Digital Commons Network^™

Artificial Intelligence: The Road More Traveled. Writing And Conducting Research With Ai, Laura Zucca-Scott, Samuel Stinson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

This project illustrates and discusses actionable examples of how collaborative, supportive virtual or in-person environments can foster democratic learning models in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

The workshop models, whether in person or virtual, provide dialogical opportunities for growth. Critically examining information and developing writing skills become crucial in supporting scholarly growth and intellectual exploration while providing access to academic pursuits to otherwise marginalized individuals and groups.

The experiences we share are situated in a specific context and are interconnected with the perspectives, backgrounds, and expectations of the scholars involved. However, as the writing workshops continue to evolve due to …

Limitation For Liberty, Riley Banker

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

This paper examines how the foundational principals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are under attack in our nation today and demonstrates why protecting them through Federalism is so important.

Democratic Design Literacy Research, Ingvill Gjerdrum Maus

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents ideas about education and democracy embedded in studies on de-sign literacy for sustainability. The descriptions of one semi-structured group interview study and one action research study provided in three research papers are analysed in light of three different conceptions of education and democracy. The analysis outlines how the research methods used in situations in which students (1) engage in questions, introductions and tightly structured tasks developed from research-based knowledge; (2) interact with and share their thoughts and reflections in groups; and (3) respond to open-ended questions contribute to research enabling design education for democracy, design education through …

Assessing The Impact Of Inequality On Political Activity And Class Consciousness, Matthew Prouty

Thinking Matters Symposium

Since 1980, the United States has experienced stagnating wages, higher levels of inequality, and intensifying political polarization. Despite this, U.S. domestic economic policy has not undergone the fundamental transformation needed to combat these systemic challenges. Why have these policies remained in place when they have a negative impact on the aggregate working class, and why has the working class not used American Democracy to change these policies? Could it be that the rising inequality has led to reduced political engagement with the remaining voters being more devout participants to their ideology than effective policy? Although there is an abundance of …

Upholding Human Rights In North Korea, Deborah Adeniji

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

No abstract provided.

Critical Thinking In The Age Of Misinformation: Information Literacy For Citizenship, Tamra Ortgies-Young, Jennfer Lobo Meeks, Barbara Robertson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

As recent political events across the globe have shed a light on the fragility of democratic values, the role of the University in creating a framework for civic education becomes more urgent. Informed, caring and engaged citizenry must be a goal of higher education. Students currently face the emergence of faulty types of information - such as misinformation and disinformation, which undermines the notion of collective or public inquiry, not only within universities, but also within society as a whole. This challenge must be acknowledged and addressed by academic institutions.

Session presenters will provide an overview of their work, “Critical …

Revolution, Regime Change, And Rosewater: The United States’ Role In The Arab Spring, Grace Lewis

Capstone Showcase

This thesis seeks to determine which international relations theory best explains the United States involvement in the Arab Spring, and to ascertain if the goals set by those theories were met. Through the literature, I determine that two theories offer reasonable yet competing explanations of US involvement, and that these theories are first, defensive realism, and second, democratic peace theory. I employ the analytic method of pattern matching to compare each theory against the empirical record. In my analysis, I match empirical data from five affected countries to determine the strategic importance to the United States of the outcome of …

Libraries As Pluralistic Public Spheres: Acknowledging Conflict To Promote Democratic Discourse, Lisa Engström

New Librarianship Symposia Series: Fall 2021

In library policies and library and information studies Habermas concept of public sphere is often used to highlight the public library as a place promoting democracy and inclusion by enabling interpersonal meetings between people with different lifestyles and background. Libraries are then conceived as accessible to all bridging social, economic, and cultural gaps, and promoting a perception of shared values between users (Aabø et al. 2010). I argue that vulnerable and excluded groups thereby may be hindered to form their own identity and to make their voices heard.

Accessibility and participation are core concepts when analysing libraries democratic potential. However, …

Revisiting The Ideal Of Neutrality, Anne-Sofie Bollerup

New Librarianship Symposia Series: Fall 2021

Revisiting the ideal of neutrality

The idea of a neutral library and a neutral librarian is appealing. Without influencing or judging, the librarian trusts the citizens own judgement and steps away from her own opinion in order to serve and guide the users. The notion of neutrality as an ideal has been the dominating position among both librarians and Library and Information Science-researchers.

Advocates for the principle of neutrality claim that the idea of neutrality is both an expression of representative democracy and respect for the individual’s rights and that neutrality is an active choice (Blomgreen & Sundeen, 2020; Tewell, …

Back To The Future! Library History As Forecast: Discovering Core Concepts Of Librarianship In The Public Library’S Past, Sara Wingate Gray

New Librarianship Symposia Series: Fall 2021

Back to the Future! Library History as Forecast: Discovering Core Concepts of Librarianship in the Public Library’s Past

UNESCO and IFLA have a longstanding history in influencing librarianship from an international perspective: their joint ‘Public Library Manifesto’ (1994) describes “well-informed citizens”, with the ability to “exercise their democratic rights and to play an active role in society” as “depend[ing] on … free and unlimited access to knowledge, thought, culture and information” (UNESCO/IFLA, 1994). Without such savvy citizenry, the manifesto suggests, “[f]reedom, prosperity and the development of society” as fundamental human values may come to be in flux. Positioning the public …

The Importance Of Public Participation In Building Up Democracies In Former Yugoslav States. Case Study: Kosovo And Croatia, Florentina Hajdari Hajra, Dritero Arifi

UBT International Conference

There is a large body of scientific literature in social science and governmental documents which deals with abstract norms and principles for assessing and judging public deliberation and participation. Almost all political scientists agree that public participation enriches democracy by helping to ensure better decision-making and strengthening politicians’ accountability to the people. But, what is the effect of public participation into transforming political systems, and what are the key factors that cause these transformations? These questions remain still unsolved completely. Through this article, the main purpose is to elaborate the effects of public participation on building up democracies (similarities and …

All Democracy Is Local – How We Can Strengthen Our Democracy, Letitia Harmon

Center for Engagement and Community Development

Kansas is at the bottom of many measures of democracy. In the 2016 general election, Kansas voter turnout was 59.2%, good enough to be 34th in the country and far below the nearly 75% rate in states with the highest turnout. Kansas also ranked 40th in the country for percentage of eligible voters who actually registered, and 43rd for highest number of mail-in ballots rejected. These statistics taken from a survey of Kansas county clerks, and many more, are presented from a report by the ACLU of Kansas.

Deliberative Democracy In The Networked Public Sphere: Using Social Media To Talk Politics, Russell Hansen

TAC Talks

Online discussions about politics are commonplace these days, and play an increasingly large role in the deliberative process that is so crucial to the healthy functioning of democracy. Often assailed as inferior, dysfunctional, and distracting, these kinds of discussions are made possible by the invention and mass adoption of new information communication technologies (ICTs), and questions often arise regarding exactly how the uses of such technologies affect the way in which political deliberation is undertaken. This presentation looks at these questions through the lens of public sphere theory, specifically focusing on how disruption of the public sphere ideal takes place …

Elections In The Shadow Of Ebola: Sierra Leone’S African Socialist Movement And The Struggle For Democracy, Joshua Mcdermott

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The West African eEbola outbreak of 2014-15 claimed the lives of nearly 12,000 people, most of them from the Mano River region, comprising Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Conakry, three of the world’s poorest nations. In the wake of the outbreak, Sierra Leone’s ruling party, the All People’s Congress (APC), postponed the country’s 2017 elections for one year, under the pretext that the crisis had undermined the agenda of the president, Ernest Bai Koroma.

Authoritarianism is not new to Sierra Leone: The APC ruled the small coastal nation under a one-party state from the 1960s until a brutal civil war that …

Dilemmas About The Core Values In The European Union, Elisabeth Kardos Kaponyi

UBT International Conference

The European integration was primarily about economic cooperation, but the European Union’s role in protecting the core values in its member states. EU values were first mentioned in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union, and since the Amsterdam Treaty the community law has a sufficiently precise description of this values, which should be respected not only by countries aspiring to the EU but also by the Member States themselves. The Lisbon Treaty defines EU values as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to …

Says Who? Challenges Of Teaching News Literacy In A Culture Of Secrecy, Kanchan Kaur

First Global News Literacy Conference

India might be the world’s largest democracy, but it is still fraught with challenges that plague the underdeveloped world. India is quickly moving to a digital democracy—the ability to receive information in almost real time through mass media and to make one’s voice heard through social media (1) --with complex consequences. One of them has to do with a post-fact environment and non-state actors who try to influence public opinion to serve their own ends. Social media, especially WhatsApp, serves their purposes well, for instead of exposing people to diverse views, it mainly creates an echo chamber (2). Making matters …

News Literacy In Argentina; Commitment To Democracy, Roxana Morduchowicz

First Global News Literacy Conference

The main challenge for a News Literacy program in Latin America is to reinforce democracy. After many years of strong military dictatorships, media literacy in this region should develop and strengthen students´ democratic culture and citizenship education. The other essential goal for News Literacy in Latin America is to break the social and cultural gaps –including critical reading skills- that exist between young people from privileged families and the ones who come from the poorest economic groups. The first step is to enact News Literacy as a public policy. There have always been teachers who taught students how to critically …

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Educational Foldout, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Educational foldout for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

2017 Mlk Keynote Emory Douglas Program, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Emory Douglas

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

Program for the 2017 MLK Keynote Address: Emory Douglas. An artist, educator and human rights activist, Emory Douglas served as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-80. Best known for his political drawings and cartoons in the Black Panther Newspaper, he articulated the injustices experienced by African Americans living in the inner city, the growing militancy and organization among urban black youth in the face of police violence and the need for community-based social programs. 2017 MLK Keynote, Emory Douglas discusses the process, meaning and impact of his artwork then and now.

Designing For Democracy: Using Design Activism To Renegotiate The Roles And Rights For Patients, Eva Knutz, Thomas Markussen, Signe Mårbjerg Thomsen, Jette Ammentorp

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper we focus on ‘patient-democracy’ and ‘shared decision-making’ seen from the perspective of design practice and design research. In the research on democracy in healthcare it is rarely questioned what forms of democracy underlies these concepts. We have examined three different theories of democracy and the democratic practices that belong to each of these. For designers working to increase patient democracy it is of vital importance to be able to distinguish different structures underlying democratic practices and to work out methods for prototyping democracy. In design research there are already a number of approaches available which in one …

Pistis - The Common Ethos?, Anne-Maren Andersen

OSSA Conference Archive

The classical Greek term pistis (trust) is presented as a relevant norm in the analysis of parliamentary debate. Through exploration of pistis apparent similarities to the term ethos have appeared. It is proposed that pistis can be viewed as the equivalent to ethos, concerning the common space or connection between the speaker and the audience. Tentatively "truth", "faith" and "respect" are proposed as the elements equivalent to phronesis, areté and eunoia.

Some Practical Values Of Argumentation, Laura M. Benacquista

OSSA Conference Archive

In this paper, I identify two sets of practical values of argumentation from a standpoint that places a premium on maximal participatory democracy. The first set includes pedagogical values for both teachers and learners. The second set of values are transformative and include: facilitating openness as both tolerance and opportunity; facilitating understanding of one’s own positions, other’s positions, and the conceptual frameworks underlying them; and, finally, fostering motivation by encouraging action.

The Fallacy Of Composition And Meta-Argumentation, Maurice A. Finocchiaro

OSSA Conference Archive

Although the fallacy of composition is little studied and trivially illustrated, some view it as ubiquitous and paramount. Furthermore, although definitions regard the concept as unproblematic, it contains three distinct elements, often confused. And although some scholars apparently claim that fallacies are figments of a critic’s imagination, they are really proposing to study fallacies in the context of meta-argumentation. Guided by these ideas, I discuss the important historical example of Michels’s iron law of oligarchy.

Argumentation As An Ethical And Political Choice, Menashe Schwed

OSSA Conference Archive

The paper's two theses are: First, that the historical and philosophical roots of argumentation are in ethics and politics, and not in any formal ideal, be it mathematical, scientific or other. Furthermore, argumentation is a human invention, deeply tied up with the emergence of democracy in ancient Greece. Second, that argumentation presupposes and advances concurrently humanistic values, especially the autonomy of the individual to think and decide in a free and uncoerced manner.

Defining Functions Of Danish Political Commentary, Mette Bengtsson, Mary L. Kahl

OSSA Conference Archive

In Denmark political commentary is still a relatively new phenomenon. This paper analyzes the metadiscourse in relation to political commentary to identify the different understandings that have coalesced around political commentary as a genre. I argue that people in different positions (e.g. citizens, politicians, journalists, political editors, chief editors and political commentators themselves) emphasize different explanations for the rise of the genre and thereby functions of political commentary as part of an argumentative strategy favouring their own interests.

Design, Democracy And Agonistic Pluralism, Carl Disalvo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper, the author presents an alternative approach to ‘design for democracy,’ drawing on the notion of agonistic pluralism. Specifically, the author highlights the differences between politics and the political within agonistic pluralism, and employing examples of contemporary design projects, discusses how these differences can been seen in the objects and practices of design. Through this critical examination, the author contributes a new perspective to the discourses of ‘design for democracy’ and expands the possibilities for democratic action and critique available to both practicing designers and design scholars.