Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyzes federal, state, and local initiatives intended to address the “digital divide” from 1995-2000, focusing on how these initiatives developed in the city of Austin, Texas. The principal goal is to see how the digital divide was defined at the local level, in contrast to local responses to national and state initiatives and funding. Several kinds of institutions are examined, schools, libraries, community technology centers, workforce training centers, community centers, and churches, as well as larger organizations, which created city-wide network support, financial support, training opportunities, Web page design support, etc. for a variety of these specific institutions.
This paper addresses the following research questions. First, what aspects of the digital divide were of concern to which local actors? Second, to whom where these issues targeted? Third, Austin seems to have developed a specific focus on social/cultural capital, combined with public access to the Internet, envisioned by several departments at University of Texas, combined with grassroots activism, and city financial support that created a very locally-specific environment to address the digital divide. How did this focus on social/cultural capital influence the current telecommunications infrastructure in Austin? The data suggests that the unique combined leadership and vision of grassroots activists, the city government and the University of Texas at Austin created an environment within which solutions to the digital divide could be realized. This research can be valuable to local leaders and policymakers who are interested in creating sustainable infrastructure to bridge the digital divide.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: During the first decade after World War II, Louis Austin, editor of Durham, North Carolina’s Carolina Times spearheaded the black freedom struggle in North Carolina. He attacked segregated higher education, weak state financing of black schools, economic injustice, police brutality, and white supremacy. Austin's activist journalism, stretching from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, demonstrates that the Civil Rights Movement began well before the 1950s. Through an analysis of Austin's editorials, his selection of articles for the paper, and his work with the NAACP, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Progressive Party, and local black activists, this paper will argue that the Carolina Times played a pivotal role in winning important victories for social and economic justice and black educational opportunity in North Carolina in the post-World War II era.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Based upon on-site field study in the southern Philippines, this report asked why bribery and extortion appears to be approaching the norm in daily, routine activities. An integrated approach considers "neutralization" "routine activities," and "chaos," along with several of Donald Black's propositions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Against an understanding of security as a synonym for everything that is potentially good or desirable Waever introduced the concept of security as speech act into the IR/security studies discourse. His notion of Securitisation refers to an actor's practice of successfully naming a certain development, i.e. a referent object, a security problem in order to legitimise the use of extraordinary measures to solve it. Hitherto, Waever's concept appears underspecified concerning a speech act's conditions of success (or felicity, in Austin's words), stating merely that any securitising move has to gain recognition by an audience. This leads to a somewhat circular reasoning that the conditions of success are met when a securitising speech act has success. But what kinds of speech acts gain recognition and which do not? For what reasons?This is where the proposed paper takes off. In a first step, it is to be established whether theories of reception, as they are used by communication theorists, help to specify the conditions necessary for a successful speech act. Building thereupon we will then apply our theoretical findings to an empirical test case (to be selected) of an obviously successful securitisation act. Overall, the paper aims at both establishing missing links between the securitisation approach and communication studies and at elucidating the potential contributions of communication studies to an elaborated framework of Securitisation.

Publication Type: Panelist Abstract
Abstract: Curtis Austin, Ph.D.
The focus of my presentation will center on my personal experiences as founding director of the Center for Black Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, a traditionally white university of 15,000 students, of which one-third is African American. It will highlight both the challenges and opportunities faced since the center’s birth in June 2007. This center is unique as it is the first of its kind in the state and has developed the capacity to serve both the campus and community with very few resources. Our mission has been to promote research related to the history and culture of African Americans and the Diaspora and to facilitate connections between the University and the various social, political, and economic entities that address Black experiences. In the process, our work has spawned a new student group, the Black Studies Student Alliance, produces a weekly radio show called “Talk of the Town,” created a minor in Black Studies, and has engaged in a variety of community service and outreach endeavors including the sponsorship of an after school and summer camp program for youth and the opening of a Technology Center that doubles as a community center where free public lectures, mentoring, homework assistance, and the teaching of basic computer skills and GED prep work takes place. I will note the process by which we went about constructing a broad based advisory board that consists of students, faculty, staff, local politicians, business people and community members at large. All these points will be supplemented with a discussion about how we have learned from the experiences of similar programs, what our current challenges are, and how best to ensure longevity and high productivity in the coming years. I will close by noting how our serving the campus and community by recruiting and retaining faculty and students in the area of Black Studies will help the university endure the changes associated with globalization and all the opportunities and challenges that come with such a phenomenon