Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio Aug 2023

Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio

Doctoral Dissertations

Large dairy farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have turned to anaerobic digesters as the industry is increasingly pressured to find ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Digesters are machines that turn animal waste from CAFOs into electricity and fuel which are then sold as “credits” in California’s market based climate change mitigation programs such as cap and trade and the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. However, this dissertation not only challenges the assertion that digesters are “green,” but also that these programs are doing what they claim to do in a deregulated and re-regulated …


Productivity As Social Imperative Automation And Transformations Of Labor In The United States And Germany, Anthony Jack Knowles Ii Aug 2023

Productivity As Social Imperative Automation And Transformations Of Labor In The United States And Germany, Anthony Jack Knowles Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to illuminate the social, economic, and political dynamics shaping automation, labor transformations, and productivity development through a comparative historical analysis of the automobile industry in the United States and Germany from the turn of the 20th century to the present. I examine the US and Germany as two value regimes that represent two distinct models of political, economic, and social organization, focusing on three specific dimensions: (1) business structure and practice, (2) labor organizing and struggles, and (3) governments as they support industries and form the legal basis for industrial relations. Major productive developments …


Research Data Management Policy & Organizational Compliance: An Exploratory Study In The Academic Context, Monica Inez Ihli Dec 2022

Research Data Management Policy & Organizational Compliance: An Exploratory Study In The Academic Context, Monica Inez Ihli

Doctoral Dissertations

Research data management (RDM) describes a broad array of processes and activities aimed at ensuring that data are documented, organized, findable, and preserved for future access. In January 2023, the National Institutes of Health will begin enforcing the strictest data management requirements of a U.S. federal agency to date, including potential consequences for organizations whose researchers fail to demonstrate compliance with commitments to data management and sharing. This dissertation makes two major assessment-based contributions in support of organizational preparedness for policy compliance. First, it reports the results of a pilot study at a high research institution for a survey instrument, …


Mining Public Opinion On Covid-19 Vaccines Using Unstructured Social Media Data, Chad Aaron Melton Dec 2022

Mining Public Opinion On Covid-19 Vaccines Using Unstructured Social Media Data, Chad Aaron Melton

Doctoral Dissertations

The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and the necessary separation of populations led to an unprecedented number of new social media users seeking information related to the pandemic. Nowadays, with an estimated 4.5 billion users worldwide, social media data offer an opportunity for near real-time analysis of large bodies of text related to disease outbreaks and vaccination. This study investigated and compared public discourse related to COVID-19 vaccines expressed on two popular social media platforms, Reddit and Twitter. Approximately 9.5 million Tweets and 70 thousand Reddit comments were analyzed from dates January 1, 2020, to March 1, 2022, and …


Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake Aug 2015

Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake

Masters Theses

Present in Panama since the 19th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency …


Life-Cycle Assessment In Government Policy In The United States, Daniel L. Reed Aug 2012

Life-Cycle Assessment In Government Policy In The United States, Daniel L. Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States government, both at the Federal and state levels, are continuously relying on emerging technological and methodological tools in order to provide essential information to decision and policy-makers. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a rapidly emerging tool for both the private and public sectors. Governments around the world are aggressively looking towards life-cycle information to guide policy and promote environmental issues. LCA’s beginning in the United States dates back to 1969 at the Coca-Cola Company as a innovative way at looking at their beverage container’s impact on the environment. Since then life-cycle concepts have been slowly adapted and accepted …


Geospatial Data Accessibility In Web 2.0 Environments, Sara Helen Mcnamee May 2011

Geospatial Data Accessibility In Web 2.0 Environments, Sara Helen Mcnamee

Masters Theses

Geographically referenced data is becoming a robust source of information because the use of place-based relevance searching is being employed as a popular form of information access and dispersal. To address this trend, the researcher conducted a study on the usability of the USA National Phenology Network (http://www.usanpn.org/), engaging 6 volunteer participants structured usability test of the USANPN mapping application. The participants were asked to complete two tasks, and data was collected both during (in the form of a think aloud exercise) and after the test (in the form of an exit interview). From the data collected, the researcher aimed …