Everyday Farm Life in the Moxee Valley 1915-1950: Historical Ethnography

This study collected oral histories of those who lived or worked in the Moxee Valley, within the greater Yakima Valley of Washington State from 1915-1950. It documents and records the historical and cultural processes of farm life and its evolution for people living in this foremost hop-growing region of the United States. The larger goal is to characterize the community and social processes for use as primary source documentation to create historically accurate programs at the Gendron Hop Ranch-Living History Farm near Moxee. Nineteen participants were interviewed. Topics addressed in the study include farming in the Valley, the household, roles and work, the community and hop harvest. To date, no other study has collected this history

A political economy of war: Britain and the United States

Previous studies analyzing attitudes toward war have emphasized situational, attitudinal, behavioral and contextual explanations of the declining popularity of war. Few, however, consider purely economic interpretations of war attitudes. My political economy perspective is based on the assumption that political attitudes are shaped partly by economic predictors. Thus, along with standard model of war attitudes, I evaluate the degree to which economic predictors help explain American and British attitudes toward the Iraq War. Specifically, drawing on theories linking politics and economics, I argue that the public is more likely to support war when the domestic economy and personal finances are perceived as prosperous, but less likely to support conflict when they perceive the economy as weak and their finances strained as a result of war. Using error-correction models to estimate a time-series of aggregate beliefs about the Iraq War, I find that objective and subjective economic predictors explain American and British war beliefs, often more than military casualties, war-time events, and leadership approval. I also identify groups in society most likely to bear the economic and financial costs of the Iraq War and then, by using public opinion surveys, examine the level of war support among those groups over time using multivariate regression analyses. I do not find that the costs of the Iraq War have differential effects on various socioeconomic groups. Finally, at the aggregate- and individual levels, I find some evidence that suggests that economic predictors also influence war beliefs indirectly, operating through leadership approval. Overall, these findings confirm that models of war attitudes must begin to look beyond the standard model linking casualty rates and war-time events to war beliefs

Boomers versus Millennials: Online Media Influence on Media Performance and Candidate Evaluations

Facebook posts, YouTube videos, tweets and wooing political bloggers have become standard practice in marketing political campaigns. Research has demonstrated the effect of new media on a host of politically-related behavior, including political participation, knowledge acquisition, group formation and self-efficacy. Yet, issues related to media trust, media performance and candidate evaluations have not been fully explored. In addition, much of the political marketing research looks exclusively at the Millennial age cohort, ignoring other age groups, particularly Baby Boomers. This case study addresses whether attention to traditional (i.e., television, hard-copy newspapers and radio) and online media sources (i.e., political candidate websites, television network websites, online newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and political blogs) about the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign influences Millennials and Baby Boomers’ media trust and performance ratings, as well as candidate evaluations. Panel surveys were completed by both age cohorts, Millennials (n = 431) and Baby Boomers (n = 360), during the last two weeks of the presidential election. Findings indicate that traditional sources, specifically television, rather than online sources are significantly linked to media trust and performance ratings among both Boomers and Millennials. Attention to traditional media for campaign information predicts Boomers’ candidate evaluations, whereas Millennials’ candidate evaluations are influenced by online sources, such as Facebook and candidate websites

Back to the “wall”: How to use Facebook in the college classroom

The evolving world of the Internet — blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks — offers instructors and students radically new ways to research, communicate, and learn. Integrating these Internet tools into the college classroom, however, is not an easy task. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the role of social networking in education and demonstrate how social network sites (SNS) can be used in a college classroom setting. To do this, existing research relating to SNS and education is discussed, and the primary advantages and disadvantages of using SNS in the classroom are explored. Most importantly, specific instructions and guidelines to follow when implementing SNS (i.e., Facebook) within the college classroom are provided. Specifically, we show that multiple types of Facebook course integration options are available to instructors. It is concluded that SNS, such as Facebook, can be appropriately and effectively used in an academic setting if proper guidelines are established and implemented