Although internet chat is a significant aspect of many internet users’ lives, the manner in which participants in quasi-synchronous chat situations orient to issues of social and moral order remains to be studied in depth. The research presented here is therefore at the forefront of a continually developing area of study. This work contributes new insights into how members construct and make accountable the social and moral orders of an adult-oriented Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel by addressing three questions: (1) What conversational resources do participants use in addressing matters of social and moral order? (2) How are these conversational resources deployed within IRC interaction? and (3) What interactional work is locally accomplished through use of these resources? A survey of the literature reveals considerable research in the field of computer-mediated communication, exploring both asynchronous and quasi-synchronous discussion forums. The research discussed represents a range of communication interests including group and collaborative interaction, the linguistic construction of social identity, and the linguistic features of online interaction. It is suggested that the present research differs from previous studies in three ways: (1) it focuses on the interaction itself, rather than the ways in which the medium affects the interaction; (2) it offers turn-by-turn analysis of interaction in situ; and (3) it discusses membership categories only insofar as they are shown to be relevant by participants through their talk. Through consideration of the literature, the present study is firmly situated within the broader computer-mediated communication field. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were adopted as appropriate methodological approaches to explore the research focus on interaction in situ, and in particular to investigate the ways in which participants negotiate and co-construct social and moral orders in the course of their interaction. IRC logs collected from one chat room were analysed using a two-pass method, based on a modification of the approaches proposed by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) and ten Have (1999). From this detailed examination of the data corpus three interaction topics are identified by means of which participants clearly orient to issues of social and moral order: challenges to rule violations, ‘trolling’ for cybersex, and experiences regarding the 9/11 attacks. Instances of these interactional topics are subjected to fine-grained analysis, to demonstrate the ways in which participants draw upon various interactional resources in their negotiation and construction of channel social and moral orders. While these analytical topics stand alone in individual focus, together they illustrate different instances in which participants’ talk serves to negotiate social and moral orders or collaboratively construct new orders. Building on the work of Vallis (2001), Chapter 5 illustrates three ways that rule violation is initiated as a channel discussion topic: (1) through a visible violation in open channel, (2) through an official warning or sanction by a channel operator regarding the violation, and (3) through a complaint or announcement of a rule violation by a non-channel operator participant. Once the topic has been initiated, it is shown to become available as a topic for others, including the perceived violator. The fine-grained analysis of challenges to rule violations ultimately demonstrates that channel participants orient to the rules as a resource in developing categorizations of both the rule violation and violator. These categorizations are contextual in that they are locally based and understood within specific contexts and practices. Thus, it is shown that compliance with rules and an orientation to rule violations as inappropriate within the social and moral orders of the channel serves two purposes: (1) to orient the speaker as a group member, and (2) to reinforce the social and moral orders of the group. Chapter 6 explores a particular type of rule violation, solicitations for ‘cybersex’ known in IRC parlance as ‘trolling’. In responding to trolling violations participants are demonstrated to use affiliative and aggressive humour, in particular irony, sarcasm and insults. These conversational resources perform solidarity building within the group, positioning non-Troll respondents as compliant group members. This solidarity work is shown to have three outcomes: (1) consensus building, (2) collaborative construction of group membership, and (3) the continued construction and negotiation of existing social and moral orders. Chapter 7, the final data analysis chapter, offers insight into how participants, in discussing the events of 9/11 on the actual day, collaboratively constructed new social and moral orders, while orienting to issues of appropriate and reasonable emotional responses. This analysis demonstrates how participants go about ‘doing being ordinary’ (Sacks, 1992b) in formulating their ‘first thoughts’ (Jefferson, 2004). Through sharing their initial impressions of the event, participants perform support work within the interaction, in essence working to normalize both the event and their initial misinterpretation of it. Normalising as a support work mechanism is also shown in relation to participants constructing the ‘quiet’ following the event as unusual. Normalising is accomplished by reference to the indexical ‘it’ and location formulations, which participants use both to negotiate who can claim to experience the ‘unnatural quiet’ and to identify the extent of the quiet. Through their talk participants upgrade the quiet from something legitimately experienced by one person in a particular place to something that could be experienced ‘anywhere’, moving the phenomenon from local to global provenance. With its methodological design and detailed analysis and findings, this research contributes to existing knowledge in four ways. First, it shows how rules are used by participants as a resource in negotiating and constructing social and moral orders. Second, it demonstrates that irony, sarcasm and insults are three devices of humour which can be used to perform solidarity work and reinforce existing social and moral orders. Third, it demonstrates how new social and moral orders are collaboratively constructed in relation to extraordinary events, which serve to frame the event and evoke reasonable responses for participants. And last, the detailed analysis and findings further support the use of conversation analysis and membership categorization as valuable methods for approaching quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication.

Zugl.: Giessen, Univ., Diss., 2008

This thesis examines the depiction of warfare in post-9/11 ancient world epics and assesses the extent to which these films engage with contemporary events by means of allegory and analogy. Inspired by scholarship on allegorical and analogous interpretations of 1950s-60s ancient world epics, I explore how the current cycle engages with the American socio-political landscape in the wake of 9/11, with particular emphasis on the War on Terror and ensuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I chart the genre’s evolution in relation to the combat film, and examine how the current cycle of ancient world epics integrates the tropes of other genres into its portrayal of warfare, invasion, occupation and imperialism. Within this context, I explore the recurrent motif of the father-son dynamic, and assess how its use in combat films corresponds to that in ancient world epics. I also discuss how this motif was employed in 1980s Vietnam War films, and what its use in these modern epics suggests about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, I discuss the use of the unreliable narrator to engage with wider debates on the value of historical films compared to written history. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the ancient world epic is a malleable construct with which filmmakers can engage with the present while depicting the past. I build on existing studies of the ancient world in cinema, contributing new understanding of the current cycle’s relationship to its predecessors, to other genres, and to post-9/11 American society. In so doing this thesis contributes to notions of film as art, as industry, and as history, and how they intersect in cinematic depictions of the ancient world.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the use of the words terrorist and terrorismhave changed from before 9/11 until today, and how it is being used presently, and finally ifthe use of the word is different depending on the ethnicity of the person who commits the act.The data for this study was gathered through articles published in The Guardian and SVTNyheter, and also through Google Ngram corpus and academic discourse. Google Ngramviewer is an online search engine that collects data about all the printed sources searched forbetween the years of 1500 and 2008.The study adopts a comparative approach which meansthat the articles with the most similar content, and only difference of ethnicity of the attackers,are being compared. The results suggest that there has indeed been a change in the use of theterm. Terrorism is today being used more frequently and as has been shown, commonly todescribe a person of Middle Eastern origin.

År 2001, den 11e september, skakades hela världen av ett terrorattentat av en omfattning som man aldrig tidigare hade upplevt, där flygplan användes som vapen i flera välkoordinerade attacker som krävde drygt 3000 människors liv. Detta ledde till en omfattande reformation och kapprustning inom säkerhetsvärlden, speciellt avseende flygsäkerheten på flygplatser, för att garantera att en sådan attack inte skulle gå att genomföra igen. I den här uppsatsen tar vi upp frågor om flygsäkerhet, där vi med flygsäkerhet avser de metoder och tekniska lösningar som används för att skydda personal, passagerare, flygplan och själva flygplatsen mot oavsiktlig och avsiktlig skada samt brottslighet och andra hot. Framför allt fokuserar vi på flygplatssäkerhet samt på situationen i USA. Målet med flygplatssäkerheten är att skydda flygplatsen, planen, landet, anställda och allmänheten från skador, samt att bidra till den nationella säkerheten och kampen mot terrorism. I uppsatsen undersöker vi och diskuterar balansen mellan existerande risker, hot och flygsäkerhet. Vi kartlägger större flygsäkerhetsincidenter som ägt rum under senare år, utöver 9/11 attacken. Vidare undersöker vi de efterdyningar inom flygsäkerhet som skapades av 9/11 attacken. Slutligen diskuterar vi om dagens säkerhetspådrag till följd av 9/11 attacken är uttryck för hysteri eller kan ses som adekvata åtgärder, givet de hot mot flygsäkerheten som finns. Metoden utgörs av en kvalitativ litteraturstudie där vi har gått igenom styrande verk, intervjuer och undersökningar inom ämnesområdet. Resultatet av vår litteraturstudie tyder på att hotet om terrorism överdrivits. En ansenlig del av de åtgärder som sattes in efter 9/11 attacken för att förstärka flygsäkerheten skulle kunna klassificeras som "säkerhetsteater", det vill säga åtgärder som inte åstadkommer något utan är utformade för att få den ansvariga regeringen att se bra ut och att få det att se ut som om de arbetar med problemet. Däremot har den ökade medvetenheten hos allmänheten om risken för terrorattacker med dödlig utgång som 9/11 attacken resulterade i medfört att passagerare idag är beredda att göra aktivt motstånd mot kapare på ett annat sätt än tidigare. Detta är förmodligen en av de viktigaste anledningarna till att flygsäkerheten har ökat idag.

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain Veteran students’ perspectives on academic success as they enter or reenter the university setting. Recent research applied to Veteran students has focused on social integration and to a lesser extent on academic integration and student success. For this qualitative study grounded in social constructivism, the primary method of data collection was the recording, transcription, and analysis of oral interviews with 11 Veteran students. The findings were aligned to the theoretical framework which was adapted from Tinto’s Conditions for Student Success (2012). The results contribute to the current body of scholarly literature that highlights positive attributes that Veteran students possess including leadership skills, maturity, and acquired skills related to global and cultural awareness, and motivation. Other findings include the effectiveness of having specific programming efforts for Veteran students. As for research implications for practice, the results of this study suggest that Veteran students are not necessarily familiar with support services offered. They prefer face-to-face program delivery and may need assistance with meeting University requirements such as providing immunization records, establishing in-state residency, providing sufficient documentation for receiving support services, and options if benefits eligibility run out prior to graduation. Results also reaffirm that colleges and universities need to continue to develop and improve conditions that are known to promote student success for Veteran students.

In the U.S. federal system, 'crisis commissions' are powerful instruments of social learning that actively mediate the politics of disaster and reform. Typically endowed with the legal authority to establish causes of dramatic policy failures and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence, commissions can prompt major governmental reorganizations. Yet commissions are also frequently accused of being influenced by dominant interests and faulted for articulating incomplete or politically expedient narratives of failure. Even when commission conclusions are accepted, the reforms they propose are not always adopted. Using the 9/11 Commission as a conceptual backdrop, this dissertation explores the relationship between disaster, public investigation, and reform by undertaking a detailed study of the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board and Iraq Study Group. Together, the cases constitute a study of the national security state seeking to correct failures across different domains of state power: border security, war-making capability, and dominance in space. I argue that commissions, as one-shot diagnostic and therapeutic instruments, are more effective than standing political institutions at confronting entrenched ways of seeing and knowing in complex systems of the national security state, which are defined by the interaction of ideology, large bureaucracies, and advanced technologies. The ability of commissions to see critically for society itself is not given but rather constructed through investigative and deliberative processes that must overcome the action of political interests. Commission credibility is therefore not an essential trait that derives a priori from the inherent stature of its members, but is rather the output of the investigative phase as commissions identify, compile, and publicize errors made by the state. In this adversarial process, an aggressive professional staff emerges as a determinant of commission success, leading to an important distinction between investigative commissions with 'super staffs' and advisory commissions that lack them. Process tracing recommendations over a multi-year period nevertheless reveals dynamics of agency and resistance at play between commissions and the institutions they attempt to reform, highlighting the partial success commissions are likely to achieve at coercing entrenched institutions to implement their recommendations.

This dissertation focuses on the relationship between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on symbols of economic and military power in the United States and the internationalization agenda of colleges and universities. The construct, “post-9/11 syndrome,” is used metaphorically to delineate the apparent state of panic and disequilibrium that followed the incident. Three research questions were investigated, with two universities in the Miami-area of South Florida, one private and the other public, as qualitative case studies. The questions are: (a) How are international student advisors and administrators across two institutional types dealing with the “post-9/11 syndrome?” (b) What, if any, are the differences in international education after 9/11? (c) What have been the institutional priorities in relation to international education before and after 9/11? Data-gathering methods included interviews with international student/study abroad advisors and administrators with at least 8 years of experience in the international education function at their institutions, review of relevant documents, and analysis of each institution’s international student and study abroad data bases. The interviews were based on the three-part scheme developed by Schuman (1982): context of experience, details of experience and reflection on the meaning of experiences. Data collection and analysis for each institution were conducted simultaneously. Taped interviews, researcher insights, and member checks of transcripts were preserved as an audit trail to provide support for the integrity and consistency of my findings. Key findings include a progressive decline in fall to fall enrollment at the University of Miami by 13.05% in the 5 years after 9/11, and by 6.15% at FIU in the 7 post-9/11 years. In both institutions, there was an upsurge in interest in study abroad during the same period, with heavy concentration in Europe but less than 5% of enrolled students ventured abroad annually. I summarized the themes associated with the post-9/11 environment of international education as perceived by my participants at both institutions as 3Ms, 3Ts, and 1D: Menace of Anxiety and Fear; Menace of Insularity and Insecurity; Menace of Over-regulation and Bigotry; Trajectory of Opportunity; Trajectory of Contradictions; Trajectory of Illusion, Fatalism and Futility; and Dominance of Technology. Based on these findings, I recommended an integrated Internationalization At Home Plus Collaborative Outreach (IAHPCO) approach to internationalization, predicated on a post-9/11 recalibration of national security and international education as complementary rather than diametrically opposed concepts.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America, there has been a shift in the policies of many countries to combat terrorism. Terrorism has had a devastating effect on many. These include „the enjoyment of the right to life, liberty and physical integrity of victims. In addition to these individual costs, terrorism can destabilise Governments, undermine civil society, jeopardise peace and security, and threaten social and economic development.‟ All of these also had a real impact on the enjoyment of human rights. Therefore the fight to curb further terrorist attacks is paramount. States are charged with the responsibility of curbing terrorism by their citizens. But with responsibility comes obligations to the citizenry. States should therefore not engage in policies or actions that further deprive others of their enjoyment of human rights. This is well put by Hoffman when he says „history shows that when societies trade human rights for security, most often they get neither.‟ / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2010. / A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Mr. Lukas Muntingh at the Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. 2010. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The rise of terrorism and transnational organised crime (TOC) post-9/11, two previously separate phenomena, are now both a plague of the 21st century. The emergence of unconventional forms of terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State (IS) indicates new features in the crime-terror nexus. This requires rethinking of the conventional crime-terror convergence frameworks; including the crime-terror continuum (CTC) model, which is used to explain and categorise the relationships between organised crime (OC) and terrorism. The original 2003-2004 CTC model suggests that the relationship between crime and terrorism is not static but has evolved into a continuum. The CTC tracks down how the organisational dynamics and operational nature of both terrorism and OC changes over time. A single group can slide up and down between OC and terrorism, depending on the operational environment. Contemporary terrorism practices suggest that post-9/11 terrorist organisations have undergone significant transformations, and that the boundaries between organised crime and terrorism have become blurred. This brings into question the explanatory power and applicability of the conventional convergence trends, which are depicted in the 2003-2014 versions of the CTC model, to the reality of the transformation of terrorist organisations post-9/11. The conventional convergence trends revolve around ‘realities’ of relationships between OC and terrorism in the form of alliances, appropriation of tactics, integration, hybridisation, and transformation from terrorist to criminal entities or vice versa. The current realities raise several questions about the applicability of the CTC model, as an explanatory tool. Terrorist organisations can originate as criminal organisations, using ideological motives as a recruiting poster for criminal activities. This points to gaps in the relationship of contemporary terrorism and OC, which are found in the crime-terror nexus and its discourse. These gaps pave the way for rethinking and critical evaluation of the explanatory power of the CTC model in the post-9/11 period and lay the basis for the development of an alternative framework as a foundation for further research. This study aims to critically rethink the explanatory power and revisit the applicability of the CTC to changes in the relationship between crime and terrorism post-9/11. This study employs a systematic literature overview design followed by critical evaluation. It isolates key works on the crime-terror nexus and convergence phenomenon, and assesses their limitations, so as to better understand and tackle terrorism in the post-9/11 period. / Mini Dissertation (MSS)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Political Sciences / MSS / Unrestricted