Research Papers by 'Shawn Smith
Much media attention has been placed on “Black Twitter” – a collection of mostly African American... more Much media attention has been placed on “Black Twitter” – a collection of mostly African American Twitter users who have managed to affect change through the microblogging platform Twitter. Black Twitter is seen as a primary agent in the popularizing of the slogans “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter” in 2014 and 2015. This research looks to situate Black Twitter in a theoretically grounded and empirically justified context. Employing the public sphere - counterpublic literature, this research asks the question: Is Black Twitter a counterpublic? Using a corpus of 16000 tweets collected over a 10 day period during January 2015, Black Twitter was compared to other types of publics. Findings suggest that, compared to other publics on Twitter, #BlackTwitter more approximates the form and function of a counterpublic.
This research explores the intersections between residential segregation, e-health, and African-A... more This research explores the intersections between residential segregation, e-health, and African-American mobile phone activity. We ask two overarching questions: (1) how are African-Americans using their mobile phones for e-health, and (2) what effect does residential segregation have on this relationship? This research finds that African-Americans are less likely than Whites to use their mobile phones to exchange personal information. This relationship is not affected by the degree of residential segregation. However, African-Americans are more likely than Whites to use their mobile phones for practical purposes. This relationship is mitigated, but not fully explained, by residential segregation.
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Research Papers by 'Shawn Smith