Over the last several decades, the media landscape has evolved into a complex and dynamic conglomeration of both traditional and interactive media that seek to serve the needs of today’s fast-paced lifestyles. While traditional media are struggling under the weight of increased segmentation, the interactive environment has shown the capacity to capitalize on this fragmented market by offering m...

This paper applies theories of developmental psychology, specifically Erikson’s (1959) stages of psychosocial development, as a lens for understanding how people will use social media in considerably different ways at different stages of life. We conclude that people of different ages and developmental stages will use social media in very different ways and to meet very different psychosocial n...

This paper develops a universal meta-format (SCISM) and methodology for representation and transcoding of arbitrary scalable content. The abstractions in the meta-format are generic enough to be applicable to any type of media with only a loose restriction on the encoding structure. Scalable bit-streams are naturally organized in a manner such that representation in compliance with the meta-for...

Social media has not only reshaped the way people make decisions, but also changed the norms of how people interact with others. Due to the popularity of social media, social commerce is becoming a new form of e-commerce approaches. This study attempts to investigate what motivates individuals’ use of social commerce in the context of grocery retailing service based on the theoretical framework...

As 72% of online adults are using social media, it is vital for health professions schools and institutions to understand and adapt to the online needs of health professions students (HPS). This research was designed to examine how HPS are utilizing the Internet and online activity, specifically focusing on social media, and to determine HPS’ motivations for using social media. In 2012, 4,370 h...