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Social Influence and Political Communication

2018

Religion

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Telling The Good News, Allyson R. Escobar Dec 2018

Telling The Good News, Allyson R. Escobar

Capstones

In light of recent clergy abuse scandals, cover-ups and leadership shake-downs, it is a divided time in the Catholic Church: but this isn’t the whole story. My final capstone project is a critical essay of how Catholicism (and religion overall) is represented in mainstream media--particularly in secular news publications and entertainment (horror films) in the United States. By examining the coverage and how conversations differ within members of the Catholic Church--from journalists and critics to active Catholics, religious men and women--this project calls for greater accountability, fairness, faith representation in all media, and the overall claim that there are Catholic …


Forecasting Changes In Religiosity And Existential Security With An Agent-Based Model, Ross J. Gore, Carlos Lemos, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman Jan 2018

Forecasting Changes In Religiosity And Existential Security With An Agent-Based Model, Ross J. Gore, Carlos Lemos, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman

VMASC Publications

We employ existing data sets and agent-based modeling to forecast changes in religiosity and existential security among a collective of individuals over time. Existential security reflects the extent of economic, socioeconomic and human development provided by society. Our model includes agents in social networks interacting with one another based on the education level of the agents, the religious practices of the agents, and each agent's existential security within their natural and social environments. The data used to inform the values and relationships among these variables is based on rigorous statistical analysis of the International Social Survey Programme Religion Module (ISSP) …