Jeffrey Blevins, Journalism
Minority Report: Understanding AI, Algorithms, Misinformation, and Our Digital Futures
This project takes its inspiration from Philip K. Dick’s 1956 science fiction short story, The Minority Report, about a futuristic government that uses mutant beings with supposed precognitive power to predict criminal events, so that police can act before they occur. However, the mutant precogs do not always see the same future, which produces a “minority report” (as opposed to a majority report, which is generated when two of the three precogs share the same vision). The existence of a minority report suggests that precognition is not always accurate, and that the precogs frequently differ in their own versions of the future. Similarly, in the 21st century world of big data and social media, algorithmic computations are used to predict our economic and cultural activity and its byproduct of digital content on social media generates a collective perception of reality. However, this collective perception is manufactured by cultural, political, and economic interests, and reality, as well as the future, may very well be something else. Applying critical political economic analysis, and cultural legal studies, this book argues that social media audiences specifically, and the public generally need to do more of their own intellectual labor and challenge the majority perceptions that tend to pervade popular political discourse. We each need to produce our own minority reports to envision what our digital futures may actually become.
Xuan Cao, Mathematical Sciences
Network-Guided Feature Selection for Disease Risk Stratification
Omics data, routinely collected in various clinical settings, are of a complex and network-structured nature. For example, quantitative molecular traits including gene expression, proteomics, or metabolomics often display a coordinated change along a pathway, where the impact of one single factor on the disease outcome may not be apparent. The method of network-based feature selection can incorporate various omics data and highlight unknown networks to improve the performance of feature selection and disease prediction by borrowing information from the underlying biological pathway. The overarching goal of this project is to develop general statistical frameworks for network-based feature selection and formulate network-guided risk scores for disease risk stratification.
Anita Dhillon, School of Public and International Affairs
Cross-System Collaborations and Its Effect on Service Provision for Dual-System Youth
This project is an interdisciplinary study examining how different levels of collaboration among government agencies affect outcomes for multi-system youth in the US, in collaboration with Dr. Chesterton from Catholic University of America. Using insights from national surveys and personal interviews with key decision makers in the field, we study how collaboratives of organizations can be better designed and managed to improve the outcomes for multi-system youth - those who are under the jurisdiction of multiple government systems like the justice and welfare systems and hold identities as both victims and justice-involved.
Delaney Harness, School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies
Tracing Transparency: The Role of Technology in Governance, Human Rights, and Accountability in Carbon Markets
This research critically examines the use of emerging technologies, such as blockchain, in carbon markets, which are designed to help combat climate change by allowing companies to offset their carbon emissions. While these markets have potential, they also raise significant concerns about social justice and human rights, particularly for vulnerable communities that may be affected by these projects. The project challenges the assumption that technologies like blockchain automatically enhance transparency and accountability. It digs deeper into how these tools shape governance structures and questions whether they truly address issues like data manipulation, inequality, and the social and environmental impacts of carbon trading. By interrogating the relationship between technology and human rights, this research seeks to uncover the risks hidden beneath the promise of innovation in carbon markets. Through interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders and a critical analysis of relevant policies and documents, the study aims to expose the shortcomings of current practices and provide insights into how carbon markets and their governance mechanisms must evolve to meet both sustainability and ethical standards.
Eduardo Martinez, Philosophy
Belief-formation and Communication Under Polarization
This project consisted of three papers dealing with different strands of debate about the normative implications of polarization in democracies: the epistemic rationality of predictably polarizing behaviors, the value and calibration of partisan flexibility, and the responsibilities of political representatives to facilitate constituents' understanding of other citizens. These papers contribute to the growing subfield of political epistemology and together highlight the role that citizens, both as constituents and as representatives, can play in responding to the challenges posed by polarization and its associated challenges for democratic performance.
Oneya Okuwobi, Sociology
Disabling Perceptions: How College Students’ Perceptions of Ableism Affect Their Educational Career
The Disabling Perceptions project explores: How do disabled students perceive ableism in major fields of study, how do these perceptions vary at the intersection of disability with race and/ or gender, and what strategies of action do students pursue in the face of these perceptions? This study adds to sociological understandings of the links between culture and inequality for persons with disabilities and seeks to improve the experiences of University of Cincinnati students. Support from the Taft Summer Research Fellowship enabled data analysis of the 24 interviews collected to date.
Sharell Luckett, English
The Luckett Paradigm - A New Methodology
Aditi Machado, English
The End, Contd.
Jennifer Glaser, English
Jews, Disability, and Post-Holocaust America
Kelly Merrill, School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies
Responses to Supportive Messages: Assessing Differences Between AI Chatbots and Humans as Sources of Support
Lim Sookkyung, Mathematical Sciences
Mathematical Modeling of Bacterial Swimming and Swarming