Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

In the current race for technological innovation, companies are striving to be the best and most prominent in the industry. A major way companies are setting themselves apart is through personalized experiences for their customers, so they have a huge incentive to collect consumer information. Consumers have limited knowledge of how much information companies collect and what goes on behind the scenes. Therefore, it is becoming extremely important to ensure companies are held accountable for upholding consumers’ right to privacy. One way this can be done is through the implementation of privacy legislation. The United States has not yet enacted federal preemptive privacy legislation, so this thesis examines the feasibility of enacting such legislation using the European Union’s GDPR as a model. California’s current state-level privacy law, the CCPA, is compared to the GDPR to determine the elements of a successful privacy law and find that the CCPA has many problems, most of which are solved by the GDPR. Because of this, it is concluded that it is necessary for the United States to adopt federal privacy legislation which would be most successful if the GDPR was used as a foundation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an international impact since the novel coronavirus first surfaced in late 2019. Since then, different countries have taken different approaches to try and limit transmissions and deaths. While this is seemingly unprecedented in modern day times, many pandemics, or plagues, have happened relatively frequently in history. This paper examines three historical plagues through the lens of social psychologist Geert Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions to distinguish between cultures: power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence versus restraint. This paper then applies these dimensions to the modern day U.S. and South Korea, two countries who have had different success in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Through these dimensions, this paper aims to explain a factor in why South Korea has had better results than the U.S. It also recognizes that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are not the only factor to affect the pandemic, and explores political influences in America through the lens of Henry David Thoreau and John Dewey. Overall, this paper argues that the U.S. has been unsuccessful in taming the pandemic because of certain cultural dimensions, such as more an individualist and indulgent culture, and its unstable and divisive political climate. Given this, the United States has a hopeful, yet arduous path moving forward with COVID-19 and future pandemics.

In light of the 2020 Presidential election, accusations regarding early voting methods have risen as a topic of debate among active voters. In order to ensure the voter’s trust in voting methods, it is important to analyze whether such accusations are truthful or just dramatized speculation. Do early voting methods negatively infringe on the integrity the U.S. election process? Using gathered voter statistics and conducted partisan research within recent elections, this defense examines the impact early voting has had through the analysis of two of its most controversial claims. The author finds that there exists little to no reasonable support to conclude existence of infringement to the integrity of the election process, and the reasons that explain this topic’s rise in popularity lies in the failure to accept defeat and the notion of fear.

The Constitution is a document that was made over 200 years ago by a population that could have never imagined the type of technology or social advances made in the 21st century. This creates a natural rift between governing ideals between then and now, that needs to be addressed. Rather than holding the values of the nation to a time when people were not considered citizens because of the color of their skin, there need to be updates made to the Constitution itself. The need for change and the mechanisms were both established by the Framers while creating and advancing the Constitution. The ideal process to go about these changes is split between the formal Article V amendment process and judicial activism. The amendment process has infinite scope for changes that can be done, but due to the challenge involved in trying to pass any form of the amendment through both State and Federal Congresses, that process should be reserved for only fundamental or structural changes. Judicial activism, by way of Supreme Court decisions, is a method best applied to the protection of people’s rights.

Descriptive representation is important to building and maintaining a fair court system, especially within a context of historical oppression by race or gender. Using official government biographies, voter rolls, news articles, and press releases, I collected demographic information on the judges of Arizona and compared it to Census data, to show how under representative the state courts of Arizona currently are. Through the use of non-attorney judges, the Justice Court of Arizona has become the most representative level of the state court. Almost all of the BIPOC judges of the Justice Court are not attorneys. Allowing non-attorney Justices of the Peace has made it possible for the court to be more representative of Arizonans. However, even though it is the most representative state court, the Justice Court vastly under represents women and BIPOC as judges. As racial tension and movements for fairness under the law increase, it is important to challenge how the courts could better serve Arizona.

The role of technology in shaping modern society has become increasingly important in the context of current democratic politics, especially when examined through the lens of social media. Twitter is a prominent social media platform used as a political medium, contributing to political movements such as #OccupyWallStreet, #MeToo, and #BlackLivesMatter. Using the #BlackLivesMatter movement as an illustrative case to establish patterns in Twitter usage, this thesis aims to answer the question “to what extent is Twitter an accurate representation of “real life” in terms of performative activism and user engagement?” The discussion of Twitter is contextualized by research on Twitter’s use in politics, both as a mobilizing force and potential to divide and mislead. Using intervals of time between 2014 – 2020, Twitter data containing #BlackLivesMatter is collected and analyzed. The discussion of findings centers around the role of performative activism in social mobilization on twitter. The analysis shows patterns in the data that indicates performative activism can skew the real picture of civic engagement, which can impact the way in which public opinion affects future public policy and mobilization.

The influence of John Locke’s political philosophy on Thomas Jefferson is well-documented, from their shared belief in natural rights to their similar theories of property to their shared support of religious freedom. As one of Jefferson’s “three greatest men,” Locke’s influence cannot be understated. The influence of Baron de Montesquieu is far more contested, but nonetheless Jefferson’s close study of Montesquieu and their shared belief in the character of republics and the necessity of education, among other things, provide clear evidence for Montesquieu’s influence. I propose that the dissonance between Montesquieu’s ideas and Jefferson’s adaptation and application of them result from Jefferson’s Lockean lens: a framework based on Locke’s ideas that so profoundly impacted Jefferson’s beliefs that he molded other philosopher’s ideas to conform to Locke. By analyzing the political writings of Locke, Montesquieu, and Jefferson, as well as some of Jefferson’s personal writing (in the form of letters and his Literary Commonplace Book) the influence of both philosophers and the framework Locke provides can be established. Understanding this framework helps us better understand the philosophical foundations of Thomas Jefferson’s politics, and by extension understand the philosophical foundations of American political thought.

This thesis explores the effect that social media has on political mobilization. Going over the arguments that social media is a an effective tool for political mobilization, and the arguments that social media is not an effective tool for political mobilization. Analyzing different mobilization movements it is shown that social media is an effective tool for political mobilization.