Wiki-worthy: collective judgment of candidate notability

The use of socio-technical data to predict elections is a growing research area. We argue that election prediction research suffers from under-specified theoretical models that do not properly distinguish between ‘poll-like’ and ‘prediction market-like’ mechanisms understand findings. More specifically, we argue that, in systems with strong norms and reputational feedback mechanisms, individuals have market-like incentives to bias content creation toward candidates they expect will win. We provide evidence for the merits of this approach using the creation of Wikipedia pages for candidates in the 2010 US and UK national legislative elections. We find that Wikipedia editors are more likely to create Wikipedia pages for challengers who have a better chance of defeating their incumbent opponent and that the timing of these page creations coincides with periods when collective expectations for the candidate's success are relatively high.     

Tracking Transformations in Health Movement Organisations: Alzheimer's Disease Organisations and their Changing ‘Cause Regimes’

In this paper, we aim to contribute to the elaboration of a framework for the systematic periodisation of health social movement organisations (HSMOs). Drawing on historical and contemporaneous data on two organisations that identify as Alzheimer's disease movement organisations (the Alzheimer's Society in Britain and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland), we consider transformations in these organisations' ‘cause regimes’. By cause regime, we refer to who and what an HSMO is fighting for, as articulated in its public self-identifications; to the broader framing of the cause and to how organisations' public self-identifications of their cause can govern or regulate their operation, including their interactions with and representations of those on whose behalf they advocate. We show that the transformation of HSMOs' cause regime can give rise to a series of organisational tensions and challenges, including the alignment of the public identification of its cause with the patient identities it promotes, or its day-to-day ‘patient identity work’.     

Productivity: Lessons from Japan

The purpose of this article is to compare Japanese productivity on an industry basis with the U.S. and European companies, and then to examine the factors and methods that underline the Japanese success to determine what, if any, lessons Western companies can draw from the Japanese approach.     

The construction of intellectual disability by parents and teachers

This study examines how disability is constructed by significant adults in the lives of young people with intellectual disability. Specifically, we are examined how parents of those affected by intellectual disability and teachers in special schools construct intellectual disability in talk. Using focus group interviews, we examined whether stigma might be recreated or sustained within the family and school settings of those affected by intellectual disability. Parents and school staff constructed disability as negative, articulating difference from ‘the norm’, which was claimed to drive social isolation for affected young people. There was also evidence that parents and teachers attributed less agency to young people affected by intellectual disability. Discussion orients to how parents and teachers, see themselves as advocates for those with intellectual disability highlight, whilst at the same time recreating pervasive and subtle distinctions between children with and without intellectual disability.     

Household remedies: new narratives of queer containment in the television movie

What constitutes lesbian identity and who gets to define and/or inhabit such an identity in this postmodern and mediated world? This article addresses how the structure of televisual discourse restricts and streamlines "lesbian" representations in television movies. The supposed "progress" of appearing in the virtual public spaces of television and print media may fulfill the queer impulse for visibility in opposition to cultural silence, but it may also come at the price of a depoliticization of queer life and erotic resistance. Taking notice of which deployments of "queerness" are created and supported by text of the television movie, this article seeks insight into how the queer body and queer identity are being hegemonically reconstructed for consumption by this media form.     

Knowing ‘how to go on’: structuration theory as an analytical prism in studies of intercultural engagement

Accelerated rates of global migration over the past 20 years have seen dramatic increases in demographic, cultural and social diversity in the world's most developed countries. Scholars of migration are faced with the challenge of understanding a society that consists of countless socio-cultural frontiers, along which the contrasting and often conflicting practices and values of diverse populations collide. These circumstances require the development of a theoretical framework that elucidates the practices through which these cultural collisions and conflicts are actualised and addressed, illuminating the day to day challenges of living with difference. This article proposes structuration theory as an insightful analytical prism that can afford new in-depth perspectives into intercultural engagements. By exploring the confluence between structural factors and the actions of individual agents, structuration theory illuminates the choices made by members of migrant groups regarding socio-cultural affiliations, as well as highlighting the strategic processes and behaviours through which these choices are actualised. A discussion of empirical research with Muslim youth in the west of Ireland illustrates the analytical clarity that structuration theory can offer to debates on integration and interculturalism.