Social Science Literature Research Articles

Health Data, Information, and Knowledge Sharing for Addressing the COVID-19

SummaryObjectives: To introduce the 2021 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook by the editors. Methods: The editorial provides an introduction and overview to the 2021 IMIA Yearbook whose special topic is “Managing Pandemics with Health Informatics - Successes and Challenges”. The Special Topic, the keynote paper, and survey papers are discussed. The IMIA President's statement and the IMIA dialogue with the World Health Organization are introduced. The sections’ changes in the Yearbook Editorial Committee are also described. Results: Health informatics, in the context of a global pandemic, led to the development of ways to collect, standardize, disseminate and reuse data worldwide: public health data but also information from social networks and scientific literature. Fact checking methods were mostly based on artificial intelligence and natural language processing. The pandemic also introduced new challenges for telehealth support in times of critical response. Next generation sequencing in bioinformatics helped in decoding the sequence of the virus and the development of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines. Conclusions: The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic shows the need for timely, reliable, open, and globally available information to support decision making and efficiently control outbreaks. Applying Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) requirements for data is a key success factor while challenging ethical issues have to be considered.

An Evolutionary Explanation for the Female Leadership Paradox

Social influence is distributed unequally between males and females in many mammalian societies. In human societies, gender inequality is particularly evident in access to leadership positions. Understanding why women historically and cross-culturally have tended to be under-represented as leaders within human groups and organizations represents a paradox because we lack evidence that women leaders consistently perform worse than men. We also know that women exercise overt influence in collective group-decisions within small-scale human societies, and that female leadership is pervasive in particular contexts across non-human mammalian societies. Here, we offer a transdisciplinary perspective on this female leadership paradox. Synthesis of social science and biological literatures suggests that females and males, on average, differ in why and how they compete for access to political leadership in mixed-gender groups. These differences are influenced by sexual selection and are moderated by socioecological variation across development and, particularly in human societies, by culturally transmitted norms and institutions. The interplay of these forces contributes to the emergence of female leaders within and across species. Furthermore, females may regularly exercise influence on group decisions in less conspicuous ways and different domains than males, and these underappreciated forms of leadership require more study. We offer a comprehensive framework for studying inequality between females and males in access to leadership positions, and we discuss the implications of this approach for understanding the female leadership paradox and for redressing gender inequality in leadership in humans.

The political effects of emergency frames in sustainability

Emergency frames are mobilized in contemporary sustainability debates, both in response to specific events and strategically. The strategic deployment of emergency frames by proponents of sustainability action aims to stimulate collective action on issues for which it is lacking. But this is contentious due to a range of possible effects. We critically review interdisciplinary social science literature to examine the political effects of emergency frames in sustainability and develop a typology of five key dimensions of variation. This pinpoints practical areas for evaluating the utility of emergency frames and builds a shared vocabulary for analysis and decision-making. Emergency frames in sustainability debates can stimulate collective action on issues for which it is lacking but can have consequences. This Review examines the political effects of emergency frames in sustainability and develops a typology of different effects to build a shared vocabulary for analysis and decision-making.

Caste biases in school textbooks: a case study from Odisha, India

ABSTRACT This paper examines caste bias in Odia language textbooks prescribed by the Government in middle schools in the State of Odisha, India. The analysis focuses on 10 textbooks for Social Science and Odia literature prescribed for Classes IV to VIII. The framework proposed by Sadker and Zittleman (2007) to study gender bias in educational material in the United States is contextualized for an application to Indian textbooks. Content analysis identified seven types of bias, with ‘invisibility’ bias being the most important form of bias. This first-ever systematic analysis of caste bias within curricular material in India brings to fore the exclusion of Scheduled Castes. The persistence of caste bias across textbooks is in direct violation of the recommendations of the National Curriculum Framework-2005 and systematically creates an illusion that Indian society is an equitable one. We suggest that there is a need for further evaluation of regional language school textbooks to assess the extent of bias in curricular material.

Modernite ve Modernizm: Batı-İçi Bir Tartışma

Although the concepts of modernity and modernism are frequently encountered in both social science literature and everyday life, there is widespread confusion about the semantic domain these concepts encompass and the aspects in which they differ. The confusion in question leads to complex situations such as the improper usage of these concepts in ways that are incompatible with their meanings, or the use of these concepts interchangeably, even in many academic works. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate clearly the semantic domains of the words modernity and modernism, as well as their differences and similarities, and to explain their characteristics as an intra-Western debate by referring to the historical and social context in which they originated. In this study, the main discussions that have arisen within this framework have been assessed using a comparative analysis method, and it has been suggested that modernity could be understood as the post-19th century historical tale of the West, and modernism as the culture of modernity.

Narcotourism: a conceptual framework and research agenda

Despite existing in practice, as well as in other social science and policy literature, narcotourism has not appeared in tourism journals, and its full scope remains unarticulated. This paper aims to introduce narcotourism to a broad audience of tourism scholars, provide its conceptual foundations, and guide subsequent tourism scholarship on this topic. Looking beyond writings that have previously focused on the consumption of drugs during travel and tourism experiences, this paper presents a conceptual framework distinguishing six different tourism-related activities encompassed by the term narcotourism: consumption-oriented narcotourism, production-oriented narcotourism, acquisition-oriented narcotourism, dark heritage narcotourism, narcotrafficker tourism and emulatory narcotourism. This framework describes the hallmark characteristics of each form of narcotourism, identifies linkages between these forms of narcotourism and other areas of tourism scholarship, and concludes by suggesting a future research agenda for narcotourism. Given a long history of association between tourism activities and drug consumption, shifting legal dynamics regarding drug use, insights emerging from related disciplines, and narcotourism’s coexistence alongside myriad forms of tourism already explored by tourism scholars, this paper provides a timely foundation for future research on narcotourism within tourism studies.

Islamophobia in Poland in the Context of the Migration Crisis in Europe

The high level of fear of Islam in Poland arose in spite of the fact that Poland has very few Muslims, just 0.1% of the population. This phenomenon began to surface in 2004, after Poland’s accession to the EU but grew considerably in 2015, during the so-called migration crisis in Europe. Public opinion polls indicate that it can be described by the term “Islamophobia”, which is often used in the literature of social and political sciences. The aim of the article is to explain the reasons for such a high level of fear of Muslims in Poland and the negative attitude towards Islam, given that it is contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, with which Polish society mostly identifies. The article consists of three parts. Part one presents the reaction of the EU Member States to the migration crisis in Europe. The second part analyzes the position of the United Right (Pol. Zjednoczona Prawica) political coalition in Poland, towards immigrants and refugees from Muslim countries. Part three confronts the stands of the United Right in Poland and the position of the Catholic Church towards Islam.

Unveiling the power behind cryptocurrency mining in Venezuela: A fragile energy infrastructure and precarious labor

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis (2008–2010), peer-to-peer online payment mechanisms emerged as a way to avoid financial intermediaries and untrusted centralized state authorities. Cryptocurrencies proliferated among like-minded individuals, generally depicted by scholars as anarcho-capitalists. Much social science literature has focused on governance and technical puzzles that these new market tools bring about as well as on the risks associated with the problems of trust, security, money laundering and illegal financing. In this article, I shift gaze to center on the material underpinnings of cryptocurrencies, such as energy systems and infrastructure, as well as how cryptocurrencies can expand in contexts of crisis in peripheral societies. I focus on the case of Venezuela to explain some of these processes in the rise and expansion of cryptocurrency markets that have remained at the margins of energy and political economy discussions. A deep dive into Venezuela allows us to de-virtualize our understandings of cryptocurrencies. It redirects our attention to infrastructure, energy, rent, and precarious conditions of living in a crumbling rentier society, shedding light on the use and expansion of cryptocurrencies in a nominally socialist country.

Exploring the Use of Role Model Avatars in Educational Games

Research has indicated that role models have the potential to boost academic performance. In this paper, we describe an experiment exploring role models as game avatars in an educational game. Of particular interest are the effects of these avatars on players' performance and engagement. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition: a) user selected role model avatar, or b) user selected shape avatar. Results suggest that role models are heavily preferred. African American participants had higher game affect in the role model condition. South Asian participants had higher self-reported engagement in the role model condition. Participants that completed <= 1 levels had higher performance in the role model condition. General trends suggest that the role model's gender and racial closeness with the player, could play a role in player performance and self-reported engagement as consistent with the social science literature.

Abrupt new realities amid the disaster landscape as one crisis gives way to crises

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight the roles of sudden change and social disruption in the disaster landscape that shapes the environment of tourism destinations when hazards intersect with human systems.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on the social science literature on disasters and crises. To this end, this paper provides an overview of the role abrupt changes have in transforming the tourism and hospitality industries.FindingsThis paper serves as a call to seek bold solutions that bring about industry best practices while fostering local community stakeholders in a more integrated way to build a more resilient future.Originality/valueThe disaster landscape provides opportunities to advance new structures, norms, cultural beliefs and collaborations that can foster resilience. This paper highlights the need to integrate resilience in the form of disaster management, recovery and organizational continuity strategies in the post-COVID-19 hospitality and tourism industries.

Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings

Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings

Using ethnographic methods to classify the human experience in medicine: a case study of the presence ontology.

Although social and environmental factors are central to provider-patient interactions, the data that reflect these factors can be incomplete, vague, and subjective. We sought to create a conceptual framework to describe and classify data about presence, the domain of interpersonal connection in medicine. Our top-down approach for ontology development based on the concept of "relationality" included the following: 1) a broad survey of the social sciences literature and a systematic literature review of >20 000 articles around interpersonal connection in medicine, 2) relational ethnography of clinical encounters (n = 5 pilot, 27 full), and 3) interviews about relational work with 40 medical and nonmedical professionals. We formalized the model using the Web Ontology Language in the Protégé ontology editor. We iteratively evaluated and refined the Presence Ontology through manual expert review and automated annotation of literature. The Presence Ontology facilitates the naming and classification of concepts that would otherwise be vague. Our model categorizes contributors to healthcare encounters and factors such as communication, emotions, tools, and environment. Ontology evaluation indicated that cognitive models (both patients' explanatory models and providers' caregiving approaches) influenced encounters and were subsequently incorporated. We show how ethnographic methods based in relationality can aid the representation of experiential concepts (eg, empathy, trust). Our ontology could support investigative methods to improve healthcare processes for both patients and healthcare providers, including annotation of videotaped encounters, development of clinical instruments to measure presence, or implementation of electronic health record-based reminders for providers. The Presence Ontology provides a model for using ethnographic approaches to classify interpersonal data.

Transfer of Data using Raspberry PI

Data sharing is not a new thing. Individuals, have been sharing the data between organizations and governments even before computers and networks were invented. However, advancements in digital literacy, skills, technology, and the adaptation of regulatory systems to the digital space over the last decade have allowed data to be exchanged more quickly and on a larger scale than ever before. We've started gathering examples of data sharing practice. The process of making research data accessible to other researchers or organizations for the purposes of social science research is known as data sharing. Informal data exchange among researchers and formal data exchange through data archives and repositories are both viable options for data sharing. Data exchange was first discussed in the social science literature. The advancement of computational technology for handling machine readable data, as well as the increased use of sample surveys as a primary mode of data collection, shaped the literature in the early 1960s. The Raspberry Pi is a simple embedded device with a small footprint and low cost that is used to minimize system complexity in terms of speed and area in real time applications.

An updated review on synthetic cathinones.

Cathinone, the main psychoactive compound found in the plant Catha edulis Forsk. (khat), is a β-keto analogue of amphetamine, sharing not only the phenethylamine structure, but also the amphetamine-like stimulant effects. Synthetic cathinones are derivatives of the naturally occurring cathinone that largely entered the recreational drug market at the end of 2000s. The former "legal status", impressive marketing strategies and their commercial availability, either in the so-called "smartshops" or via the Internet, prompted their large spread, contributing to their increasing popularity in thefollowing years. As their popularity increased, the risks posed for public health became clear, with several reports of intoxications and deaths involving these substances appearing both in the social media and scientific literature. The regulatory measures introduced thereafter to halt these trending drugs of abuse have proved to be of low impact, as a continuous emergence of new non-controlled derivatives keep appearing to replace those prohibited. Users resort to synthetic cathinones due to their psychostimulant properties but are often unaware of the dangers they may incur when using these substances. Therefore, studies aimed at unveiling the pharmacological and toxicological properties of these substances are imperative, as they will provide increased expertise to the clinicians that face this problem on a daily basis. The present work provides a comprehensive review on history and legal status, chemistry, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, adverse effects and lethality in humans, as well as on the current knowledge of the neurotoxic mechanisms of synthetic cathinones.

Introduction: Intersections of Activism and Academia

Introduction: Intersections of Activism and Academia

Operationalizing the Relation Between Affect and Cognition With the Somatic Transform

This article introduces the somatic transform that operationalizes the relation between affect and cognition at the psychological level of analysis by capitalizing on the relation between the cognitive-denotative and affective-connotative meaning of concepts as measured with semantic differential rating scales. Following discussion of levels of analysis, the importance of language at the psychological level, and two principles (inextricability and complementarity) summarizing the relation between affect and cognition that are rendered explicit by the somatic transform, we present affect control theory (ACT) and its Bayesian extension (BayesACT) containing the somatic transform. We conclude by identifying examples of inextricability and complementarity in the social science and neuroscience literatures and discussing how our psychological model might be implemented in a realistic neural model.

The visual vernacular: embracing photographs in research.

The increasing use of digital images for communication and interaction in everyday life can give a new lease of life to photographs in research. In contexts where smartphones are ubiquitous and many people are “digital natives”, asking participants to share and engage with photographs aligns with their everyday activities and norms more than textual or analogue approaches to data collection. Thus, it is time to consider fully the opportunities afforded by digital images and photographs for research purposes. This paper joins a long-standing conversation in the social science literature to move beyond the “linguistic imperialism” of text and embrace visual methodologies. Our aim is to explain the photograph as qualitative data and introduce different ways of using still images/photographs for qualitative research purposes in health professions education (HPE) research: photo-documentation, photo-elicitation and photovoice, as well as use of existing images. We discuss the strengths of photographs in research, particularly in participatory research inquiry. We consider ethical and philosophical challenges associated with photography research, specifically issues of power, informed consent, confidentiality, dignity, ambiguity and censorship. We outline approaches to analysing photographs. We propose some applications and opportunities for photographs in HPE, before concluding that using photographs opens up new vistas of research possibilities.Supplementary InformationThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-021-00672-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Questions on Public Policy and Trust during Covid‐19 in the Middle East and North Africa

Trust is a recurring theme in social‐science literature for disciplines as diverse as psychology, political science, anthropology, sociology, and management. Recently, the concept has even been studied in neurobiology, behavioral economics, and computer science. In discussing the impact of state responses to Covid‐19 on trust in government, one should distinguish between two types of trust: political and social. Political trust refers to the extent to which people have trust in institutions; social trust refers to trust in other people within the community and beyond. While some studies suggest that political and social trust tend to correlate with each other, most studies examine these concepts separately. This article focuses on the impact of Covid‐19 on trust in government in the Middle East: political trust in the context of the pandemic.

Using a randomized controlled trial to develop conservation strategies on rented farmlands

AbstractAddressing the environmental impacts of large‐scale agriculture requires innovative approaches to conservation program design and evaluation. We used a randomized controlled trial and a sample of 2225 landowners in the Mississippi River Basin to test a new conservation program that targets a growing but overlooked population—nonoperating landowners (NOLs). To spur adoption of conservation practices on farmland rented out by NOLs, the program provided NOLs with ready‐to‐use lease language and a financial incentive. The program's design was informed by field work, the behavioral science literature, and the social science literature on barriers to conservation on farmland. We cannot detect an effect on conservation practices from the lease language or the incentive. The take‐up rate for the incentive was one‐tenth the expected rate based on NOL responses to a hypothetical offer in a survey. The results underscore the importance of assessing program performance by rigorously testing programs in real conservation settings.

Algorithmic thinking in the public interest: navigating technical, legal, and ethical hurdles to web scraping in the social sciences

Web scraping, defined as the automated extraction of information online, is an increasingly important means of producing data in the social sciences. We contribute to emerging social science literature on computational methods by elaborating on web scraping as a means of automated access to information. We begin by situating the practice of web scraping in context, providing an overview of how it works and how it compares to other methods in the social sciences. Next, we assess the benefits and challenges of scraping as a technique of information production. In terms of benefits, we highlight how scraping can help researchers answer new questions, supersede limits in official data, overcome access hurdles, and reinvigorate the values of sharing, openness, and trust in the social sciences. In terms of challenges, we discuss three: technical, legal, and ethical. By adopting “algorithmic thinking in the public interest” as a way of navigating these hurdles, researchers can improve the state of access to information on the Internet while also contributing to scholarly discussions about the legality and ethics of web scraping. Example software accompanying this article are available within the supplementary materials.