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Voter Participation in the Absence of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
Keith Parker,
Dora Tilles,
Clifton Brown,
Dawn Brown McGlotten
Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2021
Pages:
159-166
Received:
29 July 2021
Accepted:
13 September 2021
Published:
27 September 2021
Abstract: In June 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a history of racial discrimination no longer needed to approve proposed changes to their voting procedures with the federal government. The court ruled that the coverage formula was based on 40-year-old data that was not applicable to current needs. Thus the 2016 presidential election was the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The objective of this paper is to examine the changes in voter turnout between the 2012 and the 2016 national elections due to the changes in the Voting Rights Act. Using data from the voter file vendor Catalist and information from the U.S. Census Bureau, this paper examined changes in turnout rates for different racial/ethnic groups between 2012 and 2016. The findings indicated (1) African American turnout declined substantially; (2) white turnout increased considerably; (3) Latino American turnout increased, and (4) in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, fluctuations in voter participation were especially strong. Voter enthusiasm and perceived voter suppression efforts had a huge impact on voter turnout. In addition, not being able to identify with candidates or properly researching candidates’ political goals hampered the desire to vote, especially in Black Americans.
Abstract: In June 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a history of racial discrimination no longer needed to approve proposed changes to their voting procedures with the federal government. The court ruled that the coverage formula was based on 40-year-old data that was not applicable to current needs. Thus the 2016 pres...
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Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum
Xiaoguang Zhu,
Huining Song,
Yao Zhu
Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2021
Pages:
167-175
Received:
25 August 2021
Accepted:
18 September 2021
Published:
29 September 2021
Abstract: Online education has become a popular education paradigm and foundation for future educations. Compare to traditional offline classes, online education could support massive participants, but also confronting engagement and retention problems. Many studies have analysed participant’s behaviour to enhance the engagement concerning social, cognitive and technical factors, such as 1) knowledge, cognitive process and social dimensions of micro-collaborations; 2) effects of rating visualization on reading behaviour. However, fewer studies have concerned the organization of discussion forum on posting behaviour analysis. Therefore, this study explores patterns of posting behaviours with consideration of forum organization. In detail, this study applied local preferential attachments (LPA) on the posting behaviour of MOOC discussion forum, and discovered their patterns concerning social, emotional and technical factors. The LPA model will measure message attributes on thread page as a factual local environment of posting behaviour. With statistical test on collected data, we validated the significance and linearity of the LPA on measurements of responses number and message length. Results indicated that: 1) most LPA of posting behaviour are significant; 2) comment behaviour expressed sub-linearity on responses number, and others expressed super-linearity; 3) posting behaviour was affected by compound factors of self-identity, knowledge exchange and community citizenship. Their significant preferences suggested that: 1) forum organization is significant to model posting behaviour; 2) re-organize threads and mark message status could improve engagement of participants.
Abstract: Online education has become a popular education paradigm and foundation for future educations. Compare to traditional offline classes, online education could support massive participants, but also confronting engagement and retention problems. Many studies have analysed participant’s behaviour to enhance the engagement concerning social, cognitive ...
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Antecedents of Tourists Behavioural Intentions, Perspectives of Expectations Confirmation Model: A Study of Select Tourism Cites in South-East Nigeria
Nwatu Basil Chibuike,
Nwaizugbo Ireneus Chukwudi,
Ganiyu Rahim Ajao
Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2021
Pages:
176-189
Received:
26 July 2021
Accepted:
12 August 2021
Published:
12 October 2021
Abstract: Tourism has expanded dramatically in Nigeria over the last six decades, becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the Nigerian like in the global economy. The World Travel and Tourism index ranked Nigeria 129th out of 140 countries and Nigeria’s ranking is well below average rankings for sub-Saharan Africa. This study was motivated by the need to explore the antecedents of tourists’ behavioural intentions from the perspectives of the expectations confirmation model. The study extended the model by adding perceived trust to original components. Several studies have been conducted from the perspective of this model in tourism in many countries but none in Nigeria. The study was based on a sample 400 tourists selected from the five states in the South East geopolitical zone of Nigeria out of which 317 respondents returned valid questionnaire. The study population was infinite hence respondents were those seen at the various tourist sites and who agreed to fill the questionnaire. The analysis utilized partial least squares structural equations modelling (PLS-SEM) with the aid of WarpPLS version 7.0. All the hypothesised relationships are statistically significant (Table 6). The 95% confidence intervals straddle no zero in-between for all the hypotheses. The Effect sizes in our analysis range from as high as 0.409 for Confirmation which is the highest to 0.209 for PP and 0.149 for CE. Conf. and PT have 0.094 and 0.084 respectively hence all the IVs in our analysis fall within acceptable range from medium to high effect sizes and are all considered relevant in our model. Implications of the study were also discussed and recommendations for further study were also made.
Abstract: Tourism has expanded dramatically in Nigeria over the last six decades, becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the Nigerian like in the global economy. The World Travel and Tourism index ranked Nigeria 129th out of 140 countries and Nigeria’s ranking is well below average rankings for sub-Saharan Africa. This study was motivated...
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Toward an Interdisciplinary Learning Approach to Foster Students’ Outlook of Universally Connected World: Starting from Music and Beyond
Feiqun Shu,
Panya Roongruang
Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 5, October 2021
Pages:
190-197
Received:
15 September 2021
Accepted:
4 October 2021
Published:
12 October 2021
Abstract: Music never exists for its own sake. On the contrary, it connects to the universe including Nature, society, and human beings. Music originated from people’s labor and life and has always reflected human conditions related to temporal and spatial elements. It is our belief that music can function as an educatively meaningful window through which the students explore the world with wider views and deeper thoughts. Based on these beliefs, we postulate an interdisciplinary approach starting from music and beyond it to foster students’ outlook of universally connected world. A conceptual model is conceived by the authors which describes the students’ hierarchical progress possibly gained from purposefully designed learning in an interdisciplinary manner. To further rationalize the feasibility for such a learning approach, we propose a down-to-earth way of thinking that music relates to language in lyrics of songs, bears geo-historical footprints because it originates temporally and spatially. From these clues, a common attribute can be found to thread the whole learning process involving several subjects integrated as a whole, rather than the school subjects learned separately. Given an exemplary project for the students to explore two types of folk songs in the North and the South of China, they are led to find a common attribute focusing on isomorphic direction of move between dialect tones of lyrics and tunes of folk songs, discover the inner connections hidden beneath the surface of present phenomena, and dwell on the significant insights which enable them to act like a thinker. The interdisciplinary learning illustrated as a case project here purports to prompt our colleagues that the educative values of music are far from fully recognized and these values should function to a full degree for the young generation to emancipate the constraints of thinking and develop creative minds.
Abstract: Music never exists for its own sake. On the contrary, it connects to the universe including Nature, society, and human beings. Music originated from people’s labor and life and has always reflected human conditions related to temporal and spatial elements. It is our belief that music can function as an educatively meaningful window through which th...
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