Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Critical Thinking In The Age Of Misinformation: Information Literacy For Citizenship, Tamra Ortgies-Young, Jennfer Lobo Meeks, Barbara Robertson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

As recent political events across the globe have shed a light on the fragility of democratic values, the role of the University in creating a framework for civic education becomes more urgent. Informed, caring and engaged citizenry must be a goal of higher education. Students currently face the emergence of faulty types of information - such as misinformation and disinformation, which undermines the notion of collective or public inquiry, not only within universities, but also within society as a whole. This challenge must be acknowledged and addressed by academic institutions.

Session presenters will provide an overview of their work, “Critical …

Revolution, Regime Change, And Rosewater: The United States’ Role In The Arab Spring, Grace Lewis

Capstone Showcase

This thesis seeks to determine which international relations theory best explains the United States involvement in the Arab Spring, and to ascertain if the goals set by those theories were met. Through the literature, I determine that two theories offer reasonable yet competing explanations of US involvement, and that these theories are first, defensive realism, and second, democratic peace theory. I employ the analytic method of pattern matching to compare each theory against the empirical record. In my analysis, I match empirical data from five affected countries to determine the strategic importance to the United States of the outcome of …

The Importance Of Public Participation In Building Up Democracies In Former Yugoslav States. Case Study: Kosovo And Croatia, Florentina Hajdari Hajra, Dritero Arifi

UBT International Conference

There is a large body of scientific literature in social science and governmental documents which deals with abstract norms and principles for assessing and judging public deliberation and participation. Almost all political scientists agree that public participation enriches democracy by helping to ensure better decision-making and strengthening politicians’ accountability to the people. But, what is the effect of public participation into transforming political systems, and what are the key factors that cause these transformations? These questions remain still unsolved completely. Through this article, the main purpose is to elaborate the effects of public participation on building up democracies (similarities and …

Elections In The Shadow Of Ebola: Sierra Leone’S African Socialist Movement And The Struggle For Democracy, Joshua Mcdermott

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The West African eEbola outbreak of 2014-15 claimed the lives of nearly 12,000 people, most of them from the Mano River region, comprising Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Conakry, three of the world’s poorest nations. In the wake of the outbreak, Sierra Leone’s ruling party, the All People’s Congress (APC), postponed the country’s 2017 elections for one year, under the pretext that the crisis had undermined the agenda of the president, Ernest Bai Koroma.

Authoritarianism is not new to Sierra Leone: The APC ruled the small coastal nation under a one-party state from the 1960s until a brutal civil war that …

Dilemmas About The Core Values In The European Union, Elisabeth Kardos Kaponyi

UBT International Conference

The European integration was primarily about economic cooperation, but the European Union’s role in protecting the core values in its member states. EU values were first mentioned in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union, and since the Amsterdam Treaty the community law has a sufficiently precise description of this values, which should be respected not only by countries aspiring to the EU but also by the Member States themselves. The Lisbon Treaty defines EU values as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to …