<p> My thesis examines the socially mediated construction of reality, and how through this, laws can come to be perceived as ‘bad’. I expand upon Berger and Luckmanns (1966) Social Construction of Reality theory to illustrate this process. A qualitative research approach called ethnographic content analysis or ‘ECA’ was used to gather data from Twitter and Facebook (Altheide, 1996). With ECA I examine cultural artifacts like postings and publications on the Internet and in these social media networks. I explore how users of Twitter and Facebook construct a reality in which a law becomes bad through habitual use of social media. I illustrate the social mediated perception of ‘bad’ laws using a case study of a proposed Arizona bill called <i>The Religious Freedom Restoration Act</i>, or ‘Senate Bill 1062’ (AZ SB 1062). AZ SB 1062 would have protected a businesses right to refuse service to customers and allowed the use of a ‘sincerely held religious belief’ as a defense in court for discriminating. An analysis of social media content about this ‘bad’ law contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a broader look at power and influence in social media, how social media enables stereotypes, and the recycling of images and headlines. Social media reinforces the construction that a law is ‘bad’ based upon carefully constructed repeated headlines that serve to typify a user’s knowledge, in the form of an attention grabbing 140-character tweet.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:1594024 |
| Date | 10 September 2015 |
| Creators | Robb, Allison |
| Publisher | Northern Arizona University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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