Motivation to Participate in an Online Citizen Science Game: A Study of Foldit

Online citizen science projects have the potential to engage thousands of participants with scientific research. A small number of projects such as Foldit use an online computer game format. Motivation to participate in Foldit was investigated in a group of 37 players using an online survey, semistructured interviews, and participant observation. Results suggest that contributing to scientific research and an interest in science were among the most important motivations for participation. Interaction with others within the community of participants and the intellectual challenge of the game were also key for the continuing involvement of this group of regular contributors

An Innovative Approach to Movement Lawyering: An Immigrant Rights Case Study

The role of lawyers in social change movements is more important than ever as communities mobilize around systemic racism, police killings, xenophobia, rising unemployment, and widening economic inequality. The immigrant rights movement is a critical part of these efforts to foment change. This Article leverages an in-depth case study – the rise and fall of the controversial immigration enforcement program known as Secure Communities - to explore how lawyers work as part of a community to challenge power and effectuate change. The dismantling of Secure Communities was widely credited to a relentless campaign to thwart the government’s then-expanding deportation strategy. The authors reviewed over 23,000 internal DHS documents, as well as media accounts and court transcripts, and interviewed 30 administrative officials, congressional actors, organizers, clients, activists, and lawyers involved in the Secure Communities campaigns. This Article draws on extensive evidence to identify an innovative approach to movement lawyering that involved coordinated efforts of movement actors on the micro level (achieving immediate goals), the meso level (effecting broader policy change), and the macro level (organizing communities around narrative identities). The Article concludes that efforts at change were optimized when lawyers, organizers, and activists together built a nimble, adaptive, and modular strategy to enhance concerted power from the ground up. Within this new construct, lawyers might develop new ways of working with communities that synergistically exploit the advantages of various social change strategies at any given time, producing strengthened relationships and lasting investments in organized resistance

Make American Great for Mexicans? The Effects of Donald Trump\u27s Political Campaign on Public Opinion of Mexican Immigrants

ABSTRACT: The present study examines the effects that U.S. President Donald Trump’s political campaign has had on public opinion of Mexican immigrants. By examining the long history of oppression of Mexicans on U.S. soil and even prior to the establishment of the U.S., the study creates a base and then employs a discourse analysis that proves that Trump’s rhetoric is perpetuating some of the same stereotypes that have followed Mexicans since Europeans began settling in the Americas. Public opinion was gauged using a carefully constructed survey and the results show that overall, Trump’s harsh stereotypical rhetoric has spurred a narrative of defiance in U.S. citizens. They are hearing Trump’s harsh words and outwardly opposing them, choosing inclusivity and love as a response to exclusivity and hatred. Among the more negative responses there were a few stereotypical themes that did come up including language discrimination, allusion to various stereotypes and assumed difference. Though there were some participants that clearly took a dominant decoding of Trump’s rhetoric and are indeed perpetuating his negative stereotypical ideals, the vast majority of participants in the present study showed a great defiance and acceptance for difference, a trend that has clearly arisen in the U.S. as a result of Trump’s campaign and now presidency

Examining the Receptivity of Foreign Guests: A Study of Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) Students in Higher Educational Institutions in Accra, Ghana

With an increasingly global demand for higher education, countries are competing for international students. Popular destinations like the United States are facing a decreasing number of international student enrollments due to restrictive policies that are perceived as unwelcoming to foreign guests. Regional hubs are emerging as alternative destinations for international students. Ghana, today considered one of West Africa’s most stable democracies and an important destination country in the region, receives many foreign guests including economic migrants, students, tourists, and refugees. Ghana is also emerging as a regional hub for educational migrants. How are these foreign guests received, integrated, and ultimately trained as global citizens? More specifically, this research asks, how are ECOWAS students in higher educational institutions welcomed within Accra, Ghana? This study relies on data from 47 semi-structured interviews with foreign students and Ghanaians and direct observations sessions at public and private universities. The study examines the receptivity of foreign guests by stakeholders in Ghana, focusing on tertiary-level student migrants from throughout the West African region. Findings indicate that the educational setting generally has a positive receptivity climate as supported by the data. The positive receptivity climate is intentional with associated government and institutional policies and practices. Francophone students experience less positive reception than Anglophone students do as a result of language barriers. Receptivity of foreign guests may be one significant way for developing countries to achieve sustainable growth and positive development outcomes. As such, this research develops a new migration model that enhances receptivity through education. Policy implications include the strengthening of regional ties and migration channels related to education circulation and the ongoing promotion and development of human capital and a human economy. An example of the development of human capital is the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) based at the University of Ghana, Legon, which since its inception in 2007, has trained fifty-two multinational postgraduates who are working toward lessening food insecurity in the sub-region

Immigration practitioners, brokers, agents: investigating the immigration industry in South Africa

Research report for Master of Arts (MA) in Migration and Displacement (AC000) African Centre for Migration and Society School of Social Science Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, February 2015Most research in the field of migration studies focuses on providing either a sociology of migrants or a political analysis of the regulations which govern immigration. In this research project I have taken a different, structural approach to the field by studying the immigration industry in South Africa through the lens provided by immigration intermediaries. This research examines who immigration intermediaries are; the role they play in and around immigration structures; and the relationship between the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), immigration intermediaries, and immigrants. By using data collected in 16 qualitative, in-depth interviews with actors in the industry, primarily immigration practitioners, the primary aim of this research is to document and analyse the role of immigration intermediaries within the South African immigration industry and the role they have in shaping emerging structures around immigration. With intermediaries as the focus of enquiry, this research has three primary results: the first is a typology of immigration intermediaries; the second is an analysis of the relationship between the DHA and intermediaries which understands the role played by intermediaries as essentially a function that the DHA has outsourced as a result of their inability to effectively manage migration; and the third is an argument that South Africa’s immigration regulations have always, and continue to, ensure the reproduction of a precarious migrant class to the benefit of the South African economy. Research in migration studies tends to focus on either migrants or immigration policy. This research focuses instead on neglected actors and structures, the intermediaries and the institutions they operate within, and brings to the attention of the field the importance of the actors and structures that facilitate immigration in South Africa

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

Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources