Shared contexts and triadic closure in core discussion networks

This paper inquires into structural explanations for triadic closure in networks of confidants with whom one discusses important personal matters. Building upon the assumption that meeting opportunities affect network characteristics, we primarily argue that the social contexts in which network members meet, substantially affect triadic closure. The main empirical findings are (a) that about sixty percent of the triads in core discussion networks are closed triads, which also means that a substantial part of one's strong relations is unconnected, and (b) that meeting network members in the same social contexts is an important condition for, but certainly does not guarantee triadic closure. Importantly, the specific characteristics of social contexts explain why sharing certain contexts positively affects triadic closure, while sharing other contexts does not.     

Nuclear risk perception,political efficacy,and Internet use for civic engagement in China

Nuclear power was recently reintroduced into China’s economic agenda. However, concerns have arisen as to how communities close to the sites of newly planned nuclear power plants react to the potential environmental and health risks. In a field study conducted in the proximity of the Yunxiao Nuclear Power Plant in Fujian province, it was discovered that a majority of the respondents perceived the project as having a certain level of risk. Nevertheless, online social networks were rarely used to seek relevant information, discuss benefits and threats, deliver concerns to decision-makers, or even to mobilize collective actions. Further investigation revealed a strong connection between the political efficacy of the respondents and their level of Internet use for civic engagement. The mechanisms underlying the formation of political efficacy are examined by relating the discourses of risk to their social contexts.     

“That Model is Sooooo Last Millennium!” Residential Long-Term Care as a System,Not a Place

The current quandary with the design of existing long-term care settings results from focus on structures (“institutions”) instead of on a system of supports and services that transcends physical and traditional boundaries across settings, including nursing homes, assisted living residences, and the home. Supported by analyses of the commonalities, socio-historical and political contexts, core values, and fallacies of social and medical models in existing and emerging long-term care options, a holistic model is proposed based on new core values that facilitate community and family integration and that asserts dignity and personhood as universal attributes in an array of settings.     

“It could turn ugly”: Selective disclosure of attitudes in political discussion networks

This article documents individuals selectively disclosing their political attitudes and discusses the consequences of these communication patterns for social influence and the democratic process. Using a large, diverse sample of U.S. resident adults, we ask under which conditions do people reveal their political preferences versus keeping them close to the vest. We find Americans are more likely to share their opinions with friends and family rather than co-workers and they are more likely to share their opinions on more salient topics. More importantly, they withhold their political attitudes specifically from those with whom they disagree in an attempt to avoid conflict. This produces the experience of highly homogeneous social contexts, in which only liberal or conservative views are voiced, while dissent remains silent, and oftentimes goes unacknowledged. This experience is not the result of homogeneous social contexts but the appearance of them. Paradoxically, the mechanism of selective disclosure, whose goal is to prevent conflict at the micro-level, might lead to the perception of greater division in the larger society.     

Enjoy Poverty: humanitarianism and the testimonial function of images

The overlap between production of humanitarian images and interventions in contexts of natural and man-made catastrophes is growing on a global scale. An increasingly close relationship exists between image production, news production and humanitarian industry. In this article, we argue that this process is transforming the meaning of the social, political and ethical act of bearing witness. We analyse the epistemic and political implications of visual humanitarian testimony through the documentary film Enjoy Poverty (2008), shot in Congo by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens. Examining some of the key scenes of the film, we undertake an analysis of the visual culture of humanitarianism within which the contemporary production of sensational images of strong emotional impact is inscribed and justified. We maintain that rethinking testimonial debt in light of contemporary visual humanitarianism fundamentally means to acknowledge and explore the hierarchical relationship that visual humanitarianism creates between the witnesses, the victims and the spectators. We conclude by arguing that Enjoy Poverty constitutes an attempt to generate a new visual, discursive and political horizon within which one can prevent the transformation of the testimonial relationship into a relationship of power.     

Public Support for International Human Rights Institutions: A Cross‐National and Multilevel Analysis

The expansion of international human rights institutions has drawn much attention. Bringing together theories from sociology, political science, and international law, this article examines what factors promote public support for international human rights institutions, using the recent wave of the World Values Survey data (2005–2008). The level of public support displays both cross‐national and cross‐individual variations, so I conceptualize it as a two‐level process and employ the multilevel modeling. At the individual level, it is found that men, younger people, and individuals with more education and income show a higher level of support. At the country level, national affluence, political change (de‐democratization), and linkage to the world society are associated with more support. I further integrate individual‐level characteristics and country‐level social contexts, and pay special attention to education. Education is the institutional link between macro‐level social influences and micro‐level individual attitudes. I find that the support‐promoting effect of education is contingent on social contexts. It is more salient in wealthy countries and countries with strong ties to the world society.     

Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong,Taiwan, and China

Recent studies in political communication have found a generally positive role of social media in democratic engagement. However, most research on youth’s social media use in relation to their political engagement has been conducted in the context of American and European democracies. This study fills a gap in the literature by examining the effects of the uses and structural features of social media on democratic engagement in three different Asian political systems: Taiwan (young liberal democracy); Hong Kong (partial democracy); and China (one-party state). The findings showed that sharing political information and connections with public actors consistently predicted offline participation (i.e., civic and political participation) and online participation (i.e., online political expression and online activism) in the three political systems. Although social media use for news, network size, and network structure did not consistently predict political outcomes, they played significant roles in influencing different engagement in the three political systems. The comparative approach used in this study helped to demonstrate the role of social media in the democratic engagement of youth in three places with similar cultures but different political contexts.     

Social media and political discussion: when online presence silences offline conversation

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between the use of social media, attitudinal strength, perceived opinion agreement with social ties, and willingness to discuss a political issue in different online and offline contexts. Unlike the anonymous environment of some Internet forums, social media are closely tied to the relationships and activities of everyday life. Social media increasingly make ties from offline contexts persistent online, and, because of the ambient nature of these technologies, awareness of the opinions, interests, and activities of social ties has become pervasive. As such, the use of social media is likely to affect everyday conversation about political issues in on- and offline contexts, including the home, workplace, social gatherings with friends, community meetings, and on social network sites (SNSs). Based on a national probability survey, we find that the use of SNSs (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) has a direct, negative relationship to deliberation in many offline settings. Some uses of these platforms are associated with having a lower, perceived opinion agreement with social ties. As part of a spiral of silence, this further reduces the willingness of social media users to join political conversations in some offline settings. Only those with the strongest attitudes on an issue are immune.     

Segregation in social networks based on acquaintanceship and trust

Using 2006 General Social Survey data, the authors compare levels of segregation by race and along other dimensions of potential social cleavage in the contemporary United States. Americans are not as isolated as the most extreme recent estimates suggest. However, hopes that "bridging" social capital is more common in broader acquaintanceship networks than in core networks are not supported. Instead, the entire acquaintanceship network is perceived by Americans to be about as segregated as the much smaller network of close ties. People do not always know the religiosity, political ideology, family behaviors, or socioeconomic status of their acquaintances, but perceived social divisions on these dimensions are high, sometimes rivaling racial segregation in acquaintanceship networks. The major challenge to social integration today comes from the tendency of many Americans to isolate themselves from others who differ on race, political ideology, level of religiosity, and other salient aspects of social identity.     

Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe

Social networking sites are popular tools to engage citizens in political campaigns, social movements, and civic life. However, are the effects of social media on civic and political participation revolutionary? How do these effects differ across political contexts? Using 133 cross-sectional studies with 631 estimated coefficients, I examine the relationship between social media use and engagement in civic and political life. The effects of social media use on participation are larger for political expression and smaller for informational uses, but the magnitude of these effects depends on political context. The effects of informational uses of social media on participation are smaller in countries like the United States, with a free and independent press. If there is a social media revolution, it relates to the expression of political views on social networking sites, where the average effect size is comparable to the effects of education on participation.     

Social movement studies in India,within and beyond sociology: Proposing postcolonial political sociology as an evolving framework

The social movement theories, particularly emerged since the late 1960s and the empirical studies informed by these theories occupy a decisive space in the current sociological studies of social movements. Often, the theories that emerged in the American and European contexts overlooked the significance of ‘political sociology’ as a theoretical terrain while conceptualizing contemporary social movements. Thus, this paper attempted to reinvent the significance of political sociology in two-ways: a) it critically engaging with the classical tradition of political sociology; b) critical scrutiny of the major trends appeared in the sub-field of social movements within the disciplinary domain of sociology in India since the 1980s has been undertaken. Given this, the paper recognizes the theoretical urge for a new framework to understand social movements in reference to the specificities of the non-Western societies like India, and thereby proposes an approach termed as the postcolonial political sociology of social movements.     

Social Environment Contexts of Trait Emotional Intelligence

Two studies set out to provide information regarding social environment contexts of trait emotional intelligence. In an initial exploratory study, participants with higher emotional intelligence were associated with close others of high emotional intelligence. A second longitudinal study examined the effect of social environments comprising higher or lower emotional intelligence on changes in emotional intelligence of residents in these environments. This study assessed the emotional intelligence and subjective well-being of residents of colleges at the start of a semester and again three months later. A higher composite college residence emotional intelligence index predicted an increase in participants' emotional intelligence and positive affect. These effects were especially strong for first-semester residents. The results offer new information regarding social environment contexts of trait emotional intelligence and extend findings regarding contagion of emotion and transmission of individual differences in complex emotion processing.     

Japanese Historical Experience and Japanese Modernity

Abstract  It has long been recognized that Japanese modern society, policy and economy exhibit some very distinct characteristics, a distinct mode of structuration of modern institutions and organizations which are structured in ways radically different from those which have developed in other —especially Western— societies. Such differences are not just local variations. They pertain to the very basic ways in which the various modern institutional arenas are regulated, defined, and the broader social and cultural contexts in which they operate.
The common denominator of these characteristics is a very high level of structural differentiation. mobility, openness and dynamics grounded in conceptions of service to social contexts, ideally (as promulgated in the Meiji ideology) to the national community. Neither the emphasis on equality nor the strong emphasis on achievement were grounded in any conception of principled transcendentally oriented individuality or of transcendental legitimation of different functional (e.g. political or economic) activities.
Such a rather strong structural similarity, together with a distinct institutional dynamics. can be identified in comparing Japan and Western Europe already in the premodern period, when there were only but minimal contacts between them.
The analysis in a comparative framework of this unusual combination is of central importance for the understanding of Japanese modernity and in the following pages I would like to present some preliminary steps for such analysis.     

Communication in Religious Lobbying: Making Meaning,Creating Power

This article examines influence-building tactics used in the political discourses of religious groups born from social movements. It applies Hofrenning's (1995) 3 strategies (symbolic, language, and coalition building) to an organizational publication. The work traces the Christian Coalition stances on issues of separation of church and state between 1992 and 1996 by content analyzing Christian American, the group's official publication. This study concludes that this organization of religious conservatives used varying issue emphases, contexts, and alliances to mobilize followers. It gravitated toward a political rather than religious agenda and moved toward a more secularly delivered message over time. This article also indicates that groups rooted in social movements may be able to take places within the political superstructure relatively quickly and that Hofrenning's list is useful for tracking these transitions.     

Transnational political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands

This article examines how the social and political contexts in receiving countries affect the transnational political practices of migrants and refugees, such as their mobilization around political events in their homeland. The case study explores the political participation of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands in its full complexity, that is in both the immigration country and in homeland politics. The findings suggest that transnational political practices should not be reduced to a function of the political opportunity structures of particular receiving countries for two main reasons: (a) more inclusive political structures, which provide for more participation and co‐operation on immigrant political issues, may at the same time, and for that very reason, serve to exclude dialogue on homeland politics; (b) homeland political movements may draw on a different range of resources than their immigrant political counterparts, including those outside the local political institutional context.     

Maintenance of Urban Ethnic Boundaries: the French in St. Boniface*

The tendency to doom French Canadians outside Quebec to assimilation seems to be based on the premise that state boundaries with political and economic control over an ecological boundary are required in order for a population to be nationalized into a cohesive group. Although the French had early opportunities to dominate ecological, demographic, political and economic macro-structures in St. Boniface, they quickly lost out to the British. The French community has remained strong for 160 years by means of enclavic social factors such as residential segregation, institutional completeness, cultural identity, and social distance. French self-identification with social psychological factors such as a religious ideology, amidst rich historical symbols, is strongly supported by the status elite and a majority of French residents in St. Boniface. This enclave is changing to some extent but a distinct core of French identification remains. A resurgence of Franco-Manitoban identity is hardly taking place, but there is much evidence of reinterpretation and revitalization.     

Political non-participation in elections,civic life and social movements

This article reviews existing theory and research on political non-participation. Spanning the electoral, civic and social movement spheres, it critically compares the different conceptual tools that have been employed to explain why individuals might not participate in politics. This includes the study of rational choice, political socialisation, social networks and political emotions. In doing, this article identifies opportunities for a more holistic approach to studying non-participation across multiple fields and contexts in the social sciences.     

From International Solidarity to Migrant Activism: Critical Junctures in Philippine–Australian History

This essay examines the social and political contexts of the establishment of the first Philippine Australian Solidarity Group (PASG) and then its subsequent demise in the face of intra-group and external challenges. The demand to decolonise the conduct of solidarity within the PASG was more than a case of alleged racism, but a symptom of two intersecting phenomena. There was the growing population of immigrants who sought to find an identity in Australia through activism. Their solid political agenda, thus, intersected with the need to re-evaluate the structure and political agenda of PASG as an ‘old’ social movement. Drawing from the critical junctures in Philippine–Australian social movement, the essay sheds light on the risks of a centralised political body with a ‘diverse’ membership but also the benefits of responding to challenges to continuously re-write the rules of activist engagement, thus to re-invigorate the politics of resistance.     

Solar Festivals and Climate Bills: Comparing NGO Climate Change Campaigns in the UK and Australia

This paper compares climate change campaigns conducted by environmental nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. The NGOs represent a diversity of political access, financial resources, and international connections. Three campaign activities common to both countries undertaken between 2004 and 2006 are analyzed for their effectiveness via interviews and document review. This examination is embedded within an analysis of the political, economic, policy, and social contexts of each country. It is shown that in the UK climate change has been used as a pivotal leadership issue, that the fossil fuel industry’s influence is not predominant, and that NGOs enjoy political legitimacy. Whereas, in Australia climate change has only recently emerged as a political priority, the fossil fuel industry has had significant political and financial influence, and NGO advocacy has been marginalized. It is argued that NGOs are embedded in the political and policy contexts of their country, and the greatest campaign traction and NGO influence can only be achieved when these contexts provide favorable conditions.

Responses to Homelessness in Australian Cities: Social Worker Perspectives

Abstract

Responses to homelessness in Australia are provided by a range of government and nongovernment services. The present study examined the experiences of social workers within these diverse services. The article discusses how social workers make meaning of their professional identity and responses to homelessness in contemporary practice and policy settings. The findings of a qualitative study of 39 social workers employed in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney are analysed from a social constructionist perspective. The practice dilemmas for social workers interviewed related to the dominating influence of the contemporary political and economic climate, the managerial requirement of organisations, and the personal and professional tensions these political and organisational contexts created.