Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

The landscape of political humor and satire is changing rapidly, and it is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of our culture. Although scholars have been actively trying to capture this change, majority of the existing frameworks for understanding humor and satire in politics still reduce these phenomena to mere genres or rhetoric tools. In addition, they provide insufficient accounts concerning the reception of humor and satire, and neglect to interpret and explain what they communicate. In the article, a general understanding of humor and satire outside of a political context, followed by an overview of studies discussing humor and satire in politics through their applications in social movements, as leadership tools, and through their manifestations in mass media has been presented. Lastly, a cultural sociological perspective to the field has been introduced. It has been argued that approaching humor and satire in politics through a structural hermeneutic method of the Strong Program will enable us to recognize and treat political humor and satire as autonomous and complex cultural systems which carry an internal power to move people.     

“通知—删除”规则在电子商务专利侵权中的适用——兼论《民法典》第1195条

随着电子商务的蓬勃发展，“通知—删除”规则在有效制止电子商务专利侵权中具有重要作用。我国在21世纪初引进“通知—删除”规则，逐步构建了适用于电子商务领域专利侵权的“通知—删除”规则。《民法典》正式施行以来，“通知—删除”规则在适用于电子商务专利侵权中暴露出诸多问题：存在规则滥用隐患，权利人与商家利益失衡，通知与反通知的审核标准难以一致，因错误通知造成商家损失难以恢复，等等。解决好这些问题，需从专利侵权的特殊性出发，贴合《民法典》第1195条的规定，遵循“通知—删除”规则的立法目的进行解释适用；应重视和探索电子商务平台的自治能力，推动“通知—删除”规则在电子商务专利侵权中的解释适用。     

Microfinance Participation and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample of Women in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

More than 30 million married women in Bangladesh access microfinance, an empowering anti-poverty tool, amidst mixed responses from scholars about microfinance's empowering effect. The present study evaluates whether microfinance participation empowers women using a culturally suitable conceptualization of empowerment constituting autonomy, decision-making power in the household, and justification of partner violence. This study utilizes data from a representative probability sub-sample of 6,150 married women aged between 15 and 49 years from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2011 to assess the difference in empowerment between microfinance participants and a control group using propensity score matching techniques. Findings revealed that women who participated in microfinance were not statistically different at the 0.05 level from women who did not participate in microfinance in terms of empowerment when groups were matched on socio-demographic variables ensuring that treatment and comparison groups had equal propensity to participate in microfinance, casting doubt on the assertion that microfinance participation positively affects women's empowerment. Future research needs to focus on what empowerment may mean in relation to the outside world; we need to move beyond a familial understanding of empowerment to examine the individual in terms of her individual identity in the socio-political world in which she resides.     

Bargaining for Success: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Unions and Student Achievement

While many previous studies have identified a positive relationship between teachers unions and student achievement on standardized tests, little research to date has explored the channels through which unions might actually affect achievement. Utilizing multilevel random intercept models, we examine the effects of two categories of items commonly negotiated in teacher contracts—“industrial union” items and “professional union” items—on individual student math scores. Further, we assess the ability of these two clusters of variables to explain the positive union effect found in previous research. The results confirm that teachers unions are positively associated with student achievement and suggest that the industrial model explains moderately more of the union effect than the professional model; however, only the combination of both models is capable of reducing the union effect to nonsignificance. These findings are also confirmed in a supplemental analysis utilizing instrumental variables to account for the possibility of endogeneity. Finally, a decomposition of the union effect suggests that teachers unions are most beneficial to middle‐ and high‐achieving students. We conclude that through industrial and professional bargaining, teachers are able to secure higher salaries, credentialing, and greater autonomy which lead to improved student achievement.     

Distributed intervention: networked content moderation in anonymous mobile spaces

Given recent public focus on the use of digital tools to engage in discrimination and harassment, online platforms have come under increasing scrutiny to address online incivility. Many of these efforts have been critiqued for relying too heavily on technical tools or burdening individuals with the responsibility for reporting inappropriate actions. This research examines practices of digital bystander intervention on the anonymous localized mobile app Yik Yak. Through an analysis of the firsthand experiences of college students in the United States, this research identifies and investigates practices of networked intervention—that is, strategies of content moderation where success relies on collective action. Rooted in a general uncertainty and skepticism regarding reporting tools provided by the platform, findings suggest a preference for intervention practices that depend on distributed responsibility and networked activity. Taking inspiration from research on college bathroom graffiti—a parallel discursive environment—this paper employs the feminist theory of relational autonomy to explore the possibilities and limitations of networked intervention to cultivate individual and collective empowerment.     

Autonomy,spontaneity and creativity in research with children. A study of experience and participation,in central Italy and North West England

ABSTRACT

Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children’s knowledges and experiences. This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation. This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance. The study contributes to the debate on children’s autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice. Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children’s choices and agency are respected.     

政治关联如何影响社会组织有效性？——组织自主性的中介作用和制度支持的调节作用

社会组织领域的政治关联现象日益显著，但政治关联究竟如何影响社会组织有效性，其隐藏的作用机制又是什么？这是学术界尚未明晰的重要课题。针对254家社会组织的问卷调查发现，社会组织政治关联会正向影响组织有效性，这一关系受到组织自主性的中介作用影响。更进一步的研究显示，制度支持能调节上述中介关系。具体而言，当制度支持水平较高时，这一效应将会增强；当制度支持水平较低时，政治关联通过组织自主性间接影响组织有效性的效应就会减弱。这一发现，一方面增进了我们对社会组织政治关联的理解，另一方面也为提升社会组织有效性的理论和实践提供了重要启示。     

The relative performance of ensemble methods with deep convolutional neural networks for image classification

Artificial neural networks have been successfully applied to a variety of machine learning tasks, including image recognition, semantic segmentation, and machine translation. However, few studies fully investigated ensembles of artificial neural networks. In this work, we investigated multiple widely used ensemble methods, including unweighted averaging, majority voting, the Bayes Optimal Classifier, and the (discrete) Super Learner, for image recognition tasks, with deep neural networks as candidate algorithms. We designed several experiments, with the candidate algorithms being the same network structure with different model checkpoints within a single training process, networks with same structure but trained multiple times stochastically, and networks with different structure. In addition, we further studied the overconfidence phenomenon of the neural networks, as well as its impact on the ensemble methods. Across all of our experiments, the Super Learner achieved best performance among all the ensemble methods in this study.     

我国非司法ODR的适用与完善——以闲鱼小法庭为例

互联网经济纠纷的急速增长,迫切需要我国加强完善线上纠纷解决机制(ODR)以解决网络空间中的权利冲突问题。非司法ODR既传承了我国儒家传统的无讼解纷思想,又融会了前沿领域的互联网信息技术,充分将传统与现代相结合并创新智造出具有“线上纠纷线上解决”属性的诉源治理新模式。以闲鱼小法庭为例,基于个人、组织、社会三维效益论视角分析发现:非司法ODR通过融合非诉解纷理念能够实现形式多元、信息互通、对抗性弱的私力救济;非司法ODR通过倡导诉前分流机制可以实现缓解诉讼压力、降低诉讼延迟、优化司法资源配置;非司法ODR通过发挥定分止争作用真正实现了社会整体的非诉福祉建设。为了加快推动具有民间性、自治性、高效性的非司法ODR成为化解涉网纠纷的第一道防线,建议通过国家立法确认其正当地位,建立与司法ODR的衔接机制,规范解纷人员的职业操守,健全对网民数据的隐私保护机制,建立非司法ODR的司法确认制度。      

试论彭禹廷"三自主义"理论的实践途径

20世纪20年代末,“辞官”回乡的河南镇平人彭禹廷,“以剿匪救民为职志”。他从剿匪救民生涯中深切地感受到,即使剿灭匪患,尚不能“救穷”致富,不能抵御“匪式军队”、贪官污吏的压迫。所以,为实现积极的人生观,而“上下求索”“治本之方法”———以孙中山的“为人民求幸福的”“三民主义”为理论基础,创立了“自卫、自治、自富”“三自主义”理论。并在“三自主义”理论的指导下,掀起了历时十余年的宛西自治,使宛西自治区域成为被世人称颂的“世外桃源”、“自治天堂”。