Academic literature on the topic 'American Popular Culture'

Recently I saw a corporate TV advertisement for the American television network ABC. It showed brief shots of people in other countries—France, Japan, Russia and so on. These people were doing all kinds of things, but they weren't watching television. Americans, the commentary told us, watch more TV than any of these people. Yet America is the richest, most innovative, most productive nation on the planet. ‘A coincidence’, concluded the wry, confident voice, ‘we don't think so’.

Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (1995) build on the theory of oppositional culture, arguing that African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist oppression under internal colonialism. In this paper, rap music is identified as an important African American popular cultural form that also emerges as a form of oppositional culture. A brief analysis of the lyrics of political and gangsta rappers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, provides key themes of distrust, anger, resistance, and critique of a perceived racist and discriminatory society. Rap music is discussed as music with a message of resistance, empowerment, and social critique, and as a herald of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

AbstractWhile most mainland Chinese today have extremely few direct contacts with either America or Americans, their indirect contacts with both, via globalized American popular culture, are increasing rapidly. Do daily parasocial contacts with American celebrities shape Chinese views of America? Based on two experimental studies, this paper argues that even indirect, subconscious exposure to American celebrities via popular magazine covers shapes Chinese views of America. However, the impact of that exposure depends upon both the specific nature of the bicultural exposure and the psychological predispositions of the Chinese involved. Not all Chinese are alike, and their personality differences shape whether they experience American popular culture as enriching or threatening, leading to integrative and exclusionary reactions, respectively.

The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western origin but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Pacific Island, and Latin American people and their cultures. American culture encompasses the customs and traditions of the United States. The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot" in which different cultures have contributed their own distinct "flavors" to American culture. The United States of America is a North American nation that is the world's most dominant economic and military power. Likewise, its cultural imprint spans the world, led in large part by its popular culture expressed in music, movies and television. The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western culture (European) origin and form but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American people and their cultures. The American way of life or simply the American way is the unique lifestyle of the people of the United States of America. It refers to a nationalist ethos that adheres to the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 This research is under Transnational American Studies, which focuses on the popularity of American professional wrestling outside the United States. Nowadays, as popular culture, American professional wrestling is not only mainly consumed within North America but also consumed by massive viewers around the world. For instance, in recent years, American professional wrestling has expanded in Saudi Arabia and India. However, it fails to conquer Indonesian viewers. Thus, studies of the popularity of American wrestling as popular culture outside the United States are needed due to its massive social, cultural, and economic impacts. This research studies the recent popularity of professional wrestling outside the United States by taking  the sample from Saudi Arabia, India, and Indonesia, which Glenday considers as ‘outside wrestling culture territory’. In popularizing American professional wrestling as popular culture, three crucial factors support disseminating this popular culture outside the United States: cultural attachment, media power, and government involvement. Cultural attachment relies on cultural sameness (in this case, same ‘wrestling culture’) that later creates people’s enthusiasm. Media functions as a tool to disseminate this popular culture. Then, government involvement emphasizes the openness of one country toward American professional wrestling, which consists of violent content. Those three factors become essential parts of popularizing American professional wrestling outside the United States. Cultural attachment, in this case, is the most influential factor in the rise of American professional wrestling popularity outside the United States.   Keywords: popular culture, professional wrestling, transnational.

Popular culture helps construct, define, and impact our everyday realities and must be taken seriously because popular culture is, simply, popular. Communication Perspectives on Popular Culture brings together communication experts with diverse backgrounds, from interpersonal communication, business and organizational communication, mass communication, media studies, narrative, rhetoric, gender studies, autoethnography, popular culture studies, and journalism. The contributors tackle such topics as music, broadcast and Netflix television shows, movies, the Internet, video games, and more, as they connect popular culture to personal concerns as well as larger political and societal issues. The variety of approaches in these chapters are simultaneously situated in the present while building a foundation for the future, as contributors explore new and emerging ways to approach popular culture. From case studies to emerging theories, the contributors examine how popular culture, media, and communication influence our everyday lives.
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Mestrado em Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas
A globalização, proliferação dos média e a predominância da língua Inglesa no mundo permitem mergulhar numa viagem virtual e instantânea a diversas culturas, e com particular incidência na cultura Americana, o que necessariamente exporá os jovens a imagens e representações desta cultura. O presente estudo pretende olhar para este fenómeno através de um estudo aos jovens Portugueses. Tem como objectivos aferir as representações da cultura americana entre os jovens Portugueses e o modo como esta cultura é entendida pelos jovens, assim como o seu impacto no estilo de vida dos jovens. E as conclusões foram de que os jovens estão subjugados pelas novas tecnologias e escolhem maioritariamente entretenimento e informação em fontes com base na cultura Americana, que é conotada com o progresso e a modernidade. O estilo de vida dos jovens Portugueses sofre o impacto deste fenómeno quase hegemónico enraizando na sua identidade laivos de americanização. ABSTRACT: Globalization, the proliferation of the media and the predominance of the English language permit a virtual and instantaneous journey into real cultures, and particularly into the American culture, and this will necessarily expose teenagers to images and representations of that culture. This dissertation presents a study of Portuguese teenagers which is centred on these issues. The study aims to assess the representations of American popular culture among Portuguese teenagers as well as its impact on their lifestyle. And it concludes that, on the one hand teenagers are subjugated by media technology and on the other hand that they choose to be exposed to entertaining and information mainly of only one origin: American culture, which they understand to be connected to progress and modernity. The lifestyle of Portuguese teenagers suffers the impact of this almost hegemonic phenomenon with Americanization becoming part of their identity.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1988.
Title from title page screen, viewed September 9, 2005. Dissertation Committee: L. Moody Simms (chair), Edward L. Schapsmeier, W. Mark Wyman, Lawrence W. McBride, John R. McCarthy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 373-390) and abstract. Also available in print.

"Popular Attractions: Tourism, Heterosexuality, and Sites of American Culture" investigates the serious business of pleasure, analyzing the circuits of desire that link stories of tourism and heterosexuality. I assert that the core impulses of tourism persistently shape American identity. Though the technology changes, the story perseveres: subjects leave the familiar behind in order to find themselves elsewhere. Quite simply, they ground themselves through movement. Tracing protagonists' upward and outward movements, I argue that the preservation of the American myth of mobility requires multiple conquests--geographical, cultural, sexual, ethno-racial, and economic. Examining literary narratives and tourist trends from the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, I suggest how a changing rhetoric of productivity anchors and threatens the parameters of pleasure. As the erotics of sightseeing dovetail with those of heterosexual romance, a twinned desire for defamiliarization and domestication emerges. The subject simultaneously yearns for mobility and placement. I conclude that the narrative patterns of fiction, film, and popular tourist sites generate and capitalize on the queasiness produced by this dual desire. As feminist geographer Doreen Massey has noted, social relations "necessarily have a spatial form" (120). The narratives of geographical movement I discuss romance the possibility of new social intimacies with ambivalent results, as indicated by the repeated erasure, revision, and defense of multiple boundaries. In the introduction I analyze Lynne Tillman's novel Motion Sickness to challenge the assumption that the objectives of tourism and heterosexuality are to produce and maintain a self different from an other. Indeed, while sightseeing and heterosexual seduction both promise the pleasures of inhabiting an other's locale, they also expose the impossibility of defining differences between familiar and foreign. Considering these issues in works by Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Spielberg, Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Silko, and Lynne Tillman, and the tourist destinations represented in them, succeeding chapters analyze the reassuring and continuous constructions of binaries like home/away, distance/intimacy, and familiar/strange, illuminating their instability by revealing how they become blurred, contradictory, or representative of seemingly disparate concerns.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 28, 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-220).

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 29, 2010). Thesis advisor: Professor John Wigger. Includes bibliographical references.

The article deals with the problem of the options of studying American English by students using modern teaching methods. Particular attention is given to that English is the most popular language, namely the American version of English is the predominant language in the world. The analysis of the research highlighted the importance of distinctive features of grammar, context, pronunciation and the specifics of regional variants of American English. Versions of the subtleties of studying American English were put forward, which included humor, online resources and entertainment. In conclusion, the emphasis is placed on the fact that the use of modern teaching methods gives students the opportunity to be better acquainted with the culture and history of the United States. Furthermore, such methods also helps students to meet American reality and pronunciation. Keywords: American English, language, options fo r learning a foreign language.

Modern concrete silos and grain elevators are a persistent source of interest and fascination for architects, industrial archaeologists, painters, photographers, and artists. The legacy of the Australian examples of the early 1900s is appreciated primarily by a popular culture that allocates value to these structures on aesthetic grounds. Several aspects of construction history associated with this early modern form of civil engineering have been less explored. In the 1920s and 1930s, concrete grain elevator stations blossomed along the railway networks of the Australian Wheat Belts, marking with their vertical presence the landscapes of many rural towns in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia. The Australian reception of this industrial building type of American origin reflects the modern nation-building aspirations of State Governments of the early 1900s. The development of fast-tracked, self-climbing methods for constructing concrete silos, a technology also imported from America, illustrates the critical role of concrete in that effort of nation-building. The rural and urban proliferation of concrete silos in Australia also helped establish a confident local concrete industry that began thriving with automatic systems of movable formwork, mastering and ultimately transferring these construction methods to multi-storey buildings after WWII. Although there is an evident link between grain elevators and the historiographical propaganda of heroic modernism, that nexus should not induce to interpret old concrete silos as a vestige of modern aesthetics. As catalysts of technical and economic development in Australia, Australian wheat silos also bear important significance due to the international technology transfer and local repercussions of their fast-tracked concrete construction methods.

Desde os tempos mais remotos o ser humano vem fazendo uso de plantas medicinais para cura de seus males espirituais e físicos. Porém, o uso dessas plantas era feito de maneira empírica onde o conhecimento foi sendo construindo de maneira experimental e observada, passando de pais para filhos. Contudo, estudos científicos tornaram seu consumo ainda mais popular e o os tratamentos a base de plantas medicinais vêm se tornando cada vez mais comum. E para que os constituintes químicos de um vegetal possa ser registrado, é necessário a realização de testes que comprovam a ausência ou presença de composto com atividades biológicas benéficas ou maléficas ao homem. O presente trabalho buscou avaliar a atividade antimicrobiana dos extratos vegetais da espécie Mangifera indica Linnaeus, onde foram utilizadas cepas padrão provenientes da American Type Culture Colection (ATCC), sendo bactérias Gram-positivas: Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923) e Streptococcus pyogenes (ATCC 19615); e bactérias Gram-negativas: Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) e Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853). Apresentou inibição satisfatória para todas as frações referente a cepa Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923), apresentando resultados variáveis para as demais cepas estudadas, onde algumas frações não possuíram carácter inibitório. A variação de diâmetro dos halos de inibição esteve entre 5-30 mm.,

In a context of intercultural conflicts, of exclusive educational policies, it is necessary to create inclusive perspectives, enabling coexistence between different cultures. A Latin American educational framework rooted in neoliberal policies restricts creative gazes. Two doctoral researches carried out with a perspective of Popular Education, one in Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina and Uruguay and another on a specific experience in Uruguay show the potential of the emancipatory component. His socio-historical analyzes link the educational proposals with the historical evolution of their problems in relation to their contexts. Cultural translation is presented as one of the potentialities, where weighted popular knowledge is rescued by groups. Some socio-community referents have skills to know, understand and translate the demands. A training obtained from the analysis of the experience and knowledge of the groups stimulates decolonization processes.

Information technologies bring into view not only ideas and their transmission via electronic devices, but also means of expression and the meanings they assume for readers / listeners / viewers. This transformation -- from information through technology to expressions and their meanings -- is an intrinsic part of any electronically mediated communication. This project explores one such electronically mediated text, Tango Finlandia, a segment of the popular American news program, 60 Minutes, as it has been broadcast and discussed prominently in the United States and Finland. Analyses of exchanges between Finnish and American students demonstrate how the "exact same" televisual information and the "exact same" English words convey information that is transformed into two different expressive systems with very different cultural meanings.

Os emblemas e objetos de Rubem Valentim transitam entre a arte e a religião compondo um repertório simbólico-mágico em obras de estética geometrizadas que dialogam com a religiosidade afro-brasileira. Impregnado pelo sincretismo popular, o artista em seus deslocamentos compõe um acervo sígnico enraizado no primitivo prospectando temas que são debatidos na arte contemporânea. As experiências e os sentidos do candomblé são observados na ritualística Nagô e encantaria em entrevista realizada com o sacerdote doterreiro Ilê Asè Aféfé T'Oyá. Este estudo percorre as obras de Rubem Valentim estabelecendo relações com as práticas do terreiro e a literatura, apresentando a presença e o significado da tradição e da encantaria em um terreiro localizado na cidade de Chapecó, em Santa Catarina. Com características singulares, plenos de signos e significados os terreiros se constituem de espaços de preservação, ressignificação e resistência da cultura permitindo a sobrevivência étnica e a continuidade do universo mítico africano. Por sua força e energia transcendentes configuram-se como espaços de luta permanente contra o racismo, a discriminação e a intolerância. A arte no espaço do terreiro carrega identidades e conecta subjetividades.

Abstract Under the background of economic globalization, more and more car-builders not only supply railway vehicles to domestic market, but also actively bidding international projects and deliver products all over the world. The railway vehicle design standards are significantly different throughout the world. Using carbody system as example, the popular standards include European standard system (EN), British standard GM/RT 2100, International Union of Railways (UIC) standard system, US standard system (AAR/APTA/ASME) and Japanese standard system (JIS). In addition, some country’s standard might have special requirement based on local conditions and culture. These various standards will inevitably present different carbody design requirements. Among the above standards, EN and US standards are applicable to Europe, China, and America, which are largest railway vehicle markets in the world. This paper will introduce the history and characteristics of the mainstream rail vehicle standards worldwide and analyze the relationship between standard and vehicle design. Light Rail Vehicle (LRV), subway and commuter rail vehicle (multi-level vehicle) are selected as typical examples for the interpretation and application of US standard and EN standard separately. The 3 major requirements of carbody design, including static strength, fatigue strength and crashworthiness, are compared between US and EN standards to specify the general difference as well as the influence on the carbody design, such as material distribution, structure development, which could provide valuable reference for researchers and engineers in the rail vehicle industry to define and design new products more efficiently across different country’s rail standards.

Introdução: O município de Parnaíba encontra-se em área de transição de diversos domínios fitogeográficos, notadamente cerrado, caatinga e vegetação litorânea (manguezais e restingas), com alguma influência amazônica. A vegetação nativa das áreas antropizadas foi majoritariamente suprimida ou alterada por espécies exóticas, algumas com elevada capacidade invasiva. Os danos das alterações desses ecossistemas ocorrem em vários serviços ecossistêmicos, incluindo polinização, dispersão de sementes, sombreamento, produção de frutos, retenção hídrica e memória histórica coletiva. Objetivo: Identificar as espécies arbóreas nativas e exóticas utilizadas na arborização urbana em Parnaíba-PI, Brasil. Material e métodos: Fez-se levantamento e identificação de espécies nativas e exóticas preexistentes utilizadas na arborização urbana de loteamento no bairro Floriópolis, Parnaíba-PI, Brasil, em Novembro de 2020. Resultados: Contabilizou-se 30 espécimes nativos e 50 espécimes exóticos preexistentes (plantados por outrem). Espécies nativas: Cajueiro (Anacardium occidentale), Ipê (Bignoniaceae), Janaguba (Himatanthus obovatus), Munguba (Pachira aquática) e Oiti (Licania tomentosa). Espécies exóticas: Abacateiro (Persea americana), Acácia (Acacia sp.), Coqueiro (Cocos nucifera), Falso Pau-brasil (Adenanthera pavonina), Flamboyant (Delonix regia), Jambo (Syzygium jambos), Mangueira (Mangifera indica) e Neen-indiano (Azadirachta indica). Dentre as espécies nativas, o Oitizeiro foi a mais numerosa. Percebeu-se a dispersão de Neen-indiano e de Acácia pelos terrenos desocupados do loteamento, demonstrando o poder invasivo dessas espécies exóticas. Conclusão: Percebe-se que as plantas exóticas são mais utilizadas em detrimento de espécies nativas. Faz-se necessário priorizar o uso de espécies nativas para maximizar os serviços ecossistêmicos e preservar a memória afetiva coletiva existente com espécies botânicas, comuns na cultura popular. Pode-se fazer necessário a remoção das espécies invasivas, caso essas ofereçam riscos a infraestrutura urbana ou à fauna local, como o Neen-indiano.

In São Paulo/Brazil, between the years 1950 and 1980, porcelain sculptures representing courtesy scenes were fashionable in wealthy and middle-class homes. Several Brazilian factories started to produce such images and many others were imported, the most of them from Germany. These representations were inspired by the fêtes gallants, a rococo style genre from the 18th century. Factories like Meissen, Limoges and Capodimonte produced thousands of copies which circulated in Western Europe and the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, from French institutional policies, the fêtes galantes were revalued along with the recovery of the rococo. This political and cultural movement resulted not only in domestic interiors decorated with authentic pieces from the 18th century gathered together by collectors, but also in the production of new objects. Following decorative practices, studies anachronistically reclassified 18th artisans as artists, constructing their biographies, circumscribing their peculiarities, and identifying their works. Many pieces from the privates collections ended in museums. The porcelain aristocratic figures won the world and are produced until today. It was at the end of the 19th century, in the region of Thuringia, that the technique of lace porcelain emerged. Produced by women in a male-dominated environment, the technique involved the use of cotton fabric soaked with porcelain mass which was then sewed and molded over the porcelain bodies of male and female figures. After that, the piece was placed in the oven at high temperature, burning the fabric and leaving the lace porcelain. It is significant and relevant for the purposes of this research that the lace porcelain technique was never recognized as a object of interest by the academic literature on porcelain. It is likely that the presence of the female labor, the practice of sewing and the use of fabric have been interpreted by the male academic and amateur elite as discredit elements. Added to this, the lace porcelain became very popular in the 20th century. The reinterpretation of rococo in the 20th century was also understood as a lack of artistic inventiveness associated with marketing interests, which resulted in the marginalization of these sculptures. What is proposed here is to study these objects as pieces of domestic decoration practices, recognizing in them capacities to act on the production of social, age and gender distinctions. I intend, therefore, to demonstrate how these small and seemingly insignificant objects were associated with decorative practices of fixing women in the domestic space in Brazil during the 20th century. They acted not alone but in connection with other contemporary phenomena such as post-war fashion, the glamorization of personalities from the American movie and European aristocracy and the rise of Disney movies, which promoted the gallant pair as a romantic idea for children in the western world.

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides the results of the preliminary analysis of the findings of an ongoing study that seeks to examine the social media use, cultural and political awareness, civic engagement, issue prioritization, and social activism of Gen Z students enrolled at four different institutional types located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The aim of this study is to look at the group as a whole as well as compare findings across populations. The institutional types under consideration include a mid-sized majority serving or otherwise referred to as a traditionally white institution (TWI) located in a small coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean, a small Historically Black University (HBCU) located in a rural area, a large community college located in a county that is a mixture of rural and suburban and which sits on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and graduating high school students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs in a large urban area. This exploration is purposed to examine the behaviors and expectations of Gen Z students within a representative American region during a time of tremendous turmoil and civil unrest in the United States. Background: Over 74 million strong, Gen Z makes up almost one-quarter of the U.S. population. They already outnumber any current living generation and are the first true digital natives. Born after 1996 and through 2012, they are known for their short attention spans and heightened ability to multi-task. Raised in the age of the smart phone, they have been tethered to digital devices from a young age with most having the preponderance of their childhood milestones commemorated online. Often called Zoomers, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history. Gen Zers in the United States have been found in the research to be progressive and pro-government and viewing increasing racial and ethnic diversity as positive change. Finally, they are less likely to hold xenophobic beliefs such as the notion of American exceptionalism and superiority that have been popular with by prior generations. The United States has been in a period of social and civil unrest in recent years with concerns over systematic racism, rampant inequalities, political polarization, xenophobia, police violence, sexual assault and harassment, and the growing epidemic of gun violence. Anxieties stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues resulting in a powder keg explosion occurring throughout the summer of 2020 and leading well into 2021. As a result, the United States has deteriorated significantly in the Civil Unrest Index falling from 91st to 34th. The vitriol, polarization, protests, murders, and shootings have all occurred during Gen Z’s formative years, and the limited research available indicates that it has shaped their values and political views. Methodology: The Mid-Atlantic region is a portion of the United States that exists as the overlap between the northeastern and southeastern portions of the country. It includes the nation’s capital, as well as large urban centers, small cities, suburbs, and rural enclaves. It is one of the most socially, economically, racially, and culturally diverse parts of the United States and is often referred to as the “typically American region.” An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2021 attending a high school dual enrollment program, a minority serving institution, a majority serving institution, and a community college all located within the larger mid-Atlantic region. The survey included a combination of multiple response, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by several content and methodological experts in order to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. Finally, the survey was pilot tested prior to implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly prior to widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Over 800 individuals completed the survey with just over 700 usable results, after partial completes and the responses of individuals outside of the 18-24 age range were removed. Findings: Participants in this study overwhelmingly were users of social media. In descending order, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Tik Tok were the most popular social media services reported as being used. When volume of use was considered, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter were the most cited with most participants reporting using Instagram and Snapchat multiple times a day. When asked to select which social media service they would use if forced to choose just one, the number one choice was YouTube followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Additionally, more than half of participants responded that they have uploaded a video to a video sharing site such as YouTube or Tik Tok. When asked about their familiarity with different technologies, participants overwhelmingly responded that they are “very familiar” with smart phones, searching the Web, social media, and email. About half the respondents said that they were “very familiar” with common computer applications such as the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Suite with another third saying that they were “somewhat familiar.” When asked about Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard, Course Compass, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle, Course Sites, Google Classroom, Mindtap, Schoology, Absorb, D2L, itslearning, Otus, PowerSchool, or WizIQ, only 43% said they were “very familiar” with 31% responding that they were “somewhat familiar.” Finally, about half the students were either “very” or “somewhat” familiar with operating systems such as Windows. A few preferences with respect to technology in the teaching and learning process were explored in the survey. Most students (85%) responded that they want course announcements and reminders sent to their phones, 76% expect their courses to incorporate the use of technology, 71% want their courses to have course websites, and 71% said that they would rather watch a video than read a book chapter. When asked to consider the future, over 81% or respondents reported that technology will play a major role in their future career. Most participants considered themselves “informed” or “well informed” about current events although few considered themselves “very informed” or “well informed” about politics. When asked how they get their news, the most common forum reported for getting news and information about current events and politics was social media with 81% of respondents reporting. Gen Z is known to be an engaged generation and the participants in this study were not an exception. As such, it came as no surprise to discover that, in the past year more than 78% of respondents had educated friends or family about an important social or political issue, about half (48%) had donated to a cause of importance to them, more than a quarter (26%) had participated in a march or rally, and a quarter (26%) had actively boycotted a product or company. Further, about 37% consider themselves to be a social activist with another 41% responding that aren’t sure if they would consider themselves an activist and only 22% saying that they would not consider themselves an activist. When asked what issues were important to them, the most frequently cited were Black Lives Matter (75%), human trafficking (68%), sexual assault/harassment/Me Too (66.49%), gun violence (65.82%), women’s rights (65.15%), climate change (55.4%), immigration reform/deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) (48.8%), and LGBTQ+ rights (47.39%). When the schools were compared, there were only minor differences in social media use with the high school students indicating slightly more use of Tik Tok than the other participants. All groups were virtually equal when it came to how informed they perceived themselves about current events and politics. Consensus among groups existed with respect to how they get their news, and the community college and high school students were slightly more likely to have participated in a march, protest, or rally in the last 12 months than the university students. The community college and high school students were also slightly more likely to consider themselves social activists than the participants from either of the universities. When the importance of the issues was considered, significant differences based on institutional type were noted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was identified as important by the largest portion of students attending the HBCU followed by the community college students and high school students. Less than half of the students attending the TWI considered BLM an important issue. Human trafficking was cited as important by a higher percentage of students attending the HBCU and urban high school than at the suburban and rural community college or the TWI. Sexual assault was considered important by the majority of students at all the schools with the percentage a bit smaller from the majority serving institution. About two thirds of the students at the high school, community college, and HBCU considered gun violence important versus about half the students at the majority serving institution. Women’s rights were reported as being important by more of the high school and HBCU participants than the community college or TWI. Climate change was considered important by about half the students at all schools with a slightly smaller portion reporting out the HBCU. Immigration reform/DACA was reported as important by half the high school, community college, and HBCU participants with only a third of the students from the majority serving institution citing it as an important issue. With respect to LGBTQ rights approximately half of the high school and community college participants cited it as important, 44.53% of the HBCU students, and only about a quarter of the students attending the majority serving institution. Contribution and Conclusion: This paper provides a timely investigation into the mindset of generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. This insight is useful to educators who should be informed about the generation of students that is currently populating higher education. The findings of this study are consistent with public opinion polls by Pew Research Center. According to the findings, the Gen Z students participating in this study are heavy users of multiple social media, expect technology to be integrated into teaching and learning, anticipate a future career where technology will play an important role, informed about current and political events, use social media as their main source for getting news and information, and fairly engaged in social activism. When institutional type was compared the students from the university with the more affluent and less diverse population were less likely to find social justice issues important than the other groups. Recommendations for Practitioners: During disruptive and contentious times, it is negligent to think that the abounding issues plaguing society are not important to our students. Gauging the issues of importance and levels of civic engagement provides us crucial information towards understanding the attitudes of students. Further, knowing how our students gain information, their social media usage, as well as how informed they are about current events and political issues can be used to more effectively communicate and educate. Recommendations for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. Additionally, in other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Impact on Society: During a highly contentious period replete with a large volume of civil unrest and compounded by a global pandemic, understanding the behaviors and attitudes of students can help us as higher education faculty be more attuned when it comes to the design and delivery of curriculum. Future Research This presentation presents preliminary findings. Data is still being collected and much more extensive statistical analyses will be performed.