Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories ("fake news"), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online sur-vey, we find:(i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important" source;(ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared8 million times;(iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and(iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks

The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen

The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen

Conflicted Flows: 21st Century Pacific Narratives Across Media.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Regulation of the Sex Industry from a Criminal Law Perspective

This thesis examines the sex industry as a whole with the intention of establishing that prostitution should not be marginalised but integrated within the criminal law and regulated as other Sexual Entertainment Venues. I first establish a framework of analysis needed to illuminate the constraints put upon the different elements of commercial sexual activities. This framework stems from the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) 2003, the primary statute that regulates all sexual activities, whether commercial or non-commercial. It has four elements: consent, nature, purpose and visibility. By means of ‘black letter’ law and case histories, I then explore three areas within the sex industry: pornography, live sexual entertainment and prostitution in order to show that the element of consent is consistent throughout and relies solely on the SOA 2003 and is linked directly to the nature of the sexual activities. The nature of the sexual activities has its basis in non-commercial sexual activities, but is regulated in the sex industry in such a way that the nature differs between each commercial area. By contrast, the purpose remains constant in commercial sexual activities although it is at odds with non-commercial. All aspects of consensual sexual activities, whether commercial or non-commercial, must not be visible for unintended viewers. However, advertising of commercial sex is possible and thus visible, with the exception of prostitution. With regards to prostitution, legislation criminalises prostitutes who advertise and their mere presence constitutes a form of advertising. The public presence of prostitutes as well as the presence of their clients also creates the grounds for public nuisance. I then suggest, based on the above information, that statutory legislation could include the use of brothels, this stems from the New Zealand model, in order to respond to issues raised about consent and visibility, as well as extend the protection offered to prostitutes to other sectors of the sex industry when they are confronted with the issue of consent

The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour

What is expertise? In cultural work, the idea of expertise is commonly associated with a specialised knowledge of cultural forms and products, often possessed by art critics, dealers and cultural intermediaries. In the majority of literature on cultural work, the status of these ‘experts’ is mostly treated as normative and accepted as legitimate, with little attention paid to the expertise of the primary producers of the cultural forms which are judged. This thesis argues that expertise as a concept is taken for granted in cultural work scholarship, and thus requires further interrogation. The particular focus here is on the social media use of cultural workers to promote themselves, their aesthetic output and availability for work. As argued here, the status of their expertise is problematised in an ostensibly accessible and democratised space where ‘anyone’ can engage in cultural production. In this context, how do cultural workers signal their aesthetic expertise online? Signalling involves conveying information about one’s credentials. This concept is utilised in a framework to analyse the social media output of a group of UK cultural workers, who were also interviewed, in order to gain insight into their aesthetic expertise and how they manage signalling expertise online as part of cultural labour. The research reveals the expertise of cultural producers to be of a dynamic and fluid quality, worked on over the course of a cultural work career, where opportunities to build expertise can be constrained or enabled depending on access to resources. As these cases suggest, aesthetic expertise can be staged on social media by revealing creative skills and methods - the ‘back stage’ of production, then potentially enhanced through audience interaction, which can also put expertise signals at risk. The analysis also reveals gendered strategies for signalling expertise undertaken by the women cultural workers, to facilitate a potential collective raising of visibility online, but also raising questions about the exclusivity of such collective activity. The research concludes by suggesting ways in which cultural policy could widen access to creative skills and training, so that anyone who wishes to develop their own aesthetic expertise can do so

Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Case Studies in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, MI

This paper presents in-depth case studies of climate adaptation in two Michigan cities, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids. We identify eight factors that determine cities’ ability to respond to climate impacts (determinants of adaptive capacity), and gather data from 46 interviews with officials from local government and non-governmental organizations. We propose a framework for analyzing adaptive capacity (AC) not only in our case cities but also in other Great Lakes cities, highlighting the influence of and relationships between eight determinants of adaptive capacity—institutions, infrastructure, wealth and financial capital, social capital, political capital, human capital, information, and technology. We identify adaptation activities these cities are undertaking, highlight the factors contributing to their success, and consider constraints to future adaptation that both our case cities and other cities may experience.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90864/3/Urban_Climate_Change_Adaptation_no_links.pd

Towards a Better Future: A Review of the Irish School System

Irish schooling faces significant challenges into the future. Ireland’s is not a perfect system, no more than any other schooling system in the world. While perfection is not achievable, it is incumbent on every society to apply its best efforts to ensuring that the school system is as good as possible so that that this and future generations are assisted at achieving their potentials. The thirteen chapters of this Review paint a very creditable picture of how Irish schooling policy and provision has been evolving and of the manner in which this is being achieved. The various stakeholders and educational partners, in this small island state, have focussed constructively in establishing the present structure. Each of the categories reviewed indicates that Ireland’s educational system is on the cusp of major attempts at reform. Building on a range of accumulated achievements, it is poised for qualitative breakthroughs on a range of fronts. The thirteen chapters consist of the following: Introduction; Teaching and Learning; Early Childhood Education; Curriculum; Assessment: Primary and Junior Cycle; Transition from Second Level to Higher Education; Educational Leadership and Governance; The School System: Equality, Inclusion and Rights; The Changing Role of the Inspectorate; Initial Teacher Education and Induction; Professional Development; The Financing and Resourcing of Education at Primary and Post-Primary Levels: What Can We Learn from the OECD’s Education at a Glance