Girls and story-based videogames: an intervention in a 10th grade English class

I denne masteroppgaven i engelsk didaktikk har jeg undersøkt hvordan en 10. klasse i en norsk ungdomsskole tenker om dataspill som måte å oppleve fortellinger på. Gjennom en nasjonal undersøkelse utført av Medietilsynet (2020) kom det fram at jenter i langt mindre grad enn gutter synes dataspill er god kilde for fortellinger. Data hentet fra denne undersøkelsen viser at 25% av jentene synes dataspill er en fin måte å oppleve en historie gjennom, mens 60% av guttene svarte det samme. Med bakgrunn i disse tallene fra medietilsynet, så har jeg formulert følgende problemstilling of forskningsspørsmål: 1) Hvorfor opplever gutter og jenter gaming som et fortellermedium så forskjellig? - Vil erfaringer med et forteller-basert dataspill endre jentenes syn på dataspill? - Hvis det er tilfellet, hva er grunnen for denne endringen? For å kunne svare på disse spørsmålene har jeg testet ut dataspillet Life is Strange (2015) i en norsk 10. klasse for å se om jenters holdning til dataspill som fortellermedium endrer seg når de er introdusert til et spill som er mer rettet mot et kvinnelig publikum. Først svarte klassen på en undersøkelse helt lik den som er publisert av Medietilsynet for å sammenligne dem med den nasjonale standarden. Deretter skulle klassen spille igjennom spillet over flere skoletimer. Så fikk klassen nye spørreskjema, med samme spørsmål som før intervensjonen, for å se om det har blitt en forandring i jentenes holdning til dataspill. Funnene i denne forskningen viser at jentenes holdning til dataspill som fortellermedium blir mer positiv når de blir eksponert for dataspill som er tilpasset dem. Elementer som innlevelse, gjenkjennelse og språkforståelse blir trukket som interessante funn

Geographic Gerrymandering

The leading measures of gerrymandering reflect a party-centric theory of representation based on the statewide relationship between seats and votes. But electoral districting, a traditional practice that still predominates, reflects a geographic theory of representation focused on the district-based relationship between a representative and her constituents. We propose a new approach to gerrymandering that takes electoral districting on its own terms and defines fairness geographically without reference to the seats-votes relationship. Scholars, courts, and mapmakers recognize the representational interests advanced by geographic criteria, such as preservation of local political boundaries. We ask whether an electoral map fairly distributes these benefits. Under this approach, “geographic gerrymandering” occurs when a map unjustifiably distributes geographic impacts on the basis of race or party. This approach offers new methodological and conceptual possibilities, and a new way for courts to adjudicate gerrymandering claims that may avoid the justiciability problems the Supreme Court identified in Rucho v. Common Cause. To demonstrate this approach in action, we analyze unnecessary county splits in congressional maps of the thirty-five states with four or more representatives. Overall, mapmakers differentially impose the burden of county splits on Black residents and Democrats. But the effect depends on who draws the lines. When a neutral actor draws the lines, the disparities disappear. When Democrats draw the lines, Black residents are slightly favored but Democrats are disfavored. When Republicans draw the lines, both Black residents and Democrats are significantly disfavored. And when both parties draw the lines, both Black residents and Democrats are disfavored even more. These results demonstrate the value of a geographic approach and suggest further research

Supermajoritarian Criminal Justice

Democracy is often equated with majority rule. But closer analysis reveals that, in theory and by constitutional design, our criminal justice system should be supermajoritarian, not majoritarian. The Constitution guarantees that criminal punishment may be imposed only when backed by the supermajoritarian-historically, unanimous-approval of a jury drawn from the community. And criminal law theorists\u27 expressive and retributive justifications for criminal punishment implicitly rely on the existence of broad community consensus in favor of imposing it. Despite these constitutional and theoretical ideals, the criminal justice system today is majoritarian at best. Both harsh and contested, it has lost the structural mechanisms that could ensure supermajoritarian support. By incorporating new supermajoritarian checks and reinvigorating old ones, we could make criminal punishment consonant with first principles and more responsive to community intuitions of justice

Two-Party Structural Countermandering

The popular narrative surrounding gerrymandering frames it as a performative phenomenon—achieved through the intentional manipulations of malevolent partisan actors. Efforts to curb partisan gerrymandering —which I call countermandering—have been performative, in turn, focusing on constraining these bad actors through judicial review or mapmaker neutrality. Yet performative countermandering has had limited success. Judicial and institutional constraints are only sometimes available and are often cumbersome and costly. More important, their utility is inherently limited, because gerrymandering is not only performative. It is also structural—an inevitable product of the American electoral schema itself. This paper makes the case for structural countermandering. It explains why transformative change to our electoral schema is urgently necessary. It also hypothesizes that such transformative change has no practical chance of success unless it preserves the two-party system. Accordingly, this paper proposes a new electoral schema called MM2. It operates much like the traditional Mixed-Member Proportional (“MMP”) system used successfully for decades in Germany and New Zealand, but its goal is two-party, not multiparty, proportionality. Like MMP, MM2 preserves personal, geographic representation by selecting most legislators through single-seat districts; and it implements structural countermandering by allocating additional seats to political parties to compensate for any vote-seat distortion these districted elections produce. But whereas MMP allocates these seats to achieve vote-seat proportionality for every party, MM2 allocates these seats to achieve vote-seat proportionality only for the top two parties. By preserving certain core features of American democracy, while structurally nullifying gerrymandering, MM2 presents a promising and feasible prospect for transformative change