From Panic to Policy: The Limits of Foreign Propaganda and the Foundations of an Effective Response (Spring 2024)

American leaders and scholars have long feared the prospect that hostile foreign powers could subvert democracy by spreading false, misleading, and inflammatory information by using various media. Drawing on both historical experience and empirical literature, this article argues that such fears may be both misplaced and misguided. The relationship between people’s attitudes and their media consumption remains murky, at best, despite technological advances promising to decode or manipulate it. This limitation extends to foreign foes as well. Policymakers therefore risk becoming pessimistic toward the public and distracted from the domestic, real-world drivers of their confidence in democratic institutions. Policy interventions may also prove detrimental to democratic values like free expression and to the norms that the United States aims to foster in the information environment.LBJ School of Public Affair

The transmedia grand tour of Italy: a gender reading of media convergence and tourism in the Neapolitan quartet and Call Me By Your Name

My research project is focused on exploring the convergence of media, fan practices and tourism in contemporary Italy using a feminist and cultural studies perspective. First, using discourse analysis, I explore the industry perspective by looking at the production strategies and the identity politics (embedded in the postfeminist discourse and neoliberal culture) of two Italy-centered transmedia franchises targeting global audiences (Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and the movie Call Me By Your Name). Then, using the same research methods, I discuss the influence of these media texts and their various commercial extensions on the tourism of particular cities (respectively Naples and Crema) as well as on the cultural, social and economic spheres of the Italian country. After this, I analyze the target audience of these cultural products: through audience surveys, I investigate the forms of participation of those fans who turned into travelers, analyzing the different point of views of the fan-tourists and their buyer persona based on their gender/sex/nationality. Overall, this research project explores the agency of the fan-tourists in the context of media convergence, mediatized tourism and gendered travelling. Moreover, it also brings to light the perspective of minority groups (women and queer individuals) who use travelling as a way to assert their independence and break down the barriers of the traditionally heterosexual and masculine touristic space.French and Italia

A quantitative analysis of transit-induced displacement through the lens of racial capitalism

Existing research has established that, although various factors influence the magnitude of premiums, Transit-Oriented Development (“TOD”) may increase nearby property values, especially when transit systems are mature, speedy, and reliable. However, the question of whether TOD-induced gentrification leads to displacement of vulnerable residents, is widely debated within and beyond academic research, despite the concerns of advocates and the historical precedent of gentrification-induced displacement in many cities including Austin, TX. Rucks-Ahidiana argues that this conflict between the findings of researchers and the concerns of advocates is caused by a failure to understand gentrification and displacement as a process of racial capitalism, which theorizes that the speed and scale of gentrification and displacement effects depend on a neighborhood’s racial composition. This study seeks to investigate issues with existing quantitative research on the displacement effects of proximity to TOD through a quasi-experimental design employing a statistical technique known as propensity score matching (“PSM”) to reduce selection bias by ensuring treatment and control groups have similar baseline characteristics. Census tracts across the United States within a half mile of a TOD station were identified, and each tract was matched one-to-one with a comparable tract outside of the half-mile TOD area and within the same region. The results of multivariate regression were statistically significant and showed that proximity to TOD resulted in faster population growth and slower loss of white and Asian residents compared to residents living in tracts farther from TOD during the study period of 2000 to 2022. The opposite was true for Black and Hispanic or Latino residents, whose shares of total population and absolute counts decreased within a half mile of TOD compared to tracts farther from TOD. This result supports the claim that gentrification and displacement effects must be understood through the lens of racial capitalism. Without adequate proof of its displacement effects, cities will continue to implement TOD without explicit anti-displacement policies which ensure the investment benefits the existing low-income residents who stand to gain the most, especially if they are dependent on public transit for access to opportunities.Community and Regional Plannin

Laser-Plasma Instabilities of frequency doubled pulses at the extreme Light Infrastructure’s L4 beamline

Laser Plasma Instabilities (LPI) are one of the principal problems in laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) schemes, scattering laser energy and producing hot electrons that can pre-heat a compressing ICF target [31]. ICF systems generally employ short wavelength lasers, as LPI effects scale strongly with wavelength. As such, instabilities of particular concern, such as Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS), Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS), and Two Plasmon Decay (TPD), have been well characterized in the ultraviolet (UV) regime [32]. However, converting to the higher frequencies (3ω of Nd:glass lasers) loses laser energy that can otherwise be irradiated on target. Additionally, higher frequencies can inflict significant damage to the optics in the laser chain. Compared to optics for green light (2ω of Nd:glass lasers), developments in UV optics have been slow to achieve durability to the higher photon energies associated with UV light. New fusion schemes propose 2ω light as an ICF driver but these LPI effects have a lower threshold compared to 3ω [20, 49, 33]. This calls for further study of LPI with green light. To this end, we have built a backscatter diagnostic to measure SRS, SBS, and TPD at the Extreme Light Infrastructure's L4n beamline [52]. This work details measurements made with this diagnostic of laser-plasma instabilities of a 527 nm laser (intensities ranging from 0.5×10¹³ W/cm² to 1.6×10¹⁵ W/cm²) relevant to direct drive with a plane solid target during commissioning of the beamline [53]. SBS was observed at a shift of 526.5 nm, onsetting at a laser intensity of 2 × 10¹³ W/cm². SRS was observed at a shift of 750-830 nm, onsetting at a laser intensity of 1.4 × 10¹⁴ W/cm². TPD measurements require improvements, which are discussed.Physic

Contextualizing school mobility : investigating the influence of racially/ethnically-relevant factors on students’ mobility experiences

Understanding the impact of school mobility on student outcomes has been of keen interest to researchers and policymakers for decades. However, studying the influence of school mobility is complicated by the many confounding student and contextual characteristics that are related to both the initiation of student mobility and students’ educational outcomes. Through two studies, the current dissertation sought to disentangle some of the confounding factors of school mobility by focusing on how changes in racially/ethnically relevant contextual factors—including school racial composition and school racial climate—influenced students’ academic outcomes over time. Study one utilized data from the Northwest Evaluation Association’s (NWEA) anonymized longitudinal student achievement database and followed 230,055 Kindergarten to 2nd grade students over four years to examine how changes in school racial composition across a non-normative school move influenced students’ math and reading achievement trajectories. Study one also explored variation in these associations by race. The second study utilized data from a longitudinal community-based sample and followed 697 students across the high school transition. The aim of study two was to identify subpopulations of students with distinct academic trajectories across the high school transition and determine whether changes in students’ perceptions of school racial climate from middle school to high school influenced their school performance and attendance trajectories across the transition. Both studies identify disruptions in students’ academics across a school move. Study one finds an influence in changing school racial composition on students’ achievement following a school move with Latino/a/x students being particularly sensitive to declining same-ethnic peers across a school move. Study two identifies three distinct school performance trajectories in middle school and high school and finds that changes in school racial climate perceptions across the high school transition influence students’ high school performance and attendance. The current study contributes to the ongoing school mobility literature by contextualizing school mobility within a diversifying education system and serves to identify factors that may enhance student outcomes during periods of transition.Human Development and Family Science

Shear behavior of full-scale reinforced concrete members strengthened with anchored CFRP materials

Numerous studies on shear strengthening with CFRP material are reported in the literature. However, the majority of these studies were conducted on small-scale specimens that have little or no transverse reinforcement. A comprehensive review of the literature showed that without proper anchorage, CFRP materials did not increase the shear strength of the member due to debonding between the material and the concrete surface. In order to better understand the shear behavior of members strengthened with anchored CFRP strips, ten tests were performed on large-scale T-beams. The beams were tested with various CFRP layouts, CFRP reinforcement ratios, and transverse steel reinforcement ratios. The test results provided invaluable information on the shear behavior of strengthened members when sufficient anchorage is provided for CFRP material and debonding failure is precluded. A detailed discussion of the interaction between the materials is presented based on the observations from the experimental tests. The performance of the test specimens was compared at service loads, and at ultimate capacity. The results of this study were added to a database that was used to develop design recommendations to estimate the shear capacity of members strengthened with anchored CFRP material. The comparison between predicted shear capacities and experimental test results showed that the proposed design recommendations provided much more accurate estimates of shear strength than existing guidelines. The tests reported in this dissertation are not only critical for understanding the shear behavior of members strengthened in shear with anchored CFRP material, but also extremely valuable in filling the gaps in the literature and expanding the limited data available.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Orthodox women in America : the making of the conservative-liberal subject

This dissertation asks: what does it mean and feel like to be an Eastern Orthodox woman in America? It answers this question by exploring how it is possible to become an Orthodox woman in the present day United States. By attending to the Orthodox Christian and Western liberal discourses, everyday practices and material spaces in which practitioners – Russian immigrant women and American converts – are immersed, this dissertation unveils the slow process of becoming and the everyday experience of being an Orthodox Christian subject. This dissertation proposes that it is possible for the Orthodox women in the United States to embody a double subjectivity that reconciles conservative values, such as doctrinal commitments to gendered hierarchies, with liberal values, such as personal professions of individual freedom in complex and sometimes unpredictable ways. In doing so, this dissertation complicates an assumption that Orthodox Christian identity is best understood as a subject position, which is always already opposed to the secular liberalism that defines the West.Religious Studie

Design of cooperative grid-tied photovoltaic systems

Since 2009 there has been a discernable decrease in the price of solar photovoltaics (PV). In 2017 the average price per Watt installed was $1.50, which is 1/3rd what it cost in 2009, and the reduction in price has correlated with an increase in installed PV capacity in the United States and in Texas. While the majority of the growth in PV installations has been, and still is, in utility-scale photovoltaics, both residential and commercial installations have also grown and have done so at an increasing rate. Due to the nature of PV, this increased penetration of residential installations has created economic, social, and technical challenges for electric utilities and their customers in the United States. Although a consensus solution to these challenges does not yet exist, electric utilities have attempted to address them using a number of approaches within their sphere of control such as Rate Restructuring, Solar Cooperatives, and Subsidized PV Hosting. The upward trends in installed PV capacity, the utility’s ability to influence customer decisions through subsidized PV hosting programs, and the low additional cost of implementing these programs have combined to produce a great opportunity to apply creative problem-solving to the technical challenges associated with distributed residential PV. Empirical measurements of PV output variations caused by clouds are used in combination with detailed electrical distribution circuit models to determine the positive and negative effects of PV Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) on the electrical distribution system. Linear and quadratic optimization formulations are used to determine how to distribute PV DERs to minimize the negative effects from the perspective of the electric utility. When customer choice introduces uncertainty in the utility’s decision-making, stochastic optimization is applied to help deal with the uncertainty. This dissertation first identifies and quantifies the technical challenges that distributed PV generation creates on the electrical distribution grid resulting from PV’s distributed nature and variability of output. The dissertation then develops a methodology that electric utilities can apply to distributing PV DERs through the subsidized PV hosting programs, which they are already implementing, in a way that mitigates these technical challenges. This methodology can be applied in a present day scenario, where distributed PV is a small, yet considerable, and in a scenario likely to occur in the decades ahead – where continually increasing rates of PV installation result in extensive penetration of PV generation on the electrical distribution grid.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

The shield of Asia : how deterrence and domestic politics shaped U.S. China policy, 1949-1969

“The Shield of Asia” explains the continuity of U.S. foreign policy towards China and the Asia-Pacific region from 1949 to 1969. It considers how domestic politics, ideas about deterrence, and more traditional geostrategic, military, and economic concerns influenced the formation of U.S. foreign policy. Despite the many changes in the strategic landscape, which included the Sino-Soviet split, China’s explosion of a nuclear device, the 1965 coup in Indonesia, and the Sino-Indian and Sino-Soviet wars, America’s foreign policy remained focused on the military containment and political and economic isolation of the People’s Republic of China. As allies, members of Congress, and the American public began to question U.S. foreign policy in the broad and diverse Asia-Pacific region, and particularly its policy toward China and South Vietnam, the Johnson administration deployed what I call the “shield thesis.” A companion to the domino theory, the shield thesis argued that the U.S. military deterrent in the region, directed at the People’s Republic of China, allowed the non-communist countries to develop politically, economically, and socially along Western lines. The domino theory told the American people why China had to be contained; the shield thesis explained how. The Johnson administration did not create the shield thesis. Rather, the shield thesis evolved during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to explain American foreign policy. The Johnson administration capitalized on the thesis’ development and used it to justify continuing American involvement in the Vietnam War. The coming shift in American foreign policy towards China and the Asia-Pacific announced by Nixon in the Guam Doctrine represented not the end of the shield thesis but an expression of confidence in its success. The assumptions that underpinned the shield thesis and provided it validity for American policymakers during the Cold War continue to inform U.S. decision making in the region, and around the world, today.Histor

The economics of cyber crime

Digital technologies are creating more value and thus becoming more attractive to cyber criminals. Gary Becker provides a philosophy for understanding crimes from an economic perspective, but criminal behavior and potential policies against it differ in the context of a digital economy. In this dissertation, I analyze the strategic interactions among the relevant entities of multiple scenarios of cyber crime. In the first chapter, I consider crimes with economic incentives where criminals are expected to hack digital systems and ask for a ransom to not disturb those compromised. In the second chapter, I explore cases where a fake data sender tries to insert fake data into a data source to mislead a receiver's data-driven decisions. In the third chapter, I look at how the security of a public blockchain depends on the incentives and interactions among its writers. From these analyses, I derive insights on both how a defender should behave from an individual perspective and how governments should make policies from a social perspective.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM