Students share the stories behind their favorite laptop stickers
Watch a movie a day for $10 each month See Arts & Life, page 16
DePaulia
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2016 Pacemaker award Winner/Best Weekly College Newspaper - SPJ
Volume #102 | Issue #3 | Sept. 25, 2017 | depauliaonline.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF BAYLEE RITTER DePaul junior Baylee Ritter spoke at the United Nations on Wednesday as a representative of the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council.
Making waves One student has big ideas for ocean conservation STORY BY BENJAMIN CONBOY News Editor
One day after President Donald Trump took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly to threaten “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un, one of DePaul’s students, junior Baylee Ritter took over the microphone on Wednesday, Sept. 20 to share a plea with world leaders to cooperate in keeping the oceans clean. Ritter was invited by Erna Solber, the Prime Minister of Norway to talk about her work with the presidents of Palau, Chile, Republic of Ghana and the Vice President of Indonesia. This wasn’t Ritter’s first experience with the U.N. She has previously traveled on behalf of the United States to Canada, Turkey, Sweden and Kenya to speak about the daunting challenge of water conservation in the U.S. She also sits on the U.N.’s planning committee for World Oceans Day, a global celebration of the world’s oceans that is similar to Earth Day. “We must begin building every single inch of where we come from with our words and actions,” Ritter said in the beginning of her speech to the General Assembly. “We must be cognizant of the issues beyond our own backyard and aim our attention to things we have sometimes never
touched.” Her first experience with the U.N. was as a freshman in high school when Ritter and some of her friends started a non-profit organization that was eventually recognized by the U.N. “We started a very successful non-profit that eventually spread to 32 states,” Ritter said. “The U.N. named it the best environmental program in the U.S. It was called the Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program, and it allowed people to recycle their old prescription medications at police stations and pharmacies. When I was 13 years old, the U.N. invited us to Sweden to present with all of the other top programs from around the world. We were named the third best non-profit in the world.” Juggling a full course load and work is difficult for most students, but Ritter is a globetrotting activist who is constantly on the move. She is often given very little notice when an appearance is requested of her. She left Chicago at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday after her public relations class so she could arrive at the U.N. headquarters in New York City for her speech at 8 a.m. See OCEAN, page 5
Professor says artificial intelligence could replace human interaction Anthropomorphic devices such as Siri, Alexa or even a Roomba robotic vacuum can diminish feelings of loneliness and cause people to be less likely to engage in compensatory behaviors, according to a study done by James Mourey, an assistant professor of marketing at DePaul. Mourey’s study shows how when people feel socially excluded, they may demonstrate behaviors such as exaggerating how many friends one has, expecting to speak with close friends or family more often in the future and an increased willingness to engage in prosocial behavior in order to compensate for their feelings of loneliness. Mourey said he became interested in discovering the potential social effects of humanlike products when he began to notice the increasing number of these products on the market. “There are so many different products and services
By Timothy Duke Contributing Writer
out today that have very humanized qualities,” Mourey said. “As marketers, we saw this trend of more humanized products and became curious about what possible consequences these types of products could have on humans and human social interaction.” In order to study the impact of these devices on people, Mourey set up a series of experiments to test the products on feelings of social assurance. Mourey and his fellow researchers made participants write essays to prime participants towards feelings of loneliness and exclusion, both vital to the coming experiments. Mourey says he then divided the participants into two groups: one group was shown an image of a Roomba with a smile on it so the Roomba resembled a face while the other group was shown the same image, but
rotated 90 degrees so it no longer appeared as a face. “Then we would ask them questions like ‘Do you think you will spend more or less time talking to family and friends this month?’ or ‘How likely are you to donate to a charity this month?’” Mourey said. “What we found was that the group who was made to remember a time when they were socially excluded, but did not engage with the humanlike device, were significantly more likely to compensate for the feelings of exclusion by saying they would talk to friends and family more.” “Also, more participants in this group stated that they thought they would be willing to donate to a charity than the group who did engage with the human-like Roomba,” Mourey continued. “We found for the group who did engage with the more human-like Roomba, the effects of social exclusion were diminished and they did not compensate for social assurance.”
See STUDY, page 9