Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“I Felt Scared, Like I Was Nobody”: Native American Athletes And Fans Face Widespread Racism At Sport Events, Kalen Goodluck

Capstones

Rural towns in the midwest are often highly supportive of their high school basketball teams and Indian reservation teams are no exception. The trouble is Native American players and fans face racism when facing high school teams from outside reservations.

Over the last decade, from 2008-2018, there have been at least 45 reported incidences all over the U.S. of racial incidents against Native Americans at sporting events like high school games and non-Native teams with pseudo-Indian names and mascots. This data was compiled from news reports by the NYC New Service.

These reported incidences range from making “whooping,” streaking in …

Visiting The "Golden God": Roundtrip From Chinatown To The Blackjack Tables, Katherine Fung

Capstones

Thousands of Chinese immigrants travel by bus to casinos in the Northeast every day. The casinos court and cater to them because they are regulars if not high-rollers -- like Mr. Ng, a retiree, who has traveled six hours daily to and from the Mohegan Sun for the last 13 years.

America's New Favorite Food, Laura E. Duclos, Sshiva Tejas M

Capstones

America's New Favorite Food focuses on the culinary shift the United States is making. The days of burgers and fries are dwindling and tacos are taking over. This short documentary series follows four people who hold distinctive views on Mexican cuisine. Viewers are also able to experience Mexican food in augmented reality, where they can tinker with the models via computer or phone.

LINK TO PROJECT: DuclosTejasCapstone.weebly.com

From Virtual To Physical: Video Game Streaming Communities, Avery Miles

Capstones

This is an exploration of the inner lives of video game streamers, how they interact with their audiences and the social phenomenon of live streaming. It encompasses streamers, viewers, professional eSports athletes and indie game designers.

www.averykmiles.com

What Can We Learn From Rapper And Provocateur, Azealia Banks?, Robert A.R. Dozier

Capstones

Rapper Azealia Banks' name is synonymous with controversy, known for her feuds with celebrities and internet personalities. And her reputation has certainly impacted her career. But the trajectory of Banks' life in the public eye speaks to a larger issue of the treatment of "difficult" women in the music industry. http://robardzr.net/capstone/

Telling The Good News, Allyson R. Escobar

Capstones

In light of recent clergy abuse scandals, cover-ups and leadership shake-downs, it is a divided time in the Catholic Church: but this isn’t the whole story. My final capstone project is a critical essay of how Catholicism (and religion overall) is represented in mainstream media--particularly in secular news publications and entertainment (horror films) in the United States. By examining the coverage and how conversations differ within members of the Catholic Church--from journalists and critics to active Catholics, religious men and women--this project calls for greater accountability, fairness, faith representation in all media, and the overall claim that there are Catholic …

Canada’S Tariffs On American Consumer Goods Linger, Despite Appearance Of Trade Truce, Willa Rubin

Capstones

Months after a trade war erupted along the northern border, Canada’s efforts to counter Trump's efforts are in disarray. Despite the announcement of a new North-American trade agreement, tariffs on American and Canadian goods remain in effect, and Canada’s efforts to build political support for its position in the US have failed.

“Canada did the best they could on sensitive states to the companies that are dominating in those states,” said Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. But “you’ve got an administration which is very nationalistic. There are a lot of firms they don’t pay …

Boom And Bust: How Private Detention Centers Wreak Economic Havoc On The Counties That Turn To Them For Stability, Max W. Parrott, Reynaldo Leanos Jr.

Capstones

In 2015, a riot broke out at a federal prison in a small Texas town not far from the U.S.-Mexico border. Prisoners tore through the kevlar tents of their dorms and a fire broke out, rendering the private prison uninhabitable. The facility was an economic engine for the impoverished, Rio Grande Valley county, so when the facility closed, it left the county $2 million short of its estimated budget, with $78 million in unpaid bonds and 400 fewer jobs for a population of about 21,000 people. This summer, three years after experiencing near economic collapse, Willacy County rushed back into …

Revival, Anya Van Wagtendonk

Capstones

My hometown, Great Barrington, MA, has one famous former resident: NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois. For generations, his legacy in the predominantly white town was hardly acknowledged. People actively protested the landmarking of his birth site in the 1960s. When I was a kid, plans to name a new middle school after him were scrapped after the uproar grew too loud. Even in this supposedly liberal enclave in western Massachusetts, people continued to object to his membership in the Communist Party. As former NAACP president Cornell Brooks said recently, this would be like Princeton, N.J., ignoring that Einstein had ever …

Historical Effects Of Electronic Interfaces, G James Mitchell

Publications and Research

Electronic interfaces are a primary tool for most professional and personal communication currently happening. Electronics, like the human mind, are limited by the understanding of executing will, or commands. This can be characterized as “interface limitations” of digital technology. Identifying this bottleneck in technological development has been critical in historical changes to both hardware and software technology. Recent medical research examines a novel user interface to reduce task load. I hypothesize, interface developments that take cues from nonverbal human communication enhance and sustain the significance of those technologies in society. By examining pivotal moments of historical technology we can identify …

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

Estudio Contrastivo Intercultural De Las Funciones Retóricas De Las Citas: La Producción De Textos Académicos En El Nivel De Posgrado Escritos En Español E Inglés, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

The main objective of this research is to discover which rhetorical functions were used in the Master´s thesis writing written by eight (8) American and eight (8) Spanish postgraduates in their na-tive language. A computerized tex-tual analysis of the rhetorical func-tion of citation was used to study this phenomenon (Petrić, 2007). The results obtained from the re-search showed that the different cultural conventions in the thesis writing indicate that when com-pared with native Spanish writers, the American writers of English use the highest number of cita-tions, and write a relatively longer Introduction and Conclusion parts. On the other hand, the …

Writing In The Social Sciences Engl 21002, Caroline M. Cooper Ms.

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus provides an overview for the English 21002 City College of New York course Writing in the Social Sciences 21002.

The Patterns And Prosecutions Of Media Leakers, Julia M. Lipkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the cases of government employees who are responsible for the disclosure of confidential information to the press, known as media leakers. I claim that the government and media leaker engage in a series of patterned responses, which leads to both the disclosure of information, and prosecution of the leaker. More specifically, I demonstrate how the government’s executive branch manages a game of leaks, in which ‘illegitimate’ leakers are separated from elite officials who also leak, but are often spared from prosecution because they are considered ‘legitimate’ players of the game. Although the boundaries surrounding ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ …

“Are They Supposed To Be Heugin?": Negotiating Race, Nation, And Representation In Korean Musical Theatre, Ji Hyon Yuh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines contemporary Korean musical theatre as a form of popular culture that has served an important role in reflecting and establishing personal and national identity in Korea, especially as it intersects with the global and local manifestations of race and racial ideologies. I argue that musical theatre has served an important political and economic role, since its beginning as a cultural weapon in the height of the Cold War to more contemporary examples in which Korean musicals serve as a tool to brand Korea as an advanced nation in the world. To make a case for this relationship …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Software Of The Oppressed: Reprogramming The Invisible Discipline, Erin R. Glass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a critical analysis of software practices within the university and the ways they contribute to a broader status quo of software use, development, and imagination. Through analyzing the history of software practices used in the production and circulation of student and scholarly writing, I argue that this overarching software status quo has oppressive qualities in that it supports the production of passive users, or users who are unable to collectively understand and transform software code for their own interests. I also argue that the university inadvertently normalizes and strengthens the software status quo through what I call …

The Social Construction Of Protest: Print Media Coverage Of The 2004 Republican National Convention And The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Protests In New York City, Kirsten Christiansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Majoritarian democracies are founded on the idea that the governance of society will reflect the needs and desires of the majority of the people and that all citizens are given a voice. Public protest activity is one of the ways in which social movement organizations as claims-makers can reach an audience to attempt to convince a majority to effect social change. The mainstream news media can disseminate information about protest messages and activity beyond the local. However, the mainstream news media filters information in its own way, influenced in part because of traditional news routines but also potentially by the …

Empowering With Prep (E-Prep), A Peer-Led Social Media–Based Intervention To Facilitate Hiv Preexposure Prophylaxis Adoption Among Young Black And Latinx Gay And Bisexual Men: Protocol For A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial, Viraj V. Patel, Zoë Ginsburg, Sarit A. Golub, Keith J. Horvath, Nataly Rios, Kenneth H. Mayer, Ryunh S. Kim, Julia H. Arnsten

Publications and Research

Background: Young black and Latinx, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (YBLGBM, aged 18-29 years) have among the highest rates of new HIV infections in the United States and are not consistently reached by existing prevention interventions. Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an oral antiretroviral regimen taken daily by HIV-uninfected individuals to prevent HIV acquisition, is highly efficacious in reducing HIV acquisition and could help stop the HIV epidemic in YBLGBM. Use of social media (eg, Facebook, Twitter, online dating sites) is ubiquitous among young people, providing an efficient avenue to engage YBLGBM to facilitate PrEP adoption.

Objective: …

The Price Of A Vote: Diseconomy In Proportional Elections, Hygor Piaget M. Melo, Saulo D. S. Reis, Andre ́ A. Moreira, Hernan Makse, Jose ́ S. Andrade Jr.

Publications and Research

The increasing cost of electoral campaigns raises the need for effective campaign planning and a precise understanding of the return of such investment. Interestingly, despite the strong impact of elections on our daily lives, how this investment is translated into votes is still unknown. By performing data analysis and modeling, we show that top candidates spend more money per vote than the less successful and poorer candidates, a relation that discloses a diseconomy of scale. We demonstrate that such electoral diseconomy arises from the competition between candidates due to inefficient campaign expenditure. Our approach succeeds in two important tests. First, …

Supermarket Retailers’ Perspectives On Healthy Food Retail Strategies: In-Depth Interviews, Olivia Martinez, Noemi Rodriguez, Allison Mercurio, Marie Bragg, Brian Elbel

Publications and Research

Background

Excess calorie consumption and poor diet are major contributors to the obesity epidemic. Food retailers, in particular at supermarkets, are key shapers of the food environment which influences consumers’ diets. This study seeks to understand the decision-making processes of supermarket retailers—including motivators for and barriers to promoting more healthy products—and to catalogue elements of the complex relationships between customers, suppliers, and, supermarket retailers.

Methods

We recruited 20 supermarket retailers from a convenience sample of full service supermarkets and national supermarket chain headquarters serving low- and high-income consumers in urban and non-urban areas of New York. Individuals responsible for making …

Translating Research As An Approach To Enhance Science Engagement, Michelle T. Juarez, Chloe M. Kenet

Publications and Research

The impact of research depends on the effective communication of discoveries. Scientific writing is the primary tool for the dissemination of research, and is an important skill that biomedical trainees have to develop. Despite its importance, scientific writing is not part of the mainstream curriculum. One strategy used to teach scientific writing is holding a journal club style discussion of primary research literature that the students are asked to read. However, this activity can result in a passive learning experience and limit the development of trainees’ scientific writing skills. In order to improve trainees’ written communication skills, we tested an …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3078 (Group Communication), Elizabeth Minei

Open Educational Resources

This course focuses on small-group communication in private, public, and business settings. Topics include types and functions of groups, group-communication theory, issues of power and trust in group communication, effective communication in face-to-face and virtual teams, group conflict, group cohesiveness and team-building, and communication strategies for collaborative problem-solving and decision-making. The format of the course is designed so you will have the opportunity to develop and practice your group communication skills. Therefore, the goal is to provide you with new perspectives on the process of group and team communication, as well as increased options for communicating effectively in group and …

Validation Of Twitter Opinion Trends With National Polling Aggregates: Hillary Clinton Vs Donald Trump, Alexandre Bovet, Flaviano Morone, Hernán A. Makse

Publications and Research

Measuring and forecasting opinion trends from real-time social media is a long-standing goal of bigdata analytics. Despite the large amount of work addressing this question, there has been no clear validation of online social media opinion trend with traditional surveys. Here we develop a method to infer the opinion of Twitter users by using a combination of statistical physics of complex networks and machine learning based on hashtags co-occurrence to build an in-domain training set of the order of a million tweets. We validate our method in the context of 2016 US Presidential Election by comparing the Twitter opinion trend …

Acoustic Classification Of Russian Plain And Palatalized Sibilant Fricatives: Spectral Vs. Cepstral Measures, Laura Spinu, Alexei Kochetov, Jason Lilley

Publications and Research

This study compares two methods for classifying voiceless sibilant fricatives forming a 4-way phonemic contrast found in Russian, but otherwise cross-linguistically rare. One method uses spectral measures, i.e. vowel formants, COG, duration and intensity of frication. The second method uses cepstral coefficients extracted from different regions inside fricatives and neighboring vowels. The corpus comprises 1,431 plain and palatalized fricatives from two places of articulation, produced by 10 speakers. Logistic regression was used to classify the productions of males and females together and separately. The productions of females yielded higher correct classification rates (highest 91.9%). Cepstral measures outperformed spectral measures across-the-board.

Applications Of Complex Network Analysis In Electric Power Systems, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

This paper provides a review of the research conducted on complex network analysis (CNA) in electric power systems. Moreover, a new approach is presented to find optimal locations for microgrids (MGs) in electric distribution systems (EDS) utilizing complex network analysis. The optimal placement in this paper points to the location that will result in enhanced grid resilience, reduced power losses and line loading, better voltage stability, and a supply to critical loads during a blackout. The criteria used to point out the optimal placement of the MGs were predicated on the centrality analysis selected from the complex network theory, the …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3076 (International Communication), Allison Hahn

Open Educational Resources

This course examines issues related to the internationalization of media and communication. Topics include a comparison of information rich and information poor countries, an analysis of global media, trends in communication technology, the role of English as a world language, U.S. influences on world cultures, and international perceptions of the United States.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3076 (International Communication), Allison Hahn

Open Educational Resources

This course examines issues related to the internationalization of media and communication. Topics include a comparison of information rich and information poor countries, an analysis of global media, trends in communication technology, the role of English as a world language, U.S. influences on world cultures, and international perceptions of the United States.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3060 (Media Analysis And Criticism), Riann Subijanto

Open Educational Resources

In contemporary society, the media, including the Internet, television, smart phones, radio, magazines, movies, music, newspapers, and books, saturate our everyday lives to an extent unprecedented in human history. Their effects are wide-ranging and transformative, including affecting our perception of reality, influencing how and what we think about, and framing our understanding of the world around us. Yet, due to their pervasiveness, rarely do we seriously consider the media and the issues they raise. This course will introduce you to the seminal theories in media studies. By considering these different approaches, we will situate the media in a broader historical, …

Dancing, Mindfulness, And Our Emotions: Embracing The Mind, Body, And Sole, Alisha M. Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project examines dance, as an intervention and mindfulness practice that assists with managing our emotions. There is a need for dance therapy in social institutions such as, healthcare facilities, schools, and community centers. Dance therapy has the potential to reduce negative emotions, create mindfulness, improve self-expression, and promote a healthy well-being. I am proposing that dance therapy is applied as a regular practice in social institutions to develop mindfulness and promote emotional stability.

In this study, I argue that dance therapy can contribute to our well-being long term. In addition to this written thesis, a visual component of …