Kyshawn ('Shawn) Smith
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About Kyshawn
Smith's research focuses on theories, practices, and policies of crime where some form of community or environment is the focal point. His work tends to investigate social networks and the acts of networking related to crime in various communities/environments. He researches and teaches on matters pertaining to social capital, collective efficacy, social disorganization, prisoner re-entry, or variations in criminal activity between urban and non-urban spaces. Increasingly, this work is stemming into considerations of digital communities and environments.
Contributions
Publications
Explores the numerous factors that influence the decisions rendered in traffic court. Discusses how one physically presents themselves in court (e.g. wardrobe, visible tattoos, style of hair, piercings).
Examines the Afrobarometer 2.5 survey that was administered 10 years after the abolition of apartheid in South Africa to assess attitudes on a number of public issues. Explores those topics pertaining specifically to crime and safety. Reveals a number of positive correlations between self-reported trust and positive opinions on those topics.
Discusses "Black Twitter," a collective composed primarily of African Americans who have managed to effect change through the microblogging platform Twitter. Uses a corpus of 16,000 tweets collected during a 10-day period to compare interaction patterns (tweets, favorites, and replies) and thematic content. Suggests that compared with other hashtags and the publics they represent, #BlackTwitter possesses more of the characteristics of a counterpublic.