Browsing by Author "Hunsinger, Jeremy W."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Constructing a Politics of Knowledge in the Age of the Internet
    Hunsinger, Jeremy W. (Virginia Tech, 2009-09-22)
    The politics of knowledge in the age of the internet is concerned with many overlapping elements. From the reimagining of research in relation to the new infrastructures to the development of new technologies and their social, cultural, ontological, and epistemological implications, here the politics of knowledge centers around questions of information technology infrastructures in late capitalism, the control society, and reflexive modernization. As these social and political theories operate across academic disciplines and organizational systems, new formulations of knowledge production arise such as transdisciplinary research. Transdisciplinary research can be considered as a model for knowledge production that is still capable of recognizing the shared and processual nature of knowledge that operates contrarily to the objectified and commodified understanding of knowledge in late capitalism. Using critical analysis centered in considerations of reflexivity and the control society, I argue for the possibility of alternative cyberinfrastructures for the e-sciences and virtual learning environments as systems of cultural reproduction. These alternatives privilege constructions of science understood as creative, social, and processual following the findings of actor-network theory and the theories of Deleuze and Guattari. Finally, I argue that we are co-constructing a politics of knowledge within and through the infrastructures that we are building, and within these politics there is a conception of the practices of science and research that could be informed by a reconsideration of social theories of technology and our contemporary social and political theory in relation to the development of future technologies and future ways of understanding those technologies.
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    Disciplinary Themes in Aristotle's Political and Ethical Writings
    Hunsinger, Jeremy W. (Virginia Tech, 1998-12-15)
    This thesis is an exploratory study of the relationship between Foucault's conception of disciplinary power and the philosophical ideas of ancient Greece as exemplified by Aristotle. Foucault claims that disciplinary power arose only in the 17th and 18th centuries. This thesis demonstrates that there are similarities and parallels between certain facets of Aristotle's ethical and political theory and Foucault's idea of disciplinary power--parallels and similarities sufficiently strong to weaken, if not contradict, Foucault's description of the historical origin of disciplinary power.
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    Learning to Do Democracy: Deliberative Capacity in Political Blogging Communities
    Habegger, Michael Warren (Virginia Tech, 2011-07-07)
    This thesis demonstrates that participants in Political Blogging Communities increase their deliberative capacity over time, potentially enabling them to participate in democratic societies. The study unifies perspectives on the meaning of blogs in American politics. It presents a unique theoretical framework that incorporates community and social learning literatures. The Internet is thought to potentially enable a revitalization of democracy because of its political and communicative properties. While studies have looked to deliberation in online forums, this study specifically targets Political Blogging Communities. Blogs have been targeted by a diverse range of scholars and methods that raise questions of their role in emphasizing the constitutional ideal of deliberation. Daily Kos and Red State are among the most popular political discussion sites, but are generally under-investigated in the literature. The theoretical framework and results presented here suggest that they are places where democratic capacity increases. A pilot study provided encouraging results. Because Political Blogging Communities talk about public issues, have several aspects of a supportive community, and feature contributions from ordinary people, they foster an adherence to deliberative norms. The sampling frame sought dedicated participants in an effort to approach the question of social learning over time. To address these questions, the deliberative content of 373 diaries from 20 authors at Daily Kos and Red State was hand coded. This Thesis makes two principal contributions: (1) it introduces a new measure that assesses deliberative quality is introduced, and (2) finds that the diversity of deliberative content in political blogs increases over time.
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    Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
    (Virginia Tech. Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, 2009-12)
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    Social Networking and the Web Campaign: Observations from the 2010 Election for the U.S. House of Representatives
    Oliver, Mark J. (Virginia Tech, 2011-12-06)
    Scholars and political candidates have frequently viewed online political participation as a weaker and less meaningful form of political involvement than traditional, offline activities. This thesis presents an overview of the literature on political participation and the Internet in order to understand the origins of this view and why participation on social media may be uniquely meaningful in comparison with other Internet-based activities. Examination of social media using Resource Theory and Social Identity Theory justify this unique status by highlighting and rationalizing social media's exceptional capacity to build and maintain weak-tie networks while also generating an intimacy between constituents and candidates. Social Identity Theory also provides an argument for the potential of social media for reaching and mobilizing first-time participants through its capacity to passively reach and attract constituents for non-political, personal and identity-serving reasons. This thesis then shows how social media-enable first-time participants may be more inclined to continue and expanding their participation over time, thereby substantially affecting participation trends in the United States. Using case studies composed of qualitative data collected on candidate views of the Internet and social media in U.S. House campaigns, this thesis examines the state of Web campaigning in 2010 in comparison to the theoretically "archetypal" Web campaign in order to provide indications of whether the prescribed theoretical activities deliver meaningful citizen engagement and valuable returns to campaigns.