Mihaela Vorvoreanu
Purdue University, Computer Graphics Technology, Faculty Member
- Global media, Technology and Society, Communication, E-learning, Future Media, Blogs, and 16 moreWeb 2.0, Computer Mediated Communication, Wikis, New Media, Social Media, Cognitive Psychology, Public Relations, Usability, User Experience (UX), Cultural Identity, Accessibility, Cross-Cultural Communication, Social Networking, Social Networks, Facebook, and Social Marketingedit
- Dr. Vorvoreanu (or, as her students call her, Dr. V) is an assistant professor in Computer Graphics Technology and Or... moreDr. Vorvoreanu (or, as her students call her, Dr. V) is an assistant professor in Computer Graphics Technology and Organizational Leadership & Supervision at Purdue University. She studies the socio-cultural impact of new communication technologies. Before joining Purdue, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University, SC, and the Department of Communication at the University of Dayton, Ohio. While at Clemson and UD respectively, Dr. Vorvoreanu taught various public relations and communication courses, and did academic research in the area of public relations and new Web technologies. . She has published research articles in the Journal of New Communications Research, Public Relations Review and the Journal of Website Promotion and a book about online public relations: Web Site Public Relations: How Corporations Build and Maintain Relationships Online. Dr. Vorvoreanu holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Purdue University. She is originally from Bucharest, Romania.
Current courses at Purdue University:
Graduate:
* TECH621 - Research Focus: The Social Internet (social media research seminar)
* CGT 512 - Human factors of computer interface design
* TECH 621 - Qualitative Research Methods in Technology
* CGT 582 - Social media in the workplace (Enterprise 2.0 graduate seminar)
Undergraduate:
* CGT 256 - Human computer interface theory and design (syllabus pdf)
Current research areas:
* Social media in higher education - assessment of outcomes
* Online identity management
* Online self-organization & online protest
* Online research communities
Follow Dr. V on twitter: @mihaela_vedit - Carl H. Botanedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This article presents a thematic analysis of Yelp.com users’ motivations to read and articulate user-generated reviews. This study’s purpose was to identify factors of usage, trust, influence, and contribution of restaurant... more
ABSTRACT This article presents a thematic analysis of Yelp.com users’ motivations to read and articulate user-generated reviews. This study’s purpose was to identify factors of usage, trust, influence, and contribution of restaurant reviews on Yelp.com. This study found that information search reduction and community membership were the greatest factors encouraging Yelp.com use. Respondents reported trusting Yelp.com due to the community aspects of the website and felt they were able to sort out biased reviews easily. Lastly, the primary reasons for contributing reviews to Yelp.com were altruistic in nature, for example, helping other users make good purchase decisions and rewarding good businesses.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... CENTER FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IN INFORMATION ASSURANCE AND SECURITY (CERIAS) (2000). Download: http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/ssl/techreports-ssl/2 CACHED: Download as a PDF. by Mihaela Vorvoreanu , Carl H. Botan , Carl Botan. ...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ The purpose of this research is to examine why and when restaurant consumers use and contribute user-generated reviews. This research is needed to determine the relevance of user-generated restaurant reviews in the... more
ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ The purpose of this research is to examine why and when restaurant consumers use and contribute user-generated reviews. This research is needed to determine the relevance of user-generated restaurant reviews in the current marketplace. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The research methodology is based on a quantitative approach, and focused on current Yelp.com users as its population. Questions focused on the amount of usage, motives for usage, level of trust, users' tendencies to seek novelty in restaurants and motives for contribution. Findings ‐ Users tend to trust the reviews on Yelp.com and engage in the community aspects of the platform. Yelp.com users also are altruistic in their motivation for contributing reviews to Yelp.com. Yelp.com users who access it tend to act on the information found within the reviews. Originality/value ‐ Research articles have focused on user-generated reviews in the past; however, few have examined motivations of using and posting restaurant reviews. The value of conducting research comes from being able to understand the importance of user-generated restaurant reviews for customers in a comprehensive manner.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT User-generated content on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook provides opportunity for researchers in various fields to understand human behaviors and social phenomena. On the one hand, these human behaviors and... more
ABSTRACT User-generated content on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook provides opportunity for researchers in various fields to understand human behaviors and social phenomena. On the one hand, these human behaviors and social phenomena are very complex in nature thus require in-depth qualitative analysis. On the other, the magnitude of social media data requires large-scale data analysis techniques. In this paper, we propose a web-based tool named SWAB (Social Web Analysis Buddy) that integrates both qualitative analysis and large-scale data mining techniques. Specifically, this tool supports asynchronous collaboration among researchers conducting inductive content analysis on textural data from users' online posts and conversations. It then aggregates the results and calculates the agreement among researchers, and builds modeling algorithms based on the qualitative results to classify large-scale social media text content. This current paper focuses on the overall workflow and user interface design of this tool. We demonstrate the prototype of this tool by analyzing student-posted content on Twitter.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This article presents a thematic analysis of Yelp.com users’ motivations to read and articulate user-generated reviews. This study’s purpose was to identify factors of usage, trust, influence, and contribution of restaurant... more
ABSTRACT This article presents a thematic analysis of Yelp.com users’ motivations to read and articulate user-generated reviews. This study’s purpose was to identify factors of usage, trust, influence, and contribution of restaurant reviews on Yelp.com. This study found that information search reduction and community membership were the greatest factors encouraging Yelp.com use. Respondents reported trusting Yelp.com due to the community aspects of the website and felt they were able to sort out biased reviews easily. Lastly, the primary reasons for contributing reviews to Yelp.com were altruistic in nature, for example, helping other users make good purchase decisions and rewarding good businesses.
Research Interests:
We present a design study of the Deep Insights Anywhere, Anytime (DIA2) platform, a web-based visual analytics system that allows program managers and academic staff at the U.S. National Science Foundation to search, view, and analyze... more
We present a design study of the Deep Insights Anywhere, Anytime (DIA2) platform, a web-based visual analytics system that allows program managers and academic staff at the U.S. National Science Foundation to search, view, and analyze their research funding portfolio. The goal of this system is to facilitate users' understanding of both past and currently active research awards in order to make more informed decisions of their future funding. This user group is characterized by high domain expertise yet not necessarily high literacy in visualization and visual analytics-they are essentially casual experts-and thus require careful visual and information design, including adhering to user experience standards, providing a self-instructive interface, and progressively refining visualizations to minimize complexity. We discuss the challenges of designing a system for casual experts and highlight how we addressed this issue by modeling the organizational structure and workflows of the NSF within our system. We discuss each stage of the design process, starting with formative interviews, prototypes, and finally live deployments and evaluation with stakeholders.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Using the example of a major event, this case study shows how social media analytics can be used for real-time assessment and issue identification. We introduce a method of using social media analytics that enable both broad... more
ABSTRACT Using the example of a major event, this case study shows how social media analytics can be used for real-time assessment and issue identification. We introduce a method of using social media analytics that enable both broad overall assessment and in-depth understanding of the topics and issues that emerge around a marketing campaign.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Students’ informal conversations on social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) shed light into their educational experiences—opinions, feelings, and concerns about the learning process. Data from such uninstrumented environments can... more
ABSTRACT Students’ informal conversations on social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) shed light into their educational experiences—opinions, feelings, and concerns about the learning process. Data from such uninstrumented environments can provide valuable knowledge to inform student learning. Analyzing such data, however, can be challenging. The complexity of students’ experiences reflected from social media content requires human interpretation. However, the growing scale of data demands automatic data analysis techniques. In this paper, we developed a workflow to integrate both qualitative analysis and large-scale data mining techniques. We focused on engineering students’ Twitter posts to understand issues and problems in their educational experiences. We first conducted a qualitative analysis on samples taken from about 25,000 tweets related to engineering students’ college life. We found engineering students encounter problems such as heavy study load, lack of social engagement, and sleep deprivation. Based on these results, we implemented a multi-label classification algorithm to classify tweets reflecting students’ problems. We then used the algorithm to train a detector of student problems from about 35,000 tweets streamed at the geo-location of Purdue University. This work, for the first time, presents a methodology and results that show how informal social media data can provide insights into students’ experiences.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Erin Bowen's areas of expertise include human factors and performance in organizational technology integration, organizational system factors impacting high-technology organizations, and aviation psychology. She provides training and... more
Erin Bowen's areas of expertise include human factors and performance in organizational technology integration, organizational system factors impacting high-technology organizations, and aviation psychology. She provides training and education in the application of advanced statistical and methodological techniques to organizational settings, particularly survey design and analysis, advanced confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. Bowen holds a Ph. D.
Research Interests:
Abstract Students nowadays talk about their college life in various online social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and many blogs and forums. Public discourse on these social media sites can provide insights into students'... more
Abstract Students nowadays talk about their college life in various online social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and many blogs and forums. Public discourse on these social media sites can provide insights into students' college experiences. This paper focuses on exploring the informal social media data created by students in their daily life, rather than investigating the formal usage of social media platforms in the classroom settings.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The aim of this presentation is to stimulate a conversation about microblogging and lifestreaming as media for workplace communication and public relations. Microblogging and lifestreaming are the communication practices of posting on the... more
The aim of this presentation is to stimulate a conversation about microblogging and lifestreaming as media for workplace communication and public relations. Microblogging and lifestreaming are the communication practices of posting on the Internet frequent or continuous updates ...
This presentation explains the importance of blogs for public relations practitioners and public relations practice. Using case studies this presentation explains why blogs matter for practitioners on a personal level and how blogs are... more
This presentation explains the importance of blogs for public relations practitioners and public relations practice. Using case studies this presentation explains why blogs matter for practitioners on a personal level and how blogs are changing the playing field for the public relations ...
Corporations such as Dell Toyota Coca-Cola and several others have established presences in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. In 2007 the American Cancer Society raised $75 000 in Second Life. This presentation examines the... more
Corporations such as Dell Toyota Coca-Cola and several others have established presences in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. In 2007 the American Cancer Society raised $75 000 in Second Life. This presentation examines the communication strategies these and other ...
In the United States social media (social networks such as Facebook the blogosphere micro-blogging services such as Twitter social news services such as Digg etc.) have resurrected public dialogue and the public sphere. Social media have... more
In the United States social media (social networks such as Facebook the blogosphere micro-blogging services such as Twitter social news services such as Digg etc.) have resurrected public dialogue and the public sphere. Social media have empowered individuals on several ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Press releases used to be one of the basic tools of the public relations profession, used by PR practitioners to communicate news directly to journalists. With the advent of new online communication channels, the goals, target audiences,... more
Press releases used to be one of the basic tools of the public relations profession, used by PR practitioners to communicate news directly to journalists. With the advent of new online communication channels, the goals, target audiences, and overall scope of press releases have evolved, transforming press releases themselves into a new communication tool used by public relations and marketing professionals alike.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
BACKGROUND The Web site experience analysis (WEA)(Vorvoreanu, 2004) is aresearch protocol used to evaluate the experience of visiting a Web site. Currently, the dominant approach to Web site evaluation is usability, which is primarily... more
BACKGROUND The Web site experience analysis (WEA)(Vorvoreanu, 2004) is aresearch protocol used to evaluate the experience of visiting a Web site. Currently, the dominant approach to Web site evaluation is usability, which is primarily concerned with ease of use (Brinck, Gergle, & Wood, 2002; Nielsen, 1993, 2000a; Nielsen & Norman, 2000; Nielsen & Tahir, 2002; Spool, 1999). While ease of use is an essential part of the experience of visiting a Web site, the Web site experience cannot be reduced to usability alone. Meanings, ...