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Bernie Sanders is winning the internet. Will it win him the White House?

The digital army behind Sanders, explained.

Onstage in front of California Democrats during the first weekend in June, Bernie Sanders warned that there is “no middle ground” on issues such as abortion and health care, taking a thinly veiled swipe at fellow presidential candidate Joe Biden. Soon after, Sanders’s campaign and online grassroots supporters, including ones in a behind-the-scenes Slack group devoted to his support, began to spread a #NoMiddleGround hashtag across the internet, and it started trending. By Monday, volunteers in that Slack channel had created a “No Middle Ground” Facebook group, complete with custom graphics, which they used to spread his message even further.

It’s an example of the power of Sanders’s online edge. He may have lost the Democratic nomination in 2016, but his campaign’s online savvy was on par with that of Donald Trump, who harnessed populist support on social media (not to mention an assist from Russia) to help catapult himself to the White House.

Travis Ridout.
Ridout

Digital strategy in politics is focused on raising money and adding to email lists, not necessarily persuading undecided voters, according to Travis Ridout, a professor of government and public policy at Washington State University. The money politicians raise through digital they can then use for television ads, which, while less targeted, may be more successful in reaching and persuading broad swaths of voters — it’s harder to skip over a TV commercial than an online video.

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Vox.com

WSU Vancouver offers English course on the Columbia River for the first time

Students in English 341 Native American Literature are taking a significant part of their lessons in a 15-person tribal canoe on the river.

Who says summer school is a drag? For some Washington State University Vancouver students, their summer English literature course is an adventure.

Desiree Hellegers.
Desiree Hellegers

Students in English 341 Native American Literature, taught by Desiree Hellegers, are taking a significant part of their lessons in a 15-person tribal canoe on the Columbia River. Chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation Tony Johnson will be at the helm for the course themed “Mni Wiconi, Water is Life.”

The centerpiece of the literature course is the novel “Solar Storms” by Linda Hogan. The story is set in the boundary waters between Minnesota and Ontario, and focuses the impact of the fur trade and massive hydropower projects, and the healing power of an all-woman canoe journey.

While they paddle, Johnson will teach the students about parallel impacts of the fur trade and dams on the Chinook and other Columbia River tribal nations. They will get an intimate introduction to the Columbia River ecosystems, and related cultural traditions and oral narratives of the Chinook and other Columbia River tribes. Students will leave with some understanding of the annual Pacific Northwest canoe journeys in the cultural revitalization work among the Chinook and other lower Columbia tribal nations.

The land-based part of English 341 is taught by Desiree Hellegers, associate professor of English. She is the recipient of a 2019 fellowship endowed by Lewis E. and Stella G. Buchanan, which provided seed money for the course. Hellegers developed the course in consultation with Lakota/Cheyenne activist/researcher Roben White, who is a member of WSU Vancouver’s Native American Community Advisory Board.

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Clark County Today

Unlocking secrets of the ice worm

Scott Hotaling.
Scott Hotaling

The ice worm is one of the largest organisms that spends its entire life in ice and Washington State University scientist Scot Hotaling is one of the only people on the planet studying it.

He is the author of a new paper that shows ice worms in the interior of British Columbia have evolved into what may be a genetically distinct species from Alaskan ice worms.

Hotaling and colleagues also identified an ice worm on Vancouver Island that is closely related to a separate population of ice worms located 1,200 miles away in southern Alaska. The researchers believe the genetic intermingling is the result of birds eating the glacier-bound worms (or their eggs) at one location and then dropping them off at another as they migrate up and down the west coast.

“If you are a worm isolated on a mountaintop glacier, the expectation is you aren’t going anywhere,” said Hotaling, a postdoctoral biology researcher. “But lo and behold, we found this one ice worm on Vancouver Island that is super closely related to ice worms in southern Alaska. The only reasonable explanation we can think of to explain this is birds.”

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WSU Insider

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Apocalypse Now

Evangelicals have played an important role in modern day American politics—from supporting President Trump to helping elect Jimmy Carter back in 1976. How and when did this religious group become so intertwined with today’s political issues? In this episode, what it means to be an evangelical today and how it has changed over time.

Matthew Avery Sutton.
Sutton

Research conducted by Matthew Avery Sutton, professor of history at Washington State University, is featured in this “Throughline” audio article.

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NPR.org

Dr. Universe: Why do people litter?

There is a lot of litter on our planet, but it hasn’t always been that way.

For most of human history, people made stuff out of things they found in nature. They might make tools out of rocks or sticks. These things break down and become part of the soil again.

It wasn’t until the invention of new materials, like plastic, that we started creating more litter. In fact, along with the rise of these new materials came the word “litterbug.”

Erik Johnson.
Johnson

That’s what I found out from my friend Erik Johnson. He’s a sociologist at Washington State University who is really curious about culture, the ways people interact and live together, and how that shapes a human being.

If you were eating a candy bar and the wind blew the wrapper out of your hand, you might chase after it and find a trash bin. But not everyone will make the same decision. They might let the wrapper blow away—or just toss it on the ground.

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Dr. Universe