Well-informed Citizenry Research Articles

CLOSED-DOMAIN QUESTION-ANSWERING SYSTEM FOR INDIAN LEGAL ACTS

: In Today’s digital age, access to legal knowledge among students is crucial for fostering a well-informed citizenry. However, comprehending the intricacies of provisions of Indian Legal Acts, especially in a complex legal system like India’s, can be daunting, even for seasoned professionals, let alone for educational purposes among children. To bridge this gap and foster legal literacy from a young age, we introduced a PDF-based Closed-domain Question-Answering (CDQA) System for Indian Legal Acts. Our system simplifies educating students about provisions of Indian Legal Acts such as RTI(Right to Education), RTE(Right to Education), Anti-Dowry Act, etc. By leveraging natural language processing(NLP) techniques and machine learning algorithms, our system, powered by LangChain, enables users to pose questions in natural language related to Indian Legal Acts. LangChain represents a groundbreaking advancement in question-answer systems, harnessing the power of cutting-edge language models to provide accurate and comprehensive responses to user queries. Developed based on state-of-the-art NLP techniques, LangChain is a versatile and highly adaptable tool that offers a versatile solution with transformative potential across diverse industries, including education, healthcare, legal research, customer support, etc.

On citizens' right to information: Justification and analysis of the democratic right to be well informed

On citizens' right to information: Justification and analysis of the democratic right to be well informed

When News Topics Annoy—Exploring Issue Fatigue and Subsequent Information Avoidance and Extended Coping Strategies

This paper scrutinizes the phenomenon of issue fatigue and its consequences. Issue fatigue results from overexposure to a news topic that has been on the media’s agenda for an extended period of time. Fatigued recipients become annoyed, and no longer wish to be exposed to the topic. Based on the findings of an explorative qualitative study, a quantitative online survey was conducted in Germany, Mexico, and Pakistan (N = 481). Using cluster analysis, we identified an emotional and a cognitive type of issue fatigue, and investigated how these types react. Both types of fatigued recipients avoided further news about the respective issue in traditional news media (= information avoidance). Differences were observed concerning the strategies to handle fatigue (= coping strategies): recipients of the emotional type posted about their fatigue in social media; recipients of the cognitive type turned to information in sources other than the mainstream news. Taking into account country-specific differences, we concluded that, generally, issue fatigue—via information avoidance—results in an uninformed citizenry. This can be a hurdle for the functioning of an established democracy or for the success of democratic transitions. Posting about issue fatigue, which was more frequent in Mexico and Pakistan, might ‘infect’ others, and intensify problems resulting from issue fatigue. Turning to alternative sources can be either beneficial or problematic for the development of a well-informed citizenry, depending on whether alternative sources provide reliable and truthful information.

DO SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION RELATE TO CLIMATE CHANGE AWARENESS? EVIDENCE FROM AFROBAROMETER ROUND 7 DATA

Climate change has been considered the most significant environmental catastrophe which is currently threatening human survival. Like the rest of other countries on the African continent, climate change in Nigeria has debilitating effects on both the people and the community due to vulnerability and poor coping capability of the people. Numerous studies related to the problem of rising temperatures in Africa are now being carried out and documented. However, only a little research evidence is available, particularly from Nigeria, regarding the way socio-demographic factors and sources of information are related to climate change awareness. The Afrobarometer Round 7 data for Nigeria was released in 2019 with a sample of 1600 drawn from the 36 states in the country through a clustered, stratified, multi-stage, random sample. The data were subjected to different statistical analyses of t-test, ANOVA, correlation, and regression. The study found that a majority of participants received information about climate change on the internet, social media, TV, and radio. Only a few of the participants obtained climate change-related information from the newspapers. The results showed significant differences in climate change awareness based on gender and place of respondents’ residences. One-way ANOVA showed that significant differences exist in climate change awareness among educational and regional groups. However, no significant difference was found in the awareness of climate change among age groups. In contrast, a significant positive relationship among gender, place of residence, region, and awareness of climate change was observed. Internet news and climate change awareness were found to be negatively significantly related. Stepwise regression analysis showed that internet news was the most parsimonious set of climate change predictors. It is suggested that for a better understanding of climate change, government agencies and other stakeholders should use the internet and various social media platforms to disseminate information related to climate change. Subscription to social media platforms should be made cheap for the citizens for broader coverage which in turn engenders well-informed citizenry.

Political Humor, Sharing, and Remembering: Insights from Neuroimaging

Abstract Over the last two decades, news-oriented comedy programs have risen to compete with traditional hard news media as sources of information about politics. To the extent that a politically knowledgeable electorate is necessary for a thriving democracy, understanding the mechanisms underlying the extent to which political comedy facilitates or inhibits a well-informed citizenry is critical. Across two studies, we use behavioral experiments and neuroimaging to examine the causal effects of humor on the desire to share and the capacity to remember political information. We find that humor increases the likelihood to share political information with others and enhances people’s memory for information. Humor also increases brain response in regions associated with understanding other people’s mental states (i.e., mentalizing), which advances a theoretical framework that humor may facilitate considerations of others’ views (e.g., how other people will respond to shared political information).

Seek and you shall find? A content analysis on the diversity of five search engines’ results on political queries

ABSTRACT Search engines are important political news sources and should thus provide users with diverse political information – an important precondition of a well-informed citizenry. The search engines’ algorithmic content selection strongly influences the diversity of the content received by the users – particularly since most users highly trust search engines and often click on only the first result. A widespread concern is that users are not informed diversely by search engines, but how far this concern applies has hardly been investigated. Our study is the first to investigate content diversity provided by five search engines on ten current political issues in Germany. The findings show that sometimes even the first result is highly diverse, but in most cases, more results must be considered to be informed diversely. This unreliability presents a serious challenge when using search engines as political news sources. Our findings call for media policy measures, for example in terms of algorithmic transparency.

Investigating the Source and Strategies Adopted by Mainstream Media in Combating Fake News in the Kingdom of Eswatini

ABSTRACT The spread of “fake news” is a threat to the credibility of the media in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). These intentionally false stories or disinformation purporting to be news threaten the democratic role of mainstream media in creating a well-informed citizenry. There is hate speech, and disinformation directed at the royal family, the cabinet, prominent figures and the larger Swazi society. This study focuses on disinformation in the mainstream media, the Swazi Observer and the Times of Swaziland, and the strategies being adopted to combat it. The article adopts a qualitative methodological approach using in-depth interviews with journalists and qualitative content analysis of the newspapers as data-gathering methods. The study reveals that the dissemination of false information is partially a consequence of the secretive nature of Swazi society even on matters of public interest. This has resulted in people spreading false news through social media aimed at ridiculing those in authority. On the other hand, “fake news” has found its way into mainstream media as journalists use the internet and social media such as Facebook and Twitter as sources of news without verifying their authenticity due to the pressure to be the first to publish.

Do Biology Majors Really Differ from Non-STEM Majors?

Recent calls to action urge sweeping reform in science education, advocating for improved learning for all students-including those majoring in fields beyond the sciences. However, little work has been done to characterize the differences-if any exist-between students planning a career in science and those studying other disciplines. We describe an attempt to clarify, in broad terms, how non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors differ from life sciences majors, and how they are similar. Using survey responses and institutional data, we find that non-STEM majors are not unilaterally science averse; non-STEM majors are more likely than biology majors to hold misconceptions about the nature of science, yet they are not completely ignorant of how science works; non-STEM majors are less likely than biology majors to see science as personally relevant; and non-STEM majors populations are likely to be more diverse-with respect to incoming knowledge, perceptions, backgrounds, and skills-than a biology majors population. We encourage science educators to consider these characteristics when designing curricula for future scientists or simply for a well-informed citizenry.

Media pluralism: What matters for governance and regulation?

ABSTRACTMedia pluralism is valued in most jurisdictions because it contributes to a well-informed citizenry. The authors examine what media policy and regulatory levers appear to affect five types of citizen knowledge across the European Union. They conclude that concentration of titles matters more than ownership in newsprint; and that neither type of concentration matters in broadcasting in the same way, but the regulatory regime for public service broadcasting does, particularly for political knowledge.

Science ideals and science careers in a university biology department

In an ethnographic study set within a biology department of a public university in the United States, incongruity between the ideals and practice of science education are investigated. Against the background of religious conservative students' complaints about evolution in the curriculum, biology faculty describe their political intents for fostering science literacy. This article examines differences that emerge between the department's rhetorical commitment to improve science understanding amongst their students and the realities of course staffing and anxieties about promotion and tenure. Because tenure-track faculty are motivated to focus their careers on research productivity and teaching biology majors, other biology courses are staffed with adjunct instructors who are less equipped to negotiate complex pedagogies of science and religion. In practice, faculty avoid risky conversations about evolution versus creationism with religiously conservative students. I argue that such faculty are complicit, through their silence, in failing to equip their students with the science literacy which their own profession avows is crucial for a well-informed citizenry in a democracy.

Civil Society and Online Political Discourse

The goal of this study is to examine—theoretically and empirically—the implications of unrestricted, computer-mediated social interactions for civil society. Discussions of 207,419 participants in 35 newsgroups over 6 years are examined. Patterns of participation and attention attraction follow a power–law degree distribution—a highly skewed distribution—as is expected in large networks. Furthermore, analysis shows that these patterns are dependent on group size: The larger a group, the more skewed is its distribution. These patterns indicate hierarchical social structures that limit equality among participants and well-informed citizenry. The growth of discussions, which can empower civil society, is in fact making it more hierarchical.

The Effect of Content on Global Internet Adoption

The adoption of Internet access is considered important for economic productivity, political freedom, and a well-informed citizenry. Moreover, Internet adoption rates vary significantly across countries. As a consequence, there is a large literature examining economic and social determinants of Internet adoption across countries. However, there is no work properly assessing the role of content. In this paper, we test the effect of content availability on Internet adoption across countries. Controlling for the endogeneity of content with respect to the installed base of Internet users and a range of factors known to affect adoption, we find a statistically and economically significant effect of content on Internet adoption. Content’s effect on adoption rates is similar to that of income inequality, population density, primary school enrollment, and the degree of civil liberties, although of lesser importance than that of per-capita GDP. Internet services is an example of a two-sided market. Adoption by users depends on the availability of content and vice-versa. This feedback poses a difficult empirical problem in isolating the effect of content on adoption. Our identification strategy relies on estimating the effect of relevant content produced by “large” countries on adoption by “small” countries. We argue, and provide empirical evidence, that content production by the “large” countries is exogenous to adoption of Internet access in the “small” countries. To identify content relevant to an adopting country we use the number of users of the language in which the content is written. This provides significant exogenous variation in relevant accessible content across countries. Estimating cross-country adoption regressions, we find that a country one standard deviation above the mean level of accessible content has an Internet adoption rate significantly higher than that of the mean country in the sample. We also find evidence consistent with awareness of Internet content spreading through social interaction. Content has a greater effect in more densely populated countries and in countries with more linguistically homogeneous populations. This suggests that it is

Review: The Assault on Reason

THE ASSAULT ON REASON Al Gore New York: Penguin Press, 2007. 308pp, $32.50 cloth (ISBN 978-1-5 9420-122-6)The Assault on Reason - is italicized for emphasis on front cover is a polemic masquerading as a thoughtful book. Al Gore effectively identifies many of threats to Americans' historic commitment to rational discourse. At his best, his wide-ranging, thought-provoking analysis updates and reinforces founding fathers' venerable works with cutting-edge neurological and psychological research. Unfortunately, embedded in this timely, important, substantive critique is a trendy, banal, and predictable attack on George W Bush's administration. One need not be a Bush apologist to be disappointed by this descent from a lofty philosophical and scientific plane to more pedestrian and personal political terrain.Our is in danger of being hollowed out, former vice president and recent Nobel peace prizewinner warns, in introduction to this short, crisp, well- organized book (10). Burnishing his credentials as ultimate Harvard man, Gore mixes worlds of scholarship and politics, theoretical and practical, explaining complicated intellectual ideas in easily digestible prose. His argument is accessible without being simplistic. He begins by looking at web of connections linking printed word, and democracy (11). Seeking philosophical and technological preconditions that created American politics, Gore proclaims, the age of print begat Age of Reason which begat age of democracy (12). As literacy spread, newspapers and pamphlets involved individuals intelligently in politics, developing a commitment to rational discourse. The resulting wellinformed citizenry created (12). In short, Gutenberg blazed a trail for Jefferson; great readers make for good citizens.Unfortunately, modern communications threaten democracy's mutuality and sense of community. Just as modern psychologists' attachment theory teaches that without two-way communication babies feel powerless, monolithic media makes modern citizens feel irrelevant. Meanwhile, neurologists warn against being overstimulated by kind of loud, colourful fare triggering sensory overload that dominates pop culture marketplace. In a haunting, eloquent passage, Gore describes one-way nature of communication he most blames on television revolution: Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The 'well-informed citizenry' is in danger of becoming 'well-assumed authence' (16).Gore errs by overstating newspapers' responsiveness in 18th and 19th centuries. The American revolution began as an elites' rebellion. Only once British alienated homegrown American aristocrats with access to wealth, power, and newspaper columns, did movement for independence grow. And even after Jacksonian revolution created mass party politics, most Americans felt involved but not truly empowered to shape their nation's destiny. Still, modern media's narcotizing passivity has distracted and demoralized most American voters.Rather than fully developing these themes after introduction, Gore spends next five chapters critiquing Bush administration. These chapters are supposed to indict today's enemies of reason, yet somehow they keep returning to Bush's sins. …

What Happened to Social Studies?

In the face of pressures to focus on literacy and mathematics, schools and textbook publishers are attempting to integrate social studies into the teaching of reading. Beyond ensuring a superficial treatment of the subject matter, this practice threatens the continuing of reflective, engaged citizens, Ms. McGuire fears. ********** IN THE SPRING I have a chance to visit a number of schools. When I do this, I find it interesting to check out the bulletin boards in classrooms and hallways. What I have noticed on recent visits is consistent with a trend that has been cited across the nation: schools with high levels of poverty focus on literacy and mathematics to the exclusion of social studies, while schools with children of middle- and upper-class families offer a much broader range of subjects, including social studies. (1) No one would argue against the importance of developing the literacy and mathematics skills of children in poverty. But at what cost? A society that depends on a well-informed citizenry that understands how democracy functions and knows something of the world beyond its own borders cannot afford to overlook the social studies. A report from the Carnegie Corporation, The Civic Mission of Schools, outlines specific goals for civic education: to develop competent and responsible citizens who are informed and thoughtful, participate in their communities, act politically, and have moral and civic virtues and a belief in their capacity to make a difference. (2) Such education becomes even more important for children in poverty if they are to participate in and embrace the ideals of American democracy. Moreover, as the report argues, teaching civic education can't wait until high school: Research suggests that students start to develop social responsibility and interest in politics before the age of nine. The way they are taught about social issues, ethics, and institutions in elementary school matters a great deal for their civic development (p. 12). The goals of civic and social studies education do not need to be set aside in order to achieve the goals of education in literacy and mathematics. Indeed, these goals should work together because the social studies can provide a purpose for developing and applying literacy and mathematics skills. WHY IS SOCIAL STUDIES DISAPPEARING? The diminished attention to social studies education began with the standards and testing movement. As the national push for accountability became ever stronger, states focused first on standards in literacy and mathematics. The comprehensive mathematics standards introduced in 1991 set the bar for the of standards across the nation. As the standards and testing movement gained momentum, literacy and mathematics garnered the attention and energy of educators, pushing the other subjects to the back burner. Fifteen years later, these subjects are still on that back burner, and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has exacerbated the situation by placing even greater pressure on schools to raise students' standardized test scores in literacy and mathematics. This has been particularly problematic for social studies, in which the world, past and present, serves as the basis for the curriculum--a curriculum that has traditionally dealt with the problem of too much to teach. Initially, history was a focus of the national standards. But civics, geography, and economics are also important, and the scholarship in all of these areas has meant an abundance of learning expectations that can overwhelm teachers and publishers alike. It is dicey business to decide what is worth teaching when depth of understanding, rather than simply covering material, is the goal. Social studies educators have been unable to pare down the curriculum, and special interest groups of all stripes have something to say about what is most important. The issue is very political; witness the debate on the history standards in Congress in the mid-1990s that led to revisions to the standards. …

Electronic government: Government capability and terrorist resource

Abstract The federal government's war on terrorism has heightened understanding and appreciation of the many facets of electronic government. Electronic government is used as a resource in the war on terrorism, helping to prevent and prepare for attacks. It might also prove useful in recovering from attacks. Unfortunately, e-government itself is a likely target for terrorists. Cyber intrusions into government Web sites and damage to, or destruction of, infrastructure, whether a computer system or an electrical grid that supplies power, could impair e-government. E-government is also attractive as a potential target for the information it provides, information that enemies of the United States could use in identifying weaknesses and planning attacks. While the Bush Administration has developed a comprehensive policy, based on a market model, for facilitating the use and effectiveness of e-government, its approach to e-government security, particularly in the area of Web content, has been ad hoc. Soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks, federal agencies began scrubbing their Web sites, an effort that has implications for the notion, and practice, of having a well-informed citizenry.

Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic

In a manner that astounded foreign observers and citizens alike, newspapers defined new republic of United States as did no other institution. By 182Os roughly six hundred newspapers, including sixty big-city dailies, were being pulled off nation's presses, a quantitative accomplishment in which editors took understandable pride.1 In 1814 Nathan Hale of Boston Daily Advertiser wrote, we have any striking traits of national character, their origin may be clearly discerned in our universal relish for newspaper reading, and in general character of newspapers we read.2 While London press could boast of its superiority in terms of literary talent and mechanical execution, Hale and his brother printers countered by pointing to America's numerical preeminence: more newspapers, more subscribers, and more readers could be found in their nation than in any other.3 In 1810 Isaiah Thomas, first historian of American journalism and a former editor, estimated that United States published about twenty-two million papers annually, compared to twenty-one million for Great Britain and Ireland.4 Eleven years later Essex Register of Salem, Massachusetts, put number for United States at eighty million, substantially above fifty-six million papers produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In 1824 William Coleman of New York Evening Post reported that annual production of newspapers in his state exceeded that for all of England. He believed there were two newspapers published in United States for every one in England, Scotland, and Ireland combined. If number of newspapers published drew editorial comment, so too did number of newspapers read. In 1821 Joseph Gales of quasi-official Daily National Intelligencer guessed that United States had 350,000 newspaper subscribers and 1.5 million newspaper readers.5 In other words, one of seven Americans read a newspaper for free. These nonpaying readers were both agents and beneficiaries of a massive giveaway that helped democratize culture of print. This essay addresses a central question implicit in Gales's numbers: how were newspapers transformed from everyday commodities into a form of public property?The quantitative explosion of newspaper circulation at opening of nineteenth century signaled a major transformation in relationship between public and news. With an intensity that would have astounded their colonial forebears, Americans of early national period came to believe that access to news, and therefore to newspapers, was their birthright. This new sense of entitlement sprang from confluence of two ideological currents that have often been treated as if they ran in opposite directions. The ideology of republicanism stressed importance of a well-informed citizenry.6 Because newspapers had no rival as an instrument of general enlightenment and a primer of civic values, didactic republicans had special reason to regard them as the book of people. The ideology of liberalism attached equal significance to well-informed consumer.7 Newspapers contained information that Americans needed in order to make intelligent decisions about enticing new world of consumer goods opening before them. Recent scholars have demonstrated that republican and liberal impulses, far from working at cross purposes, could produce a shared political vocabulary of sufficient flexibility to blur differences in meaning. Thus virtue required to sustain a liberal republic might be understood as either citizen's capacity to sacrifice for common good or economic self-restraint that consumers were called upon to exercise in ultimate den of temptations, marketplace.8 Whether legitimated by republican representations of enlightened citizen or by liberal constructions of enlightened consumer, newspapers came to be seen as an indispensable entre to modern, democratic life. …

On the Outlook for Weather Modification

ABSTRACT THE history of rain-making efforts is reviewed briefly, and some recent U.S. projects are surveyed. Results are inconclusive, and the programs are heavily impacted by social and political influences. Owing to the importance, complexity, and variability of weather phenomena, careful planning with substantial partici-pation by a well-informed citizenry is essential for weather modification to become an effective tool in the hand of man.