Other Political Science Commons^™

When And Why Do Arabs Verify? Predicting Online News Verification Intention During The 2023 Gaza War, Menna Elhosary

Theses and Dissertations

Guided by the network gatekeeping and secondary gatekeeping theoretical frameworks, this study employed a 2 (news headlines: pro-Palestine/anti-Palestine) x 2 (news sources: the Times of Israel/Al-Jazeera English) experiment embedded in an online survey on a purposive sample of Arab social media users (N= 452), aiming to understand the antecedents of online news verification during the 2023 Gaza War1. The study investigated the motives that might have encouraged or discouraged Arabs from verifying the war-related news circulated on social media. A model was proposed to examine the role of confirmation bias in shaping perceptions about sources and messages, thereby impacting online …

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …

Call Your Elected Officials: Identifying Predictors And Audiences For Collective Climate Action, Nathan Scott Bender

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Influential climate action in the United States is beyond the scope of individual actions, and instead requires collective action. This challenges governmental agencies and NGOs to promote enough collective action to inspire systemic change. Though decades of social research have identified broad trends in the drivers of this collective climate action, predictors of specific actions vary across individuals and contexts, and existing theory does not fully account for these shifting relative contributions. Additionally, the scale and urgency at which we must address climate change requires understanding and motivating climate action at all scales, from broad trends to predictors of specific …

Unpacking Political Identity In First-Time Voting Christian Women: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Mary Grace Golden

Honors Theses

As political science tends to focus on polling and statistical analysis to examine individuals’ voting behaviors, the reasoning behind constituents’ decision-making process is often left in the dark. This is particularly true in first-time voting women who come from religious backgrounds that uphold complementarian gender values. This study focuses on the following research questions: How do women experience their political identity in relation to their gender identity? How do women experience their political identity in relation to their religious or faith identity? How do women experience their political identity in relation to voting for the first time? I answer these …

Tucker Carlson, Oann And A White Nationalist: A Quantified Look At The Disinformation Pipeline Surrounding Covid-19, Juliet Jeske

Capstones

A quantitive exploration of extremist media and its effect on misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Best Practices For Voter Engagement Within Higher Education, Alyssa Tomins

Honors Projects

It is imperative that higher education institutions learn more about how to recruit members of younger generations to participate in future elections. Young people have historically voted at low rates, but that trend has started to change in recent years as more resources are being devoted to voter engagement among young people. This leads to the interest of understanding what best practices and strategies have academic institutions utilized to advance voter engagement on their campuses. This qualitative study analyzes these best practices and strategies at 84 colleges and universities, all of whom are members of The Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote …

Barriers To Post-Secondary Success, Douglas Swanson, Najeana Henderson, Maritza Sloan

Dissertations

This study reviews factors that prior studies have identified or failed to consider as barriers to post-secondary success. The three main areas include academic success for Latinx students after high school, organizational systems and their impact on African-American students’ postsecondary readiness, and what workers think of their high school education with regards to career preparedness.

Five factors are identified as major barriers for Latinx students to continue in a higher education system. A survey of former students from Saint Louis, Missouri, and Dallas, Texas, metroplex area identified 56 Latinx students that participated in an initial survey. This led to a …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Corporations And The American Polity, Patrick Labossiere

Student Theses and Dissertations

Research on corporate communications’ effects on politics presents an acknowledgement of a relationship between the two topics, leaving a void in the explanation and examination of this topic. The void presents an opening to introduce a conceptual process for how corporations are able to craft communications to influence the American Polity, the democratic social organization within the United States. This research begins with a historical review of how corporations gain prominence in American society, capturing the ability to participate in the democratic social organization of the polity. A qualitative analysis of several conceptual frameworks serves as data, to establish an …

Teacher Demoralization: Neoliberal Influence On The Complex Education System And Teacher Morale, Dionne Elvira

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, neoliberal influence has slowly taken over our education system’s vision and purpose. Presently, marketization in schooling has drawn the attention and influence of those of monetary and political power (Bartlett et al., 2002). Accountability measures set in place by the strings attached to school funding and sanctions encompass blanket demands on classroom instruction not equitably designed to support our diverse student populations (Ravitch, 2013; Reigeluth, 2014; Tsang, 2019). The school system, as it presently stands, is managed and maintained under systematic models that do not align to the complex needs of each unique school within its unique …

The People Who “Burn”: “Communication,” Unity, And Change In Belarusian Discourse On Public Creativity, Anton Dinerstein

Doctoral Dissertations

The main intellectual problem I address in this study is how everyday communication activates the relationship between creativity, conflict, and change. More specifically, I look at how the communication of creativity becomes a process of transformation, innovation, and change and how people are propelled to create through everyday communication practices in the face of conflict and opposition. To approach this problem, I use the case of communication in modern-day Belarus to show how creativity becomes a vehicle for and a source of new social and cultural routines among the independent grassroots communities and initiatives in Minsk. On one level, I …

La Habana: A History Of Society, Livelihood, Movement, And Land Use On The Iquitos-Nauta Highway, Katie Brown

Undergraduate Honors Theses

With increasing infrastructural projects and land titling in the Peruvian Amazon, many changes are occurring within small roadside communities. In this case study, we investigate how these changes impact livelihoods, land use, travel patterns, and social relations within the broader concepts of development, privatization of land, and commodification of nature. Specifically we focus on the caserío La Habana situated on the Iquitos-Nauta highway in the Loreto region of Peru. Semi-formal interviews and ethnographic methods were conducted to gather information on social organization, history of the community, land use practices, migration patterns, opinions on the road, and livelihood strategies. After data …

The Dark Tetrad, Social Dominance Orientation, And Online Political Discussion, Cory D. Taylor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Previous literature into online trolling behavior has focused upon the role of the Dark Tetrad and political measures separately. This study extended the existing body of research by examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad personality traits, social dominance orientation (SDO) and online political trolling in the United States of America. The data was collected using an online questionnaire from American users of Facebook and Reddit in the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter movement, and in the runup to a hotly contested national election. Positive correlations were found between all of the Dark Tetrad traits, …

Digital Political Information Consumption And Ambivalent Political Attitudes., Dane Ryan Warner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understating how individuals form, reinforce, or change attitudes has a long history in political science research. This study seeks to contribute to the existing literature by bridging the gap between the ambivalence and digital political communications literature by examining the relationship between digital political information consumption and ambivalent political attitudes. Using the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study, I examine the role of digital political information consumption as a moderator of value conflict and ambivalent political attitudes. The findings suggest that increased levels of information gather significantly reduce group ambivalence, candidate ambivalence, and value ambivalence.

"The Chinese Animation Industry: From The Mao Era To The Digital Age", Stephanie Jones

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since the 1950’s the Chinese Animation industry has been trying to create a unique national style for China. The national style of the 1950’s and early 1960’s was one of freedom, fantasy, and creativity. With the success of “Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland”/草原英雄小姐妹(1965), the government administration, namely Jiang Qing of the “Gang of Four”, demanded that all animation should follow specific guidelines based on Social Realism guidelines. This in turn, ushered in a new national style of animation during the Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). During this ten-year period government policies imposed strict restrictions on animators and cause a drain of creative …

Silence As A Strategy, Jarvis L. Steele

Honors College Theses

Understanding the struggle that is peaceful protest is a task that has two unexplored components. The first is how leaders of political movements and protest groups are able to influence the masses to not waiver in their non-violent, peaceful approach. The second is how political groups learn from the failures and successes of the previous campaigns. We are given these circumstances where governmental violence and abuse would normally lead to a retaliatory response from groups, but in order to maintain the fidelity of the movement leaders of these political protests have to protect the nonviolent approach. These are instances where …

La Identidad Nacional En Los Discursos Del Acuerdo De Paz En Colombia, Paula Andrea Aguirre Pinilla

Licenciatura en Español y Lenguas Extranjeras

El proceso de paz entre el gobierno colombiano y la guerrilla de las Farc, se ha ido desarrollando en medio de fuertes contradictores del ala más conservadora del país. La guerra en Colombia, que tiene antecedentes centenarios, se recrudeció durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX, dejando atrás millones de víctimas y un país inmerso en desigualdad social. Luego de décadas de barbarie, fue posible un nuevo intento para llegar a un acuerdo dialogado con las Farc, la guerrilla más poderosa de Colombia. Este artículo se propone analizar, a propósito de las únicas cuatro alocuciones que sostuvo el expresidente Juan …

Political Giving As Civic Participation: Identifying Donors And Motivating Giving, Robyn Lynn Stiles

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The study of political donations has previously been limited to surveys of identified donors and analysis of reported giving data, and oftentimes limited to higher-dollar donors. A comprehensive review of the current political giving literature yields two distinct questions: first, what role do resources play in determining who gives, and second, what ultimately prompts people to donate to a political organization? I utilize secondary survey data in my first chapter to examine the role of resources and gender in political giving. This chapter provides insight to whether gender merely represents the availability of resources necessary for participation, or whether it …

A Content Analysis Of Jihadist Magazines: Theoretical Perspectives, Catalina M. Udani

Honors Undergraduate Theses

During its violent spread across the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) amassed both a local and international following in large part due to its usage of emergent media distribution. Beginning in 2014, ISIS’s Ministry of Media published an English-language magazine, Dabiq, disseminating its issues through online platforms. Dabiq and its successor Rumiyah both serve as propagandistic recruitment material for ISIS’s international community as well as broadcasting the message of the jihadist movement to ISIS’s enemies. This study analyzed ISIS’s publications using a qualitative content analysis in order to identify jihadist recruitment strategies through the perspectives …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

News Media Bias And The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Marisa S. Campanella

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Since 2011, turmoil has erupted in Syria causing the displacement of many individuals now seeking refuge. It has impacted other areas of the world, filling the media with stories of daily events surrounding the initial attacks. The increase in media coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis led me to question whether the stories in the news were accurate representations of what was actually happening. I chose to compare two distinct sources of news in a content analysis, Fox News and CNN, to see whether there was a discrepancy in how they reported the same topics. After analyzing seven articles from …

Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek

All NMU Master's Theses

The Internet has given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the arena for sharing official information. Information can be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. This study examined the ease of locating county governmental information, such as contact information for public officials and financial reports, and surveyed elected county officials for purposes of identifying how information is …

Listening To The Mattole: Lessons In Bioregionalism, Cannabis, And Capitalism From A Northern California Community, Nicola R. Walters

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the United States, from the 1960s through the 1970s, nearly a million Americans left urban areas to establish themselves in rural environments; this exodus is now known as the back-to-the-land movement. Nestled in the mountains of Northern California, along a capricious river, and surrounded by natural beauty, the Mattole Valley became home to many of these back-to-the-land immigrants. Seasoned in the social and cultural movements of Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s, the “new settlers” transformed the social and environmental landscape of southern Humboldt County as they integrated into rural communities. The Mattole Valley offers a unique look …

India's Dalit Moment, Gabriel Kenneth Carroll Conlon

Capstones

This summer a brutal attack on Dalit youths in the Indian state of Gujarat set off months of street protests. The attack and subsequent protests underscored the persistence of caste-based discrimination in rural India, and the often brutal manner in which Dalits – members of India’s lowest castes – are excluded from everyday society. “India’s Dalit Moment” is a field report examining the causes and protagonists of the revolt. With on-the-ground reporting in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Bihar, this multimedia piece – including print, radio and photo elements – conveys a synthetic, but detailed window into the Dalit community …

Across Systems: Preventing, Countering, And Defusing Violent Extremism—A Discussion Of Strategy, Policy, Practice, And Theory, Keenan Powers

Capstone Collection

This paper explores today’s landscape of violent conflict in the context of the now 15-year-old “War on Terror” and its defining trait of strengthened, nimble, and networked violent extremist non-state militant groups. Through an exploration of primarily United Nations and United States strategies, policies, and programming the concepts of Countering Violent Extremism and Preventing Violent Extremism are melded into a discussion of the shifting frameworks and broadening notions of what it takes to create human security. This paper is particularly concerned with how the traditionally at odds fields of Counter Terrorism, Military Security, Development Assistance, and Peacebuilding practice are co-thinking …

Russian Anti-Americanism, Public Opinion And The Impact Of The State-Controlled Mass Media, Natalie Manaeva Rice

Doctoral Dissertations

From 2011 to 2015, a rise in anti-Americanism was strongly reflected in Russian public opinion during President Vladimir Putin’s third term. The study examined the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in Russia and the role of state-controlled mass media in promoting anti-American attitudes. Statistical analysis of polls conducted in Russia by the Pew Research Center in 2012 demonstrated that anti-Americanism in Russian society should not be treated as a monolithic phenomenon. A segment of the Russian populace held a strong and deep-seated anti-American ideological bias that affected its perception of everything related to the United States. Other sentiments, however, fit a more …

The 21st Century Activist's Dilemma: Social Media's Impact On The Occupy And Tea Party Movements, Alexander Elliott Carter-Parks

Senior Projects Spring 2015

This paper examines the influence of social media on political participation in American social movements, focusing on the cases of the Occupy and Tea Party movements during their heyday in the period from 2009 to 2012 as a framework for analysis. Users of these social networks have access to instantaneous information dissemination, broad new political networks, and a wealth of radical thought; but also can be diverted from real-world participation by the appeal of low-cost online activism. Using a foundation of strong-tie/weak-tie activism theory, demographics surveys, and media coverage this paper argues that social media has reshaped the process by …

The Colonial Legacies Of “Fiesta Island”: A Critical Study Of Live-Music Events Production In Puerto Rico, Anilyn Diaz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the historical relationship between the state and national culture in Puerto Rico as seen through the case of the entertainment industry, specifically live-music events production. The dissertation is located within two bodies of literature: critical post-colonial cultural studies of cultural industries and cultural policy, and cultural approaches to scholarship on collective action and state-civil society relationships in neoliberal contexts. The research design includes archival work and analysis of organizational material, supported by a cultural ethnography approach to semi-structured informant interviews and group interviews. The interviews focus on the historical development, cultural legacies, and practices of the entertainment …

Movementism And Party Institutionalization In Venezuela, Miguel Davila

Honors College Theses

The charismatic authority of Hugo Chávez often led analysts to affirm that the Bolivarian Revolution was dependent on his leadership. This study attempts to assess the degree of that dependence by examining whether the Bolivarian Revolution has institutionalized or not. Three variables were examined: the discourse of President Chávez, the political unity of PSUV deputies in the National Assembly, and the bypass of the electoral framework by Chávez. Two hypotheses were then formulated. The first one stipulated that the aspects of movementism found in the Bolivarian Revolution were relevant enough to disqualify it as an institutionalized system. The second one …

Systems At Play: The Construction Of International Systems In Social Impact Games, Jorge Albor

Master's Theses

This thesis explores how game makers conceive of and navigate the intersection between digital systems and real world systems by asking, how can social impact game designers shape procedural rhetoric to effectively address complex real world systems with digital systems? By examining three game case studies, I reach four significant findings regarding player agency, subversive play, design approaches to scale, and game difficulty in regards to systems fluency.