Fall 2022 Fellow

I have conducted fieldwork research in Uganda as Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad recipient and have enjoyed several returns since then. Students have joined me, too. In 2017 I took students to Uganda for Baker University course credit, and I hope to bring them with me again in 2024. This spring, I’ll be enjoying a sabbatical in Uganda, where I will conduct research and deepen professional networks which draw together Kansas and African communities. 

As a Great Plains Virtual Affiliate, I am interested in how candidates used social media as part of their presidential campaigns. Uganda’s President Museveni, and his party, the National Resistance Movement, continued their dominance at the polls in 2021, but a new, popular challenger, known as Bobbi Wine, brought attention to the importance of social media as part of a national political campaign. Indeed, his savvy use of Twitter and other social media propelled his message, and he gained national, youth support in a country with a young median age. Years earlier, another presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye, livestreamed his detention in his home prior to the formal start of the campaign, revolutionizing the way that opposition members would publicize mistreatment by the government. Social media provides information and mobilization tools which compel the government to be responsive, whether or not social media aids in fundamentally altering the country’s political makeup, as it did in the Arab Spring. 

There are several important contributions of this research. The research promises to advance an understanding of the use of social media in campaigns in Uganda and in Africa in general. In Uganda, social media has met with censorship like other media, and just as in other media, the government has successfully blocked both users’ access and journalists’ content by shutting down internet access as well as inhibiting popular use through taxation. These physical and bureaucratic hurdles illustrate the government’s rightful fear of social media as a political tool for information and mobilization, and my study serves explore how political parties used social media in the recent election.

I am most interested in the Facebook and Twitter presence of presidential candidates. To explore this social media content, I will employ text mining strategies that are used in communication studies, political science, and business – fields interested in marketing and narratives.

As an instructor at a small liberal arts college, I am committed to acting as a conduit between my students and the world. To that end, I help to direct them to East Africa. Bridging my research interests and my teaching interests is easy. For instance, this semester in my Global Problems class, students are teleconferencing with Ugandan students to discuss challenges that they face in the pursuit of their education. They discuss strategies to overcoming these challenges and often find out that they are more alike than different.

To further bring Uganda to my community, these students are working with Baldwin City library to educate the city about Uganda’s people and culture. We have four projects with the library to help to illustrate this. Global Problems students are educating Baldwin City kids with Uganda-themed games and puzzles. Global Problems students are educating the older members of the community by introducing them to Ugandan authors (via books and book reviews on display) and culture through a KiSwahili proverb tree. The tree’s leaves are KiSwahili proverbs on one side of the leaf with an English translation on the other side.

The Global Problems class, like my research, addresses very real challenges in Uganda. However, it is important to know the country for much more than just these things.  Introducing the community to the cultural and people of Uganda, as well as the struggles, helps to reduce inherent ‘othering’ that can occur when we just study problems. My work as a Fellow and instructor compels me to educate from this wholistic perspective.

2023. ‘Political Philosophy Through Memes: 21st Century Comics’, Political Science Educator –

APSA Political Science Education.

2022. Games without Frontiers: Simulations in the Classroom. James Fielder, Ryan Gibb, and

Mark Harvey, eds, Routledge Press.

2022. ‘Model Diplomacy in the Classroom’ in James Fielder, Ryan Gibb, and Mark Harvey, eds,

Games without Frontiers: Simulations in the Classroom. Routledge Press. 

2022. ‘All Experts on Deck: Best Practices for Invited Speakers Using Distance Education

Technology’ in Clementine Msengi, Grace Lartey, and Katherine Sprout, eds, Handbook of Research on Contemporary Issues in Multicultural and Global Education. IGI Global, Hershey Pennsylvania.

2019. ‘Semi-Structured Interviews and Modern Ugandan Land Law,’ SAGE Research Methods

Cases.

2016. “The Elections in Uganda, February 2016,” Africa Spectrum. Vol 51, No. 2: 93-101.

Under Review

Under review.  ‘Parliamentary Power in a New East Africa.’ in Darlingtina Esiaka and Jamaine

Abidogun, eds, Africa Rising, Red Sea Press.

Under review. ‘Inferences from Big Data: Varieties of Democracy in Africa,’ SAGE Research Methods

Cases: Doing Research Online.