Anthropologists have frequently used music in general and popular music in particular as a means to gain a perspective into everyday realities of young Africans lives. Attempting to place myself amongst this range of researchers, I use the position of Rwandan hip-hop as a point of departure to examine how young men in Kigali relate to and shape their realities in terms of politics, freedom of expression, and the creation of space and opportunities in the Rwandan society. My study is based on two and a half months of fieldwork in Kigali during the period between August and October of 2013. The empirical material upon which my arguments rely consists of interviews with young hip-hop Rwandans located in Kigali, who were almost exclusively male. It is also drawn from classical anthropological methods of participant observations and daily partaking in the lives of my informants. My analytical understanding of this material is mainly based upon notions of agency and structure, and contextualized within contemporary Africanist scholars’ research on modern music and youth. By looking at the historical context of Rwanda, the current state of youth in Kigali, and the contemporary atmosphere of politics and hip-hop music, I seek to understand the contradictive role of music as an arena for youth to express themselves. Through the stories of young hip-hop men, I describe and communicate their perceptions of constrains related to historical and socio-political sensitivities, feelings of fear connected to outspokenness, and alternative means to voice their opinions. I illustrate how these young men use innovative strategies and metaphorical language as a way to negotiate with some of these constrains as well as to influence each other and embody senses of oppositional opinions and collective empowerment. I also examine how national politics and governmental initiatives have increasingly become intertwined with the music and how it is trying to take advantage of its attractiveness as a youth medium. Ultimately, I discuss how the impact of Rwandan hip-hop can be seen as double-ended, serving the interests of both governmental policies and the youth who in different ways are trying to liberate themselves from political constrains, and how this affect the empowering potential of the music.

Engaging in productive political discussion has long been a valued aspect of American democratic life. Due to ease of access and the potential for exposure to diverse views, the Internet and social media may support mediated political talk. Literature on the concept of face and politeness theory provides a framework for understanding interpersonal interactions, both online and offline. To understand if social media has the potential to host political discussion among millennials, a survey (N = 352) of undergraduate students examined social media use and political interaction experiences. Facebook was the most popular platform for exposure to others' political opinions and political self-expression. Facebook users with more diverse networks engaged in more political expression. Across numerous platforms, participants reported frequently being exposed to others' political opinions but infrequently sharing their own views. Negative and positive political interactions on Facebook and Twitter were explored for their threat to and support of negative face (need for autonomy) and positive face (need for validation). Findings indicate that engaging in negative interactions leads to more face threat while observing negative interactions solicits more face support. Engaging in positive interactions results in more face support and observing positive interactions leads to more face threat. Across interaction type and platform, participants who actively engaged in political interactions as opposed to merely observing them reported significantly more subsequent online political engagement. Future research on political interactions across various social media platforms and the application of interpersonal communication theory to the study of mediated political talk is warranted. / Master of Arts

Submitted by PEDRO LUIS BUENO BERTI null (p_berti@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-12T16:49:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação final.pdf: 3486193 bytes, checksum: 51d73640dc4cfc182bbdfa9c7a86778a (MD5) / Submitted by PEDRO LUIS BUENO BERTI null (p_berti@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-14T11:25:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação final.pdf: 3486193 bytes, checksum: 51d73640dc4cfc182bbdfa9c7a86778a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Minervina Teixeira Lopes null (vina_lopes@bauru.unesp.br) on 2017-12-14T13:31:54Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 berti_plb_me_bauru.pdf: 3486203 bytes, checksum: 72c4491d85beebe056472feffef50669 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-14T13:31:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 berti_plb_me_bauru.pdf: 3486203 bytes, checksum: 72c4491d85beebe056472feffef50669 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-10-30 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / À medida que a internet pode contribuir para revigorar a democracia, a projeção de opiniões e a circulação de ideias sobre gestão pública, portais web que exploram as potencialidades da conversação online têm sido objetos apropriados de pesquisas que buscam conhecer as características da deliberação pública online. Esta dissertação investigou a conversação online em duas iniciativas similares, em países diferentes: VotenaWeb (Brasil) e ISideWith (Estados Unidos), que permitem a expressão de preferências sobre projetos de lei em apreciação no Parlamento. Os dados foram analisados em seis categorias de compreensão: “‘justificação’”, “reciprocidade”, “reflexividade”, “respeito”, “informação” e “tópico”. Os objetivos específicos foram: a) identificar as características da conversação virtual e indicar possíveis condições favoráveis à deliberação; b) fornecer um quadro geral sobre as características da utilização dos dois portais como plataforma para expressão política; c) apontar as possíveis diferenças na exposição de argumentos e uso de fontes de informação pelos usuários. Do portal VotenaWeb foram coletados e analisados, no total, 26.664 comentários, e do portal ISideWith, 3.528 comentários. Os resultados apresentaram diferenças significativas no uso de fontes de informação e no ambiente deliberativo construído pelos usuários. / As far as the internet can contribute to reinvigorate the democracy, the projection of opinions and the circulation of ideas about public administration, web portals that explore potentialities of online conversation have been appropriate subjects of research seeking to understand characteristics of public online deliberation. This dissertation investigated two similar initiatives in different countries: VotenaWeb (Brazil) and ISideWith (United States), which allow expression of preferences concerning bills on appreciation at parliaments. The data were analysed in six categories of comprehension, each one admitting possibilities of classification: “justification”, “reciprocity”, “reflexivity”, “respect”, “information” and “topic”. The specific aims were: a) to identify the virtual conversation characteristics and indicate possible conditions favorable to deliberation present in the each analyzed portal, according to the specialized literature; b) to provide a general framework on the use of the characteristics of the two portals as a platform for political expression; c) to point out possible differences in the expression of opinions and in the use of sources of information by citizens of each country. From VotenaWeb portal 26.664 comments were collected and analysed, and from ISideWith portal 3.528 comments were collected and analysed. The results presented significative differences in the use of sources of information and in the deliberative environment created by users. / 2015/23669-9

This thesis proposes a critical exchange between architecture and graffiti. Graffiti in Athens plays a key role in the expression of Greek tensions making this city an ideal place for developing such an exchange. The author acts in a three-fold manner in this research: as architectural designer, one with an impulse to survey by drawing and capable of grasping the matrix of the surfaces upon which graffiti finds an expression; as graffiti writer, somebody with some practical experience as graffitist hence partially equipped to decode the graffiti matrix placed on any given architectural matrix; and as writer on graffiti, who is interested in bringing together and working between the architectural and graffiti matrices to reveal their convergences, deviations and interdependences, and, in so doing, expose the hidden spatiality of graffiti writing. Stemming from this peculiar triple positioning, this book promotes a new situating of Athenian inscriptions. The thesis is presented as an Atlas of Athenian Inscriptions, a book of drawings of writings and writings on drawings. The Atlas offers, in both drawn and written form, a close study of four situations in which graffiti has been recorded. The thesis regards a recent significant graffiti Exhibition – in which the author is actively implicated by being invited into it as a graffiti writer and writer on graffiti – as a starting point, as its situation zero. By de-situating graffiti from its original urban and political context whilst placing it onto the gallery surfaces, this thesis argues that the Exhibition undermines graffiti’s critical potency and has transformed graffiti into an aesthetic object. However, perhaps paradoxically, presenting graffiti as an empty gesture, the Exhibition nonetheless raises questions concerning the situating role of graffiti. By including it in the Atlas together with the following more overt surface ruptures in political edifices, the Exhibition is framed as an equally political situation. The other three situations, all in Athens’ city centre, reflect three important periods in local political history and are emblematic in that they are the epicentres of historical ruptures during which they are extensively graffitied: the former Nazi Detention Centre which operates during the Axis occupation (1941-1944); the Athens Polytechnic that plays a pivotal role in the student uprising against the Greek Military Junta (1967-1974); and the Bank of Greece HQ building which is a site of recurring political expression in contemporary crisis (2010-2015). The Atlas indexes graffiti and related information from the city of Athens, the systematic organisation of which creates different graffiti-related matrices allowing us to make sense of, navigate in and reconstruct the Athenian graffiti landscape through characteristic surface environments. By placing different political situations in the same set with the Exhibition, the thesis aims to give critical voice to how graffiti is perceived. By resituating (graffiti) images, the Atlas restores broken and creates new links between them and their surfaces whilst revealing not only the spatiality of graffiti in Athens but also the spatiality of architecture of Athens as a recurring tension between the matrices of dissensus and consensus. The thesis deconstructs the mythology that architecture represents consensus and graffiti dissensus, since each is embedded in the other. Ultimately, by carefully considering graffiti’s situating character and graphic articulation, this research promotes rupture to the smoothing of its political asperity attempted by architecture, institutions and those writing on graffiti that seek to restrain it.

Expanding on prior research into the state level causes of terrorism, I argue that state repression and limited state capacity reduces opportunities for non-violent political expression and increases the utility of terrorism. I also argue that economic freedom can is a form of political expression that can dissipate political grievances. While previous authors analyzed some of these variables separately using data on transnational attacks, I created a complete model incorporating the three categories of variables and tested my hypotheses using data that includes both domestic and transnational attacks. I use regression analysis for hypothesis testing and find support for the three primary contentions of this thesis and conclude that limits on political expression increase the likelihood nations will experienced increased levels of terrorism.

De nombreux domaines ont intérêt à étudier les points de vue exprimés en ligne, que ce soit à des fins de marketing, de cybersécurité ou de recherche avec l'essor des humanités numériques. Nous proposons dans ce manuscrit deux contributions au domaine de la fouille de points de vue, axées sur la difficulté à obtenir des données annotées de qualité sur les médias sociaux. Notre première contribution est un jeu de données volumineux et complexe de 22853 profils Twitter actifs durant la campagne présidentielle française de 2017. C'est l'un des rares jeux de données considérant plus de deux points de vue et, à notre connaissance, le premier avec un grand nombre de profils et le premier proposant des communautés politiques recouvrantes. Ce jeu de données peut être utilisé tel quel pour étudier les mécanismes de campagne sur Twitter ou pour évaluer des modèles de détection de points de vue ou des outils d'analyse de réseaux. Nous proposons ensuite deux modèles génériques semi-supervisés de détection de points de vue, utilisant une poignée de profils-graines, pour lesquels nous connaissons le point de vue, afin de catégoriser le reste des profils en exploitant différentes proximités inter-profils. En effet, les modèles actuels sont généralement fondés sur les spécificités de certaines plateformes sociales, ce qui ne permet pas l'intégration de la multitude de signaux disponibles. En construisant des proximités à partir de différents types d'éléments disponibles sur les médias sociaux, nous pouvons détecter des profils suffisamment proches pour supposer qu'ils partagent une position similaire sur un sujet donné, quelle que soit la plateforme. Notre premier modèle est un modèle ensembliste séquentiel propageant les points de vue grâce à un graphe multicouche représentant les proximités entre les profils. En utilisant des jeux de données provenant de deux plateformes, nous montrons qu'en combinant plusieurs types de proximité, nous pouvons correctement étiqueter 98% des profils. Notre deuxième modèle nous permet d'observer l'évolution des points de vue des profils pendant un événement, avec seulement un profil-graine par point de vue. Ce modèle confirme qu'une grande majorité de profils ne changent pas de position sur les médias sociaux, ou n'expriment pas leur revirement. / Numerous domains have interests in studying the viewpoints expressed online, be it for marketing, cybersecurity, or research purposes with the rise of computational social sciences. We propose in this manuscript two contributions to the field of stance detection, focused around the difficulty of obtaining annotated data of quality on social medias. Our first contribution is a large and complex dataset of 22853 Twitter profiles active during the French presidential campaign of 2017. This is one of the rare datasets that considers a non-binary stance classification and, to our knowledge, the first one with a large number of profiles, and the first one proposing overlapping political communities. This dataset can be used as-is to study the campaign mechanisms on Twitter, or used to test stance detection models or network analysis tools. We then propose two semi-supervised generic stance detection models using a handful of seed profiles for which we know the stance to classify the rest of the profiles by exploiting various proximities. Indeed, current stance detection models are usually grounded on the specificities of some social platforms, which is unfortunate since it does not allow the integration of the multitude of available signals. By infering proximities from differents types of elements available on social medias, we can detect profiles close enough to assume they share a similar stance on a given subject. Our first model is a sequential ensemble algorithm which propagates stances thanks to a multi-layer graph representing proximities between profiles. Using datasets from two platforms, we show that, by combining several types of proximities, we can achieve excellent results. Our second model allows us to observe the evolution of profiles' stances during an event with as little as one seed profile by stance. This model confirms that a large majority of profiles do not change their stance on social medias, or do not express their change of heart.

By “taking a knee” during the performance of the U.S. national anthem, National Football League (NFL) players have been protesting “the oppression of people of colour and ongoing issues with police brutality” in America (Colin Kaepernick, the movement’s founder, quoted in Coombs et. al., 2017). Despite this clarity of intention, the meaning of these protests (whether they are necessary and patriotic or counterproductive and ‘un-American’, for example) has been hotly contested in the public sphere, indicating the presence of a deeply seated counter-hegemonic struggle that is both expressed and contributed to by the anthem protest discourse. This project explores this struggle through the lens of narrative assembly, or the individual and intertextual construction of meaning through the selection and arrangement of narrative objects. Special attention is paid to the treatment of social, symbolic, and normative boundaries by storytellers responding to the anthem protest and by the anthem protesters themselves, especially those related to political expression in professional sports, American national and racial identity, and racial exclusion and marginalization. The project utilizes a structural approach to narrative analysis called the Qualitative Narrative Policy Framework (QNPF) supplemented by insights from Arthur Frank’s (2010) method of Dialogical Narrative Analysis (DNA). These methods are applied in a sociological study of a segment of the NFL anthem protest discourse published in newspaper articles during the first 16 months following the start of the controversy. This sample captures narrative responses to three significant moments—Kaepernick’s initiation of the protest, U.S. president Donald Trump’s verbal attack on protesting players in speeches and over social media (which also resulted in mass-displays of unified resistance from NFL players), and Kaepernick’s failure to obtain an NFL contract the year following his protest. Findings indicate that by transgressing several normative boundaries related to work, sports, protest, and signalling patriotism, NFL anthem protest subverts a hegemonic tale of national unity and exposes the systemic discrimination and symbolic/social exclusion that continue to produce experiences of oppression for people of colour and others in the United States. By attending to their assembly of settings, characters, plotlines, memories, solutions, and moral lessons, authors that support the protests are shown forming an intertextual or collective narrative around a central demand for justice that challenges the American status quo and projects a preferred future of enhanced racial equality yet to be achieved by the nation. Alternately, authors who oppose the protests are observed assembling a collective narrative around a demand for respect that defends boundaries essential to the maintenance of the status quo and expresses a desire to return to a past America of uninterrupted white dominance. In addition to providing a detailed case study that focuses on processes of narrative assembly in relation to counter-hegemony and social, symbolic, and normative boundaries, the project serves as an example of how the emergent methodology of the QNPF can be applied to the study of dynamic instances of everyday cultural-political struggle that may fall outside the sphere of policy research in which it has typically been employed. / Graduate / 2021-01-06

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This thesis explores the role of rap music as a platform for articulating anti-government discourse in Turkey between 2014 and 2019. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine two specific rap songs from the period – Rant Hilafeti (The Caliphate of Profit) by Ozbi and #SUSAMAM (#ICANNOTBESILENT) by Şanışer and eighteen other artists –, the study delves into how the various commodities forming rap music – lyrics, visuals, and musical sounds – collaborate to construct and convey this counter-hegemonic narrative. The thesis posits that rap music gained prominence during this period as a powerful tool for dissent, owing to its ability to resonate with marginalised groups and challenge the dominant narratives propagated by the government. Leveraging CDA and MCDA methodologies, the analysis exposes how the songs utilise linguistic, musical, and visual strategies to critique government policies, challenge authority figures, and galvanise resistance among listeners. The findings underscore the significance of rap music as a form of political expression and its influence on public discourse. The analysis highlights rap's capacity to bridge individual experiences with broader societal issues, fostering a sense of collective identity and resistance among marginalised communities. By examining the specific case of rap music, the thesis contributes to a broader understanding of the nexus between music and social movements in the Turkish contemporary political landscapes.

This research is an enquiry to find an electoral formula that conforms to Canadian constitutional values. Three core values that are pertinent to the issue of electoral systems are identified: democracy, diversity, and efficiency. Each of these core values is divided into different aspects. These aspects will form the backbone of the evaluation of different electoral systems in this work. I will begin with an evaluation of the plurality model of elections, which is currently used in Canada. I will demonstrate that many of the attributes of the current system are not in tune with Canadian constitutional values, in particular with the progressive interpretation that the Supreme Court of Canada has given to the right to vote as enshrined in Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although the interpretation of the right to vote will be the main thrust of the constitutional scrutiny in this work, attention will also be given to other pertinent rights such as equality rights, minority rights, and the freedom of expression. Next, I will examine provincial electoral reform initiatives that were initiated in five Canadian provinces. All of these initiatives - three of which were put to referenda and eventually defeated - proposed adopting a variant of proportional representation. Accordingly, I will evaluate proportional systems according to the intended values. I will conclude that these systems have problems of their own and they also cannot strike a fine balance between competing values. In the final stage, I will make a new proposal for elections to the Canadian Parliament. First, I will demonstrate that majority systems are better candidates to attain the envisioned values. Then I will introduce a new variant of the majority model, which I call a majority-preferential two-round variant. I will demonstrate that this new variant will outperform the other variants in the attainment of values if adopted for elections to the House of Commons. Finally, I will argue that the combination of a House of Commons elected through the majority-preferential formula and a proportionally elected Senate will result in a more balanced approach to the relevant constitutional values.