On October 2nd, an online conversation was conducted by the Program of African Studies of Northwestern University between Professor Chris Abani and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.1 It was the resumption of a conversation between the two writers and scholars at the New York Public Library in November 2019. In response...
This study examines selection bias on social media during the 2019 Lebanon protests. Based on the theoretical concepts of selective avoidance and selective sharing, the survey of a nationally representative probability sample found selective avoidance to occur across all social media. Among the various protest-related activities, sharing news was the...
For decades, the theory of cultural proximity, which states that audiences prefer culturally proximal content (Straubhaar, 1991), has remained a major framework to explain audience preferences. We show how transnational media flows have challenged its contemporary applicability. To probe this, we focus on a recent, intriguing, and still understudied development:...
In periods of political unrest, media habits change significantly, allowing for new patterns of selectivity. This study's main contribution lies in its application of selective exposure theory and its comparison of people's media uses in five Global South polities that witnessed widespread protests in 2019: Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq,...
Since Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation “Plus” (REDD+) starting gaining traction in the UN climate negotiations in 2007, its architects and scholars have grappled with its community-level justice implications. On the one hand, supporters argue that REDD+ will help the environment and forest-dependent communities by generating payments for forest...
One of the most notable recent developments in survey research is the increased usage of online convenience samples
drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). While scholars have noted various social and political differences (e.g.,
age, partisanship) between MTurk and population-based samples, the breadth and depth of these variations remain unclear....
In February, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Britain would vote on the continuation of their membership within the EU. This has led to ministers quickly splitting into factions either in support or opposition to British exit from the EU, now often referred to as “Brexit”. Positions have been...
The recent military-style assault on the office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo , followed by a separate hostage standoff at a Kosher supermarket traumatized Paris and sent shock waves across Europe. The three-day terror spree in Paris ended with the deaths of 17 victims and three gunmen. The...