Ethnic Insults in YouTube Comments: Social Contagion and Selection Effects During the German “Refugee Crisis”

Author(s):  
Christoph Spörlein ◽  
Elmar Schlueter

Abstract In this article, we investigate the extent to which ethnic insults propagate through comment networks in YouTube videos from four German political talk shows with the largest audience reach. We argue that comments using ethnic insults signal social norms and embolden others to emulate offensive behaviour, therefore potentially contributing the contagiousness of insulting commenting. Moreover, periods of highly salient intergroup conflict (i.e. sexual assaults and terrorist attacks), may further reduce inhibitions to publicly post insulting content further multiplying the spread of this behaviour. To evaluate our claims, we construct a repeated cross-sectional dataset from the comment networks in YouTube videos as well as a pseudo-panel of highly active users which is used to gauge the impact of social selection. Results indicate that the use of ethnic insults in online comment sections appears socially contagious. Specifically, we find that a larger presence of ethnic insults in preceding comments increases the prevalence of insulting comments by 2 percentage points which increases to 7 percentage points in the aftermath of violent incidents. However, findings based on the pseudo-user panel do show that using ethnic insults is socially contagious thus suggesting that the patterns found for the full sample are largely a function of social selection processes.

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Bachmann ◽  
Tim O. Berg ◽  
Eric R. Sims

There have been suggestions for monetary policy to engineer higher inflation expectations to stimulate spending. We examine the relationship between expected inflation and spending attitudes using the microdata from the Michigan Survey of Consumers. The impact of higher inflation expectations on the reported readiness to spend on durables is generally small, outside the zero lower bound, often statistically insignificant, and inside of it typically significantly negative. In our baseline specification, a one percentage point increase in expected inflation during the recent zero lower bound period reduces households' probability of having a positive attitude towards spending by about 0.5 percentage points. (JEL D12, D84, E21, E31, E52)


2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Gabriela Izurieta

The BDH cash transfer is a social protection program directed to the poorest households in Ecuador. This paper examines the impact of the BDH cash transfer on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes for students that want to enter a higher education institution. Close attention is put on the Ser Bachiller exam score, student´s expectations, motivations and self-esteem. The data used corresponds to the Ser Bachiller data base and the Associated Factors Survey for the academic cycle 2016-2017 (one cross-sectional period). The short-term exposure to the program was evaluated building a pseudo-assignation index (pseudo RS index) and a regression discontinuity design. The main results show that households that are near the assignation score (28.2) have an increased probability of participating in the program that ranges from 7.1 to 7.9 percentage points. For the cognitive outcomes, IV estimates reveal that the BDH cash transfer has a statistically significant negative effect on the mathematics score that ranges from 0.35 to 0.43 points (over 10 points). Regarding the non-cognitive outcomes, the BDH has a negative impact on students’ academic self-esteem on both, mathematics class that ranges from 0.25 to 0.28 percentage points) and a similar effect on language class and a statistically significant and negative impact on the expectation to obtain a master’s degree of 0.21 percentage points.


Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 2106-2122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongwei Dong

American metropolitan areas have experienced rising income inequality and worsening rental affordability in the past few decades. Has the rise of inequality caused worsening rental affordability? This study conducts both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to examine the impact of income inequality on rental affordability for low-income tenant households at the county level in America’s largest 100 metropolitan areas. The cross-sectional analyses reveal that, everything else equal, an increase of Gini coefficient by 0.1 in a county was associated with 2.2 and 4.4 percentage points more severely rent-burdened low-income households in 2000 and 2008–2012, respectively. The longitudinal analyses confirm that rising income inequality caused worsening rental affordability for low-income tenant households in large American metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2008–2012. On average, counties that experienced a 0.1 greater increase in Gini coefficient from 2000 to 2008–2012 saw faster growth of severely rent-burdened low-income tenant households by 2.9 percentage points.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Sup Park

This study examines how media use for news can relate to expressive and collective participation through the mediating role of political talk and internal and external political efficacy. Based on two cross-sectional analyses and one autoregressive analyses of the data obtained from a two-wave panel survey during the 2012 presidential campaign in South Korea, this study finds that political talk and internal political efficacy mediate the association between news attention and expressive participation, while external political efficacy does not. Political talk and internal political efficacy jointly mediate the impact of news attention on expressive participation. The analysis also reveals that social media news attention and internal political efficacy play a bigger role in connecting news attention and political participation than traditional news attention, external political efficacy, and political talk.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasuku Igarashi ◽  
Taro Hirashima

Generalized trust relieves individuals in a socially uncertain situation from dyadic constraints of existing ties and helps them change ties with other individuals to acquire better resources. However, much evidence in the emancipation role of generalized trust as a booster of new relationship formation has been limited to laboratory experiments or cross-sectional surveys. We conducted a four-wave longitudinal survey to test whether individuals high in generalized trust actively switch ties and form open triads in dynamic social networks. Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models were employed to analyze structural changes in advice and personal discussion networks among first-year undergraduates. Results showed the predicted patterns of social selection processes based on generalized trust when the dynamics of the two networks were analyzed simultaneously: only in the advice network, individuals high in generalized trust tended to terminate existing ties, create new ties, and show a decreasing trend toward forming close triads when the degree of local clustering was large. Effective tie-formation strategies of individuals high in generalized trust in a multiplex network structure are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 2165-2178
Author(s):  
Jessica D Smith ◽  
Neha Jain ◽  
Regan L Bailey

AbstractObjective:Ready-to-eat (RTE) cereal is an important source of nutrients in the American diet. Recent regulatory changes to labelling requirements may impact the fortification of RTE cereal. We used an evidence-based approach to optimize the fortification of RTE cereal considering current dietary patterns and nutrition policy.Design:A US modelling study of cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2013–2014. The percentage of the population below the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) and above the Upper Tolerable Intake Level (UL) was modelled under three scenarios: baseline, zero fortification and optimized fortification.Setting:USA.Participants:Toddlers aged 1–3 years, n 559; children aged 4–12 years, n 1540; adolescents aged 13–18 years, n 992; and adults aged ≥19 years, n 576.Results:Comparing current with optimized fortification, nutrient/100 g RTE cereal decreased for vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folic acid, vitamin B12, Ca and Fe (by 2–82 %). The amount of vitamins C and D increased (by 13 and 50 %, respectively). Among RTE cereal eaters, these changes resulted in modest increases in the percentage of the population aged ≥1 year below the EAR (+0·5 to +11·5 percentage points). Decreases were observed in the percentage of the population above the UL.Conclusions:Fortification of RTE cereal can be optimized to provide key nutrients and minimize the percentage of the population below the EAR and above the UL. Dietary intake modelling is useful to ensure that RTE cereal continues to help the population meet their nutrient needs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-286
Author(s):  
Beatriz Duran-Becerra ◽  
Grace C. Hillyer ◽  
Alison Cosgrove ◽  
Corey H. Basch

Background: Climate change is one of the most critical threats to our society. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe the content of the most viewed climate change videos on YouTube. Methods: The term "climate change" was used to search on YouTube to garner a sample of the 100 most widely-viewed videos. Videos in a language other than English, or considered irrelevant, were excluded. Using a fact sheet from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, content categories were created and successively coded. Results: The mean number of views for the 100 videos evaluated was 231,140.2 views (SD= 718, 399.5) and the mean length was 12.1 minutes (SD= 24.1). Most videos were uploaded by a news source (77.0%), included a belief that climate change is happening (77.0%), and mentioned the impact of climate change on the environment (71.0%). Only one-third of the videos mentioned how to prevent climate change (33.0%). More than half focused on a specific environment and, of those, 47.2% specifically focused on cities. Compared to videos that did not focus on a specific environment, the videos with an environmental focus were more often intended for adults (87.3% vs. 53.3%, P≤0.001). Conclusion: This study highlights the need for climate change YouTube videos intended for youth. Targeting youth may lead to engagement of younger generations in climate change discourse and inspire climate action. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of YouTube as a platform for educational videos on climate change.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1248-1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Chaillon ◽  
Stéphane Le Vu ◽  
Sylvie Brunet ◽  
Guillaume Gras ◽  
Frédéric Bastides ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to estimate the rate of misclassification in treated HIV patients who initiated treatment at the chronic stage of HIV infection using an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) that discriminates between recent infection (RI; within 6 months) and established infection. The performance of EIA-RI was evaluated in 96 HIV-1 chronically infected patients on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) with an undetectable viral load (VL) for at least 3 years. Demographic data, HIV-1 viral load, CD4+T-cell count, viral subtype, and treatment duration were collected. The subset of misclassified patients was further analyzed using samples collected annually. The impact on incidence estimates was evaluated by simulation. The specificity in treated patients was significantly lower (70.8 to 77.1%) than that observed in untreated patients (93.3 to 99.3%,P< 0.001). Patients falsely classified as recently infected had been treated for a longer period and had longer-term viral suppression than those correctly classified. The loss of specificity of the test due to treatment may have a dramatic impact on the accuracy of the incidence estimates, with a major impact when HIV prevalence is high. The cross-sectional studies intended to derive HIV incidence must collect information on treatment or, alternatively, should include detection of antiretroviral drugs in blood specimens to rule out treated patients from the calculations.


VASA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian-Alexander Behrendt ◽  
Tilo Kölbel ◽  
Thea Schwaneberg ◽  
Holger Diener ◽  
Ralf Hohnhold ◽  
...  

Abstract. Background: Worldwide prevalence of peripheral artery disease (PAD) is increasing and peripheral vascular intervention (PVI) has become the primary invasive treatment. There is evidence that multidisciplinary team decision-making (MTD) has an impact on in-hospital outcomes. This study aims to depict practice patterns and time changes regarding MTD of different medical specialties. Methods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional study design. 20,748 invasive, percutaneous PVI of PAD conducted in the metropolitan area of Hamburg (Germany) were consecutively collected between January 2004 and December 2014. Results: MTD prior to PVI was associated with lower odds of early unsuccessful termination of the procedures (Odds Ratio 0.662, p < 0.001). The proportion of MTD decreased over the study period (30.9 % until 2009 vs. 16.6 % from 2010, p < 0.001) while rates of critical limb-threatening ischemia (34.5 % vs. 42.1 %), patients´ age (70 vs. 72 years), PVI below-the-knee (BTK) (13.2 % vs. 22.4 %), and rates of severe TASC C/D lesions BTK (43.2 % vs. 54.2 %) increased (all p < 0.001). Utilization of MTD was different between medical specialties with lowest frequency in procedures performed by internists when compared to other medical specialties (7.1 % vs. 25.7 %, p < 0.001). Conclusions: MTD prior to PVI is associated with technical success of the procedure. Nonetheless, rates of MTD prior to PVI are decreasing during the study period. Future studies should address the impact of multidisciplinary vascular teams on long-term outcomes.


Author(s):  
Bich Le Thi Ngoc

The aim of this study is to analyze empirically the impact of taxation and corruption on the growth of manufacturing firms in Vietnam. The study employed pooled OLS estimation and then instrument variables with fixed effect for the panel data of 1377 firms in Vietnam from 2005 to 2011. These data were obtained from the survey of the Central Institute for Economic Management and the Danish International Development Agency. The results show that both taxation and corruption are negatively associated with firm growth measured by firm sales adjusted according to the GDP deflator. A one-percentage point increase in the bribery rate is linked with a reduction of 16,883 percentage points in firm revenue, over four and a half times bigger than the effect of a one-percentage point increase in the tax rate. From the findings of this research, the author recommends the Vietnam government to lessen taxation on firms and that there should be an urgent revolution in anti-corruption policies as well as bureaucratic improvement in Vietnam.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document