Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2019, Journalism (Communication)

In the German federal election 2017, the party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) enters the Bundestag as the first right-wing populistic party after Nazi Germany. Combined with the fact that there is research gap on post-election coverage, this poses several questions. Which frames do German print media use to present the AfD election result, which dif-ferences are there between the newspapers and how does the framing develop over time? How negative is the party's portrayal? To answer these research questions, a quantitative content analysis is used to analyze articles focusing mainly on the AfD's result in the week after the election in six German newspapers. A descriptive analysis of frame elements identifies five frames. The ratio of the frames among the papers is almost the same, with the conflict frame being used the most. There is a significant difference between the papers regarding their implicit negativity about the AfD and their election result and a focus on issue framing. Apart from that, differences in the news coverage over the AfD between the papers are small. This study offers a first contribution to the research gap on post-election coverage.

Committee: Alexander Hagen Godulla (Committee Chair); Bernhard Debatin (Committee Member); Christian Pieter Hoffman (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Political Science

Elections, and the winner-take-all competition between partisan group it represents, is often captured by common metaphors about politics being similar to a sports competition. In a three article dissertation, I examine how a focus on closeness of political partisan competition affects people's people degree of affective polarization, their tolerance of election cheating, and how it does not affect political engagement. Article 1: In recent political history, most elections have become increasingly non-competitive. Yet even though most elections are non-competitive, the Americans have become increasingly polarized and have even grown to hate or loath their opposing partisan group. If there is so little struggle over partisan control of the U.S. government, then why are Americans so entrenched against their partisan out-group? Using a survey of Americans' perceptions of election competitiveness, I explore what drives people's perceptions of competition and how it influences attitudes. I find people are biased towards perceiving elections as competitive and partisans are bias in vote-share perceptions. Greater perceptions of national partisan competition, but not other levels of office, is a predictor of higher levels of affective polarization. Real levels of partisan competition also affect people's level of affective polarization but in more nuanced ways. Given these findings, I discuss insight on effective methods for reducing partisan competition and thus affective polarization. Article 2: American government supports that highly competitive practices like elections are the best way to represent the will of voters. However, in an era of high partisan animus, it is worth examining the negative effects that this focus has on people's attitudes. Using an original survey experiment, I investigate the effects of salient partisan competition on people's tolerance of election cheating. I find that greater salience of partisan competition increases participants' tol (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Nelson (Committee Chair); Gregory Calderia (Committee Member); Thomas Wood (Committee Member); Thomas Nelson (Advisor) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Political Science; Psychology

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2022, International and Comparative Politics

A great deal of research focuses on the question of why incumbents invite IEOs but do not explicitly explored the root cause of why cheating in elections occurs despite the presence of IEOs. The occurrence when incumbents in young democracies invite international election observers (IEOs) and nevertheless cheat in elections has not been fully explored. This research advances the following expectation: incumbents seeking international benefits and whose electoral institutions are not fully mature are more likely to invite IEOs and cheat in an election. This is due to the ability of the incumbents who are seeking for the reelection to change electoral rules so as to be reelected, be able to influence the national electoral board to act in a partisan way, ability to manipulate voter registration , and lastly, the ability of the incumbents to maneuver with the IEOs activities .The findings of this research has open a door for researchers to look at the problem of election manipulation from a different angle. Furthermore, it will help IEOs and NGOs trying to promote democracy have a better understanding of the context in young-democracies.

Committee: Carlos Costa Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vaughn Shannon Ph.D. (Committee Member); December Green Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, History

The Great Depression and New Deal had a profound impact on the United States. It led to the need for fundamental changes in the nation, especially regarding the federal government's role and size. The beginning of the Great Depression marked the end of the “New Era” that the United States had experienced in the 1920s. However, one group of Americans—farmers—did not participate in this “New Era,” including those in three Northwestern Ohio counties: Hancock, Seneca, and Wood. This study analyzes through voting and media analysis how these three counties reacted to the Great Depression and the New Deal from 1929 to 1936. As the Depression continued to worsen, their suffering continued and even worsened, and with Herbert Hoover's inability to provide relief or a path to recovery, these counties and the rest of the nation turned to Franklin Roosevelt and his promise of a “new deal” to provide that relief. Within these counties, the New Deal was initially seen as successful; however, it was soon seen as having a corrosive effect on traditional American values. Because of this, these counties rejected Roosevelt and the New Deal in 1936, while the rest of the nation overwhelmingly supported him. While there has been historical scholarship published on rural farming in the Midwest during the Great Depression, there has been little analysis of Northwest Ohio and especially these three counties. There has also been little historical scholarship published on the New Deal's impact on a more local level. I argue that Hancock, Seneca, and Wood counties' citizens saw traditional American values as the best solutions to economic problems. If federal relief was deemed necessary, it should only provide enough to allow those values to resume their effectiveness.

Committee: Rebecca Mancuso Dr. (Advisor); Michael Brooks Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, History

The Army of the Potomac remains the most meticulously-studied field force of the American Civil War, yet remarkably little work has sought to connect the army's familiar narrative with wider scholarly debates about Union soldier ideology and northern political culture. This dissertation examines the process by which citizen-soldiers gained awareness of the key partisan issues of the day while serving at the front. In particular, it argues active Republican junior officers worked vigorously with party officials and newspaper editors to fight political opponents in their own units and undermine conservative Democratic generals at corps and army headquarters. In doing so, these Republican (or “radical”) officers educated politically-naive enlisted men on the tenets of “hard war” policy, radicalizing the army and priming the ranks to vote for Lincoln over former general George B. McClellan in 1864. The most potent cultural value in the army was loyalty, and Republicans and Democrats disagreed sharply over how to define it for the men under their command. Republicans emphasized obedience to the sitting administration as a wartime imperative, meaning truly loyal soldiers would proclaim fealty to Lincoln's policies in the face of opposition from Confederates and northern anti-war Democrats. The army's Democrats, in contrast, defined loyalty as obedience to a strict conservative conception of the Constitution, one which restrained the administration and left antebellum institutions largely untouched. Loyalty, in other words, was to “the Constitution as it is; the Union as it was.” The Republican view of loyalty resonated more readily with the average men of the Army of the Potomac who were enduring hardship and witnessing the realities of wartime Virginia. The failures of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign drained many soldiers of the initial rage militaire which had excited them to enlist, and they implicitly placed trust in commanding general McClellan as their bes (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Mark Grimsley (Advisor); John Brooke (Committee Member); Paula Baker (Committee Member); Allen Guelzo (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Armed Forces; History; Military History; Military Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2012, International and Comparative Politics

Since joining the ‘third wave' of democracy in the 1990s, African countries have focused on elections. Some leaders conduct elections to legitimize their authoritarian rule. Many of Africa's transitional democracies are associated with flawed elections and violent conflicts. The literature on electoral conflict places little emphasis on election governance. It is my assumption that the high rate of non-credible elections in Africa can be associated with election management that has exacerbated societal cleavages. Is an effective and independent election management body a necessary prerequisite for election results to be credible? Are credible elections correlated with lower levels of conflicts? Kenya and Ghana, with their parallel experience with electoral conflicts, are compared to determine if the level of effectiveness of an electoral commission is strongly correlated with the conduct of credible elections and consequently a reduced propensity for election-related conflicts.

Committee: December Green PhD (Committee Chair); Laura Luhrmann PhD (Committee Member); Liam Anderson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Peace Studies; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Political Science

Expectations are an important part of our understanding of presidential primaries. Whether we look at expectations in terms of how they drive momentum for some candidates, or as a component of expected utility in the individual decisions of primary voters, the chances of a candidate winning either the party nomination (viability) or the general election (electability) are key variables in understanding their success. Viability and electability are influenced over a long period of time leading up to the primaries, and continue to develop throughout the primary season. By adopting a theory of rational expectations, I look at how expectations change in reaction to information that is made available to voters. Using expectations data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Study along with data on media coverage and campaign finance in the 2000 presidential nomination process, I show that expectations about the candidates' chances change in response to changes in the information provided by the candidates and the media. In contests involving well-known candidates, voters act rationally by using this outside information to inform their expectations of the candidates' chances of winning. In contests involving only lesser-known candidates, voters do not act rationally, and only base their expectations on past values of their expectations for these candidates. This dissertation provides new insights into how expectations change over the course of a primary campaign, and gives a better understanding of these important variables.

Committee: Herbert Weisberg (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science, General

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2012, Journalism (Communication)

This paper interrogates the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision from the perspective of J¿¿¿¿rgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms. It takes a legal-historical look at U.S. policy impetus toward legitimation procedures up to the Warren Court, and normatively reconstructs the U.S. constitutional right to participate in politics. Using a close reading of judicial literature defending the old status quo of campaign finance law against Citizens United's lawsuit, the paper examines market colonization of a discussion space that, according to Habermas, ought to be set aside for non-coerced political discussions. The paper argues that because rights derive from the natural human capacity for language and reason, any right to political participation should be able to protect public political discourse from the colonizing components of non-human market systems, namely corporations. The thesis further argues that public political discourse is important because elections are important, and that critical responses to Citizens United should be situated within movements for election reform and media reform more than campaign finance reform alone.

Committee: Bernhard Debatin (Committee Chair); Aimee Edmondson (Committee Member); Hans Meyer (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Communication; Economic History; Economic Theory; Economics; Ethics; Journalism; Labor Relations; Law; Legal Studies; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Public Policy; Sociology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1918, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Political Science

This dissertation seeks to answer the main research question: Why do some countries adopt e-voting in their national elections while other countries do not? This dissertation shows that although voter turnout and election fraud do not influence e-voting adoption, e-voting adoption can increase voter turnout and decrease election fraud. In addition, it is effective in combating some political problems even if those problems are not the main reason for reforming the elections. The main argument above is supported by my three empirical chapters. The first empirical chapter focuses on answering the question: Do voter turnout and election fraud affect e-voting adoption? By employing survival analysis, I found that, unlike the common belief and understanding, voter turnout and election fraud do not affect e-voting adoption. In addition, the second empirical chapter intends to reexamine the effects of e-voting adoption on voter turnout and election fraud. Using statistical techniques such as pretest and posttest design, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, and a difference-in-differences (DID) of four pairs of countries, this study reveals that while in individual cases e-voting adoption increased voter turnout or decreased election fraud, in the larger population of countries, the effects of e-voting adoption on voter turnout were different from its effects on election fraud. Specifically, this chapter argues that while the effects of e-voting adoption on voter turnout can be significantly observed among all countries in my sample, the effects of e-voting adoption on election fraud were not significant in the adopter countries and between the adopter and the non-adopter countries. Moreover, the third empirical chapter focuses on Indonesians' support of the adoption of e-voting in their country's future elections and Filipinos' support of the current e-voting system in the country. Primarily, this chapter aims to answer the question: What are the factors tha (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ryan Claassen (Committee Chair); Kathleen Hale (Committee Member); Daniel Chand (Committee Member); Michael Ensley (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1966, Communication Studies

Committee: Lois Cheney (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1956, History

Committee: R. Stanley McCordock (Advisor) Subjects: History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1956, History

Committee: R. Stanley McCordock (Advisor) Subjects: History

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2022, Political Science

The body politic is an important yet ambiguous structure in all of our lives. Some of us may not be aware of this force that we interact with every day, but that does not change that this is the reality that we all live in. Politics, the decisions within it and its following consequences, public policy, have a fundamental impact on how we operate on a day-to-day basis. It is in the houses in which we reside, the vehicles we drive, the roads we drive those vehicles on, the jobs we work, the families we raise, and the many other relationships that we unknowingly have with and experiences that are shaped by politics. It is integral to all aspects of life whether we like it or not. Ages ago, the groups we were intended to be a part of were a lot smaller. As times have progressed however, and our societies have advanced, we have become massive entities in scale and population. Our country of these United States alone represents over 300 million individuals. That is out of several billion in the world and growing. We find ourselves fortunate that we live in a country where one of the oldest forms of democracy plays out to represent the people and its needs. To make government act by and for the people with the idea of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” being a clear mantra for us to follow. These past years have tested this theory and continues to do so today. For many, they see the system as having been corrupted over past generations piece by piece. The representative republic that we once all knew to be is not championing the republican manner nor being truly representative of the majority. Instead, it may be moving towards an oligarchical system of elites, with them defining public policy with their money and influence. This has caused the abandonment of those below them, leaving them to fend for themselves. The past few decades have been very contentious and both sides of the political spectrum argue fiercely with fiery and creed-filled debate. Many cour (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: DeLysa Burnier Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science

BA, Oberlin College, 2021, Comparative American Studies

This thesis draws on interviews with voters and organizers to disrupt preconceived popularized notions of the Deep South, arguing for a reimagining of the region's value through the lens of electoral politics and the Democratic Party's campaign efforts. There is plenty of room for revision in the apathetic approach that national Democrats and progressives treat the South with. This historic and contemporary disdain, paired with common guilt in the promotion of a limited and exclusionary idea of what the South is, contributes to the marginalization of Southern communities of color, queer and trans people, working class folks, and more. However, through attention to voter access, revised organizing tactics, and more, the Democratic Party can be a part of the solution.

Committee: Shelley Sang-Hee Lee (Advisor); Wendy Kozol (Other); Caroline Jackson-Smith (Committee Member); Charles E. Peterson (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History; American Studies; Black History; Black Studies; Communication; Demographics; Economic History; Environmental Justice; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Glbt Studies; History; Journalism; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Political Science; Regional Studies

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2021, Psychology, General

The thesis examined associations regarding COVID-19 realistic threats (i.e., concerns about physical health and material well-being) and symbolic threat (i.e., sociocultural concerns) with the likelihood of voting for Joe Biden or Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. Political ideology and attitudes about racism, sexism, and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) were considered as well. It was hypothesized that realistic threat concerns would be positively associated with the likelihood of voting for Biden, but this association would be modified by political ideology, with more liberal ideologies strengthening the association between realistic threat and the likelihood of voting for Biden. It was also hypothesized that symbolic threat would be positively associated with the likelihood of voting for Trump, but that this association would be qualified by a significant interaction between political ideology and symbolic threat, showing that more conservative ideologies strengthen the predicted association. Both hypotheses controlled for racism, hostile and benevolent sexism, and RWA. The study was a cross-sectional, correlational design and the hypotheses were tested in two separate regressions, one examining the likelihood of voting for Biden and the other examining the likelihood of voting for Trump. Broadly, the hypotheses were not supported; it was found that political ideology and symbolic racism accounted for most of the variance within the sample. Exploratory regression analyses examined the unique contributions of threat, sex differences, and tested interactions between threat perceptions and sex. In these models, the likelihood of voting for Biden was positively associated with realistic threat and the likelihood of voting for Trump was positively associated with symbolic threat. Results showed that sex did not moderate realistic threat but did moderated the association between symbolic threat and the likelihood of voting for each candidate. Speci (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Erin O'Mara Kunz (Committee Chair); Joy Losee (Committee Member); Jack Bauer (Committee Member) Subjects: Experimental Psychology; Psychology; Social Psychology

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2021, Political Science

The 2019 Mueller Report revealed a campaign by the Russian Internet Research Agency to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and insert systemic distrust in Western democracy. The campaign engaged in “information warfare” using false accounts, or bots, to prey on inherent social vulnerabilities that are amplified by the novelty and anonymity of social media, such as echo chambers and the rapid spread of fake news. This thesis explores the aims, methods, effects, and behavioral patterns of bots. It also proposes BotWise, a model designed to distill average behavior on the social media platform Twitter from a set of real users and compare that data against novel input.

Committee: Tyler Highlander (Advisor); Staci Rhine (Advisor); Alyssa Hoofnagle (Committee Member); Yu Bin (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Political Science; Sociology; Technology

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2021, Geography

This study seeks to analyze the potential compounding effects of two voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and the closing of polling locations, when both are used simultaneously in a given geographic space. Specifically, this study argues that gerrymandering and the closing of polling stations can be used as political weapons to suppress voting access. In addition, because both of these practices are spatial in nature, they can be used to impact certain voters clustered in a particular geographic spaces. As a case study to illustrate the geography of voter suppression tactics, this thesis looks at the 2020 primary elections in Texas, which were some of the most affected by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19, “coronavirus”) pandemic. Because many polling stations were closed because of the pandemic and Texas has gerrymandered districts, it provides a window into the compounding effect on votes geographically and illustrates the two-factor obstacle of voter suppression. This study utilizes polling location data for two elections in Texas, the March primary and its July runoff election, in four particular districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan area. The analysis includes spatial assessment of whether or not polling stations closed between the two elections and whether or not these closures were more to close in gerrymandered districts. The results show that polling stations were closed at high rates across all four focus area districts, but most closures occurred in the district least gerrymandered of the four. Polling stations closures may have impacted at least one of the primary elections during the 2020 election cycle.

Committee: Beth Schlemper (Committee Chair); Dan Hammel (Committee Member); Sujata Shetty (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Traditionally, the multi-party telepresence system is supported by one or more servers called Multipoint Control Unit(MCU). These servers are expensive, involve the third party in the system, and also bottleneck for large scale implementation. So, this dissertation presents protocols for autonomous Peer-to-Peer(P2P) implementation of Crowd-scale Telepresence System. The protocols use multiple features from widely adopted P2P network, Gnutella. The proposed protocols and strategies are designed based on the Principle of Distributed Computing (PDC) and the Principle of Priority-based Resource Allocation(PPRA). These principles are considered to address three of the four identified challenges of CMTS implementation, (1) Computational Challenge, (2) Temporal Challenge, and (3) Overcrowding Challenge. The fourth one is the visual challenge which is left for future work. The PDC is used to address the first two challenges by distributing of MCU's workloads among participating peers. The MCU consists of a Multipoint Controller(MC) and one or more Multipoint Processors(MP). For distributed MCU, the optimal placement of MC and MPs in the P2P overlay network is necessary, which is time-consuming because of exponential search space. So, a phase-based design approach is considered. For optimal placement of MC, three incremental protocols, such as GAncestor, ZePoP, and ZePoP-ε are presented. Then, multiple methods are discussed to place the MPs around the optimal MC. For supporting the desired frame rate, two versions of progressive timer management schemes are used at MPs. The protocol ZePoP-ε is designed based on PPRA that emphasis to properly utilize the limited resources of the P2P network. Thus, PPRA is used to address the overcrowding challenge as well as the temporal challenge. It is used to design a profit-based stream collection mechanism of ZePoP-ε for maximizing a Dynamic Role and Demand based Index (DRDI) in bounded waiting time. The proposed protocols and methods co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Javed I Khan (Advisor); Cheng Chang Chang Lu (Committee Member); Gokarna P Sharma (Committee Member); Murali Shanker (Committee Member); Jun Li (Other) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2019, Humanities

In this thesis, I illustrate how epistemic injustice functions in the divide between white working-class men and the educated elite by discussing the discursive ways in which working-class knowledge and experience are devalued as legitimate sources of knowledge. I demonstrate this by using critical discourse analysis to interpret the underlying attitudes and ideologies in comments made by Clinton and Trump during their 2016 presidential campaigns. I also discuss how these ideologies are positively or negatively perceived by Trump's working-class base. Using feminist standpoint theory and phenomenology as a lens of interpretation, I argue that white working-class men are increasingly alienated from progressive politics through classist and ableist rhetoric. If progressives wish to win over white working-class men, they will need to ameliorate this division, otherwise this gap will continue to grow. Finally, I suggest class-sensitive approaches for moving forward and bridging this gap.

Committee: Kelli Zaytoun Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jessica Penwell-Barnett Ph.D. (Committee Member); Donovan Miyasaki Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Demographics; Epistemology; Gender; Gender Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Rhetoric; Sociology; Womens Studies