Employing qualitative methods and drawing from an intersectional framework which focuses on the multiple identities we all embody, this dissertation focuses on oppressions and resistance strategies employed by women of color in Xbox live, an online gaming community. Ethnographic observations and narrative interviewing reveal that women of color, as deviants within the space, face intersecting oppressions in gaming as in life outside the gaming world. They are linguistically profiled within the space based off of how they sound. They have responded with various strategies to combat the discrimination they experience. Some segregate themselves from the larger gaming population and many refuse to purchase games that depict women in a hyper-sexualized manner or that present people of color stereotypically. For others, the solution is to "sit-in" on games and disrupt game flow by 'player-killing' or engage in other 'griefing' activities. I analyze this behavior in the context of Black feminist consciousness and resistance and uncover that these methods are similar to women who employ resistance strategies for survival within the real world.

"No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth." These were the words of former Facebook Vice President Chamath Palihapitiya who publicly expressed his regret in a 2017 interview over his role in co-creating Facebook. Palihapitiya shared that social media is ripping apart the social fabric of society and he also sounded the alarm regarding social media’s unavoidable global impact. He is only one of social media’s countless critics. The more disturbing issue resides in the empirical evidence supporting such notions. At least 95% of adolescents own a smartphone and spend an average time of two to four hours a day on social media. Moreover, 91% of 16-24-year-olds use social media, yet youth rate Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as the worst social media platforms. However, the social, clinical, and neurodevelopment ramifications of using social media regularly are only beginning to emerge in research. Early research findings show that social media platforms trigger anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and other negative mental health effects. These negative mental health symptoms are commonly reported by individuals from of 18-25-years old, a unique period of human development known as emerging adulthood. Although emerging adulthood is characterized by identity exploration, unbounded optimism, and freedom from most responsibilities, it also serves as a high-risk period for the onset of most psychological disorders. Despite social media’s adverse impacts, it retains its utility as it facilitates identity exploration and virtual socialization for emerging adults. Investigating the “user-centered” design and neuroscience underlying social media platforms can help reveal, and potentially mitigate, the onset of negative mental health consequences among emerging adults. Effectively deconstructing the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (i.e., hereafter referred to as “The Big Three”) will require an extensive analysis into common features across platforms. A few examples of these design features include: like and reaction counters, perpetual news feeds, and omnipresent banners and notifications surrounding the user’s viewport. Such social media features are inherently designed to stimulate specific neurotransmitters and hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol. Identifying such predacious social media features that unknowingly manipulate and highjack emerging adults’ brain chemistry will serve as a first step in mitigating the negative mental health effects of today’s social media platforms. A second concrete step will involve altering or eliminating said features by creating a social media platform that supports and even enhances mental well-being.

During October 2022, I contributed to the annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM) program at Arizona State University (ASU). 4 cybersecurity domains were explored during the month: phishing, password hygiene, physical security, and social media security. The scope of my work involved designing and developing activities related to phishing and social media security. The deliverables included 8 emails for the ‘Spot the Phish’ activity, an educational flier on phishing indicators, discussion questions for The Tinder Swindler documentary, and a password security question guessing game. I also collected feedback from students and faculty who participated in ‘Spot the Phish’ and the security question game. Participants answered questions about the difficulty of the activities and how their cybersecurity knowledge improved. The security question game didn’t have much participation, so there wasn’t much information to gather from the feedback. The ‘Spot the Phish’ activity had over 50 feedback submissions. That data suggested that the ‘Spot the Phish’ activity improved participants’ confidence in identifying phishing emails. After reviewing the feedback and my own anecdotal experience conducting the activities, I looked into research regarding tools for cybersecurity education. Based on that research, I designed new activities to better inform students and faculty about phishing and social media security for 2023 CSAM.

Finding Flow was inspired by a previous research project, Zen and the Art of STEAM. The concept of flow was developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and can be described as "being in the zone." The previous research project focused on digital culture students and whether they could find states of flow within their coursework. This thesis project aimed to develop a website prototype that could be used to help students who struggled to find flow.

Finding Flow was inspired by a previous research project, Zen and the Art of STEAM. The concept of flow was developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and can be described as "being in the zone." The previous research project focused on digital culture students and whether they could find states of flow within their coursework. This thesis project aimed to develop a website prototype that could be used to help students who struggled to find flow.