Environmental Education in the Public Sphere: Comparing Practice with Psychosocial Determinants of Behavior and Societal Change

Environmental education of the general public is widely practiced by a variety of types of organizations. Dedicated environmental groups, nature centers, zoos, parks, and other entities work on issues ranging from local threats to air, water, and habitat to global problems such as climate change and deforestation. A great deal of those efforts focus largely on providing information and raising awareness. Behavioral research and change models, however, suggest other factors are important in order to effect change on an individual, regional, or societal level. An analysis of environmental education in practice, examining methods and materials in use, showed the degree to which there were alignments between the content and psychosocial determinants of change, as well as how actions related to change theories. This mixed-methods study of groups doing environmental education in the public sphere compared their practices with the factors shown to help predict pro-environmental behavior, why people change their actions and habits. Through this survey research and multiple case study, increased knowledge and understanding can help inform future efforts at change on critical local, national, and world environmental problems. It can also lead to further research into environmental education, using behavior and change theories

New Media and Youth Political Action

To rigorously consider the impact of new media on the political and civic behavior of young people, The MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) developed and fielded one of the first large-scale, nationally representative studies of new media and politics among young people. The two principal researchers for the survey component of the YPP, Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Joseph Kahne of Mills College, oversaw a research team that surveyed nearly 3,000 respondents between the ages of 15 and 25 years of age. Unlike any prior study of youth and new media, this study included large numbers of black, Latino, and Asian American respondents, which allows for unique and powerful statistical comparisons across race with a focus on young people.Until now there has been limited opportunity and data available to comprehensively explore the relationship between new media and the politics of young people. One of the few entities to engage in this type of rigorous analysis has been the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The YPP study expands on this field-leading work by including an extensive battery of items addressing participatory politics and adequate numbers of participants from different racial and ethnic groups, thus allowing for analysis of how different groups of young people were engaged with new media in the political realm.The YPP study findings suggest that fundamental changes in political expectations and practices may be occurring -- especially for youth. The analysis of the data collected reveals that youth are taking advantage of an expanded set of participatory practices in the political realm in ways that amplify their voice and sometimes their influence, thus increasing the ways young people participate in political life. The YPP researchers label this expanded set of opportunities and actions participatory politics

Complementary or Substitutive? Free-Format Content Production and Knowledge Contribution in Online Knowledge-Sharing Communities

Many online platforms that thrive on user-generated content (UGC) face the under-provision issue. A new strategy that platforms deploy to tackle this problem is to offer extra content curation tools with lower entry barriers. We study one of such features in online knowledge-sharing platforms: An additional content curation tool that allows users to share free-format content apart from the standard question-and-answer (Q&A) knowledge content. By leveraging a natural experiment occurred in a large Chinese online knowledge-sharing platform, we identify the causal effects of users’ adoption of a new low-barrier content tool on their knowledge contribution in a difference-in-differences (DiD) framework. We find that the adoption of such a low-barrier tool complements knowledge contribution. Specifically, users increased their volumes of answers without compromising effort spent on each answer after adoption. We validate this finding by further addressing the selection bias through a two-step Heckman correction approach with instrumental variable and a look-ahead matching method. Our results bear important implications for platform design and intervention to motivate UGC contribution

When Politics Rule Policy: The Role of Discursive Politics in Wisconsin\u27s Photo Identification Law

Few policies carry more controversy than voter photo identification requirements. First passed in 2003, these laws require voters to present government-issued ID’s, such as a driver’s license, state identification card, military ID, or qualifying student ID. This paper examines the discursive politics in Wisconsin’s photo ID, seeking to understand how state policymakers justified the law against accusations of voter suppression. Put broadly, this paper seeks to understand the intersection of politics and policy, exploring how irrational policies are formed, implemented, and evaluated

The politics of piracy: political ideology and the usage of pirated online media

There is a lack of clarity in information systems research on which factors lead people to use or not use technologies of varying degrees of perceived legality. To address this gap, we use arguments from the information systems and political ideology literatures to theorize on the influence of individuals’ political ideologies on online media piracy. Specifically, we hypothesize that individuals with a more conservative ideology, and thus lower openness to experience and higher conscientiousness, generally engage in less online media piracy. We further hypothesize that this effect is stronger for online piracy technology that is legally ambiguous. Using clickstream data from 3873 individuals in the U.S., we find that this effect in fact exists only for online media piracy technologies that are perceived as legally ambiguous. Specifically, more conservative individuals, who typically have lower ambiguity intolerance, use (legal but ambiguously perceived) pirated streaming websites less, while there is no difference for the (clearly illegal) use of pirated file sharing websites

Aware and critical navigation in the media landscape: (un)biased algorithms and the need for new media literacy in the era of artificial intelligence and digital media

As technology advances rapidly, media literacy education plays a crucial role in supplying individuals with the skills and knowledge to navigate the complex media landscape. The article examines the ethical implications of AI algorithms highlighting the importance of critical awareness among users. AI-driven recommendation systems have considerable influence over individuals' information consumption and worldview, which requires media literacy education to foster a deep understanding of biases, limitations and potential risks associated with these algorithms. This paper points to the need for ethical behaviour to govern AI algorithms, ensuring transparency, accountability and fairness in content curation. Additionally, the article brings examples that indicate how algorithms work and what consequences they can leave in our social life and actions if we do not create them according to certain ethical values, or if we consume their messages without critical awareness. New media literacy education should empower individuals to make informed decisions about their privacy and develop a critical stance toward data collection practices. Concepts such as informed consent, data anonymity, and the implications of targeted advertising should be addressed in media literacy education. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the responsibilities of media literacy educators themselves. Teachers and institutions must ensure that media literacy programs promote inclusivity, diversity, and a global vision. By incorporating ethical frameworks into the curriculum, educators can cultivate responsible digital citizenship and encourage critical thinking about the social impact of AI and digital media. Media literacy education in the context of AI and digital media must address the ethical dimensions inherent in these technologies. By equipping individuals with the necessary tools to critically analyse algorithms, navigate data privacy concerns, and foster responsible digital citizenship, media literacy education can facilitate an informed and ethical engagement with AI and digital media

Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability—A Systematic Review of Information Systems Literature

The booming adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) likewise poses benefits and challenges. In this paper, we particularly focus on the bright side of AI and its promising potential to face our society’s grand challenges. Given this potential, different studies have already conducted valuable work by conceptualizing specific facets of AI and sustainability, including reviews on AI and Information Systems (IS) research or AI and business values. Nonetheless, there is still little holistic knowledge at the intersection of IS, AI, and sustainability. This is problematic because the IS discipline, with its socio-technical nature, has the ability to integrate perspectives beyond the currently dominant technological one as well as can advance both theory and the development of purposeful artifacts. To bridge this gap, we disclose how IS research currently makes use of AI to boost sustainable development. Based on a systematically collected corpus of 95 articles, we examine sustainability goals, data inputs, technologies and algorithms, and evaluation approaches that coin the current state of the art within the IS discipline. This comprehensive overview enables us to make more informed investments (e.g., policy and practice) as well as to discuss blind spots and possible directions for future research

Divide and Conquer: Examining the Effects of Conflict Rhetoric on Political Support

Partisan-based conflict rhetoric has grown more important in political strategy over time and is very often focused on delineating the differences between the parties. But, political messaging frequently involves targeting different social groups or non-political entities as responsible for social problems rather than political parties and opponents. Blame as a rhetorical strategy involves appeals to group identities other than those based upon partisanship. The brilliance of a blame strategy is that the group membership of the audience at which the blame appeal is directed need not be explicitly defined. Much of the research studying the various forms of conflict rhetoric (i.e. attack advertising) focuses on the partisan tensions inherent in these messages, but only limited literature can shed light on how the public feels about or responds to politicians blaming non-political groups. Through two original experiments reported in three articles, dissertation attempts to fill this gap by exploring the parameters and effects of strategically placed blame on various dimensions of political support. It seeks to answer the degree to which political and policy goals are facilitated or impeded by this divisive form of rhetoric.Each article approached this question within the framework of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978, Tajfel & Turner, 1986). As suggested by social identity theory, politicians can use conflict rhetoric to maximize the perceived differences between their in-group and the out-group, thus stimulating favoritism with the in-group through the perceived threat from the out-group. By examining the different effects of variations in blame, these articles offer an overview of whether and when politicians may benefit from attacking the opposing party, attacking a non-political group, or refraining from an attack. The results indicate that blaming an opposing party offers more harm than good. Blaming a non-political group can be effective at manipulating perceptions of the attacked group as well as raising demand for punitive policies. No blame messages elicit positive reactions that are beneficial to political parties, but arouse emotions that both help and harm measures of democratic support

Media Coverage of LGBT Issues: Legal, Religious, and Political Frames

This project creates an original dataset of 1,008 randomly sampled news items that discussed LGBT political issues posted online between 2011 and 2017 by Huffington Post Queer Voices, NPR, and Fox News. I use quantitative methods and content analysis to locate the 14 most popular LGBT political issues in media coverage and to confirm there are three competing media frames of political discussion in coverage of LGBT political issues. There are three results chapters. Chapter 5 describes the 14 LGBT political issues that appear most often in political science research and to what extent media coverage of these 14 issues differs across the political left, right and center. I find that academia addresses more LGBT issues, more often, than does media coverage. Also, media coverage and academic literature contain four competing narratives about LGBT people and issues: a Family Narrative, an Identity Narrative, a Tragedy Narrative, and a Political Activity Narrative. Moreover, politically left media coverage is more like academic discussions about LGBT politics than politically right or centrist media coverage. Chapter 6 describes three competing frames in media coverage. A legal frame contains language that discusses constitutions, trial and appellate courts, litigation tactics, and appellate procedure. A religious frame contains language that discusses the Bible, Jesus, religious-based curative therapy, evangelicals as political participants, and quotes from clergy. An institutional frame contains language that involves elections, political parties, direct democracy, constitutional amendments, local state and federal legislatures, and the President. I find that legal framing of LGBT issues has increased since the 2000s, while religious framing has declined, and political framing is slowly rising – peaking in federal election years then decreasing in non-election years. Chapter 7 describes how the media’s focus on same-sex marriage eclipses coverage of less-covered, but still important, LGBT political issues. Further, since same-sex marriage was legalized nation-wide in 2015, the media has been increasingly focused on transgender issues rather than 13 other LGBT political issues. So, the issues, narratives, and frames one encounters in news coverage about the LGBT is noticeably different than in the 2000s, and differs on the political left, right, and center