"No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth." These were the words of former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya who publicly expressed his regret in a 2017 interview over his role in co-creating Facebook. Palihapitiya shared that social media is ripping apart the social fabric of society and he also sounded the alarm regarding social media’s unavoidable global impact. He is only one of social media’s countless critics. The more disturbing issue resides in the empirical evidence supporting such notions. At least 95% of adolescents own a smartphone and spend an average time of two to four hours a day on social media. Moreover, 91% of 16-24-year-olds use social media, yet youth rate Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as the worst social media platforms. However, the social, clinical, and neurodevelopment ramifications of using social media regularly are only beginning to emerge in research. Early research findings show that social media platforms trigger anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and other negative mental health effects. These negative mental health symptoms are commonly reported by individuals from of 18-25-years old, a unique period of human development known as emerging adulthood. Although emerging adulthood is characterized by identity exploration, unbounded optimism, and freedom from most responsibilities, it also serves as a high-risk period for the onset of most psychological disorders. Despite social media’s adverse impacts, it retains its utility as it facilitates identity exploration and virtual socialization for emerging adults. Investigating the “user-centered” design and neuroscience underlying social media platforms can help reveal, and potentially mitigate, the onset of negative mental health consequences among emerging adults. Effectively deconstructing the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (i.e., hereafter referred to as “The Big Three”) will require an extensive analysis into common features across platforms. A few examples of these design features include: like and reaction counters, perpetual news feeds, and omnipresent banners and notifications surrounding the user’s viewport. Such social media features are inherently designed to stimulate specific neurotransmitters and hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol. Identifying such predacious social media features that unknowingly manipulate and highjack emerging adults’ brain chemistry will serve as a first step in mitigating the negative mental health effects of today’s social media platforms. A second concrete step will involve altering or eliminating said features by creating a social media platform that supports and even enhances mental well-being.

Americans today face an age of information overload. With the evolution of Media 3.0, the internet, and the rise of Media 3.5—i.e., social media—relatively new communication technologies present pressing challenges for the First Amendment in American society. Twentieth century law defined freedom of expression, but in an information-limited world. By contrast, the twenty-first century is seeing the emergence of a world that is overloaded with information, largely shaped by an “unintentional press”—social media. Americans today rely on just a small concentration of private technology powerhouses exercising both economic and social influence over American society. This raises questions about censorship, access, and misinformation. While the First Amendment protects speech from government censorship only, First Amendment ideology is largely ingrained across American culture, including on social media. Technological advances arguably have made entry into the marketplace of ideas—a fundamental First Amendment doctrine—more accessible, but also more problematic for the average American, increasing his/her potential exposure to misinformation. <br/><br/>This thesis uses political and judicial frameworks to evaluate modern misinformation trends, social media platforms and current misinformation efforts, against the background of two misinformation accelerants in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. presidential election. Throughout history, times of hardship and intense fear have contributed to the shaping of First Amendment jurisprudence. Thus, this thesis looks at how fear can intensify the spread of misinformation and influence free speech values. Extensive research was conducted to provide the historical context behind relevant modern literature. This thesis then concludes with three solutions to misinformation that are supported by critical American free speech theory.

This research covers the landscape of influencer marketing and combines it with the knowledge of 11 content creators and one social media specialist, ultimately producing an actionable handbook. Participants were asked questions that were intended to discover key strategies, level of difficulty, and overall insight into the content creator world. Best practices and key findings are identified in the research paper, and outlined into four parts in the handbook. The handbook serves as a compilation framework derived from my primary and secondary sources designed to provide anyone interested in becoming a content creator or social media influencer on steps they may take given what their predecessors have done to successfully launch their careers in the space.

The use of discourse markers (DMs) is present in speech to both structure and organize the discourse (Fung & Carter, 2007). However, despite the different studies about the use of DMs, less attention has been paid to specific Spanish DMs such as pues, ‘so, well’ luego, ‘then, therefore’ and entonces ‘so, then’ about their reduction. The focus of this study is on the phonetic variation of these DMs from a corpus of speakers of Mexican Spanish from Salinas, California (Brown & Alba, 2017). This paper analyzed dependent and independent variables to show their influence on the reduction of DMs. Also, chunking phenomena and special reduction were part of the study as they can reflect patterns of change in the language.

This thesis paper examines the challenges and opportunities that are present for nonprofit organizations seeking to engage in social media marketing. By analyzing the rise of social media as a prevalent tool for business-consumer outreach the paper proposes a dialogic approach to social media for nonprofits to effectively engage with their audiences, develop relationships with them, and mobilize them towards a common mission.

For the Love of the Game is a 15-minute documentary highlighting what the culture of soccer is like in Spain. Filmed completely in Valencia, Spain, this short film shows the actual atmosphere of everyday soccer. People of all ages and backgrounds give depth into what it's like to grow up in Spain with and fall in love with the game.

As social media and technology continue to impact the way students communicate and receive information, it is encouraged that university student-run organizations utilize social media platforms as a tool to further the development of their organizations. Social media platforms allow student organizations to network, promote awareness of their organizations, current campus events, and provide the opportunity to develop strong associations and interactions among students. Overall, student-run organizations currently utilize a wide variety of social media; however, frequently it is used without a clear understanding of its role and best practices, which could lead to a loss of effectiveness in their communication with students. Therefore, these factors suggest the need for university student-run organizations to recognize and understand the opportunities that effective social media strategies can bring as a communication tool to enhance student engagement.

Language has a critical role as a social determinant of health and a source of healthcare disparities. Rhetorical devices are ubiquitous in medicine and are often used to persuade or inform care team members. Rhetorical devices help a healthcare team acknowledge and interpret narratives. For example, metaphors are frequently used as rhetorical devices by patients to describe cancer, including winning or losing a battle, surviving a fight, war, potentially implying that the patient feels helpless like a pawn fighting in a struggle directed by the physician, thus reducing patient autonomy and agency. However, this occidental approach is flawed because it excessively focuses on the individual's agency and marginalizes external factors, such as cultural beliefs and social support (Sontag, 1989). Although there is a large body of research about how the rhetoric of medicine affects patients in the United States, there is a lack of such research about how patient experiences' rhetoric can help increase the understanding of Latino populations' unique social determinants. This creative project aims to analyze the rhetorical differences in the description of disease amongst Latino and American communities, translating to creating an educational module for a Spanish for biomedical sciences class. The objective is to increase future healthcare professionals' ability to understand how the composition of descriptions and medical rhetoric in different mediums of humanities can serve as critical tools to analyze social determinants in Latino healthcare delivery.