Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study begins with the investigation of whether two related events, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the passage of the PATRIOT Act following the attacks, trigger an increase in the number of articles that have their main focus as the privacy rights and surveillance of individuals. Moreover, this paper explores how these two trigger events would influence the ways in which mainstream newspapers identify the constituencies that are undertaking surveillance and/or intruding privacy.

Informed by the research on framing analysis, this study also investigates newspaper ideology as a possible factor that influences how the trigger events lead to a change in the actors that are identified by newspaper articles as undertaking surveillance and/or intruding privacy. The trigger events and a newspapers’ endorsement of George W. Bush in 2000 elections were significant predictors of the change in the tendency of the newspapers to identify government institutions as undertaking surveillance. The trigger events were also found to have led to a decrease in the tendency of the newspapers to focus on private institutions as invading privacy and/or undertaking surveillance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper presents the findings of a national study of the impacts of government surveillance on constitutionally-protected political organizing. The study is based on in-depth interviews with activists and groups involved in a range of progressive political work in the last 8 years in 5 regions of the country. Interviews documented their experiences and perceptions of surveillance and the impacts of surveillance on individuals, groups, communities, and movements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This article introduces the Panopticon conceptual model as an inherent feature of Internet structures and demonstrates the potential for this model to be used as a structural template to control and monitor the flow of information on the Internet. Additionally, recent changes in United States legislation, specifically the Patriot Act, support the ability of the Panoptic model to develop into the main structure for the control and monitoring of information and interactions on the Internet. The increase in governmental power over United States citizens is justified with the ideology that the government needs these powers so they can protect citizens from terrorists. Corporate entities like the RIAA argue they must protect their artists from copyright infringement. In order for the RIAA to protect their interests, the RIAA believes they need the ability to monitor Internet traffic in order to catch pirates. Overall, it is extremely important to monitor such governmental and corporate intrusions on citizen privacy rights.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper reports on an experiment designed to assess viewer responses to the nonverbal behavior of the president in the context of compelling news events. Subjects were shown a series of four news story-presidential reaction audio-visual sequences that varied by story topic, level of emotion, and degree of appropriateness. Cognitive, emotional, and physiological measures were used to assess subject responses to news story-presidential reaction message sequences, including heart rate, skin conductance, the Self-Assessment Manikin affect scale, recognition memory, and facial EMG (electromyography) indexing smile and frowning muscle activation. Results indicate that evaluations of the display’s appropriateness seems to moderate how much attention is given to the display, the affective direction of viewers’ facial muscle activation, and the level of autonomic activation, or arousal. The EMG data showed that viewers frowned in response to positive expressive displays that followed intense or positive news. Smiling activation correspondingly decreased for positive displays that followed intense news. These counterempathic results shed new light on the capacity of leader displays to influence viewers of political news. While much EMG and physiological research has focused on emotional congruent processes, e.g. positive reactions in response to positive facial displays, this study demonstrates the effects of incongruency in political display behavior. A political leader’s smile is no guarantee of a positive evaluation. If deemed inappropriate to the news context, negative consequences arise from what is viewed as a clear violation of nonverbal expectations. Recognition memory for verbal information in the news narrative also suffers such that encoding of factual knowledge is impaired. It is argued that leader displays that violate viewer expectations remain a likely source of voter doubt.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research considers the myths of empowerment through interactivity and the use of online communication technologies to serve commercial ends as opposed to communicative needs. It explores, through textual analysis, "community" sections on retail-oriented web sites as a manifestation of the notion that interactivity can encourage communal interaction among consumers and promulgate good will for the retailer. Building on Habermas's theories on commodification of fundamental social institutions, this work posits that these retail communities use the rhetoric of community to entice new consumers and fulfill business goals; they are commodified versions of community which exist solely to sell. This work also uses Foucault's theories on technology as devices of social control to examine the possibility that these communities are used as surveillance mechanisms for the purposes of data mining. Discussion 1- examines how users are sold the idea of community through interactivity while data about them are mined for commercial profit, and 2- problematizes the collection of consumer information.