This online experiment explored how contextual information embedded in new media channels such as YouTube may serve as normative social cues to users. Specifically, we examined whether the number of views listed under a YouTube video about climate change would elicit inferences regarding how “others” feel about the climate issue and, consequently, might influence perceptions of issue salience. Participants in this experiment were exposed to a YouTube video about climate change using two experimental conditions, one providing a small number of views under the video and the second listing a
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James SpartzLeona Yi-Fan SuRobert GriffinDominique BrossardSharon Dunwoody
How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
How do people respond to needing information about something as scary as climate change? Yang and Kahlor investigated the role of emotion when people seek new information or stop paying attention to information about climate change. People who were worried about climate change were likely to search out information, and people who were hopeful were not – probably because they didn’t want new information to change their beliefs.
This will be a dynamic digital wall that will allow visitors to interact with three-dimensional, high-resolution images of historic artifacts that mark transformative moments from the American medical past. These artifacts will respond to the user’s touch, turning, opening, and -- when activated -- enlarging to provide stories, exciting events and contexts, and digitized film and audio. Each of these objects will connect the viewer to additional objects and the stories they tell about how doctors, patients, innovators, philanthropists, and the wider community came together to make medicine modern in the United States. The interactive display will demonstrate how medical innovations forever altered the American experience of health and medicine.
Implementation of “Jews, Health, and Healing,” a major exhibit with related publications, programs, website, and outreach. For centuries, Jews have considered medicine a calling -- an occupation of learning and good deeds, vital to all communities and worthy of high respect. At the same time, Jewish bodies and behaviors have been the subject of medical scrutiny and debate. Some experts diagnosed the entire community as diseased, while others held it up as a model of health. The exhibit will examine how medicine has shaped the way Jews are seen, and see themselves. Building on recent developments in the medical humanities, “Jews, Health, and Healing” is the first exhibit to use the social and cultural history of medicine as a window into the Jewish experience in America. The exhibit will show how medicine has been, by turns, a vehicle for marginalization, acculturation, and the strengthening of Jewish identity.
The “Impressions from a Lost World” website and related public programs will tell the story of the 19th century discovery of dinosaur tracks along the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The significance of these fossils extended far beyond the emerging scientific community, as they exerted a profound effect upon American arts, religion, and culture that reverberates down to the present day. The website will use stories of real people to engage visitors to think about relationships between science and religion, amateur vs. professional scientific pursuits and the role of specialization, participation of women in science, and the impact of new scientific ideas on American culture. Website visitors will draw connections of these important humanities themes to current issues. Accompanying public programs will attract diverse audiences and build interest in the website.
This will be a unique video game based on the writings the American author Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. Designed and directed by game designer Tracy Fullerton, Walden, a game, will simulate the experiment in living made by Thoreau at Walden Pond in 1845-47, allowing players to walk in his virtual footsteps, attend to the tasks of living a self-reliant existence, discover in the beauty of a virtual landscape the ideas and writings of this unique philosopher, and cultivate through the game play their own thoughts and responses to the concepts discovered there. The humanities content of the game will focus on an interactive translation of Thoreau’s writings and will also include references to the historical context of those writings. The game takes place in the environment of 1845 New England, when new technologies such as the railroad, the telegraph were first being seen and were part of the changes to pace of life that Thoreau so articulately resisted in critiques of society.
The project is the development of a working prototype that demonstrates the humanities ideas, technology, and public outreach for Pox in the City, a Unity 3D strategy game. Pox in the City draws upon a core interpretive framework for medical history, namely that beliefs, practices, and treatment are shaped by the interaction of the healer, the patient, and the disease entity. Players take on the role of a physician who has arrived in Philadelphia just as a smallpox outbreak erupts. Armed only with Edward Jenner’s new vaccination technique, players undertake the challenge of preventing the spread of the disease by persuading patients to be vaccinated. The interactive format will immerse players in the city’s rich history, as they experience the choices made by historical actors and constrained by scientific knowledge and cultural values.
This is a 90-minute feature documentary film about falconry from award winning filmmakers Elisabeth Haviland James, Revere La Noue and Robert Nixon. The project will create a documentary experience that connects the past to the present and weaves together distant lands and cultures though a character-driven exploration of the art of falconry.
The exploratory phase of a project to bring a new humanities initiative at the John Carter Brown Library to a much broader public than has traditionally been the case for the Library’s exhibitions and scholarly projects. “Exploring the Four Elements: Toward a Digital Environmental History of the Americas” takes a simple concept -- the cultural significance of earth, air, fire, and water to the diverse populations of the Americas, from the continent’s earliest indigenous inhabitants to the last waves of European scientific explorers at the end of the colonial period -- and examines the ramifications of human engagement with these elements as a window onto changing ecological relationships throughout the pre-contact and early modern periods in the early Americas.
The project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish herself in an independent research career related to sustainability. This project builds upon Resiliency Theory and theories of applied community participation to explore two specific contexts of participatory communication (i.e., processes of collective learning and shared meaning) at the science-society interface: (1) adaptive co-management meetings in New Mexico and Oklahoma, and (2) existing education efforts by drought scientists at two Great Plains universities (Oklahoma State University and University of Nebraska-Lincoln). A mixed methods approach (including, household surveys, oral histories, key informant interviews, and pilot tests) will model community-partnership capacity for drought adaptation in Cimarron (OK) and Union (NM) Counties, and assess the impact of community-academic partnerships on drought literacy and adaptive capacity across the Great Plains. Research in adaptive co-management meetings and interactive media (as contexts for participatory communication between scientists and citizens) provides the context for innovative case study research on the role of public communication about science in community drought adaptation.
Collaboration in case study research with Host Mentor Vadjunec and outreach efforts with Partner Institution Mentor Thomas (UNL) offers a unique opportunity to research the intersections of participatory communication and scientific literacy about the human and climatic drivers of extreme drought. The core research questions addressed by this proposal are, (1) What formal and informal pathways, players, and partnerships exist for participatory communication between scientists and citizens about drought vulnerability and adaptation, (2) How does communication about drought risk and recovery inform the effective diffusion and translation of drought literacy efforts in the Great Plains, and (3) How can we design forums and spaces for sustained interaction (i.e., engagement and collective learning) between stakeholders involved in adaptive drought communication? The project objectives uniquely related to advancing research at the intersections of sustainability science and education are, (1) to identify dimensions of community and partnership capacity for drought education and pathways of adaptive drought communication across scales, (2) to advance dynamic participatory models which assist in the adaptive co-management of water resources in local communities (i.e., increasing citizen-science dialogue, mobilizing community leaders, and fostering the drought education partnerships), and (3) to design and measure the success of drought literacy efforts based on inputs from sustainability scientists at various stages of community decision-making. The adaptive drought co-management workshops in NM and OK provide spaces for stakeholder interaction, which may lead to new approaches, innovations, and learning outcomes for communities in those regions. Outreach partnerships with UNL maximize dissemination of user-friendly and culturally-relevant drought outreach products, including a project website to consolidate scientific knowledge about drought in the Great Plains and interactive media templates. Interdisciplinary collaborations and research findings will inform efforts in academic community partnerships for sustainable practices across many NSF-supported disciplines.