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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Networks Of Isolation: The Case Of Donald J. Trump, Facebook, And The Limits Of Social Movement Theory, Carol L. Stimmel May 2018

Networks Of Isolation: The Case Of Donald J. Trump, Facebook, And The Limits Of Social Movement Theory, Carol L. Stimmel

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

The 2016 election that catapulted Donald J. Trump to the U.S. presidency has raised questions for how Facebook may have enabled the emergence and coalescence of a social movement among traditionally improbable voters. The research in this paper engages with contemporary social movement theory, assessing its adequacy for explaining the role of Facebook as a primary method for facilitating a social movement among the civically-alienated, who are the most unlikely of all Americans to join an organized collective for change. From a methodological perspective, the exploration takes up the case as a strategy of inquiry to explore social movement theory …


Online Social Capital: Social Networking Sites' Influence On Civic And Political Engagement, Charles L. Bush Apr 2018

Online Social Capital: Social Networking Sites' Influence On Civic And Political Engagement, Charles L. Bush

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines how using social networking sites (SNS) is correlated with levels of civic and political engagement of college students at Old Dominion University. Past research has yielded mixed results on the link between online social capital and civic and political engagement. Major limitations of past research include grouping together social networking sites that are substantially different and not considering these sites’ impact on the different forms of social capital. This thesis first examines how social networking site preference, intensity of use, and motives for use factor into an individual’s online social capital. Secondly, this thesis looks at how …


The 21st Century Activist's Dilemma: Social Media's Impact On The Occupy And Tea Party Movements, Alexander Elliott Carter-Parks Jan 2015

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 …


Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li Dec 2014

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …


Intentioned Network Convergence: How Social Media Is Redefining, Reorganizing, And Revitalizing Social Movements In The United States, Jesse Janice Klekamp Apr 2012

Intentioned Network Convergence: How Social Media Is Redefining, Reorganizing, And Revitalizing Social Movements In The United States, Jesse Janice Klekamp

Scripps Senior Theses

This analysis seeks to understand the power of social media to create sustainable social movements. The 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle were one of the first internet-supported acts of protest and illustrate the power of the Internet and social media to bring together diverse coalitions of actors and maintain decentralized power structures. Next, the analysis studies the non-profit advocacy organization Invisible Children and the recent media explosion of their Kony 2012 campaign to make sense of how uses of the Internet have expanded since 1999. The Kony 2012 case illustrates the power of committed networks in disseminating information …