Like-minded Others Research Articles

Online monitoring activism: civic surveillance practices as a reaction to the rise of the far-right in the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The rise of far-right movements during the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a new form of individual digital activism: online monitoring activism (OMA). During the pandemic, online monitoring activists systematically collected, processed and published information from far-right Telegram channels and groups. Against the theoretical background of concepts like the monitory democracy and surveillance culture, we conducted eight semi-structured interviews with German online monitoring activists, investigating their motivations, roles, and the intricacies of their monitoring practices. Our findings reveal that online monitoring activists are driven by a sense of duty to counteract anti-democratic tendencies, which they perceive as inadequately addressed by institutional power. They gain localized and thematically specialized expertise that they share within loose networks of like-minded others. We highlight the activists’ liminal identity oscillating between virtuous citizenship and vigilantism, as well as the broader societal implications of their actions. On the one hand, they fulfill the role of active citizenship in monitory democracy; on the other, they also reinforce the transparency imperative and the wish for far-reaching security and control inherent to surveillance culture. The transparency potential afforded by their adversaries’ online connective action and mobilizing efforts legitimizes their surveillance and demands surveillance. Further normative work is needed to critically examine the extent and desirability of increased social control introduced to liberal democracy by online monitoring activism.

A containment zone or a place of surveillance? Liminal spaces on Mumsnet during COVID-19

This article makes use of discussions on the UK parenting site Mumsnet during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK between March and May 2020 to investigate the ways in which users wrote about liminal sites such as front porches, windows, and front and back doors. We argue that such spaces played a number of different roles for families during lockdown: as containment zones, barriers, safe spaces of interaction, and places of performance and surveillance. These spaces bridged public and private life during lockdown by providing a perspective of the world from within the boundaries of the lockdown home. Such spaces could be perceived as both safe and unsafe – places of relocation and dislocation within which movement between the two worlds occurred and containment and disinfection strategies were performed. We also suggest that Mumsnet itself can be considered a virtual liminal space for its users, where they were able to safely access the public sphere from the comparative safety of their own homes during the pandemic and form a community with like-minded others. We thus position Mumsnet as: a liminal space in its own right, which afforded a safe place for users to be themselves, share anxieties and advice, and find friendship and companionship; a virtual third space for the discussion of politics and news; and, on occasion, a subaltern counter-public where women could formulate and circulate alternative interpretations of events counter to the frames of the mainstream media.

The functional aspects of selective exposure for collective decision-making under social influence

Opinion diversity is crucial for collective decision-making, but maintaining it becomes challenging in the face of social influence. We propose selective exposure as an endogenous mechanism that preserves opinion diversity by forming exclusive subgroups of like-minded individuals, or echo chambers, which have been often perceived as an obstacle to achieving collective intelligence. We consider situations where a group of agents collectively make decisions about the true state of nature with the assumption that agents update their opinions by adopting the aggregated opinions of their information sources (i.e., naïve learning), or alternatively, replace incongruent sources with more like-minded others without adjusting their opinions (i.e., selective exposure). Individual opinions at steady states reached under these dynamics are then aggregated to form collective decisions, and their quality is assessed. The results suggest that the diversity-reducing effects of social influence are effectively confined within subgroups formed by selective exposure. More importantly, strong propensities for selective exposure maintain the quality of collective decisions at a level as high as that achieved in the absence of social influence. In contrast, naïve learning allows groups to reach consensuses, which are more accurate than initial individual opinions, but significantly undermines the quality of collective decisions.

The end of the game: emotional responses of older adults to climate crisis and climate mobilizations in Switzerland

IntroductionIn relation to climate change activism and climate emotions, the youth has captured most of the attention of researchers. This article draws on in-depth face-to-face interviews with people aged 64 and over engaged in pro-environmental behaviors in Switzerland.MethodsThrough a thematic analysis, we identify eight themes on positive and negative mental states related to the climate crisis and climate-related mobilizations.ResultsThe qualitative sample shows that older people engage in pro-environmental behaviors, not out of fear of losing access to vital resources, but out of concern for future generations, humanity, and nature. This broad sense of morality is associated with a form of anger for a world that refuses to change.DiscussionBetween generations, emotions vary in intensity but not in nature, and the strategies older adults undertake to mitigate their negative emotions are similar to the strategies mobilized by youth activists. In both cases, anger and fear are powerful negative emotions, and the pleasure, joy, and hope of protesting with like-minded others is a kind of remedy. Older people just face very different constraints and undertake actions that are compatible with their physical and cognitive capacities.

“Are there any other male friendly subs on here?” - online men’s rights groups as simultaneous communities of care and hate, inclusion and exclusion

ABSTRACT Online communities provide spaces and places where (almost) anyone can find like-minded others. This is true of many digital leisure spaces and is especially true for men’s rights and other masculinist groups. In these groups, while they are engaged with acts of misogyny and supremacist discourses, some men meet the fundamental need ‘for meaningful social connection, to be part of a group, and to belong’ as well as to ‘“heal” modern alientation.’ More than simple gatherings, when these groups for men form around a perceived alienation from the mainstream they become spaces ‘to which [people] belong’ and believe that they ‘can act together to create change;’ Southern’s definition of a community of care. This paper establishes these groups as communities of care where care exists under Derridian erasure. This makes them important avenues for anti-feminist and misogynistic ideologies, exclusion, and violence, but through cultures of leisure inclusion and belonging.

Личность и история в романе «Большая родословная» бурятского писателя Д. Эрдынеева

The paper is devoted to the study of the concept of the individual in the context of history in the novel “The Great Bloodline” by the Buryat writer D. Erdyneev. The main types of the individual are analysed in terms of their dominant values, social connections and relations with the world. The aim of the study is to identify the features of the connection between the individual and history in the Buryat novel of the 1970s based on D. Erdyneev’s novel “The Great Bloodline”. The scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the individual in the context of history in the Buryat novel has been studied mainly on the material of the historical novel. Meanwhile, this aspect of the problem of the individual has been also reflected by the authors of works on contemporary topics, including the novel considered in the paper. The interpretation of the typology of the individual is also new. In the existing works, negative characters are given minimal attention as carriers of obsolete values. At the same time, they also act as a certain psychological type, exponents of collective egoism, which, like its antagonists, heroes of the altruistic type (Lyksek, Balta etc.), should be correlated in their connection with history. Lyksek and like-minded others represent an integral part of their native people, closely connected with the history of the country, the most important stages and events of which are captured in their fates. As a result, it has been proved that the traditional significance of a good name and the individual’s responsibility to society for their kin are in tune with the values of the common good, constructive labour and creative work.

A qualitative study of how and why gym-based resistance training may benefit women's mental health and wellbeing

PurposeThis study used photovoice methodology to explore women's lived experiences of gym-based resistance training, and the potential mechanisms by which resistance training may promote wellbeing. MethodsTen women aged between 18 and 27 years from various locations across England each generated a total of three photographs illustrating 1) what they like and 2) what they dislike about gym-based resistance training, and 3) what gym-based resistance training means to them, and completed a subsequent photo-elicitation telephone interview via Zoom video conferencing software. Data were analysed through an iterative deductive and inductive process, firstly using Ryff's psychological wellbeing model (Ryff, 1989) as a thematic framework, and then inductively to further explore the data. ResultsFive themes linking gym-based resistance training and mental health and wellbeing were identified: (1) self-acceptance, (2) personal growth, (3) flow state, (4) social affiliation and (5) autonomy. Through engaging in resistance training participants exercise self-direction (i.e., autonomy) and have the opportunity to develop positive relations with like-minded others. The activity itself can facilitate the achievement of the “flow state” of mind. The setting, pursuit and achievement of meaningful “intrinsic goals” can result in feelings of personal growth and realisation a more positive self-regard. ConclusionGym-based resistance training provides various paths to wellbeing. Greater emphasis of these wellbeing benefits in public health messaging may encourage more women to engage in gym-based resistance training.

The Wisdom of the Crowd is not a Forgone Conclusion. Effects of Self-Selection on (Collaborative) Knowledge Construction.

Web 2.0 has elevated the possibilities of collaboration to unprecedented levels. Therein lies great potential, as the aptly coined phenomenon "Wisdom of the Crowd" implies. When it comes to controversial topics, however, there is no safety in numbers alone. On the contrary, collaboration among only like-minded people may even exacerbate biases (e.g., Echo Chambers). Yet, it is human nature to seek out like-minded others. Consequently, the process of self-selection is crucial if the heterogeneity of opinions serves as a safeguard against undesirable effects of group processes (e.g., attitude polarization). Accordingly, online environments that invite more heterogeneous (vs. homogeneous) users should produce less biased content. We tested this hypothesis in a field study, comparing articles on the same 20 controversial topics from the online encyclopedias Conservapedia and RationalWiki with Wikipedia (and Britannica serving as a gold standard) and exploring the opinions of discussants in the three online encyclopedias. As expected, articles from Conservapedia and RationalWiki were significantly less balanced than articles from Wikipedia and Britannica. We replicated this finding in a lab study with 257 participants who self-selected to one of three online wikis (Vegan Love, Nutrition, Meat & Fish) and individually as well as collaboratively wrote an encyclopedia-like article about "Diets." As expected, Wikis with a specific focus (Vegan Love, Meat & Fish) predominantly attracted authors with a positive attitude toward this focus and, as a consequence, resulted in more biased content than in the Nutrition Wiki. Overall, our results suggest that crowds alone do not guarantee wisdom-self-selection is a crucial process that needs to be taken into account.

Online political networks as fertile ground for extremism: the roles of group cohesion and perceived group threat

ABSTRACT This research note draws from the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE), uncertainty-identity theory, and intergroup threat theory to investigate the conditions under which members of online political networks are likely to endorse extremism. Using a national survey of 717 U.S. adults who self-identify as members of an online group comprising politically like-minded others, we find that when perceived group threat is high, group cohesion relates to radicalism intentions. Moreover, additional analysis suggests this relationship was particularly concentrated among conservatives. We argue that this may relate to the different ways in which conservatives and liberals manage uncertainty and threat.

Support needs and experiences of young people living in families with mental illness.

Children and adolescents living in families affected by mental illness are at elevated risk of developing mental health problems. A range of interventions have been designed to help these young people; however, the effectiveness of these programs is, in some cases, mixed. Our aim was to understand in detail the support needs and experiences of a group of Australian children and adolescents living in families with mental illness. Our study is a qualitative in nature. In 2020-2021, we interviewed 25 Australian young people (Mage = 13.60, SD = 2.26, 20 females and 5 males) living with family members affected by mental illness to understand their (the young people's) experiences, and to identify the types of support that these young people considered important or effective. We conducted reflexive thematic analyses of interview data, underpinned by interpretivist assumptions. We identified seven themes within two higher-order categories reflecting our aims to understand (1) lived experiences within families affected by mental illness (i.e., increased responsibilities, missing out, and stigmatization), and (2) support experiences, needs, and preferences (i.e., respite, shared experiences with like-minded others, education, and flexibility). Our findings hold substantial practical value by informing services, interventions, and conversations that better support young people living in families affected by mental illness.

What makes people more polarized? The effects of anonymity, being with like-minded others, and the moderating role of need for approval

Many scholars have argued that anonymity is the main factor in opinion polarization. In recent studies, scholars have found that being with like-minded others can lead people to adopt extreme opinions. The aim of the current study was to explore how these two online environmental factors impact people to move their opinions toward an extreme position (polarize). In addition to environmental factors, we investigated how an individual trait (i.e., need for approval) influenced people to take pre-existing opinions to an extreme position (polarize). We conducted an online experiment (2 [anonymity vs non-anonymity] by 2 [like-minded others vs different-minded others]) using Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (n = 476). Findings showed that being with like-minded others led individuals to move their opinions toward extremity. Furthermore, we found that among participants who were with like-minded others, those in the anonymous condition were most likely to move their opinions toward an extreme end. However, the need for approval did not play a significant moderating role in this process.

Closing the concern-action gap through relational climate conversations: insights from US climate activists

Several studies have found that relational climate conversations can be an effective method of increasing conversational participants’ concern about the climate crisis and encouraging them to take collective action. However, little work has yet examined how such conversations are practiced by climate activists, a group with expertise in relational organizing. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews with climate activists across the USA, this analysis finds that activists frequently have climate conversations with friends and family, most of whom are politically progressive and somewhat to very concerned about the climate crisis. These findings might seem to suggest that climate activists only have climate conversations with like-minded others, producing an echo chamber effect that could entrench the political polarization of the issue. However, climate activists report strategic reasons for choosing like-minded audiences, such as personal response efficacy. Additionally, they report that one of their primary conversational goals is to move people who are already concerned about the climate crisis to take collective action in accordance with values of climate justice. The results identify obstacles to collective climate action even among concerned audiences and suggest that relational climate conversations can be useful in overcoming these obstacles.Graphical

Microblogging Replies and Opinion Polarization: A Natural Experiment

In recent years, there has been a heated discussion on opinion polarization on social media platforms. Extant research attributes the emergence of echo chambers to higher exposure to information from users’ existing social networks, which consists of like-minded others and argues that the provision of information from outside users’ networks could alleviate opinion polarization. In this paper, we formulate a hierarchical Bayesian learning model to investigate the impact of replies, one of the main channels for information outside of users’ networks, on opinion polarization. We leverage a unique natural experiment contained in the data from a leading microblogging website in China in which the reply function was shut down for three days. This setting allows us to identify the impact of replies from that of peer microblogs. We found that shutting down reply function reduced sentiment polarization on the microblogging site. In addition, this effect was more significant for individuals with higher social media participation. The results of this study shed light on marketing campaign strategies as well as the ways in which platform design can reduce polarization.

Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped

Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped

Being Beyond Brown: Colourism and Embracing Skin Colour among Young Adult Malaysian Indians

Colourism is a form of discrimination based on skin tone in which lighter-skinned individuals are favoured over darker-skinned individuals. This phenomenon that is perpetuated by the global beauty industry and the media have shown to cause damaging mental and emotional effects that can last for generations. Past studies have highlighted the effects and perpetuation of colourism but not the process of how one would have to overcome these challenges and embrace their own skin colour; hence, the current study aims to unlock the knowledge on this missing key component. The objective of this research was to study the experience of embracing one’s skin colour after facing colourism among Malaysian Indian young adults. A basic interpretive qualitative research design was adopted to explore the process of how seven female Malaysian Indian young adults, in the age range of 22 to 32 embrace their skin colour following their experience with colourism. Through purposive sampling, selected participants were interviewed online using semi-structured questions. Braun and Clarke's six phases of thematic analysis (2006) were employed to analyse the data collected. The findings of this study revealed the emergence of eight themes, ‘Status quo’, ‘Initial exposure’, ‘Support system’, ‘Actively seeking to validate examples’, ‘Seeking like-minded others’, ‘Transformation’, ‘Advocate for change’ and ‘Generational empowerment’ all of which have formed a framework on the process of embracing one’s skin colour. Consequently, the result of the participants’ experience in this study, created a path to empower and shed light on how one may embrace their skin colour following their experience with colourism.

Exploring Online Social Support Groups, Part 2

BackgroundFacebook support groups are becoming frequently used by mothers to support them in breastfeeding.AimTo explore how breastfeeding mothers make sense of and interpret their experiences of online social support groups, and the perceived impact of group use.MethodTen semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, data transcribed, and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.ResultsThis article reports on two of four themes. Breastfeeding women seek different types of support at different times in their breastfeeding journey, and the groups were seen to offer emotional, technical, informational, and experiential support. Professional support was sought for “major” issues, but the experiences of like-minded others were important for most women, managing the day-to-day challenges and emotions when becoming a mother and breastfeeding. They provide a community of likeminded people who support the mother to build confidence and provide reassurance that normalizes breastfeeding and leads to reciprocity and activism.ConclusionMothers appreciated the informational, emotional, and experiential support that the online groups offered; support that provided confidence, reassurance, and normalized breastfeeding.

The Sociolinguistic Consumption of K-pop

The notion of sociolinguistic consumption distinguishes between the direct consumption of languages as denotational codes and the indirect consumption of linguistic repertoires that result from engaging in various activities. Since consumption as identity construction means gaining membership into a community of like-minded others, this raises the question of what the presence of these others might mean for the indirect consumption of linguistic repertoires as well as whether initial interest in one activity might lead to interest in yet other activities in a kind of chain consumption, thus further expanding the linguistic repertoire. This paper shows that K-pop presents us with just such scenarios. It makes the following three points. One, experienced consumers of K-pop provide translations and glossaries of key terms for newer K-pop fans, serving as language brokers. Two, interest in K-pop can lead to interest in other aspects of Korean culture, indicating the need to recognize that consumption can foster an anthropological stance. Finally, the indirect consumption of linguistic repertoires can, in turn, lead to the direct consumption of denotational codes, with implications for the roles of identity and investment in language learning.

Use of digital platforms by autistic children and young people for creative dress-up play (cosplay) to facilitate and support social interaction

Autistic children and young people who find physical interaction challenging may feel more able to communicate in familiar environments. Communication and social interaction utilising digital online platforms and spaces may provide such an environment, with a comfortable level of engagement that can be relatively controlled. As blogs, vlogs, and online uploads are often live and up to date, these constitute useful first-hand perspectives, particularly for and from neurodiverse individuals who may find physical interaction and communication difficult and confusing.As an initial source of their perspectives, together with the views of their stakeholders, thematic analysis of autistic authors and bloggers within the community was conducted from digital publicly available blog posts and published articles in relation to a particular activity - cosplay. Analysis was performed in relation to independent sole and group cosplay (dress-up) play activities within the physical home and digital online spaces to ascertain if, and if so, to what extent dress up creative and character cosplay is used by autistic individuals as a response to socio-spatial exclusions, to create own space within which to belong and exhibit agency.Findings, using Grounded Theory for thematic analysis, revealed a connection between autistic children and young people's feeling of exclusion in socio-material space and their pursuit of activites that sought friendship and like-minded others online. Within these digital spaces autistic individual are finding means and the ability to communicate together. Digital spaces for cosplay practice are encouraging feelings of acceptance whilst also providing a platform to be themselves and feel confident to reach out to, and engage with others.

Social Media Public Opinion as Flocks in a Murmuration: Conceptualizing and Measuring Opinion Expression on Social Media

Abstract We propose a new way of imagining and measuring opinions emerging from social media. As people tend to connect with like-minded others and express opinions in response to current events on social media, social media public opinion is naturally occurring, temporally sensitive, and inherently social. Our framework for measuring social media public opinion first samples targeted nodes from a large social graph and identifies homogeneous, interactive, and stable networks of actors, which we call “flocks,” based on social network structure, and then measures and presents opinions of flocks. We apply this framework to Twitter and provide empirical evidence for flocks being meaningful units of analysis and flock membership predicting opinion expression. Through contextualizing social media public opinion by foregrounding the various homogeneous networks it is embedded in, we highlight the need to go beyond the aggregate-level measurement of social media public opinion and study the social dynamics of opinion expression using social media.

Transcendendo o tempo e o lugar no contexto da Covid-19

Durante o ano de 2020, devido às restrições relacionadas à Covid-19, as oportunidades de viagem para locais de patrimônio sagrado diminuíram drasticamente e os encontros e rituais de pagãos e xamãs passaram a ser realizados de modo online. Este artigo retoma um trabalho anterior (Rountree, 2006) para reconsiderar as relações entre tempo, lugar, imaginação e performance ritual no contexto online. Argumenta-se que, enquanto no contexto de locais de patrimônios “reais” a fronteira temporal entre o passado e o presente parece borrar ou se dissolver devido às conexões materiais e corporificadas dos pagãos com um lugar sagrado, no contexto ritual online as fronteiras de lugar borram ou se dissolvem por conta das conexões temporais síncronas com pessoas semelhantes no espaço sagrado. São explorados dois estudos de caso: as respostas daqueles que se reuniram online para testemunhar a transmissão ao vivo do Solstício de Verão de 2020 em Stonehange, feita pelo English Heritage; e as experiências de um grupo de xamãs ocidentais modernos, a maioria vivendo em Malta, cujas reuniões regulares que antes eram praticadas nas casas de seus membros, em lugares na natureza e em lugares de patrimônio sagrado, passaram a ser realizadas via plataforma Zoom no início de 2020.