Geography Commons^™

Advocacy Journalism And Climate Justice In A Global Southern Country, Shafiq Ahmad Kamboh, Muhammad Ittefaq

School of Communication Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Being among the world’s most affected countries by climate change, Pakistan is facing a variety of cases of climate injustice committed by internal and external drivers. Waisbord’s referred “Advocate-journalist” model carries a good potential to advocate these injustices to stimulate democratic dialogue among the audience that eventually pushes leadership to make eco-friendly policies. This study critically analyses advocacy journalism coverage of cases of local and regional climate injustice in the editorial contents of mainstream Pakistani newspapers by using the quantitative content analysis method. Results reveal that selected newspapers gave inappropriate coverage to climate injustice issues both in quantity and quality. …

Personal Factors Influencing Us Travelers’ Sentiments Toward Travel Policies To Cuba, Carol Kline, Whitney Knollenberg, Bynum Boley, Evan Jordan

Journal of Tourism Insights

The United States and Cuba have navigated a strained political and economic relationship over the past sixty years; the tone of the relationship is in flux according to Cuban and US leadership, and most recently, COVID-19. Anticipating US travelers’ sentiments towards access to Cuba is more crucial now because of resulting policies playing out within the intersection of the shifting dynamics of the virus and the tumultuous political climate within the US. This study identified the personal factors that influence US travelers’ sentiment towards the US trade embargo and travel restrictions to Cuba. Results reveal that respondents with higher educational …

The Geopolitics Of Infrastructuralized Platforms: The Case Of Alibaba, Hong Shen, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Contemporary digital platforms have become increasingly infrastructuralized, and started to raise geopolitical tensions with their global expansion. Amidst the heightened geopolitical competition between the US and China, the growing power of Chinese infrastructuralized platforms has made them the center of recent geopolitical dynamics. Drawing from an exploratory case study, this paper discusses Alibaba, one of the most prominent Chinese Internet giants, as an infrastructuralized platform, and highlights its geopolitical struggles. Often perceived as an e-commerce company, Alibaba has become ‘infrastructuralized’: its now-massive digital empire has moved beyond e-commerce, expanding into almost every aspect of China’s and global digital economy such …

Public History Is Now, Sarah E. Dougher

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

A walking tour of downtown Portland in August 2021 raises questions for the writer about the purpose of “memory activism,” its relation to writing-as-activism. Drawing on critiques of urbanist Jane Jacobs and interrogating the concept of “reckoning,” the essay explores ways in which the streetscape and people there can deliver meaning and pose questions about systemic racism and unsheltered existence.

[Cldv 100] Diversity And Multicultural Studies, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

CLDV100 (Liberal Arts) Introduction to Multicultural Studies in the 21st Century: 3 hrs. 3 crs.

A study of what culture is; how it influences the choices we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working/living situations with people of diverse cultures. It is a course structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students' social skills in dealing with cultural differences. It includes an ethnographic study of cultural groups in the U.S.A. Through the study of cultural concepts, this course develops skills in critical thinking, writing, and scholarly documentation. Not open to students with credit in CLDV …

Cityengine As A Tool For Visualizing Neighborhood Change: An Initial Study, Zach Noyes

City and Regional Planning

Urban planning is reliant upon genuine public engagement to ensure that planning and policy decisions reflect the ideas shared by the public. Because planning is a profession largely focused on the physical and built implications of more abstract planning concepts, effective graphic communication is critical to securing public support and understanding of policy decisions. ESRI's CityEngine uses procedural modeling technology to render personally-tailored scenes to non-planner members of the public, and shows potential to positively change the way that planners generate graphic representations of physical impacts of policy changes. This initial study establishes a methodology for determining the efficacy of …

Why, New York City? Gauging The Quality Of Life Through The Thoughts Of Tweeters, Sheryl Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a resource for social data, Twitter’s platform has been used to measure the quality of life through sentiment analysis. This capstone project explores another methodological technique—querying Twitter data around specific keyword terms to determine dominant topics, word patterns, and sentiment leanings in a geographical area. Focusing on New York City and Los Angeles for comparative analysis, the keyword term “why” will be used to build a Python analysis around topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Using this approach, the analysis reveals social and cultural differences, the overall sentiment of tweets, and subjects of interest to tweeters.

GitHub Repository for all …

The Value Of Education: School Policy Decisions During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Elika W. Somani

Individually Designed Interdepartmental Major Honors Project

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lacking national U.S. policies, wide variation and conflict over chosen public school policy decisions emerged. What factors and guidelines informed the decision-making process in K-12 public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and who were the key stakeholders? This study examines three school district types – a large city, medium city, and small-town – across Minnesota as case studies to unpack how policy decisions were made during the pandemic. Stakeholder interviews uncovered that the school decision-making process was a) connected to a district's political opinions, b) made by the superintendent and school board, c) primarily influenced by …

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari (2020): Having An Amerikorean Life, Nagehan Uzuner

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Minari by Lee Isaac Chung is a drama which chronicles the life of a Korean family who moves to the USA during 1980s in pursuit for a better life. The acculturation process is experienced differently by family members. Children are mostly bored with their new life in the rural area of Arkansas while their mother, Monica, is terrified of living in a mobile home which is made of a truck trailer in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, the grandmother joins the family from Korea to take care of the kids with a more positive approach dealing with their struggles. The …

A Stillness In The Desert? Engaging The Public Through An Immersive Exploration Of Southwest Soundscapes, Julian Kilker, Thomas Bjelic

Creative Collaborations

The pandemic highlighted the anthropocentric nature of soundscapes, while the recent popularity of electric cars, quadcopters, and “noise cancellation” earbuds demonstrated how consumer products can rapidly change our awareness of sound. While light pollution is already extensively addressed in scholarly research, popular works such as The End of Night, and public engagement such as The International Dark Sky Association, the complex interplay of sound, natural resources, and public engagement is still emerging, particularly in creative fields.

Two UNLV scholars and artists are collaborating on this project: Julian Kilker, who specializes in visual and emerging technology research, and Tom Bjelic, who …

‘Big’ And ‘Little’ Quo Vadis? In The United States, 1913–1916: Using Gis To Map Rival Modes Of Feature Cinema During The Transitional Era, Jeffrey Klenotic

Faculty Publications

This article emanates from a geospatial database of over 600 premieres of the Cines company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), an eight-reel film distributed by George Kleine, and nearly 250 premieres of the Quo Vadis Film Company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), a three-reel film of ambiguous origins distributed by Paul De Outo. By mapping local premieres of both films across the United States from 1913 through 1916, the data show with spatiotemporal precision the spread of Quo Vadis? as one of cinema’s early blockbuster titles. Yet within this national phenomenon, the two films’ footprints reveal differing cultural geographies served by competing efforts to …

Exploring Visitor Perceptions And Behaviours Related To Ticks And Lyme Disease Risk In An Ontario Protected Area, Ryan Brady

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne zoonosis in North America and over the past decade, reported cases of the disease have been rapidly increasing in many regions throughout Canada. The relative novelty of this public health threat presents nature-based tourism and recreation organizations with a range of policy and management challenges. Currently, there is a limited understanding of public perceptions and behaviours associated with tick and Lyme disease risk, especially within a Canadian parks and protected areas visitation and visitor experience context. To address this practical and scholarly knowledge gap, this study utilized in-situ surveys to explore visitor perceptions, …

Bridging The Gap: Where Indigenous Knowledge And Western Science Come Together To Shape Environmental Stewardship, Bowman Leigh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the era of climate change, humans are grappling with how to ensure that natural resources exist into the future. For millennia, Indigenous people have actively managed the environment, drawing upon deep connections to the land passed down through generations. The Western worldview, on the other hand, sees humans as separate from nature — an attitude that has led to many of the environmental crises we see today.

This portfolio examines places and programs where Western science and Indigenous knowledge (IK) or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) come together to shape environmental stewardship. Western science and IK/TEK are inherently different ways …