Soomin Park
Reframing ‘Natural Beauty’: How U.S. Gen Z Translate K-Beauty’s Glass-Skin Aesthetic into Digital Authenticity
The purpose of this study is to explore how K-beauty is accepted by Generation Z women in the United States. This study is about how “natural beauty” is expressed on social media by observation. To do this, this study observed 80 posts from Instagram and Pinterest and compared the photo mood, caption style, and differences between brand accounts and general user posts. Furthermore, this study reviewed previous studies to understand why K-beauty became popular overseas, how different cultures define natural beauty, and what values Generation Z usually cares about. From the analysis, many posts repeatedly used pastel tones and bright lighting. Overall, this created the soft and cozy feeling that is common in K-beauty images. The captions were also short and simple, like “my essentials,” which made the posts feel more casual and everyday. I also noticed that K-beauty products often appeared together with Western brands in the same post. This suggests that Generation Z mixes both styles in their own routines instead of seeing them as completely separate.For natural beauty, Korean-style 'managed skin' and American-style 'as it is' often appeared together. This seems to reflect both the visual style encouraged by social media platforms and the preferences of Generation Z. Overall, K-beauty was not just copied as a Korean style. Instead, it became a way for Generation Z users to express their daily life and personal taste online.
Kailee A Cabrera
Digital Storytelling in International Development: NGOs, Media, and Public Engagement
This study examines how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and citizens use digital storytelling to shape public engagement with humanitarian and sustainability issues. The project focuses on the relationship between professional NGO narratives and citizen driven stories, and how these forms of communication work together to influence awareness, and participation. Using a qualitative comparative case study design, the research analyzes three campaigns: Greenpeace’s Ummah for Earth, The Climate Group’s Under2 Coalition, and Youth4Nature’s Unearth Voices. Content and thematic analysis were used to review posts, story maps, visuals, captions, and comments from each campaign. The study draws on Communication Infrastructure Theory and Integrated Communication Storytelling Networks to explain how storytelling circulates across organizational, media based, and interpersonal channels. The findings show that campaigns that integrate community voices create stronger trust, more relatable narratives, and clearer pathways for public involvement. The study concludes that collaborative storytelling, when supported by intentional strategy, can strengthen engagement and offer NGOs more meaningful ways to connect their messages to lived experiences.
Tara Zamani
Environment as a Casualty of Conflict: Ecocide in Palestine and Iran
This study examines how conflict-driven harm in Iran and Palestine constitutes forms of genocide which is a systematic environmental destruction produced through warfare, sanctions, and occupation. I will use a qualitative comparative case study. My research will draw on NGO and UN reports, academic literature, and international law proposals to analyze how environmental harm is framed and legitimized. Research indicates that both warfare in Palestine and sanctions in Iran cause long-term ecological damage that extends beyond the temporal limits of conflict, including air and water pollution, and infrastructural collapse. The analysis support viewing such harm as intentional or reckless, international discourse often reframes it as a humanitarian or developmental issue, which in the end minimizes accountability.
Yoojin Choi
Climate-Induced Migration and the International Legal Gap: The Case of Tuvalu
Climate change is rapidly changing the pattern of human migration. Especially, small island countries such as Tuvalu are facing serious risks that the existing international protection system cannot handle enough. This study focuses on why climate migration still remains a “legal gap” in international law and how such a gap appears specifically in Tuvalu’s case. This is an important issue since more countries, including Tuvalu, face the possibility of severe territorial loss. The study analyzed existing academic literature and reports of international organizations and confirms that the policy direction changes significantly depending on whether climate migration is framed as a security issue, an adaptation strategy, or a human rights issue. The security perspective views mobility as a risk that requires controlling movement, the adaptation perspective focuses on technical support but cannot provide long-term legal protection, and the human rights perspective emphasizes the need for protection, but still fails to establish enforceable mechanisms. Although Falepili Union agreement between Tuvalu and Australia has created new mobility opportunities, but there is still a lack of legal guarantees for climate migrants. This study proposes that in order to solve the climate migration problem, not only new legal standards, but also the international community's view of climate movement needs to be changed to a responsibility and justice-centered perspective.
James Fraser
Ironic Intent: Discerning Irony vs. Extremist Rhetoric in Memes Using Machine Learning
Memes and satire are the most effective propaganda tools at sharing information on social media. Humor, or “making light” of a geopolitical issue leads to higher content interaction and discussion regarding political themes and ideologies. As ideological attachment grows through socialization, rhetoric deepens. Human nature contributes to ideological rigidity, known as the defense of individual identity, whether real or perceived, drives individuals to resort to harming opposing groups and ideologies. Sentiment analysis, or language processing, is the classification used to determine how an individual's attitude is formed around a specific occurrence or perspective due to media exposure. Detection of irony in media, particularly in tweets and social media, can be distinguished into four classes: Non ironic, verbal irony with contrast, verbal irony without contrast, and situational irony. The BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is built on top of a Transformer encoder, which takes a sequence as an input and understands it within a concept of the words surrounding it. With the standardized and widely unfettered access of social media for younger generations, concealed extremist ideology penetrates and subconsciously replaces youth attitudes and beliefs with harmful extremist ideologies.
Jiwoo Kim
Human or Machine? South Korea's Comprehensive Response to AI-Driven Music Production
Over the past three years, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and music-generation systems using that technology have challenged South Korea’s copyright framework and evoked substantial legal and scholarly debate. This project aims to examine how policymakers and academic researchers in South Korea have addressed questions of authorship and copyright for AI-generated music since 2022. Drawing on a content discourse analysis of government publications, legislative proposals, peer-reviewed academic journal articles, and public discussion, the project identifies three major trends: (1) rising concerns over copyright infringement and uncertain fair use boundaries in AI-generated works; (2) a strong reliance on soft law guidance; and (3) the shaping influence of South Korea’s cultural power, especially K-Pop, on debates about AI-driven music. The findings show that South Korean government officials and policymakers had not clarified the respond towards the successive development of technology within the existing Copyright Act. In addition, these findings imply that South Korea is moving cautiously in pursuit of regulating AI-generated music, prioritizing legal stability and industry growth, but significant gaps remain, which will require more direct legislative action in the near future.
Aaron Cerne
Dark Indonesia and One Piece: How Popular Entertainment Guides Young People
Young people and children, due to ongoing mental development, are more susceptible to influence from outside sources. Whether it be what their parents believe, what their friends believe, or in this case, how they see people in television and comic books act. Young people take the ideas and actions by characters in these forms of popular entertainment and use them as a sort of moral compass. In this case, we have seen multiple protests beginning and ending in Southeast Asia, all using a similar symbol as a rallying point for their movement; the jolly roger of the straw hat pirates from the comic book and show One Piece. These protests, along with the ongoing Dark Indonesia protests, are full of young people who from my sources would have most likely grown up with and connected with One Piece, and are using the morals shown in One Piece as a moral compass that compels them to protest against what they see as their government’s unjust actions.
December 19, 2025