Social Capacity Research Articles

Online Public Opinion Analysis Model Based on Long Short-term Memory Network and Expectation Maximization

Abstract With the rapid dissemination of online public opinion, its emotions are easily transmitted to the general public. It possesses a certain level of social mobilization capacity and can impact the stability of society. To characterize the sentiment trend of social network information and determine its influence, we have proposed a method based on long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and expectation maximization(EM). This model employs a long short-term memory network for data training, obtaining the number of positive public opinions through word-to-word matching. Based on the expectation-maximization method and Jensen’s inequality, the lower bound of the maximum likelihood function is iteratively computed, ultimately achieving convergence of this likelihood function. This convergence value is then used for sentiment analysis. Our study utilizes 10,000 valid pieces of data from the Sina microblog as experimental data. By comparing our model with the K-MEANS model and the EM model, the results indicate significant improvements in the accuracy and convergence of our model. Our research discovers that the influence of public opinion increases as the compensation value for adoption rises, and the probability of public opinion generation gradually increases with the length of user registration years, eventually slowing down.

Investigation into the matching problem between insurance demands and insurance supply in Shanxi Province, China

Abstract With the development of the social economy and the improvement of people’s living standards, the role of insurance in society has become increasingly important. The insurance industry’s growth is not in line with social demands. Insufficient insurance capacity or a mismatch between insurance products and demands in specific regions or industries can lead to increased social risks and unprotected interests. Taking Shanxi province as an example, it is a substantial industrial and energy base in China with abundant resources such as coal and power. Shanxi province is facing challenges of transformation and upgrading due to the transformation of economic structure and the increasing environmental awareness. The matching problem between social demands and insurance capacity becomes particularly important in this process. This paper aims to examine the issue of insurance demand and supply matching, using Shanxi province as a case study. The demand for insurance protection is increasing as social risks increase with rapid economic development and improvements in people’s living standards. However, there is a gap between insurance capacity and social demands, which limits the development of the insurance industry and the effective management of social risks. The characteristics of insurance demands and the current situation of insurance supply in Shanxi province are analyzed through a literature review and empirical research methods in this paper. It discusses the problems and shortcomings of the insurance industry in meeting social demands and proposes a series of policy recommendations to promote the matching of insurance demands and supply.

Social Competencies – Students’ Experiences and Expectations towards Developing Social Capacity at the University

The article illustrates the results of a survey carried out to analyse the development of social competencies at the university in students’ perceptions. The study’s main aim was to discover the experiences and opinions of young studying adults in this aspect. According to the gathered qualitative data, students expect more practical and socially engaging activities. They point out the need to diagnose and support them in their social development, especially by organising individually tailored courses, mentoring, and training with soft-competence specialists. The article closes with a summary and practical suggestions concerning social competencies development at university.

How social capacity maintains social distancing in the efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19: evidence from Indonesia

How social capacity maintains social distancing in the efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19: evidence from Indonesia

"It's not just about you": International students' vulnerabilities and capacities during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.

In Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic was initially characterized by emergency government responses that disrupted daily life, especially for marginalized groups. This study explored the vulnerabilities and capacities of international students studying at a university in Calgary, Canada during the first phase of the pandemic. Guided by the Capacities and Vulnerabilities Analysis framework, we thematically analyzed 11 semi-structured interviews with international students. We found that material vulnerabilities included balancing finances, housing conditions, lack of information, food inaccessibility, reliance on public transport, and poor mental health, social vulnerabilities included lack of social support, culture shock, and racism, and attitudinal vulnerabilities included "nowhere to go", feeling like a burden, and perception of Canada as safe. Material capacities included financial support, knowledge about pandemic, and mental health supports, social capacities included local social support and multilingualism, and attitudinal capacities included resilience, religious and spiritual beliefs, "it's not just about you", and reflexivity. We found overlapping and complex relationships between vulnerabilities and capacities, indicating that while international students' vulnerabilities were exacerbated and introduced challenges during the pandemic, students uniquely leveraged their capacities to offset and recover from challenges. Findings from this study may be informative for stakeholders involved in disaster responses, especially universities and governments, to support international students' capacities and address their vulnerabilities.

Recovery from Addictions in Europe: Theory, Models and Methods

Abstract Recovery is a therapeutic intervention in addictive behaviors (and other kind of disorders), based in the improvement of personal, social and collective skins and capacities, in order to improve the health and social balance and to decrease the impact of substance use and other addictions. In the book Recovery from Addictions in Europe: Theory, models and Methods, the author makes an analysis of the history of the concept (including the Recovery Capital concept and the development of the Science of Recovery), the evolution of the interventions, an evaluation of good practices and a critical reflection about what it works and what it needs improvement in Recovery Oriented programs. Main conclusions are the increasing of the Science of Recovery, the necessary adaptation of Recovery oriented programs and other interventions to actual addictive behaviors and the development of a Recovery oriented model (the HERMESS model). Keywords: Recovery capital, HERMESS model, evaluation of programs, mixed methodology, Science of Recovery.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND SOCIAL CAPACITY

Society is one of the fundamental resources on which the organisation of national security is based. The activation of society in the field of national defence is based on programming, coor-dination and monitoring of cooperation between state institutions responsible for creating the desired dimension of national security and non-governmental organisations. These organizations have a particular capacity for social monitoring of non-military threats, especially for detection, warning and alerting. The effectiveness of government organisations – the armed forces, police, guards and inspections – in the field of state security depends to a large extent on their support. A society that is aware of its rights and duties towards the Homeland lays the foundation for actions taken for the proper functioning of the state and the organisation of national security. When assessing social capacity, attention should be paid to the issue of dissemination of safety knowledge. The preparation of citizens for the defence and development of the state is one of the main chal-lenges of security policy. Directly related to this issue is the ability of the institutions of political power to defend the state and protect its citizens

Green Engagement of Aisyiyah Activists Through Gardening Aroids and Aglaonema

Abstract. This article explains about the assistance given for the Aisyiyah Branch in stimulating women in doing “shaleh” charity in the Muhammadiyah company through the Aisyiyah organization through empowering the economic sector. It is related to the emergence of saturation in some women's communities towards Aisyiyah's routine activities which contain recitation activities and motivation to perform shadaqah and infaq. This pattern builds character that to become a member of Muhammadiyah and Aisyiyah, one must be a well-off person. To change this trend, this community service has developed the local wisdom of the women community in Kadirojo with a productive social and economic approach in the field of ornamental plants as a new trend of gardening in modern society. The methods carried out are cultural training of Aglaonema and Monstera ornamental plants as types of ornamental plants that have high economic value, and product marketing training in the marketplace. The results showed that Muhammadiyah's program run towards increasing the social and economic capacity of the community will increase the community engagement to actively participate in Muhammadiyah.

Deformation of socio-ecological and economic space and interterritorial cooperation in modern conditions

The article considers the category of socio-ecological and economic space and its main deformations as factors, determining the directions and necessary volumes of interterritorial cooperation. The deformations serve as the result of lack of financing in the development of its elements, their multidirectionality and inefficient use of the existing potential. Besides, we identify the discrepancy between administrative boundaries and service areas as one of the reasons for deformation of the socio-ecological and economic space. Fuller use of available social infrastructure capacities requires joint maintenance of the existing organisations. In the research, the types and depth of the socio-ecological and economic space deformation and factors, causing them, are shown. The level of deformation can be different, which is reflected in the known indicators of deviation from the current threshold values that characterise the preservation of its quality: within the maximum allowable concentration (in ecology), within the framework of existing standards (in saturation of social infrastructure objects), etc. The development of territorial cooperation is considered as an effective factor in overcoming the deformations of the socio-ecological and economic space, allowing to use available potentials better. Moreover, this activity can be aimed at creating a fundamentally new space architecture or improving its elements.

TransForm – Integrated Community Care (ICC) from aspiration to reality

Introduction: As we face crises after crises (climate, geopolitical, health, financial), each one increasing inequalities and impacting most on people and communities in vulnerable situations, we need to come up with better ways of living and caring for people and the planet. Most challenges we face today are complex and interrelated and to solve them requires participation from communities and citizens.
 As part of this, the mere concept of care needs to be redefined towards a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life. The current system of care was designed in and for the industrial era and it has reached the limits of what it can achieve. Today’s diseases are chronic and complex and require different responses. We need to reimagine and create a system designed for the problems we face today. 
 Integrated Community Care (ICC) is a concept that has evolved and is based on a range of important innovations and efforts in the field, such as people centred care, community primary care, integrated care, social determinants of health, goal-oriented care, amongst others. ICC acknowledges that each of these, although important, are not enough on their own and brings them together. In ICC, local organizations, community members, professionals, and policy makers come together in a continuous process of co-developing health, care and social support infrastructures to enhance the quality of life, social cohesion and resilience of a territorially defined community. It is not a prescriptive approach, but rather a set of principles that guide a range of existing practices that are changing the way health and care are organised.
 Aim: to inspire and better equip policy makers and practitioners to make ICC the new norm by sharing learnings and experiences of the TransForm community, including defining what ICC is, its benefits and demonstrating how to put the theory into practice.
 Audience: Citizens, policy makers, practitioners, academics that realise that the multiple crises we face are an opportunity to create something better. It is for anyone seeking for more effective ways to truly care for, about and with people and communities. 
 Who did we involve and what we did? 
 Since 2018, through a series of research activities, international conferences, site visits to ICC initiatives, workshops among experts, activities within a Changemakers Forum, TransForm has developed a learning journey (co-production of knowledge with stakeholders – academics, policymakers, decisionmakers, practitioners, people with lived experience, citizens) that has identified key values – ingredients – challenges- for ICC. An important part of this learning journey is the contribution of ICC changemakers, investing in locally anchored innovation and making the difference again and again in the daily lives of people.
 What are the next steps? TransForm will create an open-source collection of knowledge on ICC.

“They talk to you like you're a person”: Validating McCormack and McCance’s Person-Centred Practice Framework through a qualitative study of older people’s experiences of person-centred integrated care (PCIC).

This paper concerns the findings of a qualitative study exploring service user experiences of PCIC. Using McCormack and McCance’s Person-Centred Practice (PCP) Framework, with a focus on the process and outcome domains at the micro level, the research validates the utility of the framework in an integrated care context. Drawing on a case study methodology, thirty interviews were conducted with service users engaging with integrated care services across three sites within the National Integrated Care Programme for Older Persons in the Republic of Ireland. 
 The PCP framework is an internationally recognised theoretical framework that supports healthcare service providers and teams in understanding the dimensions of person-centredness and how these can be represented and realised in practice (Slater, McCance and McCormack, 2017). The PCP framework centralises the establishment of the therapeutic relationship between the service provider and the service user, including their families and carers and identifies person-centred processes and consequent outcomes. 
 In particular, this paper will focus on this micro level component, i.e. the outcome and process domains, of the framework. The findings of the study validate the outcome and process domains as key in service user experiences of PCIC. While the three sites differ in terms of the integrated care model applied, findings indicate that the processes of engagement; having a sympathetic presence; providing holistic care; engaging in shared decision making; and working with patient’s beliefs and values are evident; are all both experienced and valued by service users. In addition, across the three cases, service users identify the impact of their care as manifesting all four person-centred outcomes included in the framework: satisfaction with care; involvement with care; and feeling of well-being; and creating a therapeutic culture between service user and care professional.
 The findings also indicate key components pertinent to service user experiences of PCIC which may be considered as possible extensions to the framework’s stated outcomes. These include consideration on the felt experience of integration and coordination in terms of outcomes for the service user. While the framework includes the felt experience of feeling treated as an individual and being involved in care in outcome domains, the felt experience of coordination and integration could also be included. Findings of the study elucidate the importance of the biographical narrative and reveal how diversity of individuals’ personal and social resources and capacities impact on the differentiated nature of agency and its expression as part of the care experience. This agency of the older person, whether relating to their educational, economic or other capacities or their social network and ancillary informal social supports and care, will impact on how they engage with and participate in care processes and related care needs. Consideration of this key biographical information, in addition to individuals’ beliefs and values, will impact on how service providers can optimise supports provided and will inform processes around participation and shared decision making. The findings reveal how this framework can be successfully used and potentially extended as a meaningful evaluative tool to explore experiences of PCIC.

Fish as fellow creatures—A matter of moral attention

AbstractUp against capacity‐based approaches to animal ethics, Cora Diamond has put the idea of animals as our fellow creatures. The aim of this article is to explore the implications of this concept for our treatment of fish. Fish have traditionally been placed at the borders or even outside of the moral community, although there is growing evidence that they have perceptual and social capacities comparable to animals that are considered morally significant. Given that a fellow creature's approach is not primarily concerned with capacities, fish may pose a challenge: Can fish be seen as our fellow creatures, and if so, on what grounds? In exploring these questions, we defend Diamond against Jeff McMahan's critique of her account and its implications that the fellow creature‐concept is reducible to either capacities or special relationships and leaves no room for argument‐based moral reform. We suggest that moral attention is key to grasping the moral significance of fish and discuss how scientific research can support such attention. In so doing, we demonstrate how Diamond's approach to animal ethics provides a viable alternative to the dominant animal ethics approaches. Finally, we indicate how this approach can be useful for discussions on industrial fish farming.

Social-ecological vulnerability and risk of China's marine capture fisheries to climate change.

Climate change is a new disrupter to global fisheries systems and their governance frameworks. It poses a pressing management challenge, particularly in China, which is renowned as the world's largest fishing country and seafood producer. As climate change continues to intensify in the region and climate awareness grows within the country's national policy, the need to understand China's fisheries' resilience to the escalating climate crisis becomes paramount. In this study, we conduct an interdisciplinary analysis to assess the vulnerability and risk of China's marine capture fisheries in response to climate change. This study employs a spatially explicit, indicator-based approach with a coupled social-ecological framework, focusing on 67 species and 11 coastal regions. By integrating diverse sets of climatic, ecological, economic, societal, and governance indicators and information, we elucidate the factors that could hinder climate adaptation, including a limited understanding of fish early life stages, uncertainty in seafood production, unequal allocation and accessibility of resources, and inadequate consideration of inclusive governance and adaptive management. Our results show that species, which have managed to survive the stress of overfishing, demonstrate a remarkable ability to adapt to climate change. However, collapsing stocks such as large yellow croaker face a high risk due to the synergistic effects of inherent biological traits and external management interventions. We emphasize the imperative to build institutional, scientific, and social capacity to support fisheries adaptation. The scientific insights provided by this study can inform fisheries management decisions and promote the operationalization of climate-resilient fisheries in China and other regions.

Adaptable leadership for arid/semi-arid wetlands conservation under climate change: Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach

Adverse socio-economic and environmental impacts of climate change on wetlands have enforced the international community and many nations to develop adaptive policies for wetland management, which require effective leadership to influence relevant stakeholders. This study identifies and prioritizes leadership functions and theories for climate change adaptation (CCA) in wetlands ecosystems, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. A mixed qualitative-quantitative research methodology was applied through focus groups and a survey with a sample of national, sub-national, and local experts on wetlands management and climate change in Iran. The Analytic Hierarchy Processing (AHP) technique identified the political-administrative (weight = 0.245), adaptive (W = 0.244), and enabling (W = 0.237) functions for CCA, respectively, as three prioritized leadership functions, followed by the dissemination function (W = 0.102), which emphasizes the necessity of applying and enhancing leaders' social capacities, knowledge, communication skills, and personal networks to facilitate social learning and actions regarding CCA in local communities and among relevant organizations. It is necessary to overcome structural and functional barriers for leaders and their followers to information access and involvement in participatory decision-making platforms. Moreover, network and communication leadership theories (W = 0.368) and sustainable leadership perspectives (W = 0.362), respectively, have the highest priority among leadership theories and are crucial for establishing participatory decision-making among relevant stakeholders and applying adaptive strategies for wetlands governance under climate change conditions. The reconceptualization of leadership as a complex adaptive notion draws attention to the social complexities and emerging characteristics of leadership in contemporary societies and organizations. The understanding of leaders' and followers’ networks and identifying the core role of leaders provides a foundation for developing leadership functions and theories beyond hierarchical, individualistic, and one-way concepts of leadership.

APPLYING HOWARD GARDNER’S THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES TO JENNY MELLOR’S CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE “AN EDUCATION”

"An Education" is a drama movie from 2009 that was directed by Lone Scherfig and produced by Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey. It features an ensemble cast including Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Emma Thompson, and Olivia Williams. The central character in the movie is Jenny Mellor, a hardworking 16-year-old student. Her parents have high hopes for her to attend Oxford University. However, Jenny's orderly life starts to change when she develops an unlikely relationship with David Goldman, a middle-aged man. This study examines the portrayal of Jenny Mellor, the main character in the movie "An Education," through the lens of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. The study aims to analyze the various forms of intelligence that Jenny Mellor possesses and how they shape her personal and academic growth. Utilizing Gardner's theory, which acknowledges different types of intelligence beyond traditional academic measures, this study explores how Jenny's intellectual, social, emotional, and creative capacities are depicted in the movie. The analysis utilizes qualitative methods, including content analysis and narrative interpretation, to explore the diverse aspects of Jenny's intelligence. The findings reveal that Jenny demonstrates strengths in linguistic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence, while also displaying aptitude in other domains such as musical and Visual-Spatial intelligence. Furthermore, the study sheds light on how Jenny's diverse intelligences influence her decision-making, relationships, and overall development. This study contributes to a deeper appreciation of the multifaceted nature of intelligence and illuminates the character development of Jenny Mellor through the lens of Howard Gardner's theory.

Operationalizing deployment time in police calls for service

Analyses of emergency calls for service data in the United States suggest that around 50% of dispatched police deployment time is spent on crime-related incidents. The remainder of time is spent in a social service capacity: attending well-being checks and resolving disturbances, for instance. These findings have made a considerable contribution to the discourse around public perceptions of the police and the distribution of public funds towards (or away) from law enforcement. Yet, an outstanding issue remains. No investigation has been undertaken into whether findings are robust to the different ways in which ‘time spent’ is operationalized in these studies. Using dispatch data for Amsterdam during 2019, this study compares three operationalizations of ‘time spent’. Additionally, in order to provide some context on the potential mechanisms through which these different operationalizations might yield different results, we report on dispatch numbers per incident category and provide an initial exploration into ‘multi-dispatch’ incident types. We find that general proportional breakdowns are fairly robust to the time measure used. However, for some incident categories (e.g. Health) and incident types (e.g. Shootings), analyzed in isolation, the results are not robust to the different operationalizations. We propose that the mechanism explaining this lack of robustness can be traced to the high dispatch numbers for specific incident categories and types, particularly those with an imminent threat to life.Preregistration: This study has been preregistered under the title: Scale and composition of emergency reactive police demand in Amsterdam, Netherlands (https://osf.io/qgwv6/).

Digital Transformation, Social Innovation and the Not-For-Profit Sector in Australia

Digital transformation also includes the potential and practice of digital social innovation, whereby the affordances of digital technologies are used to address contemporary social issues. This is particularly relevant to the not-for-profit sector, which plays an important role in Australian society delivering community services. There is a growing appreciation of the ability of this sector to innovate, given its closeness to grass-roots social issues, its flexibility, and capacity to recruit staff and volunteers from all walks of life to contribute to its operations. The sector often operates in-between and in-connection-with government and business, and such collaboration with diverse viewpoints can also be a stimulus for innovation. However, various constraints have been identified, such as the lagging digital proficiency of the sector and its workforce, and the general standoff between purpose, profit and regulatory motivations. The relationship between modern technologies and social innovation by the not-for-profit sector is of national policy interest and worthy of investigation into its originality, opportunities and obstacles. From this brief discussion article, the author invites interested readers to correspond and contribute to this research project.

Phase transition phenomena in social propagation with dynamic fashion tendency and individual contact

In complex systems, individuals exhibit various social contact capacities on account of differences in societal strata, educational backgrounds, and individual psychology. It is a fact that people tend to utilize diverse social networks and demonstrate ever-changing fashion trends. From our study on personal psychology, we have noted that individuals display a behaviour known as dynamic fashion tendency (DFT) when receiving information. Next, to represent DFT behaviour through a threshold model, we devised a dynamic SAR propagation model on a multi-layer contact network. For the transmission mechanism of individual behaviour, we utilized partition theory to investigate and uncover. Both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments demonstrate that the propagation mode exhibits a boundary phenomenon. The final adoption size may demonstrate either continuous second-order or discontinuous first-order phase transitions, depending on individual DFT behaviour. When unit propagation probability is constant, the largest final adoption size is attained with the ideal DFT parameters. Additionally, personal contact plays a role in spreading behaviour and shifting the propagation pattern from continuous second-order to discontinuous first-order. Ultimately, numerical analysis can correspond with real models.

Dimensions of cultural sustainability—Local adaptation, adaptive capacity and social resilience

Cultural sustainability relates to sustainable development. According to UNESCO “culture provides the necessary transformative dimension that ensures the sustainability of development processes.” Originally sustainable development was defined through three dimensions-ecological, economic and social dimension. Further, the social dimension has been understood in multiple ways often accentuating socio-economic assets of development rather than socio-cultural capacities. Eventually, there has been an increasing interest in defining cultural sustainability as a fourth pillar of sustainable development. While becoming aware of the contemporary supranational risks such as climate change, COVID 19-pandemia or escalating military conflicts, sustainable development can hardly be envisioned in terms of linear progress but rather considered with anticipation of eventual shocks, interruptions, and vulnerabilities related to development. In this perspective, cultural sustainability can be increasingly associated with identifying vulnerabilities and with envisioning attainable measures of adaptation. This article addresses the complex issue of defining cultural sustainability through lenses of social resilience and adaptive capacity at local level.

Environmental public health communication to engage stakeholders and foster social capacity in poorly involved communities living in industrial contaminated sites: the case study of Porto Torres (Italy)

This work aims to discuss the implementation of a communication plan as a key element of the epidemiological study to foster social capacity in the scarcely involved community of the industrial contaminated site of Porto Torres (Sardinia region, Italy). We established an inter-institutional working group committed to developing communication activities and materials ensuring multidisciplinary skills from social and communication sciences to collaborate with the environmental and health experts involved in the epidemiological study. The adopted methodological approach and communication strategy resulted in effective and successful engagement of local institutional and social actors in the design and implementation of targeted communication activities. Designing and implementing environmental public health communication processes with poorly involved communities residing close to industrially contaminated sites is critically important. In these areas, environmental noxious exposures associated with high health risks are frequently combined with low socioeconomic conditions. This calls upon mechanisms of environmental injustice, distributive and procedural, and emphasizes the need to prioritize interventions based on integrative strategies securing local communities' engagement through informed participation. Based on the lessons learned in this community-focused experience in Italy, we have identified key actions for suitable environmental public health communication to foster social capacity and promote procedural environmental justice in communities living in other industrial contaminated sites.