Utilitarian Research Articles

ROLE OF MEDIA ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS

The engagement of students in social media networking activities has been observed to result in increased focus on their academic pursuits, leading to a higher investment of time and effort in their studies. The current investigation was carried out within the Lahore District situated in the province of Punjab.The pr imary aim of this investigation is to examine the influence of social media utilisation on the scholastic ach ievement of college students. The research was carried out in various urban centers, namely, Lahore, University of the Punjab, G.C University, University of Lahore, and Superior University. This study employed a multistage sampling method. During the initial phase, a random selection process was employed to choose four universities located in the Lahore district of the Punjab province. During the second stage, a random selection process was employed to select four departments from each university. In the third stage, a sample size of 400 participants was chosen through convenience sampling. The sample consisted of 100 students from each university and 25 students from each department, all of whom were enrolled in degree programs. Data were obtained using a meticulously designed interview schedule. The data that was gathered was subjected to analysis through the utilization of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings indicate that a significant proportion of the participants utilized social media platforms to enhance their scholastic achievements. Therefore, there is a strong positive correlation between academic performance and social media usage. Keywords: Social Media, Networks, Internet, Students, Time.

Efficiency of management of higher education in russia in the practices of application of managerial tools

The managerial ideology for two decades of its use as a management model in the system of higher education in Russia has demonstrated its inefficiency. It has become a source of higher education losing its social purpose. The purpose of the study: to establish the ability of state managerialism to ensure the effective management of the Russian institution of higher education. Methodology: neo-institutional theory. Methods: document analysis; mass sociological survey among students and teachers; in-depth interviews with vice-rectors and deans of seventeen Russian universities. Hypothesis: the effectiveness of higher education management in the practice of applying managerialism is hindered by three barriers: 1) quality inversion, that can be caused by the disinterest of social actors to work effectively in the conditions of applying managerial ideology; 2) the mismatch between the managerial understanding of efficiency and the goals of higher education. In this case, we are talking about a deliberate rejection of the traditional goals of higher education for the sake of the formal implementation of managerial norms; 3) strict regulation of the work of the teaching staff, the reverse consequence of which is predicted to be the imitative fulfilment of the prescribed rules for the professional activities of students.
 Three empirical indicators were used to test the hypothesis: intensification of educational and scientific activities; stimulation of inter-university and intra-university competition among employees; increasing the professionalisation of university management.
 In the course of using survey methods, the effectiveness of state managerialism was refuted through the respondents' rejection of managerial values, the negative impact of institutional barriers on the process of achieving the goals of higher education, and the recognition of the neo-optimal (inefficient) nature of the use of budgetary funds. Instead of improving management efficiency, there is the emergence of imitative practices that are a direct consequence of formal adaptation to new institutional conditions. Professionals who are forced to adapt to managerial tools develop adaptive self-regulation strategies derived from their resource capabilities. As a result, new management tools operate in idle, on their own, in isolation from the target orientations of professional activity. This gives rise to a directly opposite effect on the goal conceived by the reformers: the effectiveness of management is reduced due to a sharp increase in the costs of using managerial tools and failure to achieve traditional professional goals. A paradoxical situation arises: according to formal signs, there is an increase in efficiency, but according to real results, a sharp decrease in the level of professionalism and expected social utility.

Associations Between Social Risks and Primary Care Utilization Among Medically Complex Veterans.

Social risks contribute to poor health outcomes, especially for patients with complex medical needs. These same risks may impact access to primary care services. To study associations between social risks and primary care utilization among patients with medical complexity. Prospective cohort study of respondents to a 2018 mailed survey, followed up to 2years after survey completion. Nationally representative sample of 10,000 primary care patients in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system, with high (≥ 75th percentile) 1-year risk of hospitalization or death. Survey-based exposures were low social support, no family member/friend involved in health care, unemployment, transportation problem, food insecurity, medication insecurity, financial strain, low medical literacy, and less than high school graduate. Electronic health record-based outcomes were number of primary care provider (PCP) encounters, number of primary care team encounters (PCP, nurse, clinical pharmacist, and social worker), and having ≥ 1 social work encounter. Among 4680 respondents, mean age was 70.3, 93.7% were male, 71.8% White non-Hispanic, and 15.8% Black non-Hispanic. Unemployment was associated with fewer PCP and primary care team encounters (incident rate ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.65-0.91; p = 0.002 and 0.75, 0.59-0.95; p = 0.02, respectively), and low medical literacy was associated with more primary care team encounters (1.17, 1.05-1.32; p = 0.006). Among those with one or more social risks, 18.4% had ≥ 1 social work encounter. Low medical literacy (OR 1.95, 95% CI 1.45-2.61; p < 0.001), transportation problem (1.42, 1.10-1.83; p = 0.007), and low social support (1.31, 1.06-1.63; p = 0.01) were associated with higher odds of ≥ 1 social work encounter. We found few differences in PCP and primary care team utilization among medically complex VA patients by social risk. However, social work use was low, despite its central role in addressing social risks. More work is needed to understand barriers to social work utilization.

To profile or not?

Developing effective inspection processes at border crossings in order to identify violators within large groups of mostly innocent people is an important and difficult task. Passenger profiling is a tool used to deal with this task, but it raises many public concerns and ongoing debates about its usefulness. In this article, we study whether profiling is helpful, how it should be used to maximize its effectiveness, and how social utility is affected by its use. We consider two game models that take place at a crowded border crossing, where passengers are divided into different groups based on their risk profile. The models involve three players: the defender, the attacker, and the passenger recruited to engage in a violation. The defender decides on an inspection policy for every group of passengers. The attacker decides from which group to recruit a single passenger as a violator. The recruited passenger has private knowledge about the likelihood that she/he will engage in the violation or not. We solve the game models and compare their solutions with those of a no-profiling inspection policy. We then study a model with four players, including a social planner who is concerned about social utility, and chooses the defender's inspection resources and policy. We show that the announced profiling policy provides the highest payoffs to the defender. Regarding social utility, profiling is always better than no profiling. However, there are cases where the unannounced profiling policy provides the most socialutility.

The Correlation of Morality and Law in the Works of I. A. Ilyin and G. F. Shershenevich: Comparison of Natural Law and Normative Approaches

The article substantiates the need to address the political and legal heritage of pre-revolutionary Russian legal thought and offers an analysis of the scientific heritage of the classics of domestic political and legal thought I. A. Ilyin and G. F. Shershenevich on the relationship between morality and law. The concepts of social norms, their purpose and place in the system of social regulation are investigated. The social nature of morality, its regulatory function and historical variability, means of influencing persons who do not comply with the norms of morality are noted. The difference between legal regulation and moral regulation is carried out. The social utility of morality, the concept of moral behavior and its motives are investigated. In the context of understanding the law, attention is focused on its coercive nature and types of legal sanctions. Within the framework of the close interaction of morality and law, it is emphasized that giving a moral norm a legal sanction gives this norm a mixed character — ethical and legal. It is noted that the requirements of morality and law in some cases may contradict each other.

HIV-related stress predicts depression over five years among people living with HIV.

Extant literature has demonstrated significant associations between HIV-related stress, social support, and depression among PLWH. However, little research has been conducted on the changes in such associations over time. Our study aims to explore the longitudinal relationship between HIV-related stress, social support, and depression among PLWH over five years. 320 PLWH were recruited from Changsha Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hunan Province, China. They were assessed for depressive symptoms, HIV-related stress, and social support within 1 month of HIV diagnosis, 1 year after diagnosis, and five years after diagnosis, respectively. Relationships between these variables were examined using a fixed effect model. The prevalence of depressive symptoms within the first month, first year, and fifth years of HIV diagnosis was 35, 12.2, and 14.7%, respectively. Emotional stress (β: 0.730, 95% CI: 0.648, 0.811), social stress (β: 0.066, 95% CI: 0.010, 0.123), instrumental stress (β: 0.133, 95% CI:0.046, 0.221) positively predicted depression, while social support utilization (β: -0.176, 95% CI: -0.303, -0.049) negatively predicted depression. Our study suggests that HIV-related stress and social support predict depressive symptoms over time among PLWH and that reducing HIV-related stress and improving social support in the early stages of diagnosis is extremely important in preventing depressive symptoms among PLWH.

Optimal strategy analysis of a Markovian queue with variable vacation and vacation interruptions under unobservable cases

ABSTRACT This paper makes a game-theoretic analysis of an M/M/1 queue with variable vacation and vacation interruptions. The Nash equilibrium mixed strategy and social utility maximization are derived based on a non-cooperative game theory and an optimization theory under different information precision levels, namely almost unobservable and fully unobservable cases. The explicit solutions of the entrance probabilities and the steady-state probability distribution of the system are investigated using the probability generating function and nonhomogeneous linear difference equations. Furthermore, the effects of the information levels and diverse system parameters on the equilibrium strategies, the arrival rates, and the expected benefits are explicitly illustrated by numerical comparisons. The research results can provide a theoretical basis and performance analysis tool for the optimal design in the wireless transmission and network communication system.

Beyond Individual Cognitions: Time for Intervention Science to Focus on Health Context and Audience.

Intervention science faces a hazardous paradox: on the one hand, vulnerable populations (eg,patients, people from low socioeconomic background, older adults) are those for whom adoption of healthy behaviors is most urgent; on the other hand, behavior change models are less predictive, and interventions less successful, in these populations. This commentary presents 4 reasons that may explain this issue: (1)research mostly focuses on what causes behavior and how to change it, at the expense of investigating among whom and under what conditions models are valid; (2)models put an undue emphasis on individual cognitions; (3)most studies are not conducted on vulnerable populations; and (4)most researchers are from high-income countries. Several avenues are proposed to address this issue: (1)providing a central place to the context and audience in health behavior change modelization, through collaborations with researchers from other disciplines and countries, and with members of the targeted audience; (2)better reporting samples' sociodemographic characteristics and increasing samples' diversity; and (3)using more rigorous and innovative designs (eg,powered randomized controlled trials, N-of-1 trials, intensive longitudinal studies). In conclusion, it becomes urgent to change the way we do research: the social utility and credibility of intervention science depend on it.

Ethical Challenges at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic – A Systematic Review

Background: The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented influx of patients in hospitals, raising ethical concerns not just about triage and life-support decisions but also about family visits and the quality of end-of-life care. The value of ethics in the public healthcare system cannot be overstated; nonetheless, the ethics-related problems (or issues) identified during this epidemic have been linked to a lack of accountability, resource allocation challenges, and a loss of trust in healthcare providers. These elements have the ability to shake our ethical ideas, exacerbate ethical dilemmas, and put carers in dangerous situations. Objectives: To determine the prevalence and distribution of ethical principles in COVID-19-related research publications. Methods: The keywords were used to check the articles published on ethics-related problems at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, published between January 1, 2021, and August 31, 2022. Secondly, we aimed to identify the prevalence and distribution of these ethical principles in research publications related to COVID-19. Results: A total of 6152 articles were identified; 2816 were included for abstract and title screening. Of the 159 articles, 134 were excluded based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The remaining 25 articles were scrutinised extensively. There were 17 (68%) literature reviews, 5 (20%) systematic reviews, 1 (4%) integrative review, 1 (4%) cross-sectional study, and 1 (4%) observational study. Conclusion: It is evident from the multitude of papers on the issue that medical ethical challenges, as well as ethical discussions and debates, continue to develop virtually every day. We attempted to portray the COVID-19 whirlpool, encompassing the scope, nature, and urgency of the issues that developed in a highly charged political atmosphere. There have been efforts to use ethical considerations to justify triage procedures. An imbalance between utilitarian and individual ethics, regardless of perspective, leads to insoluble discomforts that carers must overcome.

The Problem with the Anthropocene: Kainos, Not Anthropos

The Problem with the Anthropocene: <i>Kainos</i>, Not <i>Anthropos</i>

Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South by David Silkenat

Reviewed by: Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South by David Silkenat Kevin Grove Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South David Silkenat. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. I and 260 pp., figs, notes, bibliog, index. $35.00 hardcover (ISBN 9780197564226) The field of environmental history has often played an influential role in the development of geographic research on human–environment relations. William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis and Changes in the Land, for example, helped contour geographic debates on socio-ecological hybridity and the ontological politics of nature during the tumultuous “science wars” of the 1990s and early 2000s. David Silkenat’s Scars on the Land holds similar promise today. Silkenat’s text excavates the environmental impacts of slavery on landscapes and ecologies of the US South, and offers an unwavering emphasis on the need to link environmental destruction to the dehumanizing horrors of chattel slavery, white supremacist ideologies, and opaque practices and landscapes of Black and Indigenous resistance. Much like Cronon’s work three decades earlier, Scars on the Land comes along at a crucial conjuncture in geography — a moment where the broader impact, utility and value of social science and humanities research is being contested and reconfigured. As is well known, calls for a new social contract between science and society have proliferated since the early 2000s, with the demand that science contribute solutions to emergent and pressing social needs. Geography is not immune to these debates. As recent efforts to reorganize the National Science Foundation’s Human-Environment and Geographical Directorate illustrate, some disciplinary colleagues are all too ready to dismiss qualitative and critical geographic research as “unfit” for NSF support on grounds that it does not contribute to solutions-oriented interdisciplinary collaborations (see Grove and Rickards 2022). Given how these directorate changes come on the heels of long overdue interest in Black and Indigenous geographies, the current moment presents geography with a unique problem. Rather than demonstrating the interconnections between nature and society, the challenge is now to excavate how the social production of nature works through the production of racialized difference; and to do so in a way that can speak to novel demands for the social utility of science. Scars on the Land illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations across environmental history and geography can address both problems. [End Page 215] To be clear, Scars on the Land is primarily written for an audience of historians. As Silkenat explains in the introductory chapter, the text aims to bridge disconnected debates on the social and environmental histories of the American South within the field of southern US history. While the text admirably succeeds in this regard, it perhaps bypasses some opportunities to build bridges with work in other disciplines, particularly research in Black geographies and the geography of the US South (both of which feature prominently in this journal). Its core arguments on the environmental impacts of slavery will resonate strongly with scholars working in fields such as Black ecology and Black geographies, which situate socio-ecological problems in the long history of anti-Black racism and the life-destroying landscapes it produces (Pulido 2002, Wright 2018, Moulton and Salo 2022). Nonetheless, there is much to be gained from a close engagement with Silkenat’s arguments. One major contribution Scars on the Land offers is the robust array of archival materials and secondary sources Silkenat draws on to develop an environmental history of slavery in the US South. Each chapter focuses on a specific environmental attribute, and deftly draws on troves of historical documents to bring to life fragile southern environments, the violent logic of plantation ecology — specifically, its treatment of land and enslaved labor as dispensable and given to free, instrumental use — and its contradictions that created opaque niches of Black resistance and alternative forms of life. Chapter 1 starts from the ground up, focusing on soil. Here, Silkenat introduces the key dynamic between racialized extraction and resistance. On one hand, soil clearly illustrates the plantation system’s compulsive drive to total objectification and consumption of non-white and non-human life. Plantation agriculture cleared forests and overworked fragile soils, creating denuded...

Indonesian Patent Law Reform for Simple Patent Innovations on Achieving Welfare State Objectives

The main focus of this research is to examine the legal protection of simple patent innovations within the Indonesian patent system, considering their substance, structure, and legal culture. The objective is to advocate for the reformulation of regulations concerning the social and economic utilization of intellectual property, specifically simple patents, in order to address their impact on public interest from a welfare state perspective. The current regulations governing simple patents demonstrate monopolistic and individualistic tendencies. This study utilizes a normative juridical research method and employs a statute-based approach to critically analyze the provisions of Law No. 13 of 2016, commonly known as the Patent Law. The research findings indicate that the current regulation fails to adequately support inventors of simple patents. The existing first-to-file registration system, resembling that of regular patents, has resulted in low rates of acquisition and registration for simple patents. Consequently, it can be concluded that the regulation of simple patents under the Patent Law does not favor inventors of such patents. In order to rectify this issue, it is crucial to reformulate the legal protection of simple patent innovations based on the principles of the welfare state. The ideal formulation of the Patent Law should take into account the norms and values prevalent within the inventor community, thereby necessitating a reformulation of the legal protection system rooted in the substance, structure, and legal culture in Indonesia.

Utilization of Social Media and Learners’ Creative Writing Skills

Aims: The purpose of this study is to identify the profile of the respondents’ most used social media networks; determine the level of social media utilization in terms of educational, networking and entertainment tool; to determine the students’ level of creative writing skills in terms of content, convention, and vocabulary; find the significant relationship between the utilization of social media and the creative writing skills of students.&#x0D; Study Design: Descriptive Survey Research Method with Quantitative Approach.&#x0D; Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at Agusan National High School in Cagayan de Or City's East 1 District during the school year: 2022.&#x0D; Methodology: The respondents were Two hundred thirty-two (232) students in Grade 10 at Agusan National High School in Cagayan de Oro City's East 1 District. This study used a self-created survey that underwent validity and reliability testing.&#x0D; Results: The results showed that the most utilized social media site was Facebook, while Twitter was Less Utilized interpreted as Very Low. On the students' overall utilization of social media, utilization as a networking tool got the highest, while utilization as an educational tool was the lowest. The students' overall creative writing skills, Vocabulary was the highest, while the content was the lowest. Students’ most used social media sites have a significant relationship with their creative writing skills. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. Students’ extent of utilization of social media sites has a significant relationship to their creative writing skills. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected.&#x0D; Conclusions: The study employed a descriptive survey research method, which included a quantitative approach to collecting numerical data through a questionnaire. It also used frequency and percentage distribution, mean and standard deviation. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient was also used to find the relationships among the variables. The results showed that students visit and utilize Facebook and their social media accounts Most of the Time, while their creative writing skills were also at Most of the Time or High Level. It was concluded that students' utilization of social media is significantly correlated to their creative writing skills; thus, it is recommended that the utilization of social media be guided and monitored for proper and correct utilization.

Barrier Factors Model of Innovation Process in the Furniture Industry Supply Chain (Case Study at PT. Duwa Atmimuda)

PT. Duwa Atmimuda is a company engaged in manufacturing in producing stainless metal products and furniture frames. PT. Duwa Atmimuda is experiencing problems with the lack of application of technology in terms of marketing, seen from the absence of social media utilization, causing the company to find it difficult to expand market share. This study aims to identify the factors that hinder the company's innovation process using the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) method and classify the model using MICMAC Analysis. The results showed that the ISM model of the barrier factor for the innovation process in the furniture industry supply chain has 6 levels. After the ISM model is obtained, the next process is to classify each variable indicator on the barrier factors of the innovation process with the help of MICMAC analysis. There are 4 classification clusters, the first cluster (autonomous indicators) has one indicator. While in the second cluster (dependent indicators) there is one indicator. In the third cluster (linkage indicators) there are 9 indicators. In the fourth cluster (independent indicators) there is one indicator. The third cluster (linkage indicators) is the highest cluster of indicator spreads where this indicator has high control and dependence. The conclusion of this study is that there are 12 inhibiting factors in the innovation process which are arranged into six levels of the ISM model and in the MICMAC analysis the third cluster is the highest distribution cluster.

Externalities and the State

Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises argued that cases of negative externalities all turn out to be instances of failure of government to enforce individual property rights adequately. This article goes beyond Rothbard and Mises in claiming that failure to enforce property rights is far from the only way in which government gives rise to externalities. Indeed, rather than externalities requiring government intervention to remedy the problems they cause, this article argues that most actions of the government actually cause externalities. Looking at externalities in this way leads to the logical conclusion that government interventions are the main obstacle to markets’ attaining maximum social utility. The line of reasoning leading to this conclusion is as follows: (1) government failures lead to externalities; (2) externalities lead to market failures; ergo (3) government failures lead to market failures. Specific government actions whose externality-generating effects are analyzed include taxes, subsidies, price controls, government spending, monetary policy, prohibitions, and income redistribution.

Polarization and Coherence in Mean Field Games Driven by Private and Social Utility

We study a mean field game in continuous time over a finite horizon, T, where the state of each agent is binary and where players base their strategic decisions on two, possibly competing, factors: the willingness to align with the majority (conformism) and the aspiration of sticking with the own type (stubbornness). We also consider a quadratic cost related to the rate at which a change in the state happens: changing opinion may be a costly operation. Depending on the parameters of the model, the game may have more than one Nash equilibrium, even though the corresponding N-player game does not. Moreover, it exhibits a very rich phase diagram, where polarized/unpolarized, coherent/incoherent equilibria may coexist, except for T small, where the equilibrium is always unique. We fully describe such phase diagram in closed form and provide a detailed numerical analysis of the N-player counterpart of the mean field game. In this finite dimensional setting, the equilibrium selected by the population of players is always coherent (favoring the subpopulation whose type is aligned with the initial condition), but it does not necessarily minimize the cost functional. Rather, it seems that, among the coherent ones, the equilibrium prevailing is the one that most benefits the underdog subpopulation forced to change opinion.

The rising tide of criticality in social entrepreneurship and social innovation

In this article, we trace a rising tide of criticality to highlight three waves in a sea of social entrepreneurship/social innovation (SE/SI) research. Our aim is to draw attention to counter, alternative and critical perspectives in the field and how ‘dangerous’ their co-option by right wing narratives is. We review what we believe to be three waves in the development of a critical research agenda undertaken by a cohort of academics who, in their loyalty to the field, have sought to unpick the underlying assumptions in the practice of, and academic reflection on, social innovation. We set out the early instrumentalist critique, in which the success and social utility of SE/SI is questioned. We secondly highlight a post-structuralist shift, in which hidden and unheard voices and perspectives are welcomed and celebrated. The third wave, for us, constitutes a dangerous threat to the SE/SI project, threatening to undermine and co-opt the first two waves, as has happened in other related fields of intellectual endeavour. We position this paper to not only engage with scholars who challenge the normative assumptions behind social innovation research, but also to draw attention to the entry of right-wing politics in post-modernist critical theory. It is not that everything in this third wave is bad, but that everything becomes unexpectedly dangerous, especially if we uncritically adopt reflexivity, naturalization and performativity as politically and morally neutral positions. Contra to Foucault, in adopting a critical realist stance, we begin to propose that ‘the social’, posed as an inherently ‘good’ thing, is an ontological reality that is knowable, albeit given that our knowledge of what is ‘good’ is nonetheless limited and partial. In the first Skoll World Forum (2004) some activists put up posters in the toilets of Said Business School warning delegates, ‘beware social entrepreneurship: a wolf in sheep’s clothes!’ (Nicholls &amp; Young, 2008, p. 272). We conclude our paper warning that SE/SI is not the only wolf to be concerned about!

Choosing connection: relational values as a career choice motivation predict teachers' relational goal setting.

Relational goals have a positive impact on teachers' classroom performance, but little is known about the antecedents of these goals. One of the most important reasons for choosing teaching as a career is the desire to work with children/adolescents. This study examined this reason along with other relational career choice motives as predictors of relational goal orientation, complementing other studies that have examined the relationship between reasons for career choice and goal orientations but did not consider the relational component. We hypothesized that relational motives for career choice would predict relational goal setting for teaching better than other reasons for career choice. The sample comprised N = 167 student teachers at a large German university who answered an online questionnaire assessing motivations for choosing teaching as a career, professional self-concepts and relational goal orientation. Adopting an expectancy-value perspective, we set up a structural equation (N = 167) and two linear regression models (n1 = 86, n2 = 81) to examine the effects of student teachers' career choice motives on relational goal orientation. Analyses showed that the relational motive of educational interest was the only significant predictor in a structural equation model with educational interest, subject-specific interest, and general ability beliefs as predictors and relational goal orientation as the criterion. The first regression model found that the social utility motive work with children/adolescents was a significant predictor of relational goal orientation when combined with other career choice motives, namely educational interest, subject-specific interest, general abilitiy beliefs, and three other social utility factors. The second regression model found no significant effects of educational interest, subject-specific interest, educational self-concept and subject-specific self-concept on relational goal orientation. The results suggest that teachers who choose their profession because they enjoy working with children and adolescents are likely to strive to build satisfactory student-teacher relationships. Implications for future research and teacher education are discussed.

Social support and cognitive function in Chinese older adults who experienced depressive symptoms: is there an age difference?

This study examined the moderating effect of overall social support and the different types of social support on cognitive functioning in depressed older adults. We also investigated whether the moderating effect varied according to age. A total of 2,500 older adults (≥60 years old) from Shanghai, China were enrolled using a multistage cluster sampling method. Weighted linear regression and multiple linear regression was utilized to analyze the moderating effect of social support on the relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive function and to explore its differences in those aged 60-69, 70-79, and 80 years and above. After adjusting for covariates, the results indicated that overall social support (β = 0.091, p = 0.043) and support utilization (β = 0.213, p < 0.001) moderated the relationship between depressive symptoms and cognitive function. Support utilization reduced the possibility of the cognitive decline in depressed older adults aged 60-69 years (β = 0.310, p < 0.001) and 80 years and above (β = 0.199, p < 0.001), while objective support increased the possibility of cognitive decline in depressed older people aged 70-79 years (β = -0.189, p < 0.001). Our findings highlight the buffering effects of support utilization on cognitive decline in depressed older adults. We suggest that age-specific measures should be taken when providing social support to depressed older adults in order to reduce the deterioration of cognitive function.

Democratization in the Digital Era: Experience from Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is home to about 8.5% of the world’s total population and 10% of its internet users, yet it is also home to 12.7% of the world’s social media users. The exponential growth in internet and social media utilization poses both opportunities and challenges towards democratization. The research aims to examine how the digital sphere may or may not support inclusive and deliberative democracy in the region. Using elaboration on case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, the current study is reflecting on shared challenges and opportunities in preserving democracy amidst the rapid development of cyberspace as a mode of political communication. The findings suggest that digital space has been instrumental in harassing dissent or jailing opposition members in countries like the Philippines and Vietnam. On the other hand, the use of technology provides an opportunity to foster a more deliberative and inclusive democracy in Indonesia and Malaysia. The article contributes to the wider conversation on democracy and the digital sphere in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries.