Opinion expression via user comments on news websites: analysis through the perspective of the spiral of silence

User comments have become an essential part of news websites. In this article, we examine this mode of public expression via the theory of the spiral of silence. This is done while adopting alternative measures, with regard to three major issues on the Israeli agenda, and in comparison to expression in public, as in the traditional theory. Based on an Internet survey (n?=?712), the present study results support the relevancy of the spiral of silence to the online comment sphere. Perceived support for one’s opinion by the majority was found to have a positive and significant effect on the willingness to express opinion in the online sphere. The explanatory role of fear of isolation was more significant in the online sphere than in face-to-face context.     

Interval estimation: An information theoretic approach

ABSTRACT

We develop here an alternative information theoretic method of inference of problems in which all of the observed information is in terms of intervals. We focus on the unconditional case in which the observed information is in terms the minimal and maximal values at each period. Given interval data, we infer the joint and marginal distributions of the interval variable and its range. Our inferential procedure is based on entropy maximization subject to multidimensional moment conditions and normalization in which the entropy is defined over discretized intervals. The discretization is based on theory or empirically observed quantities. The number of estimated parameters is independent of the discretization so the level of discretization does not change the fundamental level of complexity of our model. As an example, we apply our method to study the weather pattern for Los Angeles and New York City across the last century.     

A Social Networks Approach to Public Relations on Twitter: Social Mediators and Mediated Public Relations

This study proposes theoretical and practical frameworks to systematically examine mediated public relations in social media spaces. We applied a social network conceptual framework to identify and characterize social mediators that connect the US State Department with its international public. The results showed that social mediators vary in terms of their formality and interdependence. Formal social mediators were primarily US government agencies while informal social mediators were nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals. Notably, relationships with populations in the Middle East and North Africa were mediated primarily by informal actors, and formal mediators played a key role in connecting the public with everywhere else in the world. Government-related formal mediators and informal social mediators showed similar levels of bilateral relationships. In contrast, news media, the most traditional public relations mediators, were rarely found as social mediators and demonstrated the most unilateral relationships.     

A Small-Sample Estimator for the Sample-Selection Model

A semiparametric estimator for evaluating the parameters of data generated under a sample selection process is developed. This estimator is based on the generalized maximum entropy estimator and performs well for small and ill-posed samples. Theoretical and sampling comparisons with parametric and semiparametric estimators are given. This method and standard ones are applied to three small-sample empirical applications of the wage-participation model for female teenage heads of households, immigrants, and Native Americans.     

Suicidal Ideation and Comorbid Disorders in Adolescents and Young Adults Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome: A Population at Risk

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of suicidal ideation and comorbid disorders (major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder) among adolescents and young adults with diagnosed Asperger's syndrome (AS). A cross-sectional study using a self-administrated mail questionnaire and a Web-based questionnaire were used. Two samples were selected for this study. The first sample used snowball sampling, starting with parents of adolescents and young adults with diagnosed AS who participated in a qualitative study conducted in 2002. The second sample consisted of a volunteer sample of parents who visited Web sites for parents and individuals with diagnosed autism spectrum disorder. The sample included 10 adolescents and young adults with diagnosed AS. Fifty percent of the sample had a clinically significant level of suicidal ideation, 20% met criteria for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, and 30% met criteria for generalized anxiety disorder.     

Preliminary Evaluation of the Validity and Reliability of the Spanish Version of the Therapeutic Alliance with Clinician (TAC) Questionnaire

As part of a broader study aimed at evaluating perceived alliance with service providers and level of satisfaction with services received, 103 monolingual Spanish speaking Hispanic women were interviewed. Participants were receiving ongoing behavioral health treatment at three different community service provider sites located in the greater New Haven area in Connecticut. These sites included a community health center (n = 40), a community behavioral health center (n = 40), and a faith-based agency (n = 23). As part of this study, the English version of the Therapeutic Alliance with Clinician (TAC) questionnaire was translated into Spanish and administered to our sample of Hispanic women. Results on the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the TAC are presented in this article.     

Urban path dependency theory and the living wage: Were cities that passed ordinances destined to do so?

Most accounts of why cities pass living wage ordinances stress the importance of grassroots coalitions that have successfully mobilized bias out of concerns for justice and fairness. On the basis of data from the Integrated Public Micro-Use Data Series (IPUMS) for the years 1950–1990, this paper argues that cities that passed ordinances had labor market characteristics that may have predisposed them to do so. These cities were also more likely to pass ordinances because of transformations in their labor markets that were occurring over several decades. It is these transformations that constitute a form of path dependence. Consequently, it is this path dependence that may account for why some cities were more conducive to the development of grassroots organizations and coalitions that were able to capitalize on changes over a 40-year period as a basis for mobilizing bias. Although the story of post-World War II economic transformations is nothing new, this paper seeks to make a systematic attempt to quantify the extent to which they may have made certain cities more likely to pass ordinances.     

Can World System Theory predict news flow on twitter? The case of government-sponsored broadcasting

Social media platforms provide world governments with the opportunity to distribute news content from their broadcast channels directly to foreign publics [Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world system. New York: Academic Press] World System Theory, which has successfully explained and predicted the structure of international news flow, is now being challenged. Specifically, these social platforms undermined assumptions regarding the one-way flow of information toward audiences and the exclusive institutional nature of the players in the international system. This study examines the unique case of government-sponsored news media and its international news flow. It finds that while the structure of the international news flow on Twitter exhibits a hierarchical core–periphery structure, non-institutional actors (e.g. bloggers) conformed less than institutional players (e.g. governments and news media) to that structure. This study also found that non-institutional actors assumed the role of bridging news sources and audiences, a role traditionally reserved for a small minority of elite news media. The growing and diversified pool of information mediators resulted in a more fragmented network of news flow, siloed, rather than interconnected. Research findings are synthesized and analyzed in the context of international broadcasting and social media scholarship.     

Downloading culture: community building in a decentralized file-sharing collective

File-sharing collectives have significantly disrupted models of digital media distribution since their emergence and widespread popularization in the late 1990s. This study investigates how semi-anonymous and decentralized collectives construct their communities of practice. Conducting a case study of a private torrenting community, data were gathered via participant observation, interviews, and online postings (i.e., blogs and forums). Findings challenged dominant notions of opportunism, selfishness and task-oriented individualism advanced by Human–Computer Interaction scholars. Three key constructs were identified in private torrent community building: boundary construction, membership maintenance, and a sense of belonging and solidarity. Findings illustrate how a file-sharing community cultivates the formation of prosocial digital peers, fosters an affective approach to peer-to-peer collectives, and ultimately forges a downloading virtuoso community. This sisyphean, goal-oriented community seeks to create a comprehensive archive of media artifacts independent of and in opposition to dominant corporate platforms. The community demonstrates a downloading culture inspired by technological design, yet driven by trust and solidarity.