Anatomy of Protest in the Digital Era: A Network Analysis of Twitter and Occupy Wall Street

Two months before the first Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest in September 2011, activists were using Twitter to organize and spread the movement. In this study, the earliest Twitter messages regarding #OccupyWallStreet were subjected to network analysis to answer these questions: What were the central hubs in the OWS discourse on Twitter in the summer of 2011? How did OWS emerge from among several social movement organizations to lead a nationwide series of demonstrations? What were the key points in the Twitter dialogue that aided the process of scale shift? By addressing these questions, this research connects social movement concepts with network centrality measures to provide a clearer picture of movements in the digital era.     

Social media teams as digital vanguards: the question of leadership in the management of key Facebook and Twitter accounts of Occupy Wall Street,Indignados and UK Uncut

Recent protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street in the US, the indignados/15M movement in Spain, and UK Uncut have witnessed the rise of social media teams, small activist groups responsible for managing high-visibility and collective activist social media accounts. Going against dominant assertions about the leaderless character of contemporary digital movements, the article conceptualises social media teams as ‘digital vanguards’, collective and informal leadership structures that perform a role of direction of collective action through the use of digital communication. Various aspects of the internal functioning of vanguards are discussed: (a) their formation and composition; (b) processes of internal coordination; (c) struggles over the control of social media accounts. The article reveals the profound contradiction between the leadership role exercised by social media teams and the adherence of digital activists to techno-libertarian values of openness, horizontality, and leaderlessness. The espousal of these principles has run against the persistence of power and leadership dynamics leading to bitter conflicts within these teams that have hastened the decline of the movements they served. These problems call for a new conceptual framework to better render the nature of leadership in digital movements and for new political practices to better regulate the management of social media assets.     

Squaring Up: Experiences of Transition from Off‐Street Sex Work to Square Work and Duality—Concurrent Involvement in Both—in Vancouver,BC

Many studies of exit from sex work are inspired by role theory, where people experience a lack of attachment to a role; are faced with individual, interactional, and structural challenges; contemplate transition and exit a role; and then struggle to establish postrole identities and new lives. This framework has been used to explicate the factors and experiences of those who leave or attempt to leave the sex industry; however, it is limited because studies present sex work as a harmful and dangerous profession that people are trapped in, escaping, or have survived. In this paper, I discuss Vancouver's history of violence against sex workers and I review research on sex work exiting and bring forward recommendations for the design of exit program based on the experiences of 22 active and former off‐street sex workers from Vancouver, British Columbia. I describe study participants who include Sex‐Work‐No‐More participants who would not return to the industry, Sex‐Work‐Maybe participants who consider reinvolvement, and Dual‐Life participants who are employed in sex work and conventional work simultaneously. These participants uniquely challenge narrow, binary understandings of involvement and transition because they discuss their use of deception to obtain resources needed to make change; the support that clients have provided; their strategic engagement in sex work as a means to exit; their considerations of reentry; and for some, their dual employment. In light of new legislation that criminalizes activities related to sex work—the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act—and the Federal government announcement of $20 million dollars for the creation of exit services nationwide, hearing from sex workers is essential to advancing agendas in this area. De nombreuses études de la sortie du travail du sexe sont inspirées par la théorie des rôles, où les gens éprouvent un manque d'attachement à un rôle; sont confrontés à des défis particuliers, interactionnelles et structurelles; contempler transition et quitter un rôle; et ensuite du mal à établir des identités post‐rôle et les nouvelles vies. Ce cadre a été utilisé pour expliquer les facteurs et les expériences de ceux qui quittent ou tentent de quitter l'industrie du sexe; Cependant, elle est limitée parce que le travail présente des études de sexe comme une profession nocive et dangereux que les gens sont piégés dedans, échapper ou ont survécu. Dans cet article, je discute de l'histoire de la violence contre les travailleurs du sexe de Vancouver et je passe en revue la recherche sur le travail du sexe sortant et de formuler des recommandations pour la conception d'un programme de sortie fondée dans les expériences de 22 travailleurs actifs et les anciens hors rue sexe de Vancouver CB Je décris les participants à l'étude qui incluent le travail du sexe‐No‐More participants qui ne reviendrait pas à l'industrie; Sex‐travail, peut‐être les participants qui considèrent réengagement; et les participants Dual‐vie qui sont employés dans le travail du sexe et le travail classique simultanément. Ces participants contestent unique, ententes binaires étroites de la participation et de la transition parce qu'ils discutent de leur recours à la tromperie pour obtenir les ressources nécessaires pour apporter des changements; le soutien que les clients ont fourni; leur engagement stratégique dans le travail du sexe comme un moyen de sortir; leurs considérations de rentrée; et pour certains, leur double emploi. À la lumière de la nouvelle législation qui criminalise les activités liées au sexe de travail ‐ Loi sur la protection des collectivités et des personnes victimes d'exploitation ‐ et l'annonce du gouvernement fédéral de 20 millions de dollars pour la création de services de sortie à l'échelle nationale, l'audition de travailleurs du sexe est essentielle pour programmes faisant la promotion dans ce domaine.     

State Formation and Property—Reflections on the Political Technologies of Space in Central America

The paper analyzes state formation as the process whereby power/knowledge complexes organize, use and produce social space. In particular the focus is placed on private land ownership as a historical form of land possession. Privatization of land as a technique of government produced a homogeneous fragmentation of space, and the argument made in the paper is that this space became the primary technique in the construction of dualized Salvadorean society based on the exclusion from the political nation of a large group of delinquent and deviant bodies that should be policed, and the inclusion in the political nation of a small group of land owning individuals that took part in politics.     

Risk Factors in Adolescence: The Case of Gambling, Videogame Playing, and the Internet

It has been noted that adolescents may be more susceptible to pathological gambling. Not only is it usually illegal, but it appears to be related to high levels of problem gambling and other delinquent activities such as illicit drug taking and alcohol abuse. This paper examines risk factors not only in adolescent gambling but also in videogame playing (which shares many similarities with gambling). There appear to be three main forms of adolescent gambling that have been widely researched. Adolescent gambling activities and general risk factors in adolescent gambling are provided. As well, the influence of technology on adolescents in the form of both videogames and the Internet are examined. It is argued that technologically advanced forms of gambling may be highly appealing to adolescents.     

Now — and Now — and Now: Time,Space and the Material Entanglements of the Classroom

This study examines time and children in the classroom based on free‐flowing observations written in class by 10‐year‐old pupils. The concept of entanglement is activated to consider time together with space and matter and explore the dynamics in which these elements interact. The analysis unsettles the notion of time as a separate, ‘outside’ parameter: rather than examining children in time, this viewpoint enables us to see children as being or becoming of different times and entangling with material elements. On the other hand, entanglements also produce different moments of now, which are seen as multiple and hybrid. The author suggests an understanding of research with children as ‘lively entanglements’ in which special attention should be given to things that matter to children.     

When Nonprofit Organizations Meet Information and Communication Technologies: How Organizational Culture Influences the Use of Traditional,Digital, and Sharing Media

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In contrast to previous studies that emphasized how resources and institutional forces influence nonprofit organizations...     

Policy Legitimacy,Rhetorical Politics,and the Evaluation of City‐Street Video Surveillance Monitoring Programs in Canada

This article examines the evaluation and legitimization of city‐street video surveillance in Ontario, Canada. We demonstrate how monitoring programs are promoted, designed, and justified based on rhetorical claims about their efficacy. Although program evaluation data do not commonly corroborate or support program objectives, we show how the rhetorical politics of video surveillance evaluation research finds legitimacy by adhering to the Ontario privacy commissioner's best practices guidelines—guidelines that are formulated to minimize rhetoric in system design. The findings raise questions about how city‐street video surveillance remains a viable policy option given the lack of evidence pertaining to its usefulness.     

Work‐Related Health Limitations,Education, and the Risk of Marital Disruption

Despite progress in identifying the covariates of divorce, there remain substantial gaps in the knowledge. One of these gaps is the relationship between health and risk of marital dissolution. I extend prior research by examining the linkages between work‐related health limitations and divorce using 25 years of data (N = 7919) taken from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY‐79). I found that work‐related health limitations among husbands, but not wives, were linked to an increased risk of divorce. In addition, I found that this relationship was moderated by education in a fashion that varies according to race. For White men, education exacerbated the effect of health limitations, but for Black men, education attenuated the effects of work‐related health limitations.     

Contesting Dominance and Performing Badness: A Micro‐Sociological Analysis of the Forms,Situational Asymmetry,and Severity of Street Violence

This article proposes two ideal types of street violence: contesting dominance and performing badness. These ideal types were used as heuristic devices in qualitative analyses of 159 violent interactions among Dutch youth, taken from judicial case files. These analyses revealed that over half of the interactions resembled the contesting dominance type. Here, opponents engage in sequences of challenges and provocations to aggressively establish a domineering self; attackers purposively looked for or arranged confrontations that revolved around the issue of who is superior per se. The performing badness type was found in 30% of the cases. This is one‐sided violence in which attackers humiliate and toy with their victims to display their power and meanness. The relationships between these forms of violence, situational asymmetry (weak victims and supportive groups) and severity of the violence were analyzed statistically. Contesting dominance was associated with more severe violence, resulting from the greater amount of confrontational tension. Situational asymmetry was the rule in both forms of violence. The difference between the size of the attackers’ supportive group and that of the victims turned out to be especially important. The larger the difference, the more severe the violence in general, but especially in contesting dominance.     

Political Economy,Ecological Modernization,and Energy Use: A Panel Analysis of State‐Level Energy Use in the United States, 1960–1990

The present study will examine energy consumption from two competing perspectives within environmental social science: political economy and ecological modernization. These frameworks will be evaluated with a fixed‐effects panel analysis of state‐level energy use between the years 1960 and 1990, based on data for 50 states plus Washington, DC, from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System. The results from the panel analysis show that the increase in total energy use between 1960 and 1990 depended on both increasing economic growth and urbanization, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and inflation‐adjusted energy prices. The results challenge the claims of ecological modernization theory and support a political economic approach to the study of changes in energy use. In the conclusion, the study’s findings will be framed within the context of the early twenty‐first‐century economic and ecological crises. In light of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study can also further advance the renewable energy debate by reminding us of the social drivers of energy use.     

Changes in Wives' Income: Effects on Marital Happiness,Psychological Well‐Being,and the Risk of Divorce

We investigate the effects of increases in married women's actual income and in their proportion of total family income on marital happiness, psychological well‐being, and the likelihood of divorce. We use data from a sample of 1,047 married individuals (not couples) in medium‐duration marriages, drawn from a five‐wave panel survey begun in 1980 and continuing to 1997. Structural equation modeling is used to assess the impact of increases in married women's absolute and relative income from 1980 to 1988 on the marital happiness and well‐being of married men and women in 1988. Event history analysis is used to determine how these changes affect the risk of divorce between 1988 and 1997. We find that increases in married women's absolute and relative income significantly increase their marital happiness and well‐being. Increases in married women's absolute income generally have nonsignificant effects for married men. However, married men's well‐being is significantly lower when married women's proportional contributions to the total family income are increased. The likelihood of divorce is not significantly affected by increases in married women's income. Nevertheless, increases in married women's income may indirectly lower the risk of divorce by increasing women's marital happiness.