TONE-BASED INCIVILITY AND CONTENT-BASED INCIVILITY: A FRAMEWORK TO EXAMINE ONLINE UNCIVIL DISCOURSE

This research study is an attempt to distinguish between two types of incivility; tone-based incivility and content-based incivility. Building upon and extending on the theoretical framework proposed by Muddiman (Muddiman, 2017) on political incivility, this paper is an attempt to construct a two-dimensional framework within which online incivility could be analyzed. 624 comments were quantitatively analyzed from two news stories on the page of the New York Times on Facebook. The study established that tone based uncivil comments and content based uncivil comments could be a two-dimensional framework, within which to examine extant online discourse. It also found that despite concerns of uncivil behavior abounding on social media, especially Facebook, the overwhelming majority of the comments were civil in nature

Race and racism in Internet Studies: A review and critique

Race and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to the Internet, alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate significantly both offline and on. As we mark 15 years into the field of Internet studies, it becomes necessary to assess what the extant research tells us about race and racism. This paper provides an analysis of the literature on race and racism in Internet studies in the broad areas of (1) race and the structure of the Internet, (2) race and racism matters in what we do online, and (3) race, social control and Internet law. Then, drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, including Hall’s spectacle of the Other and DuBois’s view of white culture, the paper offers an analysis and critique of the field, in particular the use of racial formation theory. Finally, the paper points to the need for a critical understanding of whiteness in Internet studies

SOUTH ASIAN AND (UNDOCUMENTED) LATINO/A IMMIGRANT BLOGGERS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THEIR ENGAGEMENT WITH IMMIGRATION DISCOURSES

The overarching purpose of this project is to theorize how marginalized communities engage with dominant discourses and to locate possibilities for agency in contesting dominant representations of marginalized groups. I selected two discursive events as instances of a larger U.S. immigration discourse--the enactment of SB 1070 in Arizona and the publication of a column in TIME Magazine in which the author decries the influx of South Asians to his hometown of Edison, NJ. I then modified critical discourse analysis to examine weblog responses to these events by two diasporic communities interpellated by them--(undocumented) Latino/a immigrants and South Asian immigrants. Drawing upon a theory of constitutive rhetoric, I look at ways that members of these two groups are interpellated as subjects within their blogging communities. Moreover, I examine how the collective subject negotiates various identifications through a three-part diasporic identity framework consisting of structural, trans-spatial/historical, and intergroup representational positionings. I also consider the implications of the constitutive rhetoric for agency by interrogating how the blogs enable and constrain bloggers\u27 abilities to speak about the discursive events. In addition, I interrogate bloggers\u27 constructions of U.S. immigration discourse, identifying four ideological claims both (re)produced and challenged by the bloggers: triumphal multiculturalism; American Dream mythology; the entitlement to rights; and normative standards of acceptability. I also use a postcolonial approach to discursive engagement that considers the production of alternate subjectivities through destabilizing of the subject/object relationship. This project complicates our understanding of diasporic subjects as based on complex postcolonial subjectivities. This allows for an expanded notion of how collective subjects are constituted ontologically through the coming together of numerous points of identifications within a complex framework of diasporic identities. In addition, it links ontological status and epistemology by complicating the understanding of how and where subject positions arise, challenging assumptions of universal knowledge. Finally, it theorizes discursive engagement of members of marginalized diasporic groups by applying a dialectical perspective of agency and interpellated subjectivities and revealing how power operates through discourse to position subjects while identifying possible moments of agentic potential

Controversy trend detection in social media

In this research, we focus on the early prediction of whether topics are likely to generate significant controversy (in the form of social media such as comments, blogs, etc.). Controversy trend detection is important to companies, governments, national security agencies, and marketing groups because it can be used to identify which issues the public is having problems with and develop strategies to remedy them. For example, companies can monitor their press release to find out how the public is reacting and to decide if any additional public relations action is required, social media moderators can moderate discussions if the discussions start becoming abusive and getting out of control, and governmental agencies can monitor their public policies and make adjustments to the policies to address any public concerns. An algorithm was developed to predict controversy trends by taking into account sentiment expressed in comments, burstiness of comments, and controversy score. To train and test the algorithm, an annotated corpus was developed consisting of 728 news articles and over 500,000 comments on these articles made by viewers from CNN.com. This study achieved an average F-score of 71.3% across all time spans in detection of controversial versus non-controversial topics. The results suggest that it is possible for early prediction of controversy trends leveraging social media

Pedagogy for the Privileged in the First-Year Writing Classroom: An Exploration of Autoethnography as a Teaching Tool

Access to higher education is still restricted and segregated in many ways, meaning a significant portion of first-year writing classrooms are dominated by students who benefit greatly from privilege—including those in rural, primarily white institutions that are often overlooked in anti-oppression education efforts. The goal of this study is to provide a theory-based, defensible case for a unique and practical social justice approach to these rural, privileged composition classrooms that can be further developed and revised through implementation and experience. This proposed model combines current pedagogy for the privileged theory with an autoethnographic approach to Writing About Writing, drawing on texts based in autoethnographic testimony and critical discourse theory to develop a framework that can be used to design a course syllabus within current curricular standards

New Teacher Identity and the Edublogosphere: A Multi-Case Study of First Year Teacher Bloggers

New Internet and communication technologies (ICTs) facilitate collaboration and interaction among teachers. The increased presence of web-based tools in education settings prompted this qualitative inquiry. Widely available and inexpensive, these webbased tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, podcasts) provide opportunities for publishing content online. This multiple case study explores the sociocultural construct of identity formation (Holland & Lachicotte, 2007) of four first-year teachers who voluntarily blogged about their experiences. Data sources include the blog posts written by participants during the 2006-07 school year and responses to an electronic questionnaire emailed to participants at the end of the year. A qualitative content analysis (Alaszewski, 2006) was conducted to identify emergent themes in the data. Analysis was guided by a set of dimensions drawn from the research literature on teacher identity and grounded in the data. Findings represent six dimensions of teacher identity that include pedagogical, personal, intuitive, intellectual, social, and political aspects of teaching. The following conclusions were drawn by the researcher: (1) new teachers who capitalize on the affordances of blogging generate feedback from readers that substantiates their experiences and provides encouragement in times of struggle, (2) new teachers rely on their own educational histories to shape themselves as teachers, and (3) new teachers want a “safe place” to interact with other teachers, so much so that concerns about privacy, security and critique are outweighed by the benefits of communicating with other teachers through blogging

Women In The Web of Secondary Copyright Liability and Internet Filtering

This Essay suggests possible explanations for why there is not very much legal scholarship devoted to gender issues on the Internet; and it asserts that there is a powerful need for Internet legal theorists and activists to pay substantially more attention to the gender-based differences in communicative style and substance that have been imported from real space to cyberspace. Information portals, such as libraries and web logs, are gendered in ways that may not be facially apparent. Women are creating and experiencing social solidarity online in ways that male scholars and commentators do not seem to either recognize or deem important. Internet specific content restrictions for the purposes of protecting copyrights and protecting children jeopardize online freedoms for women in diverse ways, and sometimes for different reasons than they do for men. Disparities in the ways women and men use, experience and communicate over the Internet need to be recognized, studied, and accommodated by those who would theorize cyberspace law and advocate directions for its evolution