Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The research presented in this paper draws upon components of two recent models of consumer behavior in the online environment, the Internet Consumer Trust Model (Grazioli & Jarvenpaa, 2000; Jarvenpaa & Tractinsky, 1999) and the Electronic Exchange Model (Swaminathan, Lepkowska-Whie, & Rao, 1999) to examine the effectiveness of certain trust and assurance mechanisms (i.e., privacy policies and seals), as well as vendor and consumer characteristics, on trust and disclosure of personal information to commercial Web sites. A relatively novel experimental design is used to investigate the hypotheses. Results suggest that the vendor characteristic of reputation is important in influencing e-tailer trust, and that the content of privacy assurances do not impact trust or disclosure.

Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: Bharata Natyam, a postcolonial modern Indian dance form, ingeniously masks itself as a national, classical form with an uninterrupted three thousand year-old history. It has come to represent the penultimate form of cultural nationalism for diasporic minority Indian communities, but this is particularly true in the U.S. with its contradictory logic of assimilation, exclusion, and celebration of so-called "diversity" through the discourse of multiculturalism. An ethnographic inquiry into the contemporary and prolific practice of Bharata Natyam in Southern California both solidifies its nationalist history in India as a traditional and classical form, and a multicultural practice on the margins of American dance. A critical historical analysis, however, particularly one that is grounded in political economy, interrogates the archives of American modern dance and demonstrates the complexity and entangled histories of both Indian and American dance practices.

Early Indian dancers known as "nautch" traveled to, lived, and worked in the U.S. especially between 1880 and 1907. As I suggest, Indian women dancers remain outside of the written discourse of American modern dance partly due to anti-Asian immigration policies operating in the early twentieth-century that prevented Indians from traveling and entering the U.S. By interrogating the archives of early American modern dancers such as Ruth St. Denis (credited as one of the three "foremothers" of American modern dance), it becomes apparent that Indian dancers influenced and helped jumpstart not only St.Denis's career but were seminal to the inception of American modern dance practices. Since these archival traces are extremely bare, that is, down to single sentences, a word here, or a photo there, it becomes important to rethink the archive through bodily discourse itself. Indian dancers also remain outside formal histories of American dance because of a lack of attention to corporeal practices. The difficulty in finding "third world" subjects in the imperial archive is precisely because the record is precariously thin. I suggest that if the archive is actually mined for bodily interactions, alternative histories that offer new but often contradictory insights into the present may be revealed.

What this paper ultimately argues is that it is difficult to conduct contemporary ethnographies of "minority" ethnic dance practices in the U.S. without a critical historical reading of the "fieldsite" in its many complexities. What we come to think of as "field site" is complicated when the field is one's own backyard and not a "third world" as mapped by area studies and anthropology. I ask, how does such a reading complicate American and Asian cultural forms? Finally, in framing this essay on the questions posed by third world feminist ethnographers, I ask what it means to consider the brown female dancing body at the center of American modernity in U.S. imperial archives, and not relegated to the margins. I therefore argue that we need to examine "third world" women dancers and the corporeal traces they have left at the very core of "first world" American cultural forms.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Traditional media landscapes are in flux for journalists today. Media outlets are facing major losses in advertising revenue and intense competition from online products such as citizen journalist sites. These citizen journalists aren’t always trained in the same conventions and norms as professionals but are now shaping both news and relationships in the journalistic realm. This study compares hyper-local citizen journalism sites with traditional media sites in the same geographic areas to determine how the hyper-local sites differ in terms of thematic content, objectivity and watchdog functions. The author finds that thematically, both traditional and hyper-local citizen sites have similar levels of political coverage. Also, hyper-local sites carry more opinion-oriented news than traditional sites. In addition, hyper-local sites seem to be very interested in carrying out the watchdog function of the press, especially in terms of local government, and commit few incidents of boosterism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper considers three interrelated historical factors that may have contributed to an increase in the incidence and severity of disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in recent decades in people of color and poor communities: (1) the rise of public awareness and concern about the environment; (2) the growth and expansion of the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon; and (3) the enactment of federal and state siting policies. These factors are investigated by examining temporal trends in the disproportionate siting of commercial hazardous waste facilities in Michigan. Racial, socioeconomic, and housing disparities at or near the time of siting in host neighborhoods of facilities sited from the 1950s to the 1980s are examined. The results strongly support the proposition that the sociocultural and legal contexts are important to understanding disproportionate siting in people of color and low-income communities. Facilities sited prior to 1970 show no evidence of disproportionate siting, whereas after 1970, facilities were sited in neighborhoods with disproportionately high percentages of minorities and persons of low socioeconomic status. Facilities sited before 1970 were located in economically vibrant neighborhoods with relatively good housing and employment conditions. Host neighborhoods of commercial hazardous waste facilities sited after 1970 exhibited increasingly-depressed economic and housing conditions. These historic patterns suggest that discriminatory siting is here to stay and may even worsen as long as the current sociopolitical and legal terrain exists, highlighting the significance of institutional forms of discrimination that pervade industry and governmental siting decisions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examined the motives and activities of Internet movie sites users by applying the uses-and-gratifications perspective. Four motives (convenience, socialization, entertainment/diversion, and information) and two factors (information seeking and participation) in peripheral activities besides a movie watching behavior were discovered via factor analysis. The relationship between motives and movie watching behaviors showed that in general, while ‘convenience’ motive was the strongest predictor of Internet movie watching behavior, ‘socialization’ was a stronger predictor of the frequency of the behavior.