Grassroots journalism in your own backyard: How citizen reporters build hyperlocal communities

Americans are flocking to the Internet for news and information. However, the majority of online journalism targets a national audience, thereby lacking a proximate focus.;Hyperlocal media sites---online news outlets that form small, virtual communities of citizen reporters to cover real-world, geographic spaces---are multiplying on the web. The sites aspire to bring neighborhood news to the net through the work of citizen journalists.;In order to further investigate the emerging grassroots media phenomenon, the researcher conducted interviews with hyperlocal practitioners. In the pages that follow, the insider perspective behind hyperlocal media will be illumed through the eyes of the pioneers who aim to change the very definition of journalism

August 25, 2003

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

The Montclarion, October 13, 2005

Student Newspaper of Montclair State Universityhttps://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/montclarion/2189/thumbnail.jp

Casco Bay Weekly : 1 September 1994

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_1994/1035/thumbnail.jp

University of San Diego News Print Media Coverage 2004.04

Printed clippings housed in folders with a table of contents arranged by topic.https://digital.sandiego.edu/print-media/1015/thumbnail.jp

Queering Virtual Groups: Exploring Facebook Groups as a space for identity construction and social justice among the LGBTQ community in India

India has emerged as one of the top users of the Internet. However, the question is how the rise of the Internet influences a society like India, which is still struggling with issues like poverty, literacy, employment, religion, and gender. This research endeavors to explore one aspect of that question by studying the role of the social media platform – Facebook Groups, for the LGBTQ community in India against the backdrop of the societal taboos and lack of legal support for the queer community, coupled with the existing infrastructural loopholes like education and technology. Over the past couple of decades, India has been witnessing a wave of change as conversations surrounding non-normative gender and sexuality is on the rise. Following from the social identity theory, social identity model of de-individuation effects (SIDE), and the theory of counterpublics, this sequential mixed methods research analyzes and presents an understanding of the relationship that exists between social media, identity, LGBTQ community, and the Indian social context. It is hoped that it will add to the conversation surrounding social media and identity, particularly queer identity, and enable an understanding into how social media can be used for identity construction for a minority population like the queer community, in a socio-cultural context like India

Factors that influence the throughput of engineering students at Nelson Mandela University

The current throughput rate of engineering students is an enormous concern, especially in light of the current financial pressure on universities and the goal for the education sector in the National Development Plan 2030, which is to increase annual enrolment levels at universities from 950 000 in 2010 to 1,6 million by 2030 (National Planning Commission, 2011). The low throughput rate of engineering students makes engineering qualifications unsustainable. In a scarce skills list, which highlights the importance of the problem that South Africa is facing, five engineering disciplines are in the top 10 scarce skills in South Africa (Scarce skills, 2016) and, therefore, this study only focuses on engineering students’ throughput rate. Regarding the future enrolment goal for 2030, it is important for universities to understand the factors that influence the throughput rate of engineering students, which the universities have control over. This will put the universities in a position to implement interventions to change negative influences on the throughput rate of engineering students into positive ones. This study consists of a literature review, firstly focusing on the factors influencing the student throughput rate internationally. The literature review then focuses on South African factors and lastly discusses three main categories, namely student engagement, the use of technology and the academic environment. The eight variables that are under study are grouped into these three main categories. The primary data, which were collected through the use of a questionnaire in order to have a good understanding of the factors influencing the throughput rate, were reported and analysed. The results of this study revealed the factors that influenced the throughput rate most positively and negatively

University of San Diego News Print Media Coverage 2009.01

Printed clippings housed in folders with a table of contents arranged by topic.https://digital.sandiego.edu/print-media/1072/thumbnail.jp

'The Mula Ring': Material Flows of Circulation Through the Cuban World

This thesis explores the permeability of what is arguably one of the most politicised and reified ‘frontiers’ in the world: that between the U.S. and Cuba. Despite decades of diplomatic hostilities and economic sanctions, the border between Miami and Havana is in a state of constant flux, with ceaseless flows of both people and things moving in both directions. Drawing upon fifteen months of ethnographic research primarily in Miami and Havana (2017-2018), and also in Panama, Mexico and Guyana, this thesis traces these ‘flows’ to understand how and why these material and digital flows constitute everyday life for millions of Cubans who, notwithstanding this political rhetoric, seek to maintain personal and business relationships. The thesis presents personal stories based on these flows to examine the shifting relationship between Cuba and its diaspora. Cubans in both Miami and Cuba are negotiating materiality and digital networks within their own plural notions of cubanidad (‘Cubanness’), capitalism and socialism, and according to their own geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts. By focusing on the inconsequential objects of the everyday, and centring on notions of ‘flow’ and ‘flux’, this thesis seeks to show how a politically and economically turbulent landscape is experienced and reconfigured at a micro level by ordinary Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits who, by the happenstance of their birth right, must negotiate extraordinary and difficult conditions on a daily basis to maintain their family connections, cultural identity, and ultimately, to live what they consider to be meaningful lives. The thesis shows how it is only through a slippage in traditional categories of ‘people’ and ‘things’ that such flows are made possible, and then positions this observation within theoretical arguments that situate rupture as crucial for the emergence of new cultural forms