Representing environmental harm and resistance on Twitter: The case of the TAP pipeline

This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research via social media. It provides original case-study data and aims to stimulate further empirical and theoretical debate. In particular, the study explores how Twitter users have represented the harms related to an ongoing pipeline project in Italy (referred to as TAP), and the resistance to those harms. To these ends, it offers a virtual and visual ethnography of Twitter posts and posted images

Creating the collective: social media, the Occupy Movement and its constitution as a collective actor

This paper examines the process through which Occupy activists came to constitute themselves as a collective actor and the role of social media in this process. The theoretical framework combines Melucci's (1996) theory of collective identity with insights from the field of organizational communication and particularly from the ‘CCO’ strand – short for ‘Communication is Constitutive of Organizing’. This allows us to conceptualize collective identity as an open-ended and dynamic process that is constructed in conversations and codified in texts. Based on interviews with Occupy activists in New York, London and other cities, I then discuss the communication processes through which the movement was drawing the boundaries with its environment, creating codes and foundational documents, as well as speaking in a collective voice. The findings show that social media tended to blur the boundaries between the inside and the outside of the movement in a way that suited its values of inclusiveness and direct participation. Social media users could also follow remotely the meetings of the general assembly where the foundational documents were ratified, but their voices were not included in the process. The presence of the movement on social media also led to conflicts and negotiations around Occupy's collective voice as constructed on these platforms. Thus, viewing the movement as a phenomenon emerging in communication allows us an insight into the efforts of Occupy activists to create a collective that was both inclusive of the 99% and a distinctive actor with its own identity

15 years of protest and media technologies scholarship: A sociotechnical timeline

This article investigates the relationship between the invention of new media technologies and scholarship concerning protest and political engagement. Building on an innovative approach that moves beyond a systematic literature review, this article contributes to our understanding of scholarship concerning digital communication technologies and how they may have been adopted and shaped protest movements and political engagement. Based on visualizations, we draw a sociotechnical timeline of protest and media technology scholarship within three dimensions: technological development, methods and techniques, and the social phenomena under investigation. The article concludes by identifying major trends in protest and media technologies scholarship over the past 15 years. The sociotechnical timeline enhances our understanding of academic discourse at the intersection of protest and media technologies by highlighting shortcomings and potential for future research

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

Measurement of Leptonic Asymmetries and Top Quark Polarization in ttbar Production

We present measurements of lepton (l) angular distributions in ttbar -> W+ b W- b -> l+ nu b l- nubar bbar decays produced in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=1.96TeV, where l is an electron or muon. Using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4fb^-1, collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Collider, we find that the angular distributions of l- relative to anti-protons and l+ relative to protons are in agreement with each other. Combining the two distributions and correcting for detector acceptance we obtain the forward-backward asymmetry A^l_FB = (5.8 +- 5.1(stat) +- 1.3(syst))%, compared to the standard model prediction of A^l_FB (predicted) = (4.7 +- 0.1)%. This result is further combined with the measurement based on the analysis of the l+jets final state to obtain A^l_FB = (11.8 +- 3.2)%. Furthermore, we present a first study of the top-quark polarization.Comment: submitted versio

Measurement of the semileptonic charge asymmetry in B0 meson mixing with the D0 detector

We present a measurement of the semileptonic mixing asymmetry for B0 mesons, a^d_{sl}, using two independent decay channels: B0 -> mu+D-X, with D- -> K+pi-pi-; and B0 -> mu+D*-X, with D*- -> antiD0 pi-, antiD0 -> K+pi- (and charge conjugate processes). We use a data sample corresponding to 10.4 fb^{-1} of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV, collected with the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We extract the charge asymmetries in these two channels as a function of the visible proper decay length (VPDL) of the B0 meson, correct for detector-related asymmetries using data-driven methods, and account for dilution from charge-symmetric processes using Monte Carlo simulation. The final measurement combines four signal VPDL regions for each channel, yielding a^d_{sl} = [0.68 \pm 0.45 \text{(stat.)} \pm 0.14 \text{(syst.)}]%. This is the single most precise measurement of this parameter, with uncertainties smaller than the current world average of B factory measurements.Comment: Version includes minor textual changes following peer review by journal, most notably the updating of Ref. [21] to reflect the most recent publicatio

Search for B0→π0π0B^{0}\to \pi^{0}\pi^{0} Decay

We have searched for the charmless hadronic decay of B0 mesons into two neutral pions. Using 9.13fb^-1 taken at the Upsilon(4S) with the CLEO detector, we obtain an improved upper limit for the branching fraction BR(B0-->pi0pi0) < 5.7*10^-6 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: pages postscript, also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN

Search for Zgamma events with large missing transverse energy in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

We present the first search for supersymmetry (SUSY) in Zgamma final states with large missing transverse energy using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 6.2 fb-1 collected with the D0 experiment in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV. This signature is predicted in gauge-mediated SUSY-breaking models, where the lightest neutralino is the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) and is produced in pairs, possibly through decay from heavier supersymmetric particles. The NLSP can decay either to a Z boson or a photon and an associated gravitino that escapes detection. We exclude this model at the 95% C.L. for SUSY breaking scales of Lambda < 87 TeV, corresponding to neutralino masses of < 151 GeV.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Precise measurement of the top quark mass in the dilepton channel at D0

We measure the top quark mass (mt) in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV using dilepton ttbar->W+bW-bbar->l+nubl-nubarbbar events, where l denotes an electron, a muon, or a tau that decays leptonically. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb-1 collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We obtain mt = 174.0 +- 1.8(stat) +- 2.4(syst) GeV, which is in agreement with the current world average mt = 173.3 +- 1.1 GeV. This is currently the most precise measurement of mt in the dilepton channel.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

A search for charged massive long-lived particles

We report on a search for charged massive long-lived particles (CMLLPs), based on 5.2 fb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron $p\bar{p}$ collider. We search for events in which one or more particles are reconstructed as muons but have speed and ionization energy loss $(dE/dx)$ inconsistent with muons produced in beam collisions. CMLLPs are predicted in several theories of physics beyond the standard model. We exclude pair-produced long-lived gaugino-like charginos below 267 GeV and higgsino-like charginos below 217 GeV at 95% C.L., as well as long-lived scalar top quarks with mass below 285 GeV.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Letter