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Peace is usually studied through nation-states operating in the international system, but recently, peace scholars have underscored the need to research peace as a part of everyday life. I argue that communication scholars should join the new conversation about everyday peace. I discuss major peace theories in broadcast and digital media that either replicate the state-centered approach or struggle to find ways to reach reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue that communication scholars are well equipped to study everyday peace by focusing on mediatized manifestations of everyday life in popular culture and digital platforms. I demonstrate my claim by analyzing visual and sonic manifestations of everyday peace in Israel/Palestine. I investigate two Israeli television shows, Fauda and Arab Labor, focusing on Jewish and Palestinian men who try to pass members of the other community. Their identity work proves that national and ethnic identities are not stable but remain in flux, undermining Zionism which strives to silo Jews and Palestinians into separate categories. Nevertheless, Fauda and Arab Labor do not prescribe easy solutions to the conflict in their plots. Instead, they allow characters to work through the hardships of the conflict and its implications in their everyday lives. I study the texts of both television shows, illuminating the power of fiction to discuss taboo subjects at the core of the conflict. Moreover, I analyze the production of both shows. Based on interviews with creative workers, I contend that making quality TV is in itself a form of peacemaking because it brings Jews and Palestinian together, galvanizing them to process trauma and explore possible connections between the two communities. I study the sonic expression of everyday peace through a second case study — Border Gone, a digital activist project publishing stories of ordinary Palestinians from Gaza in Hebrew online. I trace the project’s evolution, which initially centered around translating stories written by young adults with the help of hundreds of Israeli volunteers. The stories reveal the humanity of Palestinians, undermining the Zionist perception that all Palestinians are terrorists. Ultimately, Border Gone transformed into an independent news outlet; the managing team was resolved to provide the appropriate political context to Palestinian stories, showcasing how the Israeli occupation of Gaza affects everyday lives. I conducted interviews with Border Gone’s managing team, and with members of its volunteers’ community. I analyze posts appearing on the project’s Facebook page and investigate the various comments uploaded to the page between December 2019-May 2021. May 2021 marked the peak of the project’s operation during a devastating war in Gaza. During the war, I joined the project’s managing team, conducting a participant observation on its news reporting process using the transcripts of a WhatsApp group where we communicated with each other. I conclude that Border Gone affords nonreciprocal listening to Palestinian stories, wherein Jews educate themselves about the reality of Palestinian life without expecting the other side to do the same. The stories captivate Israeli listeners and encourage them to engage in meaningful solidarity by insisting on lively descriptions of Palestinian experiences. Border Gone, as well as Fauda and Arab Labor, prove that peace is possible between Jews and Palestinians who use media to write and tell stories of everyday peace; moreover, media making draws members of these communities close, helping them process the horrors of violent conflict together.

White American Theatre has a long history of practicing exclusion. In the summer of 2020, a new collective named We See You White American Theatre formed to create the “BIPOC List of Demands for White American Theatre” and to push for more equitable practice in the American theatre industry. Their 31-page initiative calls for widespread reform in the American theatre community including codified cultural competency, BIPOC recruitment and retention both onstage and off, and greater transparency in funding and hiring. This thesis studies the practice of what I call inward- facing theatre activism— that is, theatre activism that critiques and redresses issues within the industry itself, rather than use theatre as a medium for other modes of social or political activism. I employ a mixed methodology including historical analysis, digital and traditional ethnography, and qualitative interviews, framing my research through the context of political scientist Cathy Cohen’s theory of marginalization. Using Cohen’s framework, I investigate inward-facing theatre activism as it is situated along a continuum of theatre activism, as it resonates throughout community-specific theatre organizing, and— using We See You White American Theatre as a case study— as it exists within and attempts to disrupt the dialectical relationship between marginalization and resistance in the American theatre. My thesis breaks ground in the study of inward- facing theatre activism in three ways: first, by providing a foundational analysis of marginalization and resistance that will benefit future scholars seeking to study integrative and secondary marginalization processes and the American theatre industry as a microcosm of American politics; second, by connecting Cohen’s framework to the study of activism in the American theatre industry to explore how current and future scholars and activists alike might utilize this framework to achieve industrial equity; and third, by developing nascent scholarship on the We See You White American Theatre collective.

Decentralized systems online—such as open source software (OSS) development, online communities, wikis, and social media—often experience decline in participation which threatens their long-terms sustainability. Building on a rich body of research on the sustainability of physical resource systems, this dissertation presents a novel theoretical framing that addresses the sustainability issues arising in decentralized systems online and which are amplified because of their open nature. The first essay develops the theory of polycentric information commons (PIC) which conceptualizes decentralized systems online as “information commons”. The theory defines information commons, the stakeholders that participate in them, the sustainability indicators of information commons and the collective-action threats putting pressure on their long-term sustainability. Drawing on Ostrom’s factors associated with stable common pool resource systems, PIC theory specifies four polycentric governance practices that can help information commons reduce the magnitude and impact of collective-action threats while improving the information commons’ sustainability. The second essay further develops PIC theory by applying it in an empirical context of “digital activism”. Specifically, it examines the role of polycentric governance in reducing the threats to the legitimacy of digital activism—a type of information commons with an overarching objective of instigating societal change. As such, it illustrates the applicability of PIC theory in the study of digital activism. The third essay focuses on the threat of “information pollution” and its impact on open collaboration, a type of information commons dedicated to the creation of value through open participation online. It uncovers the way polycentric governance mechanism help reduce the duration of pollution events. This essay contributes to PIC theory by expanding it to the realm of operational governance in open collaboration.

Abstract: The design of comment systems on social media and news websites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are not made to promote critical discussions or find the source of political conflict. The integration of digital tools like social media to enact politics online and the shift to identity-based politics further complicates the political space. The speed at which digital communication occurs and the rate at which online news is released places stress on the ability to pause and think about critical and sensitive issues like death. This paper introduces a new theory called the philosophy of movement. It will explain how adopting this philosophy will help the user be a more effective and affective communicator of political issues. The philosophy of movement incorporates affect theory, existentialism, and conflict resolution to produce an actionable and theoretical model to understand and respond to political difference in the digital space. In the philosophy of movement through existential authenticity the individual is faced with the ambiguity of reality and the multitude of contending truths. They are able to negotiate through this conflict by accepting ambiguity, but empowered to act in spite of not knowing through their affective potential, the ability to affect and be affected in the public space and make an impact in the field of relation. The philosophy of movement is implemented in a case study examining a local conflict where a woman is at odds with a town that believes driving a hearse as a regular vehicle is inappropriate. The philosophy shows how the dissemination of the conflict online obscured the true source of the issue and did not enable reconciliation due to the inauthentic response of the public and the style in which the articles were published. This paper shows how the philosophy of movement contributes to authentic problem solving so that reconciliation can be reached through conflicts with ambiguous truths.

Internet scholars studying activism coordinated online have not focused on how a social movement may be impacted by the social networking site, instead platforms are often regarded as one analogous entity. Using content analysis this thesis examines seven weeks of posts from the social media accounts of the Women’s March to understand the differences in form, interaction, function, and discussion. It aims to bridge the current gap in digital activism literature, as well as aid future social activists. The findings of this study reveal the importance of understanding the platforms themselves, and how community is built differently on each site. The differences found in terms of interaction, form, and function indicate that Facebook is better suited for coordinating online activism because of its ability to build a more interconnected community.

The city of Rio de Janeiro has become a global gay tourist destination as well as political hub for the local and national LGBT movement. However, despite the city’s gay-friendly, racially diverse reputation and pro-LGBT political gains, violence has increasingly endangered LGBT Brazilians amidst the rise of extreme conservativism in both government and society. This violence is not only gendered but also racialized, disproportionately impacting Black women and LGBT youth. Rio has become particularly renowned for a dual, paradoxical legacy: that of Black spectacle, celebration, and sexual freedom as well as that of great inequality, violence, and Black premature death. According to Smith (2016), this paradox is intentional—an “afro-paradise”—which simultaneously fetishizes and threatens Black lives. Numerous structural forces have transformed Rio into a hostile racial-sexual terrain in which Black LGBT youth must survive and build community. This critical ethnographic study examines: 1) how Rio’s Black LGBT youth negotiate violence and exclusion in everyday life; and 2) how they use physical and virtual sites as well as their own creative expression to claim their stake in the production of urban space. I ask, how do young Black LGBT people build political power when virtually locked out of state institutions and formal politics? I contend that Black LGBT young people are consistent placemakers across many spatial realms and scales, creating sites of self-making and political intervention through new media, art, events, and popular education. I highlight three particular spatial tactics: 1) occupying physical urban spaces and claiming territory; 2) Diasporic self-making through digital activism; and 3) leveraging cultural labor as young entrepreneurs and kinfolk. The key to youth’s success has been the everyday strategic use of space, culture, and creative expression—a strategy of “infrapolitics”. Black LGBT youth enact a form of “hip hop urbanism”, in which they continuously make something out of nothing and quite literally put their creative expressions to work. Lastly, I argue that Black LGBT youth’s placemaking practices demonstrate alternative ways of building power and innovating communal support systems, all in ways that do not entirely depend on state institutions, party politics, or even spatial proximity.

The present study explored the nature of social justice discussions on the social networking site Tumblr using publicly available data from Tumblr posts generated between March 16, 2016 and March 30, 2016. Posts were self-identified by users with at least one of five common hashtags related to social justice identified in a pilot study on Tumblr. These hashtags were #Black Lives Matter, #Feminism, #Racism, #Social Justice, and #SJW, an abbreviation for “social justice warrior” a phrase used to label individuals who engage in social justice discussions online. Findings indicated that posts about social justice are common on Tumblr with 15,160 public posts created by 8,794 users across the two weeks. However, not all posts reflect a positive attitude toward social justice with 8.6% of posts expressing disagreement or even hostility toward movements promoting equality. Data from the present study were compared to data collected in the pilot study to describe consistency and differences in results using the same methodology at two different time points for two different lengths of time. Implications of study findings for clinical and research purposes are discussed.

This dissertation proposes the civic crowdfunding platform as a worthy object for critical study and as a powerful tool for liberation and transformation of the public sphere. I use Freirean praxis and empirical measures of policy outcomes to argue that under the current political system, specifically the constraints and incentives induced by Supreme Court rulings Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, a citizen’s (or corporation’s) financial contribution has superseded voting, legislator contact, and protest as the most effective form of civic engagement and political activism. To evaluate effectiveness, I revive speech act theory and J. L. Austin’s “performative speech acts” and arrange digital and traditional speech acts along an axis of performativity. Additionally, this study classifies crowdfunders as counterpublics whose unmet demands, per M. Lane Bruner’s conception of counterpublics, are especially well addressed by digital civic crowdfunding. Digital crowdfunding specifically addresses issues of accessibility and inclusiveness through lowered material constraints, fewer exclusionary criteria, decentralized power, and mechanisms for accountability. The study employs participatory, iterative scholarship in a live test case campaign (and a resulting public) on the civic crowdfunding site ShiftSpark, in collaboration with its founder Ben Yee. Screenshots and the language of the test campaign are included, and a summarizing chapter explains my selection of the issue and its public as an exemplar of a counterpublic whose political participation is currently constrained by an oppressive system. Using this example, I argue crowdfunding counterpublics can be consciousness raising and disruptive, capable of challenging existing power distribution. Citizen crowdfunding therefore embodies many of the hopes of post-bourgeois public sphere and liberatory civic and social action.

The mobilization of the student movement #YoSoy132 inspired new political and civic participation among young students in the urban context of Mexico City. This study explores the habits and perspectives around political participation, freedom of expression, and the use of social networks among these university students. Based on survey data from two samples, we contrast the relationship between online and offline political practices during the birth of #YoSoy132. For the first sample, we administered a questionnaire to college students who took part in a public demonstration organized by the #YoSoy132 movement just one week before the 2012 Mexican federal election. We collected the second sample via social media online, with a focus on college students from different universities across Mexico City. We compare the similarities and differences across youth participation via the samples In Situ and Online groups. We demonstrate that digital penetration and the presence of a convergent culture are important elements that favor hybrid political and civil participation. Our findings allow us to infer, at least from our samples of college students, that social networks are gaining unprecedented importance in the formation of youth imaginaries when a strong correlation between online and offline practices exists. In the face of widespread accusations of the corruption of mass media in Mexico and systemic threats to freedom of expression, social networks provided an alternative and trustworthy route for expression, dialogue, and mobilization.

The contemporary debate over safe space has inspired a multitude of news editorials, blogposts, and passionate commentary, presented along a hard binary of proponents and opponents. Defenders of safe space strategies, including trigger warnings and call-outs contend that these practices benefit a larger social justice project, while opponents insist they reiterate past political correctness movements and constitute censorship. This project strives to situate the contemporary safe space debate within a broader historical and critical context through a textual analysis of the defenses and critiques published between 2011 and 2016. It considers three key themes that recur in that discourse, namely the belief that safe space takes identity politics to an extreme, the belief that safe space strategies create a population of hypersensitive victims, and the belief that calls for safe space constitute a form of violence or policing. Each of these themes is examined in comparison with another safety project, (e.g. women's-only spaces, domestic violence shelters, and public safety or policing). This method complicates the deterministic view of the contemporary safe space movement as a result of the rise in social media. It also challenges the binary that links safe space with progressive politics and opposition to safe space with conservatism. Ultimately, it allows for insights gleaned from the examination of previous safety projects to inform recommendations for effectively pursuing safety as a social justice aim.

This study looks at the practice of teaching civic engagement through digital and Web 2.0 tools and examines the impact on agency and self-efficacy of first-year writing students. The primary focus is studying student attitudes toward use of these tools, civic engagement in general, and the perceived value of engaging civically through use of these tools with the hopes of better understanding the value of this work and the impact it will have on future civic, community, and political engagement. Based on the findings of a triad of studies published in 2012 – a CIRCLE study (“That’s Not Democracy”), Giovanna Mascheroni’s study of Italian youth and political uses of the web, and a study conducted by DoSomething.org – the researcher designed a first-year composition course that asked students to choose a cause or issue for the duration of the semester and take on roles of informer, reformer, advocate, and activist on three fronts: Twitter (microblogging), Wordpress (blogging), and YouTube (digital advocacy videos). A feminist methodology was used for this study, understanding that the participatory nature of the research was an essential part of the ethos of the researcher. Qualitative data was collected through analysis of student work, reflection essays, and semi-structured focus group conversations. Through the focus group discussions, the student participants and the researcher worked collaboratively to create knowledge. The findings of this study echoed those of the three studies mentioned above. In addition to showing that instruction and experience with digital civic engagement are linked to an increased likelihood to engage in the future, the study showed that there are numerous benefits to teaching new media, civic, and academic literacies through an activist lens in writing studies. Students acquire a host of academic and professional skills that will help them succeed in the classroom and their future careers. Beyond acquisition of research and 21st century writing skills, teaching digital activism empowers students, increases agency, and helps them grasp the value of disrupting existing, outdated, or oppressive power dynamics in effective ways. Finally, it helps develop lifelong learners who are self-motivated.

This case study of the Occupy movement examines how different geographic forms of individual-level resources—local and global social capital—and communitylevel resources varying by place of residence play a key role in political activism in the digital age. To overcome the limited approach based on blind faith, in which social networking sites are unreservedly treated as sole mobilizing agents, this dissertation includes the exploration of how local and global social capital influence the way the use of social networking sites affects participation in the Occupy movement. In doing so, this dissertation goes beyond the exclusive focus on the effects of social capital formed and shared through the strength of a personal tie (i.e., strong vs. weak ties) on political participation considered in much of the current literature. Moreover, acknowledging that on-the-ground activities taking place in physical communities continue to be essential determinants of political engagement, this dissertation is intended to determine whether the communities in which individuals reside produce unique or specialized resources or environments, and how they provide different opportunities for involvement in the movement. From an online survey and in-depth interviews with participants in the U.S., this dissertation found that local and global forms of social capital had distinct effects on participation in the Occupy movement. This suggests that local social capital induced local participation, while global social capital encouraged global participation. In this vein, the use of social networking sites contributed to both local and global participation indirectly, through its effects on local and global social capital, respectively. Indeed, communities with politically liberal environments and high poverty levels were found to be favorable places for mobilizing participation. Global cities, New York City in particular, served as an optimal political space for encouraging participation in the movement because they provided diverse human resources and substantial political infrastructure. This dissertation makes an important contribution to our knowledge of political activism in the digital era. It highlights the situation that social networking sites are not sole contributors leading to political participation, and therefore, that the geographic dimension of social capital and community should also be carefully considered when examining political participation.

This case study of the Occupy movement examines how different geographic forms of individual-level resources—local and global social capital—and communitylevel resources varying by place of residence play a key role in political activism in the digital age. To overcome the limited approach based on blind faith, in which social networking sites are unreservedly treated as sole mobilizing agents, this dissertation includes the exploration of how local and global social capital influence the way the use of social networking sites affects participation in the Occupy movement. In doing so, this dissertation goes beyond the exclusive focus on the effects of social capital formed and shared through the strength of a personal tie (i.e., strong vs. weak ties) on political participation considered in much of the current literature. Moreover, acknowledging that on-the-ground activities taking place in physical communities continue to be essential determinants of political engagement, this dissertation is intended to determine whether the communities in which individuals reside produce unique or specialized resources or environments, and how they provide different opportunities for involvement in the movement. From an online survey and in-depth interviews with participants in the U.S., this dissertation found that local and global forms of social capital had distinct effects on participation in the Occupy movement. This suggests that local social capital induced local participation, while global social capital encouraged global participation. In this vein, the use of social networking sites contributed to both local and global participation indirectly, through its effects on local and global social capital, respectively. Indeed, communities with politically liberal environments and high poverty levels were found to be favorable places for mobilizing participation. Global cities, New York City in particular, served as an optimal political space for encouraging participation in the movement because they provided diverse human resources and substantial political infrastructure. This dissertation makes an important contribution to our knowledge of political activism in the digital era. It highlights the situation that social networking sites are not sole contributors leading to political participation, and therefore, that the geographic dimension of social capital and community should also be carefully considered when examining political participation.

This thesis describes a study that investigates the assumptions, rhetorical strategies, and genre characteristics demonstrated by online petitions and two websites that host them—We the People and MoveOn Petitions. Chapter One consists of a literature review of democratic and public sphere theories, as well as a description of the two websites of interest. Chapter Two investigates the impact of digital circulation on the function and form of the genre. Chapter Three describes a visual analysis of the home pages and creation templates of each site, while Chapter Four contains a critical discourse analysis of a sample of petitions. The project concludes with a chapter that outlines the findings of the study, supplemented by a discussion of the affordances and constraints of the genre. I argue that online petitions are complex digital texts that reveal varied and often complicated attitudes towards democracy, and that online petitions are their own genre due to their circulation patterns. Ultimately, this project provides insight on a form of digital public writing valuable in a variety of contexts, including first-year composition classrooms.

This dissertation addresses longstanding sociological questions about organizational democracy in the context of contemporary advances in digital technology. To date, most of the scholarship on digital activism suggests that the Internet enables social movements to be less hierarchical, more participatory, and more egalitarian. However, such claims are weakened by researchers' tendency to study only high levels of digital activism, rather than investigating digital practices across a range of organizations with differing levels of digital engagement. In contrast, I explore political, labor and social movement organizations across an entire political field. My units of analysis are the 34 groups in North Carolina active on both sides of a political issue: public employee collective bargaining rights. The organizations range from Tea Parties to rank-and-file labor unions and from conservative think tanks to progressive coalitions. I collected data on over 60,000 Tweets, Facebook posts and Web site metrics of the organizations. I then created an index to measure the extent of digital engagement of each group, and I developed a typology of online social movement activities and platforms. An analysis using this index indicates that rather than digital technologies simply shaping social movements, I find that social movement organizational differences affect Internet use. Groups that are more hierarchical, conservative, reformist and composed of middle and upper class members are much more likely to have higher digital activism levels than less hierarchical, progressive, radical and working class organizations. Using in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, and content analysis, I also uncover the mechanisms of these digital differences. First, contrary to the literature that suggests that digital activism is tied to non-hierarchical groups, I find that groups that are more hierarchical and bureaucratic have the infrastructure to develop and maintain online organizational engagement. Next, rather than the typical image of the digital activist as a left-wing radical, the highest digital activism levels are among right-wing groups because of what I call their organizing ideology: their ideas and practices of liberty and spreading the truth align with their Internet use. In turn, reformist groups embrace the Internet to reach those in power in their lobbying efforts while radical groups simply treat digital technology as one of many tools for mass organizing, resulting in lower digital activism levels. Finally, digital activism is not an egalitarian participatory space due to low costs of entry because of a social class gap, which derives from the high costs of online participation, as well as power and entitlement differences between working-class and middle-to-upper class groups. This study demonstrates that the Internet does not render obsolete sociological theories of collective action, oligarchy, and stratification. Instead, this research points to how ideology, hierarchy and inequality shape Internet use, challenging the theories of digital democracy.

Abstract: This thesis examines the role that digital technology plays in the advancement of political and social goals. Though a fairly recent phenomenon, digital activism has become a highly contested topic as regards its effectiveness. This thesis looks at two case studies in the use of digital tools for activism, the 2011 Arab Spring in Tunisia and then in Egypt. Digital activism is theorized as is related to the public sphere as discussed by Jürgen Habermas. This thesis concludes by identifying a number of existing threats to digital activism inherent in the current governance structure of the Internet.