Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Theorizing An Online Politics: How The Internet Is Reconfiguring Political Space, Subjectivity, Participation, And Conflict, Trevor G. Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This work considers how politics can be reinvigorated through the use of the internet. The argument consists of two parts, the first of which develops a theoretical understanding of politics, meant to differentiate it from the anti-political status quo, which draws on the theories of participatory and agonistic democracy. It then precedes to develop and adapt this understanding of politics to the context of the internet. This is done by breaking politics up into four terrains of contestation which can be configured to be more or less political.

Politics requires, first of all, a common place to gather. Drawing on …

Approaching Ideals Through Innovation: Twentieth And Twenty-First Century Mass Media Technology And American Democracy, Elizabeth Brand Cermak

Senior Theses

From the moment our First Amendment was adopted, America’s ideal of democracy has been firmly intertwined with media communications between the President and the citizenry. Over time, technological advancements have altered the way this communication is facilitated, increasing the public’s access to the Office of the Presidency, and visa versa, via new forms of media. Through an examination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of the radio, the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, and Barack Obama’s use of Social Media and the Internet, this thesis will seek to answer the question of whether the …

The Dilemma Of Surveillance: Predicting The Future Of The Surveillance State, Jade Medrano

Senior Theses and Projects

What is the role of surveillance in modern states and how does it affect stability and security? Policymakers generally believe that increased security through heightened surveillance will increase stability because the more the state is able to see and know about its citizens and adversaries, the better it will be able to prevent challenges to authority. However, in the case of East Germany, Romania, and the Soviet Union, increased surveillance was seemingly unable to forestall regime collapse. In particular, in the Soviet Union and Romania, the problem of preference falsification led to the citizens hiding their true feelings from the …

Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, …

A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis Of Web 2.0 Technology Use In Egypt & China, 2005-2010, Monica D. Morales

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Taking a cue from scholars' suggestions to focus on the intersections of various fields of study, this research aims to find the commonalities among representative theories of democracy, mass media and social movements. Assessment of each reveals that all three areas of study encompass space for the interface of the media and the public. The confluence of these elements, when paired with Information and Communication-based technologies, yields what is introduced here as the Integrative Conceptual Model of Internet Analysis. Using this model gives way to a focus on Internet-mediated scenarios through a framework that evaluates the type of agent interaction, …

Space Cops And Cyber Cowboys: An Institutional Comparison Of The Governance Of Space Exploration And The Internet, James Luther Gilley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A growing concern for human society is the question of technology, how they are to be used and how can they best be governed. The very question of whether technology is governable remains for the most part unexplored. This work will seek to examine these important questions. By utilizing a historical institutional perspective, two case studies of the governance of technologies that have emerged in the last century will be explored. Space Exploration technologies and the advanced networking of computers known as the Internet will serve as the case to illuminate the question of governing technology. Deep qualitative functional analysis …