Full Stack Application Development for Streamlined User Experience;Social Media Infrastructure as a Catalyst for Alt-Right Extremism

The design process is a critical, yet often overlooked, part of software development. I had the opportunity to work on a prototype at my Capital One summer internship where I saw a full development process. A key part of the learning experience was designing the frontend and backend architecture with my co workers. In my social technical thesis, I call for a more indepth look at new features during the design phase to prevent alt-right radicalization. Social media is a breeding ground for hate speech and radicalization, and some social media features encourage this behavior. While these two projects are not deeply intertwined, they show the technical and social development process that should go into application development. The technical and social infrastructure of any application is imperative to making a good product - not just how efficient it is.
In my capstone project, I detail my experience working at Capital One this past summer. Working in a team with three other interns, we were tasked with creating a prototype for an internal financial application. This web application would help those on the financial teams set up their datasets quicker by eliminating the step of having to register the same data schema in two places. Our boss gave us the basic parameters, and of course gave us lots of help throughout the summer, but the frontend design was entirely up to us. We also had to keep in mind that this was just a proof of concept, so we had to write clean code so that a full time developer could pick up the project after we left for the summer.
Over the course of 10 weeks, we were able to finish our prototype and present our final product to our boss and higher ups. We built an application that connected to our Amazon Web Services (AWS) backend using Python via our frontend built in Angular. I contributed to the functions that connected to our AWS DynamoDB database. I also worked on piecing together the pages of the frontend, so when a button was clicked it made an API call then moved to the next screen based on the response of the call. Our boss and higher ups were pleased with the project and we delivered what they asked for and more by including an analytics dashboard page.
In my social technical thesis, I ask the questions: How did the alt-right rise to power through social media? How did social media platforms react? What are the consequences of a lack of action against the alt-right? It is imperative to ask these questions because the alt-right is a dangerous, violent subculture within the American conservative movement. I answer these questions through applying Actor Network Theory (ANT). This theory along with viewing a feature as a black box provides a useful framework for software developers to use during the design phase.
There are many academic publications on political radicalization online, and I selected a view to discuss in my thesis. These papers cover all different platforms from Reddit and TikTok to the new ultra conservative, invite only app, Gab. The literature provides great background to then apply ANT to Reddit’s subreddit culture and TikTok’s infamous “algorithm.” Placing the features in a network of on-app actors and off-app actors shows how these features create an infrastructure conducive to radicalization. I implore software developers to think about the potential networks a new feature could create.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Technical Advisor: Rosanne Vrugtman

STS Advisor: Pedro Augusto P. Francisco