Alien Registration- Galipeau, Gerard (Lewiston, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/29825/thumbnail.jp

The effects of political memes : a longitudinal field experiment

Les médias sociaux sont devenus un élément incontournable des sociétés occidentales (et de plus en plus dans les autres régions du monde). Plusieurs études se sont intéressées à leurs impacts et ont trouvé qu’ils peuvent avoir une influence modeste, mais significative sur les attitudes et comportements politiques des citoyens. Sur ces plateformes sociales, les utilisateurs ont adopté divers moyens de communication notamment le mème (« Internet meme »). Ce sont des images tirées de la culture populaire agrémentées de texte qui ont comme particularité de pouvoir être imitées ou remixées et de se propager de manière virale sur le web. Bien que ces créations soient habituellement légères et humoristiques, elles sont aussi souvent utilisées par les citoyens et parfois par des acteurs politiques afin de s’exprimer politiquement. En effet, les recherches antérieures soulignent que les mèmes politiques peuvent être le reflet de l’opinion politique de certains groupes. En s’inspirant de la littérature sur l’influence des médias sur le comportement politique et de la psychologique politique, ce mémoire avance que ces images peuvent avoir un impact sur l’idéologie et les sentiments intergroupes. Pour vérifier cette affirmation, ce mémoire utilise une expérience aléatoire contrôlée, directement sur Facebook. Avec cette méthode, l’analyse révèle que les effets sont en général très limités. Cependant, elle démontre que les mèmes politiques peuvent contribuer à la polarisation des opinions, notamment chez les individus qui sont attachés à un parti politique.Social media have become a central part of western societies (and more and more in other world regions). Many studies have examined the link between social media and political behaviours and attitudes, and have found modest but significant impacts. On social platforms, users have adopted many communication styles, notably, the Internet meme. These are images drawn from popular culture with original text which have the property of being imitated or remixed and spread virally on the web. Usually, those creations consist of light humour, but they can be used by citizens and sometimes political actors to express political ideas. Recent research has shown that political memes can reflect the opinions of certain groups in society. Drawing on the literature in political behaviour and political psychology, this thesis argues that political memes can have a potent effect on ideology and intergroup feelings. To assess this claim, this thesis employs a randomized experiment, directly on Facebook. With this method, the analysis reveals that political memes generally have a limited impact. Nonetheless, it shows that memes can contribute to attitude polarization, notably among those who feel close to a political party

Alien Registration- Galipeau, Alfred (Lewiston, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/29823/thumbnail.jp

Non-Linear Homogenization of Magnetorheological Elastomers at Finite Strain

Magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) are composite materials consisting of magnetizable particles embedded in an elastomeric matrix material. They are capable of magnetostriction, generating actuation traction, and magnetic field-dependent modulus effects. Because of these properties, MREs have a myriad of potential applications including magnetic position sensors, electromagnetic shielding, and flexible magnets, as well as controllable mounts, clutches and vibration absorbers. While experimental results demonstrate the promise of these materials, the effects that can be obtained are still relatively small. The goal of this thesis is to provide a better understanding of the properties of MREs using theoretical methods to help guide their continued development. For this purpose, we use homogenization, which determines an effective macroscopic constitutive model for an MRE based on the properties of the constituent phases and their arrangement within the composite. Variational homogenization methods were developed in this work which provide a framework to predict the behavior of general magnetoelastic composites. However, specializing this work to MREs, a somewhat simplified approach is developed which assumes that the microstructure evolves exactly as it would in the purely mechanical problem; we refer to it as the &ldquopartial decoupling approximation.&rdquo Specific constitutive models for MREs made with rigid inclusions are derived which incorporate the non-linear effects of magnetic saturation and the non-linearity inherent in finite strain mechanics. While the magnetoelastic coupling in MREs can be accounted for by considering the torques and forces exerted on particles by the applied magnetic field, the variational approach used here circumvents the need to explicitly compute these forces and torques. The results demonstrate that for aligned loading, where the magnetic torques vanish, the magnetoelastic coupling is proportional to the square of the particle concentrations to leading order. For non-aligned loading, the associated torques have effects proportional to the concentration and can be significantly larger. We optimize magnetoelastic properties like magnetostriction, actuation traction, and magnetoelastic modulus with respect to the microstructure. Furthermore, we investigate multi-scale composites that utilize magnetic torques and particle rotations to produce strong magnetoelastic coupling

Alien Registration- Galipeau, Cecile (Lewiston, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/29824/thumbnail.jp