Theses
The full complement of CMS graduate student theses — on television, games, activism, education, and more.
Theses are also available at DSpace (both CMS and Science Writing), MIT’s own repository for its community’s academic publications.
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Theory and Practice Towards a Decentralized Internet
This thesis scrutinizes the evolution of Internet technologies, the changing paradigms of netizens’ online interactions, and the socioeconomic structures of Internet platforms in the larger context of the proposed shift from a centralized web to a decentralized one.
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Fission and Fury in Perry Ohio: One Town’s Fight to Save Their Nuclear Power Plant
Residents and town officials in Perry are not going quietly into the retrenchment of America’s nuclear energy industry.
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From the Sea to the Stars: The Forgotten Journeys of the Philippines’ Ancient Explorers
Modern Filipinos — who are even now making their first tentative steps into space — are heirs to a rich heritage of exploration, the story of which has yet to be fully told.
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The Promise and Perils of Personalized Learning: Keeping Students at the Center of the Ed Tech Revolution
The Kettle Moraine School District’s success in creating personalized learning experiences for their students is a case study for how other districts might approach homegrown disruptions of their own.
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Invisible Scars: How Domestic Violence Victims Have Been Left Out of the Discussion on Traumatic Brain Injuries
Although domestic violence researchers suggest that the population will develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is only diagnosed post-mortem, a lack of donated brains means the disease has yet to be found among domestic violence victims.
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Can This Burger Save the Planet?: Synthetic Beef and the Dream of an American Animal-free Diet
Opposing strategies reveal the promises and pitfalls of trying to reform the American diet and that above all else our food system is unsustainable.
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The Deepest Paradox: Seafloor Mining and Its Future
It is time to assess the paradoxical nature of seafloor mining: to mine the seafloor to support sustainable and efficient technological development on the land above.
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The People and the Park: How a Small Mexican Community Created one of the World’s Most Successful Marine Preserves
The story of Cabo Pulmo’s struggles and triumphs can provide valuable lessons for community-based conservation efforts around the world.
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Internet Killed the Michelin Star: The Motives of Narrative and Style in Food Text Creation on Social Media
While the underlying purpose of the construction and consumption of food texts remain the same from analog to digital form, the authority of food culture and its complimentary narrative control has shifted as a result of the convergence of food texts and digital media affordances.
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Just Say No to “Just Say No”: Tensions in Organizational Approaches to Youth and Online Privacy in the Americas
This thesis examines organizational practices in the field of youth online privacy in the Americas. Mariel García-Montes describes harms created by protective, universalist, individualistic approaches that pose youth as conditional citizens, and makes a case for approaches based instead on youth agency, intersectional views of privacy, collective responsibility, and the recognition of youth as subjects of rights today.
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The Print that Binds: Local Journalism, Civic Life and the Public Sphere
Local journalism is critical as a tool for informing citizens so they can be civically engaged and hold the powerful accountable, as well as keeping communities together.
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When to Start Freaking Out: Audience Engagement on Social Media During Disease Outbreaks
Sensationalism, gatekeeping, and media figurations mean audience engagement is not merely a journalistic, revenue‐oriented concern — it is a public health concern too.
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Intimate Worlds: Reading for Intimate Affects in Contemporary Video Games
Video games have a unique capacity to generate intimate affects, and my games of choice push us to rethink our assumptions about what constitutes intimacy more broadly.
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When All You Have is a Banhammer: The Social and Communicative Work of Volunteer Moderators
Drawing upon interviews, participant observation, and my own experiences as a volunteer community moderator on Reddit, I propose that a significant portion of work performed by volunteer moderators is social and communicative in nature.
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Seizing the Memes of Production: Political Memes in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora
“This thesis seeks to understand how different groups of people in Puerto Rico and the diaspora deploy internet memes for political critique. In this work, I analyze three case studies focused on how Puerto Rican groups and individuals use internet memes to express political discontent, make calls to action, engage in catharsis, and seek political change.”
