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Browsing by Author "Arthur, Tori, committee member"

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    A critical analysis of participatory research in the social sciences
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Russell, Gregory, author; Champ, Joseph, advisor; Arthur, Tori, committee member; Carcasson, Martin, committee member; Flores, David, committee member; Humphrey, Michael, committee member
    In this dissertation, I put forward ethical, methodological, and epistemological reasons that warrant the presence of participants in the appraisal of social scientific research products. I discuss the nature of appraisal through Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy and use it to support the claim that participatory research holds the capacity to improve formalized appraisal processes in cultural research. Extending the critique into a consideration of Western and Indigenous epistemologies, I attempt to deconstruct the ways in which Western academic research, specifically social scientific research, perpetrates colonialism and how, through participatory research, social scientific research practices might begin the process of decolonization. I then discuss how descriptive analytic techniques can make participant appraisal viable in academic contexts by showing how participatory strategies can license non-immersive data-collection methods, e.g., general interview-based research, in ways that are typically associated with those that are immersive, e.g., participant-observation.
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    Affective attunement and counter-power affordances of Twitter to the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Enyinnaya, Virtue Chibuike, author; Tham, Samuel M., advisor; Arthur, Tori, committee member; Faw, Meara, committee member
    Using the Network theory of Power, and Affective Public, this study employs a Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) to examine the affective attunement and counter-power affordances of Twitter during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Drawing on qualitative data collected from Twitter during the protests, the study examined the ways in which Twitter facilitated affective attunement - the ability of Twitter users to attune to each other's emotions - in amplifying activist voices and mobilizing publics for collective action. It also analyzed the counter-power affordances of Twitter, which enabled protesters to challenge dominant discourses and power structures in Nigeria. Through a CTDA lens, the study explored the ways in which power, cultural ideologies, users' online experiences, and technology intersected in the #EndSARS protests, and how these dynamics shaped the outcomes of the protests in addressing police brutality in Nigeria. The findings suggest that Twitter played a significant role in the mobilization and organization of the protests, and that affective attunement and counter-power affordances were key factors in the success of the movement. This study contributes to our understanding of the complex relationships between power, technology, and social change, and provides insights for future research on the role of social media in protest movements within regimented democracies. Limitations and future directions are discussed.
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    Beautiful transgressions: subversion and visibility in YouTube's beauty community
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Marshall-McKelvey, Kira, author; Elkins, Evan, advisor; Hughes, Kit, committee member; Anderson, Karrin, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
    YouTube influencers must navigate the platform's capricious algorithm in order to achieve and maintain visibility online. The attention economy necessitates visibility labor for YouTubers to succeed in digital content creation. In particular, YouTubers must consider advertiser guidelines so that their content gets monetized (and subsequently rendered more visible). Content on YouTube that achieves high visibility tends to reinforce hegemonic logics of self-branding and gender. The beauty community, which produces feminized cultural outputs, is a highly commercial space on YouTube that rewards capitalist-affirming logics of gender and women's empowerment. Working in conversation with scholarship that explores the resistive possibilities of "LeftTube" (leftist YouTube), I highlight subversive tactics that women beauty gurus use without sacrificing their visibility online. Threading in discourse of play and fun, I argue that women beauty gurus can subvert postfeminist, neoliberal norms that discipline and confine gender performance. I first identify the normative genre conventions of the contemporary YouTube beauty community. Then I argue that RawBeautyKristi challenges norms of new momism and the "always on" digital entrepreneur by performing negative affect as a symptom of alienation, decentering western and masculine temporal structures, and complicating aesthetic labor in relation to neoliberal motherhood. Next, I argue that Nappyheadedjojoba performs platform-specific-intimacy to activate an ostensibly apolitical audience. Specifically, on YouTube, her incongruous references to makeup relieve tension, she utilizes beauty-specific terminology to familiarize her politics, she engages respectability politics, and she incorporates self-promotion as relational labor. On Patreon, she positions audience support as promoting creative liberty, she employs self-disclosure in relation to her politics, and she engages ratchetry as resistance. These strategies cultivate a sort of political authenticity. Lastly, Jenna Marbles's playful performance of failure to be part of YouTube's beauty community lluminates the inaccessibility of a seemingly open, democratizing space. By positioning herself as a YouTube viewer who unsuccessfully attempts tutorials, framing excess in contrast to the quest for natural beauty, exaggerating her status as an aging 32-33 year old lady, and flouting YouTube's self-branding conventions, Mourey reveals an attention economy in the beauty community that privileges postfeminist norms of age, beauty, and femininity. Ultimately, my dissertation aims to provide those in precarious positions with tactics to challenge dominant structures in ways that are invisible to those in power.
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    Black like it never left: Black women and representation in contemporary broadcast television
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Taylor, Kirstin, author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Chung, Hye Seung, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
    It is imperative that we recognize that broadcast television is not dead, despite echoing declarations to the contrary, and that it can be a viable platform for presenting Black-led programs telling complex stories. In this project, I argue that current broadcast television shows are harnessing their industrial position and staple generic conventions to reorient depictions of Blackness on broadcast to more complexly and resonantly reflect lived Black experiences. It seems that these stories are being told not just on niche or fringe platforms catering to Black audiences, but also on long established and popular broadcast channels. This project is a limited survey of Black female representation on broadcast television comprised of three case studies: Fox's emergency procedural 9-1-1, The CW's HBCU set drama All American: Homecoming, and ABC's sitcom Abbott Elementary. Guiding this survey is a set of critical questions: First, how do these cases represent Black womanhood? Second, what are the industrial and creative contexts of these cases and how do they influence the texts? How do their creators, showrunners, writers, and actors work within the broadcast parameters and appropriate traditional conventions to display different iterations of Blackness? Finally, what new cultural meanings, if any, are the resulting representations generating?
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    "Reclaiming our time, reclaiming our time!" Black women student affairs mid-level administrators talk supervision at predominantly white institutions
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Nathan, B., author; Carlson, Laurie, advisor; Hughes, Blanche, committee member; Leone, Deanna, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
    The research is limited or nonexistent regarding; (1) Black Women student affairs mid-level administrators at predominantly white institutions, (2) the impact of both racism and sexism in student affairs supervision, (3) ways Black Women student affairs mid-level administrators challenge and resist racism and sexism in supervision, and (4) ways Black Women student affairs mid-level administrators supervise and want to be supervised. Black Feminist Thought served as the theoretical framework for this in-depth qualitative study seeking to understand the experiences of racism and sexism, how racism and sexism is challenged and resisted, and the various approaches of Black Women student affairs mid-level administrators in supervisor roles at predominantly white institutions. Using Sista Circle Methodology, data was collected primarily through sista circles. Data was presented through the use of poetry and spoken word to pay homage to the contributions of poetry made by Black Women. From the data, three theoretical constructs emerged: (1) The existence and prevalence of the 'T' word, Trauma, (2) Listen Up! I'm Speaking Now, and (3) What is the service of student affairs, supervision, and higher education? The findings support the need for transforming supervision in student affairs. Finally, the study confirmed student affairs administrators fail to acknowledge and analyze power structures and systems of oppression present within the job of supervising (Brown, R., Desai, S., & Elliott, C., 2020).