Building False Trust During COVID-19: How Health Information is Circulating Differently in the South

Building False Trust During COVID-19: How Health Information is Circulating Differently in the South During COVID-19, African Americans in the United States have seen hospitalization rates 3x higher than the national average (Kulke, 2020; Burton, 2020; Soucheray, 2020). Furthermore, African American communities tend to rely heavily on social media sites such as Twitter for health information, (Brown, 2019) carrying this trend into the COVID-19 pandemic. While Twitter has potential to reach diverse audiences through its state and health organizations, it also has potential to spread misinformation regarding important health matters (Hope, 2020; Kouzy et al., 2020; Walwema, 2020). For example, Twitter contains “personalized ecosystems” that African American communities have created to circulate information of personal relevance about COVID-19. Although helpful in theory, they often lack higher organizational resources. This study examines how strategies for spreading health information differ between Twitter accounts of African American organizations and state health organizations located in the south. We conduct three 5-8 person African American male focus groups and a data analysis on over 4,626 Tweets from select Twitter accounts to analyze how they are building trust and engagement about preventative health behaviors during COVID-19. Two rounds of preliminary coding have already shown that public health organizations do not fully understand the needs of minorities, while minority organizations find it hard to continually provide content. This study makes a unique contribution to the topic of social media in health communication by focusing on an underserved demographic living in an overlooked region and the depths to which change can occur in communication to directly benefit them during a global pandemic. Keywords: COVID-19, African American, state health organizations, Twitter accounts, building trust, engagement, social media, health communicatio

Drag Performance and Femininity: Redefining Drag Culture through Identity Performance of Transgender Women Drag Queens

Viewing gender as a performance reveals how gender identity is shaped and formed. There is currently tensions associated with drag queen performance as an act of subversion and transgression from the heteronormative definition of gender and drag as a perpetuation of heteronormative definitions of gender. There is also a tension between the affirmation of femininity and transgression from gender binaries of womanhood. In order to address these tensions, this thesis project examined the reasoning behind how transgender women and gay men drag queen performers navigate the world of femininity. Specifically, this study explored the varied reasons behind performing femininity through drag and to further understand what it means to perform femininity. This project also delved into gender scholarship and how it related to gender as performance, drag queen performance, and transgender identity performance. I collected the data through purposeful sampling and semi-structured interviews with three transgender drag queens and three gay man drag queens. The interview responses were analyzed using thematic analysis. The themes that were discovered in this project suggested that through drag performance, femininity is used as medium to access a unique understanding of the self. The data suggested that cultural and social understandings of gender influenced performance of the self on and off the stage and the participants still worked within these assumptions surrounding gender to make sense of their identity. Ultimately, this thesis explored what it means to perform femininity and identity in a culture that perpetuates cultural and social understandings and notions of gender performance

Novel regulators of hepatic energy metabolism

Metabolic syndrome is a rapidly increasing global epidemic with a prevalence of 20 to 25% in the adult population. The metabolic syndrome strongly increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, which remains the leading cause of death worldwide. The hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which covers a spectrum of disease stages ranging from simple steatosis and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Despite great advances in understanding the pathophysiology of these diseases, there are currently no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)- or European Medicines Agency (EMA)-approved drugs for the treatment of NAFLD. Currently, many drugs are developed and in the pipeline. One promising group of hormone-based drugs is based on several members of the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family with strong metabolic effects, including amelioration of hepatic steatosis. In our research into the mechanisms underlying the hepatic lipid lowering effects of FGF1, we have recently identified several interesting downstream targets. This thesis investigates the individual role of these FGF targets in hepatic lipid metabolism and their potential in treating NAFLD. We have studied the biological function and molecular mechanisms of these regulators and their involvement in hepatic energy metabolism and hepatic function. Using experimental approaches, including mouse models and in vitro systems, we uncovered new functions and angles to guide future research efforts to understand hepatic energy metabolism and combat NAFLD