Online equity-based crowdfunding, also known as regulation crowdfunding, or Reg CF, is a financing process by which a large number of individuals pool resources towards the support of a project in return for a pro-rated stake or return. Still in its infancy, crowdfunding has been largely unexplored and minimally tested within the architecture realm, likely due to the high capital requirements and complex building regulations. Yet, as it expands into a viable market, equity crowdfunding may offer architects an alternative: a more democratic, open-source and participatory building process, and the ability to re-position their role as facilitators of catalytic projects. While donation and reward-based crowdfunding platforms (such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo) are used to fund smaller-scale projects, equity-based crowdfunding platforms (such as WeFunder, Small Change and SeedInvest) have been increasingly used in larger-scale real estate transactions. Currently less than 1% of all crowdfunded projects are civic design-focused. A recent study found only 3% of architecture campaigns use equity crowdfunding compared to 71% of reward-based crowdfunding and 14% of donation-based crowdfunding. Equity crowdfunding has raised the highest amount of funds per architecture campaign per crowdfunding type, upwards of $50,000 on average, and the broader US market projects exponential growth, upwards of $8 billion by 2020. Because investors are given equity incentives, they are more likely to contribute higher amounts, provided that there is a strong team and clear business plan. Architects can now test and receive feedback on public sentiment around once-unconventional ideas, and move forward on projects that might not have appealed to conventional investors. Additionally, architects can circulate their proposals with an international group of like-minded possibly-interested investors and support networks; build awareness around challenges they seek to address; showcase their expertise around project types; and improve the likelihood - through increased political and financial capital - that their ideas evolve into reality. This thesis overviews the landscape of crowdfunding in architecture, specifically equity crowdfunding; details how it might be integrated and initiated as an early-stage participatory tool by architects to generate support for their proposals; and explores the implications crowdfunding may have on the architecture process. The thesis tests such a process through a theoretical equity crowdfunding campaign - “Gowanus Crossing” in Brooklyn, NY, which proposes a 290-footlong water remediation bridge across the toxic waterways of the Gowanus Canal. The aggregated system of the bridge incrementally develops as financing becomes available and the project raises immediate public awareness around efforts to clean the water. Overall, this thesis suggests architects are ideally suited for facilitating crowdfunding campaigns. Equity crowdfunding becomes a financing process that will alter the traditional building process but may also become a tool architects could utilize to pro-actively respond amidst the challenges of climate change, political partisanship, and urban disinvestment. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the reactions to Canadian public health organizations' messaging through a social media analysis by answering the following two research questions: 1) How did different levels of government use social media communication to inform the public of COVID-19 information during the reopening phase? 2) What was the public response to the lifting of COVID-19 measures? COVID-19-related Tweets posted by Ottawa Public Health (OPH), Public Health Ontario (PHO), and Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (HC & PHAC) and their replies were collected using the Twitter API through Python. Sentiment analysis of the data was conducted using the VADER tool. This was followed by a thematic analysis of Twitter threads to identify patterns in the Tweets posted by each organization and their respective replies. Results of the VADER sentiment analysis indicate OPH Tweets were mostly positive, whereas HC & PHAC Tweets were slightly more positive than neutral. PHO Tweets were mostly neutral. Public social media replies to the selected public health organizations were also measured; replies to both OPH and HC & PHAC were more negative than positive, although replies to OPH were slightly more positive compared to replies to HC & PHAC. Thematic analysis revealed five themes regarding public health organizations' use of social media communications and eight themes relating to the public response to information posted by the selected public health organizations. The results from both sentiment and thematic analysis can help inform recommendations to enhance communication by Canadian governmental organizations, especially in public health systems, and offer recommendations for public health social media communication to inform future disaster response policies.

This study aims to investigate how municipalities respond to citizen input in consultation reports – a necessary and often mandatory documentation in the Swedish planning process. More specifically, building on the political-philosophical debate on deliberation as a democratic ideal, this study explores how local authorities' response to citizen input is structured and designed in these reports, and to what extent citizen input is recognized. By approaching a model for logics and considerations within sorting processes, I also seek to understand how local authorities motivate and explain their stances. More specifically, I examine whether considerations – made within a so called selective sorting – emphasize what ispossible, legal and/or proper to implement. The study is mainly based on a qualitative content analysis of consultation reports from three Swedish municipalities. The results of this study highlight, among other things, that the structure and design of the response from the local authorities depend on the structure and design of the input. Further, almost fifty percent of the total number of responses studied are rejected, where a vast majority of the few approvals given are weak/vague. Even though local authorities from all three municipalities motivate their stances based on what is possible, legal and proper, there are some general patterns. In total, almost half of all positions are justified on the basis of what is considered proper to implement, while approximately a fifth are justified on the basis of what is legal. Further, I have drawn attention to two more specific ways in which municipalities seem to motivate and explain their positions. These ways are defined as two categories that I have chosen to call aesthetics and external expertise.