Browsing by Author "Puplampu, Adiki"
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Item American immigration rhetoric: a dangerous game: critical analysis of modern immigration speeches and policy statements(2018) Puplampu, Adiki; Wurfel, MarleneThe purpose of this primary research was to contrast the manner in which right-wing and left-wing political figures use rhetoric to refer to immigrants and refugees. The focus of this research was American political figures between the years of 2012 and 2018. Using critical discourse analysis and deconstruction, this paper examined speeches and policy statements from both political spectrums in order to compare their uses of dehumanizing terms in reference to immigrants and refugees. After comparing each side this paper found that in the sources analyzed, the right used dehumanizing rhetoric with more frequency and severity than the left. The units of analysis for this paper were the texts deconstructed and coded for words that fit this paper’s working definition of dehumanizing rhetoric: words or terms that suggest a lack of human qualities in an individual or group of people. The goal of this research was to highlight the way immigrants and refugees are referred to in public discourse by politicians of different political affiliations, and the potential consequences of this negative rhetoric. Course: BCSC 203 Introduction to Research Methods.Item Better than the real you? VR, identity, privacy, and the metaverse(2023) Macpherson, Iain; Puplampu, AdikiIf tech-sector CEOs from firms like Meta and Microsoft, plus industry hypers and investors, get their way, then days and nights like Kentarō’s will become commonplace. This future is heralded under a banner-word the metaverse, envisioned as a blending of virtual and physical realities that will profoundly alter how people experience everyday life, from entertainment to work to relationships. Think ‘augmented reality’ (AR): So, these are computer visuals overlaid by screen or lens onto the actual world – but re-imagine this as a more seamlessly immersive experience, in which we intensify or reduce, at will, our envelopment in virtuality. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently described the metaverse as an “embodied Internet, where instead of just viewing content, you are in it” (as cited in Newton, 2021, para.11). This metaverse will depend on advances and convergences across a vast technological array: 5/6G telecommunications, computer processing/graphics, VR, AR, artificial intelligence, social media, the mobile Internet, ‘smart’ glasses/lenses, body tracking and face recognition, holograms and deepfakes, blockchain and cryptocurrency, and ‘the Internet of Things.’ If this massively, multi-user, multimedia metaverse comes to pass, there will be ramifications for everything from the economy and politics to psychology and relationships. This chapter explores implications for human identity, in three senses: psychological well-being, a deeper ‘sense of self,’ and digital privacy. In each case, we highlight negative and positive discoveries and potentials regarding existing and emergent technologies. Our conclusions are tentative, since findings on ‘virtual identity’ remain debated, and the metaverse isn’t here yet, but this chapter will equip you to decide whether you approach its subject with worry, wonder, or doubt that virtual reality (VR) will transcend niche interests any time soon.Item Reassessing clictivism: a tool of the (pandemic) times(2023) Puplampu, Adiki; Macpherson, IainActivism has long taken place in digital spaces, from the 1990s hacktivism of the Zapatistas to Edward Snowden’s digital leaks and modern-day online petitions (Karatzogianni 2015). In contemporary digital culture, online activism is often characterized as clicktivism, or dismissed as slacktivism, and defined as “low-risk, low-cost activity via social media whose purpose is to raise awareness, produce change, or grant satisfaction to the person engaged in the activity” (Rotman et al. 2011, 821). Less generously, it can be defined as “acts of participating in effortless activities as an expedient alternative to expending effort to support a social cause” (Hu 2014, 354). Despite its unfavourable reputation in both academic and non-academic writing, clicktivism became an undeniably powerful tool at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns forced people around the globe to stay home for extended periods of time, resulting in increased exposure, via various media, to local and global social issues. This intensified social consciousness, in combination with public health orders prohibiting large gatherings, fostered clicktivism as a primary method of social activism, shedding new light on its qualities, both positive and negative. Criticisms of clicktivism fall into two main themes. First, many consider it inferior and counterproductive to “real world” activism which is characterized by actions such as street demonstrations (Halupka 2014, 116). Second, critics argue that motivations for clicktivism are murky because of the slippery slope between genuine activism and mediated virtue-signalling. In more theoretical terms, there is a concern that impression management, efforts to influence others’ perception of us, is the motivation for clicktivist action, not a desire for social change. In response to criticisms of clicktivism we contend that these arguments hinge on misconceptions around online activism and identity construction. In the case of online activism, critics often assume it always involves what psychologists call moral balancing: reliance on previous moral action, such as “liking” a political social-media post, to excuse future (in)action such as not demonstrating or donating. In fact, people are at least equally motivated to maintain consistency between past, present, and future behaviour (Lee and Hsieh 2013). As for impression management, critics associate it with deception, diametrically contrasting it with authenticity. This perception fails to recognize that everyone regularly impression manages in their face-to-face and technologically mediated interactions with others, and typically not from vanity or insecurity (Goffman 1959).Item Unhealthy communication: health care communication between majority and minority cultural groups(2020) Puplampu, AdikiEffective communication is important in almost every aspect of life. Within the medical setting, effective communication is paramount because the consequences of miscommunication can be deadly. In health care contexts interpersonal communication is not only affected by the nature of the interaction but also the power differentials between the people participating. The purpose of this paper is to examine how health care communication is affected by power dynamics. Specifically, it will look at the communication between majority-culture doctors and minority patients in order to advance the following argument: the asymmetrical power relationship between doctors and patients is exacerbated when doctors are from majority cultural backgrounds and patients are from minority cultural backgrounds, this is problematic because communication within a medical context is important for patient satisfaction, recall of information, and outcomes. Following the introduction, the literature review explores some of the trends in medical communication literature; these trends include discussions in the literature about the variables and behaviours that affect doctor-patient communication and the critical approach of research done on intercultural medical communication. The section after the literature review establishes that power gaps exist between doctors and patients as well as majority and minority cultural groups. The following paragraphs discuss the negative effects these power differentials have on the intercultural communication between patients and doctors when it comes to patient satisfaction, information recall, and outcomes, before coming to the conclusion that without clear expressions of their communicative differences the communication between these two groups will be compromised.