 2007). Many users from over the world exchange tons of messages and there is still no mechanism for conversations grouping. Seeing this Twitter «bottleneck», Chris Messina proposed inclusion of hashtags in text messages on August of 2007. He is inspiriting from IRC channels and Jaiku microblog.
    [Show full text]
  • Electronic Word-Of-Mouth on Microblogs: a Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Twitter and Weibo
    Intercultural Communication Studies XXII: 3 (2013) MA Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Microblogs: A Cross-cultural Content Analysis of Twitter and Weibo Lin MA Beijing Foreign Studies University, China Abstract: This research studies microblogging as word-of-mouth communication from a cross-cultural perspective. It compares microblogging contents on Twitter in the US and Weibo in China. After coding microblogs on four smart-phone brands in a month period for their content categories, the author computed the relation between the proportional occurrence of each category and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The results indicate, across cultures, consumers mostly use microblogs to share brand- central information and entertaining messages. However, cultural values, in significant ways, moderate specific types of contents consumers share on microblogs. Implications for application of microblogging in marketing communication and future research into eWOM content are discussed. Keywords: Microblog, word-of-mouth, content, culture Word-of-mouth (WOM) has been recognized as one of the most influential resources of information transmission (Breazeale, 2008; Godes & Mayzlin, 2004). The influence of WOM on consumer behavior is well established in marketing literature (Steffes & Burgee, 2009). With the rapid development of the internet and information technology, electronic WOM (eWOM) has become an increasingly important way for consumers to share brand-related information (Chen & Xie, 2008). Among various online media, microblog, with its rapid growth and wide spread, has grown to be a key eWOM platform. By December, 2012, Twitter, the most popular microblogging application, had over 500 million users and more than 200 million monthly active users worldwide. As a unique way of communication, microblogging is believed to have the potential to substantially impact WOM branding, which can impact key elements of the company–customer relationship including brand image and brand awareness (Jansen et al., 2009).
    [Show full text]
  • Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in the Coffee Shop Alternate Universe
    Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Katharine Elizabeth McCain Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2020 Dissertation Committee Sean O’Sullivan, Advisor Matthew H. Birkhold Jared Gardner Elizabeth Hewitt 1 Copyright by Katharine Elizabeth McCain 2020 2 Abstract This dissertation, Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe, works to categorize and introduce a heretofore unrecognized genre within the medium of fanfiction: The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe (AU). Building on previous sociological and ethnographic work within Fan Studies, scholarship that identifies fans as transformative creators who use fanfiction as a means of promoting progressive viewpoints, this dissertation argues that the Coffee Shop AU continues these efforts within a defined set of characteristics, merging the goals of fanfiction as a medium with the specific goals of a genre. These characteristics include the Coffee Shop AU’s structure, setting, archetypes, allegories, and the remediation of related mainstream genres, particularly the romantic comedy. The purpose of defining the Coffee Shop AU as its own genre is to help situate fanfiction within mainstream literature conventions—in as much as that’s possible—and laying the foundation for future close reading. This work also helps to demonstrate which characteristics are a part of a communally developed genre as opposed to individual works, which may assist in legal proceedings moving forward. However, more crucially this dissertation serves to encourage the continued, formal study of fanfiction as a literary and cultural phenomenon, one that is beginning to closely analyze the stories fans produce alongside the fans themselves.
    [Show full text]