Impact Of Social Groups Research Articles

Adaptive Formation by Pedestrian Small Groups During Egresses

Human crowd behavior is an intriguing example of collective behavior where global dynamics emerge from interindividual interactions. Although most studies of human crowds assume that all individuals are independent, the presence and impact of social groups, such as friends or families, have recently been explored. Spatial structures resulting from group behavior and decision-making processes are key aspects of social groups, and how such structures are formed and the impact of these are largely unknown, especially in the scenario of crowd evacuations. Here we experimentally show that in the vicinity of exits, dyads and triads form a representative formation, which would attenuate a disadvantage of small groups that are typically regarded as moving obstacles toward the evacuation dynamics. In laboratory experiments on crowd evacuations regarding small group behavior, we first observed no noticeable differences of egress time between monads and groups, which is contrary to a naïve intuitiveness but in agreement with recent experimental observations. To resolve this contradiction, a detailed analysis focusing on behavior in front of exits suggests that group members constitute a straight-line structure vertical to the exit. Our findings offer a new perspective on how adaptive small group behavior emerges during crowd evacuation.

The Impact of Social Groups on Social Movements in Hong Kong

The phenomenon of communal social groups in Hong Kong in recent years cannot be underestimated. The sense of group in Hong Kong has its roots in the struggle over identity, which has led to the emergence of different ideologies in Hong Kong society due to external pressures to articulate multiple identities. Based on ideology, the first social group emerged in Hong Kong society before 1997, and after 1997, group consciousness in Hong Kong was also influenced by the subject of Liberal Studies 2009. With the understanding and popularisation of plenty of current affairs, students organised their social group as a methodology to participate in social movements and exert their influence. They believe that Hong Kong's social problems are rooted in political conflicts. To address the new challenges posed by external political factors since 1997, a new generation of young people in Hong Kong has begun to practise their civic engagement through social groups, which has led to a series of social movements, which have gradually formed the basis for mobilisation of Hong Kong's social activities, making the boundaries between the different ideological camps in Hong Kong's social activities more distinct, and forming a clear-cut mechanism for social movement cooperation.

Tracking Anti-Vax Social Movement Using AI-Based Social Media Monitoring

Anti-Vax social movement possesses a dire threat to governments’ aim of mass vaccination. Moreover, by propagating serious misconceptions and misinformation about COVID-19, Anti-Vaxxers directly and indirectly cause harm to the overall health and wellbeing of the society. In addition, the ongoing clashes between Anti-Vaxxers and Pro-Vaxxers have created great social conflicts in recent times. This article proposes an artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution to identify and monitor social groups, such as Anti-Vax and Pro-Vax, in ethical manner. The proposed solution uses AI-based sentiment analysis and named entity recognition (NER) to advice political scientist, social scientists, and policy makers to assess the influence and impact of social groups. The proposed solution was deployed via iOS, Android, and Windows App on a range of platforms integrating publicly available 40 857 Twitter data related to COVID-19 in 55 different languages from 15 June 2021 till 31 December 2021. Our system demonstrated that Anti-Vax and Pro-Vax social movements posted 72% and 65% more negative contents compared to average negative sentiments of global COVID-19 related posts during the monitored period. Moreover, Anti-Vax-related posts with “Hoax” keyword were found to have the highest level of social impact with 38 849 retweets and highest level of negativity (i.e., sentiment score of 0.87). We found out that Pro-Vax community engages in social conflict with Anti-Vaxxers referring them as ignorant (i.e., average sentiment score 0.91), stupid (i.e., average sentiment score 0.89), and confused (i.e., average sentiment score 0.88). Most importantly, the social conflict detection system reveals possible locations of conflict.

Quantifying the impact of social groups and vaccination on inequalities in infectious diseases using a mathematical model

BackgroundSocial and cultural disparities in infectious disease burden are caused by systematic differences between communities. Some differences have a direct and proportional impact on disease burden, such as health-seeking behaviour and severity of infection. Other differences—such as contact rates and susceptibility—affect the risk of transmission, where the impact on disease burden is indirect and remains unclear. Furthermore, the concomitant impact of vaccination on such inequalities is not well understood.MethodsTo quantify the role of differences in transmission on inequalities and the subsequent impact of vaccination, we developed a novel mathematical framework that integrates a mechanistic model of disease transmission with a demographic model of social structure, calibrated to epidemiologic and empirical social contact data.ResultsOur model suggests realistic differences in two key factors contributing to the rates of transmission—contact rate and susceptibility—between two social groups can lead to twice the risk of infection in the high-risk population group relative to the low-risk population group. The more isolated the high-risk group, the greater this disease inequality. Vaccination amplified this inequality further: equal vaccine uptake across the two population groups led to up to seven times the risk of infection in the high-risk group. To mitigate these inequalities, the high-risk population group would require disproportionately high vaccination uptake.ConclusionOur results suggest that differences in contact rate and susceptibility can play an important role in explaining observed inequalities in infectious diseases. Importantly, we demonstrate that, contrary to social policy intentions, promoting an equal vaccine uptake across population groups may magnify inequalities in infectious disease risk.

Pedestrian Level of Service: the Impact of Social Groups on Pedestrian Flow Characteristics

Pedestrian Level of Service: the Impact of Social Groups on Pedestrian Flow Characteristics

From Beliefs to Attitudes: Polias, a Model of Attitude Dynamics Based on Cognitive Modeling and Field Data

Attitude is a key concept in social psychology. The paper presents a novel agent-based model to simulate attitude formation by combining a rational and an emotional components based on cognitive, psychological and social theories. Individuals of the artificial population perceive actions taken by actors such as government or brands, they form an attitude toward them and also communicate the events through a social network. The model outputs are first studied through a functional analysis in which some unique macroscopic behaviors have emerged such as the impact of social groups, the resistance of the population toward disinfor-mation campaigns or the social pressure. We then applied our model on a real world scenario depicting the eeort of French Forces in their stabilization operations in Kapisa (Afghanistan) between and. We calibrated the model parameters based on this scenario and the results of opinion polls that were conducted in the area during the same period about the sentiment of the population toward the Forces. Our model was able to reproduce polls results with a global error under %. Based on these results, we show the diierent dynamics tendencies that emerged among the population by applying a non-supervised classification algorithm.

Impact of Social Groups in Political Discourse

In this article, ideological confusion is explained based on the structural-functionalist perspective. Analysis of the phenomenon in question focuses mainly on the interdependence created between the “deeply-social” factors of and political discourse. This analysis is undertaken to better understand the circumstances that condition political parties on representing social categories in different social contexts and on showing the implications of political identity building based on the type of discourse used by the political actors.

Adjusting to living with multiple sclerosis: The role of social groups

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is typically associated with life-long adjustment to wide-ranging, changeable symptoms and psychosocial disruption as all relationships are changed or lost. Despite accumulating evidence, the therapeutic impact of harnessing social group factors in MS management and rehabilitation remains largely unexplored. We investigated their role specific to adjusting to MS. A qualitative approach was used with thematic analysis to induce a rich and developing account of the impact of social groups on adjustment for 15 individuals with MS. An adjustment questionnaire was used to provide a framework for its organisation and discussion. The analysis revealed three themes associated with loss, change and social processes that influenced adjustment. These features distinguished between those who were more or less able to adjust, and resonated well with processes previously identified as central to identity loss and change. Social factors enhanced adjustment through easing transition between pre- and post-MS diagnosis lives. Notably, maintenance of pre-existing social roles and relationships was critical in providing a meaningful basis for integrating the old with new senses of self. The capacity to join new social groups was as key in adjustment as was awareness of having access to multiple social groups to avoid being solely defined by MS. These concepts provided a more stable grounding upon which to nurture value systems and employ collective support to counter the negative consequences of living with MS.

University education, credentialism and social stratification among Palestinian Arabs in Israel

Few attention was devoted to the relative impact exerted by differential university access and credentialing patterns on the intrasocial stratification of subordinate groups. The paper investigates the issue among Palestinian Arabs in Israel, along religious, socioeconomic and gender lines, as well as in comparison to respective trends of the Jewish majority. Findings suggest that, while inequalities in access, retention and graduation rates at university level persist between Jews and Palestinian Arabs; for the latter, the combined effects of labor-market structure and regulative sectorial state policies, have determined considerably the relative impact of social group of origin on university enrollment, retention and graduation rates. The various implications of these findings are then discussed, urging further, and more elaborate, research into their socioeconomic and political consequences.