Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Buck Stops Somewhere: An Analysis Of Global Governmental Responses To Covid-19, David Roundy

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This study reviews a global sample of noteworthy governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus first discovered in 2019, officially known as SARS-CoV-2, sparked radical change in every country across the globe, but as we enter the post-pandemic era, it is clear that some nations fared better than others when it came to addressing the situation. Some countries were better prepared to handle a viral outbreak before COVID-19 even began to spread, while others were aided by swift and effective leadership to ensure national success in the face of an international dilemma. This study makes use of both qualitative …

War And Money In Ngram Viewer, Robert H. Mcfadden, William Zywiak, Ronald P. Bobroff, Gao Niu

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

The second and fourth authors have been inviting Intro to Applied Analytics and Statistics 1 students to use the Ngram Database to explore historical topics of their choosing. This is the first article derived from this exercise. The first author examined the historical relationship between war and money from 1775 to 2005 in the American English corpus. This is followed by an examination of the 3-gram “cost of war” in the American English and British English corpora. Specific to the analyses presented here several military and economic events are discussed. More specifically, both economies and wars are somewhat unpredictable, with …

Twitter's Role In An Increasingly Polarized Political Climate; A Look Into The 2020 Us Elections, Leanne Kendall

Honors Projects in Data Science

Amidst politically strained times, one might wonder what has cause such an exaggerated gap between the views of democrats and republicans. For years, research has suggested the US’s voting population is becoming increasingly politically polarized, with one of the causes being social media. This study's purpose is to understand more about the role that social media plays in the polarization of parties in the US. The study is comprised of the analysis of over 3,000,000 tweets from 9/22/2020 through 11/10/2020 that mention or are written by senate and presidential candidates. Natural language processing, network graphing, and sentiment analyses were utilized …

The Right To Participate In And Enjoy The Benefits Of Scientific Progress And Its Applications: A Conceptual Map, Andrea Boggio

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

The last generation experienced extraordinary progress in science and technology. Scientific and technological progress is now increasingly seen as essential in addressing the pressing global challenges we face as a human civilization. These advancements have led international organizations, scholars, and practitioners to pay increasing attention to the right to participate in and enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications or, as it is often referred to, “the human right to science.”

When adequately parsed, the “right to science” contains three distinct but interrelated clusters of rights (first-level rights): rights to scientific progress; rights to participate in scientific progress; …

A Study Of Undergraduate Major On The Youth Electorate Within The Bryant Community, Jenna Birnbohm-Kaminski

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This thesis will carefully explore the relationship between undergraduate college major, and political participation and affiliation of young voters (ages 18-29). There has been a great deal of research in the field of voter behavior about this generation of young voters, and how they will impact the new electorate and overall political climate. An increasing commonality amongst young people is an undergraduate education of some kind. However, undergraduate students can choose their area of study, thus differentiating the exposure to information and experience of each student at a very impressionable time in their lives. A study of the political behavior …

The Changes In The Impact Of Presidential Impeachment: Nixon To Trump, Paige Diforte

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

The ability to impeach a sitting president is granted to Congress in the U.S. Constitution as part of the system of checks and balances. The process can have a wide scope of impact on our society and other political processes. This study analyzes the impeachment processes of Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump through the lenses of media coverage, changes in approval polls and the results of midterm elections. By identifying and comparing the emerging trends in each instance, a better understanding of the relationships between impeachment, its portrayal in the media, presidential approval and election results can be …

Risk Transfer Militarism And The Iraq War, Kathleen H. Bannon

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

President Barack Obama's military and political strategies during the withdrawal period from January 2009 to December 2011 of Operation Iraqi Freedom (IOF) effectively mitigated the risks of the U.S. forces stationed within the region while also ensuring influence over regional actors' trained military counterparts. By restructuring core military programs, leveraging civilian partnerships, and enacting new military doctrines, the U.S. engaged within the latest iteration of risk-transfer militarism

Book Review: Law, History, And Justice: Debating German State Crimes In The Long Twentieth Century, Michael S. Bryant

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Instrumental Vs. Expressive: A Study Of Voter Behavior Models Through The Lens Of Identity In The 2016 Presidential Election, Kaitlyn Fales

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Studying voter behavior through the lens of identity is central to making sense of the 2016 presidential election. The traditional models for explaining voter behavior are rational choice and behavioralism. The former is grounded in instrumental partisanship and a voter’s issue positions, with the latter grounded in an expressive, psychological attachment to partisanship. More recent, social identity theory related models discuss voter behavior through group belonging and the partisan mega-identity (Mason 2018). My analysis used the ANES 2016 Time Series Study. To measure a voter’s issue positions, I created a new Identity Index alongside the expansion of an established Issue …

Making It Up As He Goes: Trump’S Improvisational Rhetoric And The Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

Trump disregards the norms of presidential communication by regularly speaking or tweeting off-the-cuff with seemingly little forethought or editorial input. As White House administrations institutionalized presidential speechwriting and strategic communications over the past century, meticulously-crafted rhetoric became the norm. Trump’s improvisational rhetoric is the antithesis of the highly-professionalized, disciplined approach to political communication we have come to expect from the presidency. This essay takes the position that his reliance on improvisational rhetoric is more than a matter of communication; it is a matter of governance. Trump regularly uses improvised communication to make important policy decisions. In doing so, the president …

It's Complicated: President Trump's Relationship With Media, Joseph Iamele

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Through an evolution of presidential communication and the development of newer communications technology, a symbiotic relationship between the president and media outlets has emerged. The president, attempting to communicate his messages to as much of the American public as possible, relies on media to spread his messages. Media outlets, on the other hand, would rather focus on more negative or drama filled aspects of the presidency. This results from a profit motive in the media industry that requires outlets to continuously gain readership, viewership and, subscribers. The best way to gain these is not by reporting the president’s policy accomplishments, …

Would A Gene-Editing Ban Fit Human Rights Law?, Andrea Boggio

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

The right to benefit from scientific progress, as set out in Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, means that member states must “respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research”. By default, biomedical research — arguably including clinical studies involving edited germline cells — is therefore permitted.

Variables Predicting The Severity Of A Mass Shooting: The Connection To White Supremacy, Sarina Resnick

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Since mass shootings have become increasingly relevant in today’s society, the subject of what makes a mass shooting deadly has become more and more popular. This project focuses on how selected variables correlate with the severity of a mass shooting, and especially focuses on the impact of white supremacy ideology. Theoretically, a shooter imbued with this ideology will likely be more violent, thus causing a higher victim count (injuries + deaths). The other variables included in the model are: the use of a long gun, the use of multiple guns, the use of semi-automatic guns, mental illness, and shooter suicide. …

U.S. Presidential Leadership And Crisis Rhetoric, Robert Mccabe

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

My capstone project seeks to determine what are U.S. presidents attempting to accomplish in (or with) their speeches? This matters because presidential responses to crises can reflect how a president’s leadership abilities are perceived by the people he serves. This perception plays a large role in determining how much political strength the president has to accomplish his agenda. I address this research question by analyzing four different speeches: President Kennedy’s Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy’s Address on the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Bush’s National Cathedral Speech after the September 11th …

Wall Street Women: 1950s To The Present, Nicholas Calabro

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This project is designed to show the connection between the women of Wall Street and the Second and Third Waves of Feminism. In particular, it analyzes what principles of Second and Third Wave Feminism can be applied to the women of Wall Street. The project does this with qualitative information about feminism as well as the women’s experience on Wall Street and quantitative data about performance between men and women. This project is being done for the female accounting/finance students at Bryant University, so they can apply this information in the real world. In conclusion, both the Second and Third …

The Enduring Narrative Of “Socialized” Medicine: Oppositional Rhetoric And Obama’S Health Care Reform, Richard Holtzman

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

President Barack Obama and his promises of health care reform were met with strong public support when he took office in January 2009. By the time Congress ultimately passed legislation in March 2010, not only had a majority of citizens turned against health care reform, but many had come to interpret it as inimical to American values. Opponents pejoratively branded the president a “socialist” and his reform as “socialized medicine.” A review of the history of health care reform efforts in the United States over the last eight decades illustrates that this rhetoric and the defining patterns of its proliferation …