Research from AdPR: Social media continues to re-shape our world - sometimes in ways we don't even suspect.

A recent study published in Information, Communication & Society shows that new participants in the social media space are disrupting long-held assumptions about how news and information flow from one geopolitical entity to the next, including by government-run networks such as Voice of America, Al Jazeera and Russia Today. In particular, non-institutional social mediators – like individuals, bloggers and twitter accounts associated with major corporations – are entering into the conversation and enabling more two-way communication between news sources and audience members.

Historically, the flow of news and information has tended to originate in larger nations – known as “core” nations – and then migrate to smaller, or “peripheral” nations. This is important in shaping the worldview of individuals, as core nations are better able to imprint their own cultural values and geopolitical priorities on the citizenry of peripheral nations. Such communication has tended to be very top-down, aimed at passive audiences with little or no ability to influence the discourse.

According to co-author Itai Himelboim, associate professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, this dynamic is changing.

“Our ability to predict and understand information flow based on traditional assumptions is eroding,” Himelboim explains. “Non-democratic governments such as China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are now about to bypass news media gatekeepers and establish more direct communications with citizens of foreign countries, thereby increasing the global reach and influence of their own worldview. As a result, the international news system is becoming somewhat more egalitarian than what we’ve been used to seeing.”

Guy J. Golan, Itai Himelboim. Can World System Theory predict news flow on Twitter? The case of government-sponsored broadcasting. Information, Communication & Society.

View the full article.

Focus on research: AdPR professor studies social media discussions of serious diseases

Associate Professor of advertising
Itai Himelboim researches social media
discussions of serious diseases

As part of a new initiative, the Advertising and Public Relations department will highlight research led by our own faculty and staff. In this article, Associate Professor Itai Himelboim studies the mood of social media postings discussing serious disease:

Gall Myrick, J., Holton, A., Himelboim, I., Brad, L. (2015). #StupidCancer: Exploring a typology of social support in an online interactive environment. Health Communication.

Social media postings about serious diseases, such as cancer, are more likely to express feelings of hope, as opposed to negative emotions such as fear and distress. That’s one of the findings of a new study recently published in the Journal of Health Communication. According to co-author Itai Himelboim, associate professor of advertising at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, cancer patients, as well as their friends and family, are more likely to express positive emotions in their social media conversations, perhaps as a way of “fighting back” against the disease and showing support for those afflicted.

Posts expressing negative emotions, on the other hand, are less likely to be shared or retweeted, suggesting that “the norm for discussions in a cancer community may be to remain as optimistic as possible,” according to the article. The study also found that information sharing is widespread among those posting about cancer, with 61 percent of tweets in the sample containing hyperlinks to outside sources. Meanwhile, an interesting benefit of sharing support via social media may be the ability to establish a broader community of users who may or may not have a direct connection to the cancer experience.

The purpose of the study was to explore a new typology, or categorization, of social support interactions in an online environment. The study distinguishes between interactions that offer helpful information as opposed to those that provide strictly emotional support, both for those who transmit the posts and those who receive.

To view the full article, click here.

Written by Tripp Cagle.

Himelboim recognized in faculty paper competition and by Karen Russell Award

Itai Himelboim

Itai Himelboim, associate professor of advertising in the Advertising and Public Relations Department at The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, was awarded third place in the faculty paper competition and The Karen Russell Award for his research on social networks.

Himelboim’s research in classifying Twitter topic-networks using social network analysis was presented this August in the annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. In order to further uncover the success of social media networks, Twitter social media network datasets were segmented. This segmentation allowed for the research to illustrate six distinct patterns of collective connections. Himelboim was awarded third place in the Communication Technology division for his work delving into the value of these network structures.

In addition to his recognition for his work in identifying distinct patterns of connections via Twitter, Himelboim was given The Karen Russell Award for most downloaded Journal of Public Relations Research paper in 2014. Named after Karen Russell, an associate professor of public relations at Grady, this award was presented to Himelboim as the study identified social mediators that connected the U.S. State Department with its international public. As the research concluded, it was unveiled that government-related formal mediators and informal social mediators showed similar bilateral relationships. Himelboim was recognized for this award in the Public Relations division.