My thesis research is about improving the communication between female political candidates/electeds and environmental issues/policies that their constituents care about.
Simply put, I want to see more women in politics and I want environmental issues to be better addressed by the government.
I think computation can further my research goals in a few ways. The first is to highlight existing data which shows female politicians disproportionately vote in favor of pro-environment policy over their male counterparts. This data will ideally help mobilize voters that identify the environment as one of their top issues.
I would also love to create some new data connecting increased voter turnout with constituents feeling they can easily communicate their concerns to their representatives. And inversely, it would be very meaningful to have data which shows that politicians increase their attention on constituent concerns with these better communication channels.
I don’t have a ton of datasets off hand to pull this information from, but it’s a priority as we move through this next phase of research. We are also now beginning to partner with organizations that focus on training politicians (ignite, Run For Something, 21 in ’21and many more) and plan to get some robust analytics from them.
In regards to my desired knowledge about coding, I would like to understand the verbiage and some foundational concepts. It’s mostly so that I can meaningfully participate in conversations that may require coding in a future professional setting. I don’t, however, expect myself to really commit to a serious coding project in my career. I have so many other skills I think are imminently important for me to practice to support my future success.
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