Arts and Humanities – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Arts and Humanities

The role of social media in electoral politics and violence in sub-Saharan Africa

Election violence remains a regular occurrence in many countries around the world. This project aims to identify and better understand the online atmosphere of politically affiliated groups on social media during violent elections in sub-Saharan Africa. We consider specifically the case of Côte d’Ivoire, where multiparty elections have been routinely tainted by violence since the 1990s. In the most recent presidential elections, at least 87 people were killed in election-related violence. Data for this project are collected from CrowdTangle, a Facebook API, that tracks social media posts in public Facebook groups. The dataset (N=2,073,664) includes all posts in 169 public Facebook groups supporting the five main political candidates in Côte d’Ivoire from 1/1/2015 to 12/1/2020. This time period covers two presidential elections (2015 and 2020), one legislative election (2016), and a constitutional referendum (2016). UROP students were tasked with coding photo and video content from the 6,248 posts that received at least 500 likes and the 2,963 posts that had at least 100 shares. The students also collected the names of the posters in order to infer ethnicity. We anticipate finding variation in support for democracy or violence conditional on political party affiliation. Trends in content may help uncover key tensions behind election-related violence in Côte d’Ivoire. Understanding the political dynamic of Ivoirians on social media will better help us understand the proliferation of violent rhetoric around elections, who is likely to use it, and perhaps inform policy interventions on reducing election-related violence.

Social media, youth, and election violence in Francophone Africa

Election violence remains a regular occurrence in many countries around the world. This project aims to identify and better understand the online atmosphere of politically affiliated groups on social media during violent elections in sub-Saharan Africa. We consider specifically the case of Côte d’Ivoire, where multiparty elections have been routinely tainted by violence since the 1990s. In the most recent presidential elections, at least 87 people were killed in election-related violence. Data for this project are collected from CrowdTangle, a Facebook API, that tracks social media posts in public Facebook groups. The dataset (N=2,073,664) includes all posts in 169 public Facebook groups supporting the five main political candidates in Côte d’Ivoire from 1/1/2015 to 12/1/2020. This time period covers two presidential elections (2015 and 2020), one legislative election (2016), and a constitutional referendum (2016). UROP students were tasked with coding photo and video content from the 6,248 posts that received at least 500 likes and the 2,963 posts that had at least 100 shares. The students also collected the names of the posters in order to infer ethnicity. We anticipate finding variation in support for democracy or violence conditional on political party affiliation. Trends in content may help uncover key tensions behind election-related violence in Côte d’Ivoire. Understanding the political dynamic of Ivoirians on social media will better help us understand the proliferation of violent rhetoric around elections, who is likely to use it, and perhaps inform policy interventions on reducing election-related violence.

The role of social media in electoral politics and violence in sub-Saharan Africa

Election violence remains a regular occurrence in many countries around the world. This project aims to identify and better understand the online atmosphere of politically affiliated groups on social media during violent elections in sub-Saharan Africa. We consider specifically the case of Côte d’Ivoire, where multiparty elections have been routinely tainted by violence since the 1990s. In the most recent presidential elections, at least 87 people were killed in election-related violence. Data for this project are collected from CrowdTangle, a Facebook API, that tracks social media posts in public Facebook groups. The dataset (N=2,073,664) includes all posts in 169 public Facebook groups supporting the five main political candidates in Côte d’Ivoire from 1/1/2015 to 12/1/2020. This time period covers two presidential elections (2015 and 2020), one legislative election (2016), and a constitutional referendum (2016). UROP students were tasked with coding photo and video content from the 6,248 posts that received at least 500 likes and the 2,963 posts that had at least 100 shares. The students also collected the names of the posters in order to infer ethnicity. We anticipate finding variation in support for democracy or violence conditional on political party affiliation. Trends in content may help uncover key tensions behind election-related violence in Côte d’Ivoire. Understanding the political dynamic of Ivoirians on social media will better help us understand the proliferation of violent rhetoric around elections, who is likely to use it, and perhaps inform policy interventions on reducing election-related violence.

Contemporary Performance in Puerto Rico: Javier Cardona and Mickey Negrón

The intention of this research is to contextualize contemporary performance in Puerto Rico. I will analyze the ways in which it addresses social issues. The two artists I focus on are Javier Cardona and Mickey Negrón, and their respective performances “Taxonomía of a Spicy Espécimen” (2020) and “PonerMickeytarme: Ritual de pluma y purificación” (2015). One of them, Javier Cardona, is an Afro-Puerto Rican dancer and performer that focuses on race and his experiences as a black man in the LGBT community. The other, Mickey Negrón, is also a Puerto Rican performer that addresses social and political issues surrounding gender identity and expression through street performance, especially as they relate to religion and education.

Understanding the Cost Decisions of International Arbitration

Rei Kubota Pronouns: he/him/he Research Mentor(s): Katherine Simpson, Arbitrator Research Mentor School/College/Department: Simpson Dispute Resolution, Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 6 (4pm-4:50pm) Breakout Room: Room 6 Presenter: 4 Event Link Abstract For privacy concerns this abstract cannot be published at this time. Authors: Rei Kubota Research Method: Library/Archival/Internet Research

Global Workers’ Rights

The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.

Global Workers’ Rights

The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.

Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting

Working alongside Professor Patrick Barry and his research team, I have been able to identify what makes good sentences good. The motivation behind this project is to teach speaking, writing, and problem solving skills to aspiring lawyers on a large scale. Professor Barry has identified a need for improving these skills and plans to tackle this by producing professional writers and speakers through the use of his online public courses and classes through the Michigan Law School hoping to address the question of how we can improve student writing in order for them to become better advocates. As a research student on this project, some strategies I engage in to address the research question are consistently trying to test and improve them with tasks such as conducting close editing and reviewing of papers, attending the Good with Words class, taking and providing feedback on MOOC courses, etc. Personally, I started off with the Writing and Editing MOOC where I had to present feedback on what should be changed by crafting a weekly E-D-I-T memo. As a result, the critiques of the courses and classes allows Professor Barry to improve each platform. We hope to find that this enhances writers and speakers around the world. We predict that specifically improving the online MOOC courses will allow Professor Barry to scale his teaching to reach a large number of people. In broader terms, everyone who wants to become a better speaker and writer would benefit from the course.

Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting

The Good Sentences project started by Professor Patrick Barry is about answering one question: what makes good sentences good? Knowing this can help us improve our own writing and speaking. This project started out in the law school in order to enhance the writing and speaking skills of law students, but over the years, it has expanded greatly: it’s now composed of many sub-projects all dedicated to the same cause. To actually determine what makes good writing good, the research team analyzes popular pieces of literature that society deems to be good writing. We analyze the most memorable phrases and break them down grammatically so that we can learn what aspects of those phrases are the most powerful. Professor Barry then shares these phrases within his class, sparking a discussion on them that allows for further analysis. Next, those class discussions are published as books by Professor Barry and his team. The sub-projects within Good Sentences are all fundamentally based on the material within these books. To address our fundamental research question, I as a member of the team reviewed Professor Barry’s class at the University of Michigan and his Coursera courses. I also took part in the editing process of his books, which are transcripts of prior classes. While these methods along with others get us closer to answering our question, the research is always ongoing; however, we can use what worked for other pieces of good writing/speaking and teach others to implement it within their own writing.

ORBIT: Online Resource for Building Intercultural Teams

The ORBIT project is aimed at launching a platform that encourages collaboration between people pursuing projects or researching similar topics of interest. The platform overcomes international borders and language barriers by encouraging intercultural connections. My contribution to this project has been investigating how to extend the existing research to a new audience of middle school students and their teachers. To this extent, we are developing a version of the platform based on the existing beta platform. Because the current platform was created with faculty in mind, we are conducting new research to reconfigure some of the elements to support the middle school student audience. Working in partnership with middle school teachers and administrators, we seek to provide a medium which effectively creates an engaged virtual or hybrid project-based learning environment where students can collaborate and build interpersonal skills. The literature shows that these activities support social-emotional learning, which is particularly critical for students in this age group. We have found that students enrolled solely in remote learning feel disengaged from their peers and their classes (compared to in-person instruction) causing them to face negative repercussions in their academics and personal lives. We have developed an IRB proposal to further investigate these students’ needs and how to best accommodate them in a collaborative virtual environment. As a next step, once the proposal is approved, we look forward to gaining insights from interviewing the students directly and involving them in a series of design-based research activities.

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