WORD BOMBS: THE USE OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS TO COUNTER DOMESTIC VIOLENT EXTREMISM

This thesis investigates how implementing strategic communications can counter domestic violent extremist (DVE) behavior in the United States. Strategic communications use counter-messaging based on research and intelligence of the group’s behaviors and perceptions. To develop strategic communications to counter violence, this thesis explores narratives, how they work, their persuasiveness, and how emotions play a role in influencing others. Extremists use social media to propagate images depicting violence and language promoting physical violence. This thesis explores inoculation strategies, nudge theory, psychological and social approaches, and counternarratives to counter DVEs. Reasoned action theory is used as a template for determining how background information, beliefs, and intentions form extremists’ behavior and action. Four case studies are presented using DVE group examples from anarchists, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, and Atomwaffen. Each case study looks at the group’s ideology, violence, social media, demographics, and narratives to better understand the group’s themes. Next, using the reasoned action theory model as well as knowledge of the group and messaging theme, the thesis provides an example of how to craft a counternarrative. This thesis recommends that government and law enforcement invest in inoculation and nudge strategies as well as artificial intelligence, and create special strategic communication teams or units.Civilian, Washington County Sheriff's OfficeApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Digital Crossroads: Civic Media and Migration

This report examines the uses of digital media among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with migrants and refugees primarily in Europe. Based on interviews with leaders at over 20 NGOs, this report documents how organizations are thinking about digital and media literacies for combating xenophobia. NGOs are strategically leveraging various storytelling techniques to build effective communication campaigns that identify and respond to discriminatory messages and racist sentiments prevalent in public discourse. This report highlights seven key strategies for digital storytelling that is current practice as well as a five-part framework of emergent practice. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for the management of digital media programs and projects

People With Secrets: Contesting, Constructing, and Resisting Women’s Claims About Sexualized Victimization

What do sexual assault victims and women charged with prostitution have in common? Both are processed through a criminal justice system where legal actors assess their claims of victimization and either provide or deny resources and recognition in response to those claims. Ideal victim theory posits that not all victims’ claims are treated equally due to static factors such as personal characteristics or case facts. Professor Corrigan and Professor Shdaimah present the Arena of Intelligibility, an original analytical tool developed from their empirical data, to more effectively explain case outcomes for women affected by sexual crimes. The Arena explains criminal case outcomes as the result of dynamic processes and relationships between and among criminal justice personnel and would-be victims. Such outcomes are not solely the result of sociodemographic factors, but also reflect personal and institutional beliefs, attitudes, and priorities. After describing the Arena, the authors demonstrate how intelligibility is constructed by analyzing data from their studies in three domains: women’s responses to questioning, demonstrations of compliance, and representations of trauma. Graphic illustrations “map” women in each domain to demonstrate their movement toward (or away from) resources and recognition as their cases progress

Instawoke : a case study of pre-service teachers' experiences with critical consciousness raising via social media

Concerns for educational equity for an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse K-12 student population has drawn attention to the preparation of future teachers’ multilingual, multicultural, and social justice-oriented capacities. This qualitative case study explored the pedagogical use of social justice-oriented social media in teacher education to develop critical consciousness and political and ideological clarity amongst a cohort of 22 elementary ESL-certified pre-service teachers. As part of their teacher education coursework, participants were asked to engage with a social justice-oriented Instagram account and submit ten written reflections responding to ten Instagram posts of their choice. These reflections were triangulated with participants’ autobiographical data and questionnaire results to draw conclusions about the ways in which they interpreted the content on the account particularly in light of their sociocultural backgrounds, their development as critically conscious educators, and their existing digital practices. Findings indicated that participants were on a trajectory towards critical consciousness and were strategically drawing on their emotions, text-to connections, their experiences with their students, and larger societal discourses to understand social and political issues. Additionally, pre-service teachers’ sociocultural backgrounds, particularly in terms of race, gender, and religion, played strong roles in their interpretations of social justice issues. As the use of social media for the purposes of critical consciousness development was an engaging tool, recommendations for social media use and social justice-oriented teacher education are providedCurriculum and Instructio

People With Secrets: Contesting, Constructing, and Resisting Women’s Claims About Sexualized Victimization

What do sexual assault victims and women charged with prostitution have in common? Both are processed through a criminal justice system where legal actors assess their claims of victimization and either provide or deny resources and recognition in response to those claims. Ideal victim theory posits that not all victims’ claims are treated equally due to static factors such as personal characteristics or case facts. Professor Corrigan and Professor Shdaimah present the Arena of Intelligibility, an original analytical tool developed from their empirical data, to more effectively explain case outcomes for women affected by sexual crimes. The Arena explains criminal case outcomes as the result of dynamic processes and relationships between and among criminal justice personnel and would-be victims. Such outcomes are not solely the result of sociodemographic factors, but also reflect personal and institutional beliefs, attitudes, and priorities. After describing the Arena, the authors demonstrate how intelligibility is constructed by analyzing data from their studies in three domains: women’s responses to questioning, demonstrations of compliance, and representations of trauma. Graphic illustrations “map” women in each domain to demonstrate their movement toward (or away from) resources and recognition as their cases progress

The production of digital public spaces

Digital media are noticeably changing the qualities of urban public spaces, which can no longer be considered a purely physical construct. Yet, the extent to which contemporary digital media can be used to promote other forms of spatial agency remains a critical issue. Whereas the impact of technology from a macro perspective offers a globalizing and homogenizing image, its role in the production of space at a local scale is less clear (Kirsch 1995). The aim of this study is to argue for digital public spaces as a concrete programme to support the articulation of a third notion of public space that emerges at the interface of physical–digital hybrid spaces (Stikker 2013). The project for digital public spaces is posed as one that pursues enabling citizens’ rights to participation and appropriation (Purcell 2002) of physical–digital hybrid spaces. It is argued that while physical and digital spaces do not stand in opposition, their operational models do not fit seamlessly either. Therefore, the research is particularly concerned with how to design for the conditions that allow a dialogical relation between physical and digital features of space, and enable citizens to actively participate in the production of physical–digital hybrid spaces, and for which a dialectical mode of analysis is required. Following a cumulative narrative, the study explores different characterizations of digital public spaces, which have been articulated through design-led action research projects conducted in collaboration with academia, creative industries, citizens and public authorities. The study accomplishes a novel application of the unitary theory of space proposed by the Marxist French philosopher and sociologist, Henri Lefebvre (1992), which is revisited to develop a novel framework to reveal the social production of physical–digital hybrid spaces. The framework is developed through practice, and extensively applied throughout the thesis illustrating three distinctive dominating perspectives of physical–digital hybrid spaces: substitution, co-evolution and recombination (Graham 1998). The framework has proved to be a flexible and insightful method of analysis that: enables approaching the social production of physical and digital spaces individually and in relation to one another; to understand how different spatial configurations allow for participation and appropriation; and in turn, to re-contextualize the right to the city (Lefebvre 1996) in digital public spaces

The media dependence model: an analysis of the performance and structure of U.S. and global news

This dissertation is an attempt to make sense out of the many questions surrounding news media performance and its inadequacies. It does this by first synthesizing two critical models of news analysis and applying their respective strengths toward the other’s weaknesses. The synthesis is based on the propaganda (Herman & Chomsky, 1988, 2002, 2008) and indexing models (Bennett, 1990; Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007). While the scope of the synthesis is broad and substantial, and contributes much in terms of understanding news content, it still leaves important questions that this dissertation endeavors to address. It answers how and why social movements garner news media attention and sympathy, while others do not. This work does not leave domestic matters unaddressed or under-theorized. It does so by distinguishing between foreign and domestic news reporting and modeling domestic coverage. It theorizes ownership of the news media in a manner appropriate for the age of globalization, with findings based on a substantial and thorough content analysis of important events in Fallujah, where the most substantial military operation was conducted during the occupation of Iraq. Lastly, in spite of containing “bird’s eye” conclusions and critical analysis on news media performance and its respective tendencies, this dissertation will also address the conditions and instances in which exceptions are most likely to arise. The name I have given to the model of news analysis presented in this dissertation is the media dependence model (MDM). I chose this name to emphasize the chief failing of the U.S. news media system: its reliance on corporate funding and ownership and the unfortunate result of this structure leading to a lack of independence from Washington (the White House and key Congressional leaders) and Wall Street (Madison Avenue and the public relations industry) positioning

Learning, technologies, and time in the age of global neoliberal capitalism

Though diverse in nature, the articles in this collection discuss both socio-cultural and temporal transformations linked to technology and learning and can be classified into three broad themes. The first theme is interested in temporal experiences within time and learning; the second theme is about practical implementations of these concerns, and the third theme inquires into relationships between our understanding of time and human nature. In many articles, the boundaries between these themes are blurred and fluid. Yet, this general classification does indicate the present state of the art in studies of time, technology and education

RACE, DISABILITY AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF RADICAL AGENCY: TOWARD A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF DECOLONIAL CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS IN LATINX DISCRIT

The present dissertation is a non-empirical methodology project grounded in political philosophy. As a practical exercise, it bridges knowledge workers (e.g., educators, action researchers and other engaged scholars) with activists to explore the situated emancipation possibilities of radical agency at the intersection of blindness and Latinidad. It does so in line with DisCrit and other bodies of literature within critical disability studies, works centered on trans-Latinidades and border-crossing, intersectional decoloniality theorizing, critical hermeneutics, critical race theory and blackness/ whiteness studies. It interrogates performative and movement building spaces for teaching and learning that foster radical exteriority trajectories of decolonial solidarity and emancipation-centered reflexivity. The driving questions that articulate the project are tackled metatheoretically and through a hermeneutic method quite common in critical race theory, the method of counter storytelling. This gets enacted in reflexive counter stories distributed throughout each of the five chapters of the dissertation. Some of the emerging practical lessons from the analysis include: (1) a need to fight lovelessness and ossified modes of movement organizing; (2) the realization that trans-Latinidades often have difficulties conciliating their master ideologies and competing utopias; (3) the understanding that in the current context, LatDisCrit is a proto-utopia, one that remains within the power of the unnamed; (4) the conviction that LatDisCrit will only have meaning if it gets traction as a mutually edifying sphere between knowledge workers and activists in the trenches; (5) the need to avoid the framing of decolonial solidarity as a process circumscribed to communities of sameness; (6) the importance of empowering activists as true experts of their sense of situated emancipation and undoing disciplinary layers of hierarchy between knowledge workers and activists; and (7) a practical imperative for LatDisCrit’s alliance building and organizing to flow through multiple trans-Latinx and pandisability relational links, being mindful to work especially along with those collectivities that generate more tension for the comfort zones of blind Latinx