Digital Commons Network^™

How Traditional And Social Media Shapes Public Perception Of United States Surpeme Court Decisions On Civil Liberties, Leila P. Martin

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study examines how traditional and social medai shape public perception of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Civil liberties, focusing on four landmark cases: Dobbs v. Jackson, District of Columbia v. Heller, Materpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and Obergfell v. Hodges. Using Entmans framing theory, the research analyzes how tone, language, emphasis, and ideological slant differ across media platofrms and how these frames infleunce public attitudes, insitutional trust, and civic understanding. A mixed-methods design combines archival media analysis, national polling data from Pew Rsearch Center and gallup, and an independent survery to asses how media narratives, rather than …

Using Scenario-Based Generative Ai In A Social Studies Methods Course, Timothy Lintner, Ellis Reeves

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly transforming the landscape of educator preparation. This shift is especially evident in social studies. As emerging technologies like AI reshape how social studies is taught and learned, it is essential to incorporate them into course design and student outcomes. Simply put, we must ensure that the next generation of social studies educators can effectively use AI to create real-world, scenario-based learning experiences that foster inquiry and encourage student action-taking. This article examines how AI-supported, scenario-based learning was strategically integrated into a secondary social studies methods course at the University of South Carolina Aiken. From concept …

Language As A Strategic Security Resource: Criminological Perspectives On Collective Efficacy, Cultural Security, And Community Resilience, Declan Onwudiwe

African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies

Language is typically examined as a medium of communication, identity formation, cultural transmission, and education. This article advances a broader argument: language should also be understood as a strategic security resource and a significant criminological variable. Drawing on collective efficacy theory, societal security scholarship, linguistic relativity, decolonial language theory, and ethnolinguistic vitality theory, the article argues that language can facilitate social cohesion, informal social control, intelligence gathering, conflict resolution, procedural legitimacy, and community resilience. Indigenous African languages serve as repositories of historical memory, customary law, social norms, and security-relevant knowledge that may contribute to public safety and social order. The …

Kosovo’S Strategic Missteps With International Law, Parker W. Remick, Robert Muharremi

Journal of Peace, Conflict, and Security Studies

This paper interrogates the principle of selective engagement with international law in the foreign policy of Kosovo, arguing that international law functions less as a neutral arbiter between states and more as a pliable instrument wielded in the pursuit of national objectives. Through a meticulous analysis of Kosovo’s post-2008 trajectory, the study unveils a pattern of selective engagement with international legal mechanisms highlighting both moments of strategic acumen and critical miscalculations. Despite possessing the legal attributes of statehood, Kosovo’s struggle for international legitimacy is hampered by a failure to fully exploit legal avenues, from multilateral treaty accession to litigation and …

One Land, “Different Owners”: Theoretical Explanations Of Communal Conflicts In Nigeria, Chukwudi G. Njoku

Journal of Peace, Conflict, and Security Studies

Communal conflicts are prevalent in Nigeria, with thousands of fatalities recorded. Literature suggests that an overwhelming percentage of these conflicts are land ownership related. Through a systematic review of literature and an analysis of conflict data, this study provides further understanding of the role of land ownership and competition in the occurrence and lethality of communal conflicts. It argues that land competition, more than other socio-economic factors is the key driver of communal conflicts in Nigeria. The findings from the analyses are explained with three theories – the tragedy of the commons which proved that the conflicts are triggered by …

Discourse Of Open Party Contestation In Jemaah Tarbiyah In Indonesia, Gili Argenti, Caroline Paskarina, Nani Darmayanti, Nandang Alamsah Deliarnoor

Jurnal Wacana Politik

Factionalization in Indonesian political parties is commonly explained by elite rivalry, coalition choices, or clientelistic interests, leaving intra-party conflict over the meaning of ideology less well explained. This article asks how the discourse of an open party constructs and reveals ideological contestation within Jemaah Tarbiyah and how that contestation contributed to the emergence of the Gelora Indonesia Party. Using Teun A. van Dijk's critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study integrates textual analysis, social cognition, and social context. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with 20 purposively selected actors from PKS, GARBI, Gelora, and related Tarbiyah networks, together with party …

Who Killed Lucio Blanco? Border Incursions & Sovereignty Along The Rio Grande, Jaime L. Alvarez

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The assassination of Lucio Blanco along the banks of the Rio Grande in 1922 was not an isolated episode of political violence but the culmination of nearly a century-old practice of contested sovereignty, border incursions, and lack of law enforcement. This dissertation thus examines the borderlands of Texas and Mexico from the nineteenth century through the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. Within this time frame, this dissertation demonstrates that the international boundary functioned less as a fixed division between two sovereign states and more as a political gray zone in which authority, identity, violence, and political power were continually negotiated. …

Understanding The Political Profile Of Long Island’S Central American Electorate: A Case Study Of Long Island’S Majority-Latino Towns, Brett J. Patrick

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

As Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants settled en masse across Long Island from the 1980s to the 2010s, seven Latino-majority towns emerged, each with distinct voting patterns that diverge from broader national Latino trends and from one another. This study examines how and why these Central American communities vote by integrating precinct-level election returns with the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey data. Using variables such as income, population density, education, citizenship status, and language, it identifies correlations between demographic conditions and partisan vote share. This approach reveals how socioeconomic factors shape political behavior within Salvadoran-American and Guatemalan-American enclaves in Nassau and …

Policy Discourse On A Three-Term Presidency Ahead Of The 2024 Elections: A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis, Ahmad Syukri, Ridho Al-Hamdi

Jurnal Politik

This study examines competing narratives surrounding the proposal to extend the presidential term limit to three terms in the period leading up to the 2024 General Election, using the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). The study employed a qualitative case study design based on 136 news articles published by five national online media outlets between January 2022 and April 2024. The unit of analysis was direct quotations from policy actors that addressed the three-term presidential discourse. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12 Plus through deductive and inductive coding based on four NPF elements: setting, characters, plot, and the moral of the …

Panopticism And Pan-Oticism: Sound-Power From Foucault To Deleuze, Eric Dillenberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From Muzak to long range acoustic devices (LRADs), the contemporary proliferation of sonic technologies for governing moods, behaviors, and potentialities complicates the virtual absence of sound within Michel Foucault's primarily visual modality of disciplinary power in Discipline and Punish, exemplified by his central conceptual model of the panopticon. This thesis develops the corollary concept of pan-oticism to theorize the transformation of sound-power and its political function within administered sonic ecologies from Foucault's disciplinary societies to Gilles Deleuze's societies of control. Within the enclosed spaces constitutive of disciplinary societies, sound-power remains subordinated to Foucault's visual logic of panopticism, extending …

Authoritarianism, Hostility And Threat: An Analysis Of American Political Podcasts Surrounding The 2024 Presidential Election, Noah D. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Political rhetoric surrounding key events has seen sharp increases in emotionally affective speech, intergroup sentiment, and rhetoric unbecoming of democratic societies in recent years. Similarly, semi-democratic and ideologically driven speech has become increasingly normalized within an era of political polarization and hardline beliefs in modern media. Within this economy of outrage, sensational and largely unmoderated media formats, particularly podcasts, have become a mainstay of political information and discourse. This raises an important question: how does rhetoric surrounding political events construct intergroup sentiment and authoritarian rhetoric within political media, particularly American political podcasts? Further, given political podcasts’ growing social influence in …

Scientific Uncertainty As Political Aggression: A Manifesto For Those Who Value Science And Want To Save It From State And Corporate Control, Stephen Demeo

Publications and Research

A manifesto is an opportunity to publicly express strongly held beliefs about a topic that is personally important to an author. It is analytical as it is creative. “Scientific Uncertainty as Political Aggression” is a manifesto that intersects science and politics. It urges those interested in science to examine two different but related topics: scientific uncertainty in measurement—what it is, how it is determined, why it’s important— and the magnification of uncertainty through legal and linguistic tactics used by right-wing politicians and politically supported corporations.

For some time now, the Republican Establishment has cast excessive doubt on scientific findings through …

When Protection Becomes Predation: Militarized Masculinity And Sexual Violence In Northeastern Nigeria, Tosin Osasona

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The study investigates the structural and situational drivers of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) perpetrated by state security actors in the context of Nigeria’s counterinsurgency campaigns in Borno State. Drawing on militarized masculinity and strain and deprivation theories, and using a qualitative, interpretive research design, the study argues that CRSV is not an isolated or episodic form of deviance by individual soldiers and security personnel but is embedded in routine military–civilian interactions. Advancing an interactionist explanation of CRSV in Nigeria’s Islamist counterinsurgency operations, the study demonstrates that the likelihood of sexual violence increases through the interaction of gendered institutional norms, operational …

Nihilistic Violence Aesthetics In Public Online Communication, Heath Nicholas Landress

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Public online communication has increasingly included violence-related content that is meme-based, ironic, visually stylized, multimodal, and only partially ideological. This comprehensive literature review synthesized research on online extremism, extremist memes, toxic multimodal content, dehumanizing digital communication, nihilistic violent extremism, warning behaviors, platform affordances, and youth-facing online environments. The purpose was to clarify what the literature had established; identify where the scholarship remained fragmented; and map research domains relevant to social, behavioral, public safety, and human services scholarship. The review used a structured, comprehensive literature review strategy supported by integrative synthesis procedures. The final corpus contained 34 scholarly sources, including 32 …

Parameters Autumn 2026, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Recursive Artificial Intelligence Training And The Homogenization Of Discourse, Sam Hemesath

Political Science Honors Projects

As Large Language Models (LLMs) begin to produce text on the internet, the same repository from which training data for LLMs are scraped, LLMs will start to train on data they produced. What will happen to future models when LLMs are trained on their own text? Scholars have raised concerns about the possibility that LLMs homogenize language and discourse. These concerns are further exaggerated as LLMs begin to infect their own repositories, marking a turn from human-produced training data sets. In this paper I simulate a recursive training loop by prompting a popular open-source LLM with 1000 prompts and using …

Political Linguistics And Epistemic Agency: Universal Write Publications And The Defense Of Global Black Knowledge, Ayo Sekai

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

As linguistic erasure intensifies across the African world, the preservation of African-centered knowledge systems has become both a scholarly and political imperative. This article examines the relationship between linguistic imperialism, epistemic agency, and scholarly sovereignty through the intellectual trajectory of Dr. Ayo Sekai, political linguist and founder of Universal Write Publications (UWP), a Black woman–owned academic press dedicated to culturally grounded scholarship. Expanding traditional understandings of linguistic imperialism, Dr. Sekai advances political linguistics beyond structural language dominance to examine who holds linguistic power and how that power operates through dog whistle politics, signaling terms, and policy language code—discursive patterns embedded …

Winnie's Feminism: A Tribute To Mama Dr. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela As A Radical Feminist From 1986-2018, Anna Lefatshe Moagi

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Growing up in South Africa and having read several “tell-all” biographies by influential women have made this researcher aware of the struggles of women to be recognised and valued within their social environments. The many names that come to mind, when speaking of women’s voices that challenged their position in our society, belong to those of struggle veterans such as Adelaide Tambo, Ruth First, Lilian Ngoyi, Albertina Sisulu, Thandi Modise, Baleka Mbethe, Leymah Gbowee, Ruth Mompati, Charlotte Maxeke, Joice Majuru, Thuli Madontsela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Their as women leaders roles remain undervalued (Shekhawat 2015). These phenomenal influential women and many …

International Mediation In The Sudan Conflict: A Critical Appraisal And Alternative Tracks, The Initiative Research And Analysis Committee The Sudanese Initiative To Stop The War And Build Peace

The Journal of Social Encounters

Extensive international intervention is one of the most prominent features of the ongoing war in Sudan since early 2023. As a result of the conflict that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Sudan is witnessing what is widely recognized as one of the most severe humanitarian crises in modern history; It has been characterized by massive displacement, large-scale refugee flows, and famine, along with widespread human rights violations and crimes against humanity—both direct and indirect consequences of military operations that have raged across thirteen of Sudan’s states, where the Rapid Support Forces are actively …

The Rights Of Religious Minorities In Sudan: A Case Study Of Armenians, Jon Armajani

The Journal of Social Encounters

This essay examines the constitutions of the Republic of Sudan and minority rights, with a focus on Armenians in that country.  It provides (1) the demographics of Sudan; (2) an overview of the Armenians of Sudan; (3) a history of Sudan’s constitutions; (4) an analysis of their provisions and related laws on minority rights, citizenship, naturalization, and inheritance; (5) an overview of Sudan’s civil war, which began on April 15, 2023, and (6) a concluding section which analyzes risks to Armenians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Sudan.

Genocide By Algorithm In Gaza: Artificial Intelligence, Countervailing Responsibility, And The Corruption Of Public Discourse, Branislav Radeljić

The Journal of Social Encounters

The accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into military systems[i] raises major concerns across fields such as security studies, international public law, and critical technology studies. As warned in 2023, “[t]he world’s major military powers have begun a race to wire AI into warfare. […] No one is inviting AI to formulate a grand strategy, or join a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the same seductive logic that accelerated the nuclear arms race could over a period of years, propel AI up the chain of command.”[ii] In the military domain, algorithmic systems function as epistemic …

Lessons From Tanzania’S Ujamaa For Smart Settlements In Nepal: Social Justice And Economic Development, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepal’s constitutional commitment to a “socialism-oriented” state places social justice, equitable access to resources and housing, and protection of marginalized populations at the center of national development discourse. However, persistent landlessness, informal settlements, unemployment, youth outmigration, and unequal access to infrastructure reveal a significant gap between constitutional aspirations and socioeconomic realities.

This article examines lessons Nepal can draw from Tanzania’s experience with Ujamaa, the African socialist development model initiated by President Nyerere in 1967. Using comparative policy analysis, published research, official documents, and exploratory field observations from selected Tanzanian locations, including the capital and villages in the Iringa Region, the …

Towards The Systematic Cross-Civilizational Comparison: How Civilizations Work Case 3: The Chinese Case, Tiantian Wu

Comparative Civilizations Review

Drawing on Liah Greenfeld’s (2024) framework of Systematic Cross-Civilizational Comparison, this study examines Chinese civilization as an enduring and culturally autonomous system shaped by its unique first principles, “the Great Unity”, which integrates Confucian orthodoxy, political legitimacy, and cultural tradition into a coherent worldview. Historically, this framework justified dynastic rule through moral virtue and the Mandate of Heaven, forming a durable model of statecraft that incorporated Taoist, Legalist, and Buddhist influences. Expressed and perpetuated through the Chinese language, these principles have systematically shaped the civilization’s modes of thought, ethics, and emotional patterns. Although the Opium War and subsequent “Century of …

The First Principles Of Chinese Civilization: Relationalism And Pragmatism, Sai Zhang, Yongnian Zheng

Comparative Civilizations Review

This article examines the first principles of Chinese civilization, relationalism and pragmatism, through Liah Greenfeld’s (2024) definition of civilization as a distinct cultural reality. By comparing Chinese civilization with others, particularly in the context of globalization, we seek to identify its distinctive characteristics. Our overview analysis draws on interdisciplinary literature (including linguistics, philosophy, sociology, political economy, and social psychology). We argue that the complexities of Chinese civilization require a nuanced understanding of its first principles, which are codified in language and cognition. The article explores how these principles manifest in mainstream thoughts such as Confucianism and Legalism, influencing social structure …

Temporal Legitimacy And Civilizational Logic: A Sociological Perspective On The Foundational Principles Of Chinese Civilization, Yuk Man Cheung

Comparative Civilizations Review

This article departs from the recent social-scientific analytical framework for comparative civilizations proposed by the sociologist Liah Greenfeld (2024a, 2024b, 2025) and puts forward several basic conjectures regarding the analysis of the characteristics of Chinese civilization, with the aim of assisting our understanding, execution, and integration of empirical studies. Precisely because these are conjectures, they differ from conventional academic research–especially the case-study-oriented research style dominant in contemporary Anglophone academia. Accordingly, this article can only be regarded as an attempt that, starting from sociological theory, offers preliminary conjectures and tentatively constructs a theoretical framework within which specialists from different fields may …

Cognitive Foundations Of The Absence Of Antisemitism In Japan: Towards A Civilizational Perspective, Chikako Takeishi

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper explores the gap between civilizations in the forms antisemitism takes and the cognitive modes on which it is based, given its significance for comparative civilizational analysis. Antisemitism is characterized by two features — the expressive nature of violence and an orientation toward the elimination of an entire group — which are particularly salient compared to other forms of anti-sentiment familiar in the age of nationalism. In the first section of this paper, I argue that antisemitism exhibiting these features has not been present in Japanese history. The subsequent sections, building on Greenfeld’s theory of civilization, examine existential envy …

Children’S Literature As A Site Of Cross-Civilizational Analysis: Hong Kong In Crisis After 2019, Faye Dorcas Yung Schwendeman

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper applies Liah Greenfeld’s cross-civilizational framework to Hong Kong children’s literature published from 2017 to the present, with emphasis on post-2019 works. Existing scholarship argues that 2019 marked the crystallization and mass diffusion of Hong Kong national consciousness; a nationalism lens therefore helps explain the intensified production of Hong Kong-centered narratives, civic pedagogy, and Cantonese-language transmission. I argue, however, that nationalism does not fully account for a crisis register that becomes salient in parts of the corpus: texts that frame the conflict as a struggle over singular truth, counter-memory, and intolerable contradiction, and that assign to ordinary people a …

The “Original Spirit” Of Chinese Civilization: Wang Huning And The Indigenization Of Reform In Post-Mao China, Chandler Rosenberger

Comparative Civilizations Review

For several centuries, modernizing intellectuals in China have struggled with the question of how to move their country forward against the inertia of a large peasant population rooted in millennia-old traditions. The Communist Party of Mao Zedong tried to fill that peasantry with revolutionary fervor, but grew fearful as chaos quickly destroyed traditions and reforms alike. In the last three decades, however, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seems to have found a way to engage the population in modernizing within their own familiar cultural framework. Guided by chief ideologist Wang Huning, the CCP has embraced a civilizational approach to reform …

Shifting Faith Among Indigenous People In Arunachal Pradesh, India: Revisiting Greenfeld's Civilizational Framework, M. Amin Khan

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper examines changing religious demography in Arunachal Pradesh through Liah Greenfeld's theory of civilization as a self-generating and self-reproducing symbolic reality. Using decadal Census data (1971–2011), it traces the demographic decline of Indigenous/Tribal religions classified under “Other Religions and Persuasions” (ORP) alongside the widespread growth of Christianity and the more limited growth of Hinduism. The analysis argues that these demographic shifts reflect more than religious conversion; they reveal differential capacities for cultural reproduction. Whereas civilizations endowed with codified first principles and enduring institutions sustain continuity across generations, Arunachal Pradesh's largely localized and orally transmitted indigenous traditions have proven less …

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.