Asymmetric relationships between creators and consumers in peer-produced knowledge repositories produce inequitable knowledge representation--or knowledge gaps. These gaps result in unequal access to information, and downstream technologies that leverage peer-produced data perpetuate these inequities. Effective knowledge gap identification represents a necessary first step towards equitable knowledge representation. However, while prior...
Having an Experience: Media Franchises, Events, & Participatory Culture explores, like its title suggests, what we mean when we talk about “having an experience” in today’s media culture. Traveling to an expanded network of sites where media fans are actively called to go out and “have an experience” in the...
Yugoslav wartime television news often conformed to the demands of the political regimes. Informed by this knowledge, scholars have argued that TV as a medium incited and legitimized the wars by fostering ethnonationalist ideologies. Using archival and textual analysis, this project examines how television reacted to the political constraints imposed...
Over the past decade, concepts and expressions derived from Black feminist theory, a line of intellectual thought historically produced from Black women’s unique lived experiences that asks us to consider how one’s material realities are co-constituted by multiple, interlocking systems of the oppressed, have traveled into the public sphere through...
Facts are not enough! The more recent wave of science communication practices have been advocating for the death of the deficit model of science communication. This model notes that by possessing sufficient information, individuals will change their attitude and behavior to align with scientific facts. However, recent research has shown...
This dissertation imagines the near future of teamwork, when AI agents will join teams,interacting, collaborating, and completing tasks as a team member. Broadly, I seek to answer the
questions: how do humans integrate a new AI teammate onto their team, and how does the AI
teammate’s function influence this integration...
Popular and scholarly arguments state that uncivil discourse is bad for democracy because it hampers political trust and sharpens polarization. These same scholars see uncivil discourse as contrary to a good democratic society. However, their arguments could be overstated because incivility may be so contextual that elites can frame certain...
Depression is a challenging mental illness that requires individuals to manage their moods and emotions over time. While past mental health literature describes how individuals seek and share support on social media and within online communities, the ways that offline and one-on-one supportive interactions unfold is less clear. To address...
When first-year students begin college they are thrown into a new environment where they are expected to simultaneously perform academically, form new relationships, and become independent. Many students struggle with this transition; experiences of stress, anxiety, and depression are common. For the majority of residential college students this is their...
Using the Connected Learning framework as a lens to frame my research inquiry, this dissertation explores the potential of Hip-Hop songwriting and recording practices as a new form of music education in elementary schools. Using data from three years of ethnographic study I have collected while working as a youth...