As America undergoes a modern, civil rights movement, the reality of police brutality can no longer be disregarded by everyday voters. The Black Lives Matter movement has become ubiquitous, both in real life and in the media, after the murder of George Floyd. This moment has made way for widespread video coverage of police brutality incidents, a litany of written think pieces dissecting the long-term effectiveness of the police, and a myriad of articles discussing prospective policy actions. With a rise in coverage comes a heightened level of awareness of and conversation around this issue. We have witnessed the pervasiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement and an increasing conversation around the allocation of funding towards police departments. Change has been sparked, but which form of media has most effectively influenced the public? Seeing as one of the principal goals of police-related advocacy groups is to fulfill their vision of a properly functioning police force, including in relation to accountability and reform, it is vital to understand which medium the public is most receptive to. This study and its design serve to examine how exposure to different media regarding police brutality affects people’s opinions on Black Lives Matter, police reform policies, and similar changes. Moving forward, social movements will have a better understanding of which types of media can best target the public when trying to coalesce support around their movement.

As America undergoes a modern, civil rights movement, the reality of police brutality can no longer be disregarded by everyday voters. The Black Lives Matter movement has become ubiquitous, both in real life and in the media, after the murder of George Floyd. This moment has made way for widespread video coverage of police brutality incidents, a litany of written think pieces dissecting the long-term effectiveness of the police, and a myriad of articles discussing prospective policy actions. With a rise in coverage comes a heightened level of awareness of and conversation around this issue. We have witnessed the pervasiveness of the Black Lives Matter movement and an increasing conversation around the allocation of funding towards police departments. Change has been sparked, but which form of media has most effectively influenced the public? Seeing as one of the principal goals of police-related advocacy groups is to fulfill their vision of a properly functioning police force, including in relation to accountability and reform, it is vital to understand which medium the public is most receptive to. This study and its design serve to examine how exposure to different media regarding police brutality affects people’s opinions on Black Lives Matter, police reform policies, and similar changes. Moving forward, social movements will have a better understanding of which types of media can best target the public when trying to coalesce support around their movement.

Partisan politics has created an increasingly polarized political climate in the United States. Despite the divisive political climate, women’s representation in politics has also increased drastically over the years. I began this project to see if there is a partisan rivalry between women in politics or a sense of shared “womanhood.” This thesis explores the role political parties play for women in office by examining how they vote on bills, what type of bills they propose, and whether or not they work collaboratively with their female counterparts at the Arizona State Legislature. My main goals for this project are to see how strong or weak political parties are in shaping political behavior at the Arizona State Legislature and to determine if there is a sense of “womanhood” despite different political affiliations. I also explore the role party affiliation plays within women legislators at the Arizona State Legislature.

Visualizations can be an incredibly powerful tool for communicating data. Data visualizations can summarize large data sets into one view, allow for easy comparisons between variables, and show trends or relationships in data that cannot be seen by looking at the raw data. Empirical information and by extension data visualizations are often seen as objective and honest. Unfortunately, data visualizations are susceptible to errors that may make them misleading. When visualizations are made for public audiences that do not have the statistical training or subject matter expertise to identify misleading or misrepresented data, these errors can have very negative effects. There is a good deal of research on how best to create guidelines for creating or systems for evaluating data visualizations. Many of the existing guidelines have contradicting approaches to designing visuals or they stress that best practices depend on the context. The goal of this work is to define the guidelines for making visualizations in the context of a public audience and show how context-specific guidelines can be used to effectively evaluate and critique visualizations. The guidelines created here are a starting point to show that there is a need for best practices that are specific to public media. Data visualization for the public lies at the intersection of statistics, graphic design, journalism, cognitive science, and rhetoric. Because of this, future conversations to create guidelines should include representatives of all these fields.

In the 1970’s, the United States was revolutionized by second-wave feminism as conversations about sex and contraception reached the forefront of the political stage. Roe v. Wade (410 US 113-178, Supreme Court of the United States) reshaped how the Constitution protects privacy and autonomy, while also taking a stance on the cultural war between "pro-choice" and "pro-life" advocates. Since 1973, the conservative movement has launched a coordinated campaign to create pro-life policies at the state and federal levels. Since Roe was decided, access to reproductive care has faced continuous attacks, with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center (No. 19-1392, 597 U.S Supreme Court (2022)) representing a definitive tipping point in the ongoing battle for reproductive rights. The Dobbs decision now leaves millions of Americans in limbo as state legislatures are left to battle what abortion will look like in their state. Driven by political objectives, the Supreme Court employed an originalist interpretation to advance a specific and narrow understanding of the Constitution, ultimately subjectively overturning precedent. This analysis aims not only to offer an exact critique of the logic weaponized by the court and the hypocrisy wielded by the conservative judges on the court, but also to situate this case in the national and historical context. The fight to overturn Roe was a coordinated effort and was by no means accidental or coincidental. Evaluating this critique without acknowledging the context is naïve because to do so is to miss half of the picture. Understanding why this case was brought to the Supreme Court when it was is just as important as the content of the decision.