scholarly journals Dialect borders—political regions are better predictors than economy or religion

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curdin Derungs ◽  
Christian Sieber ◽  
Elvira Glaser ◽  
Robert Weibel

AbstractThe impact of geography on language and dialect variation has been subject to a vast number of studies in linguistics, as well as the broader humanities. Most quantitative research concerning dialectology has focused on the relationship between spatial distance and change of dialects. Hypotheses regarding the impact of other geographic, cultural, and social factors have been put forth for many years but have rarely been examined with quantitative methods. In this article, we compare dialect variation in Swiss German morphosyntax with three types of social and cultural variation, namely variation in religion, administration, and economy. These different types of variation have contrasting temporal origins. Religion is, for instance, represented by the borders between Christian denominations, which are a result of the Reformation in the 16th century. In order to compare different types of spatial information in one statistical model, we introduce an approach that is robust for spatial dependencies. On one hand, our results are largely in agreement with previous studies. Spatial distance, for instance, proves to be the most important predictor of dialect variance, with distance measures that more realistically represent the potential for social contact, explaining a higher proportion of variance. On the other hand, most interestingly, we find evidence that administrative borders (i.e. political regions) more profoundly impact Swiss dialects than religion or economy. This opens the floor for the hypothesis that possibly both Swiss dialects and political regions have common origins in ancient migration movements and medieval borders between Alemannic territories.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Aguiar ◽  
Marta Pinto ◽  
Raquel Duarte

BACKGROUND The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and all physical distance measures implemented across the world have caused significant stress, anxiety and mental health implications in the general population. Unemployment, working from home and day-to-day changes may lead to a greater risk of poor mental health outcomes. OBJECTIVE To describe the protocol for a cross-sectional online study that aims to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. METHODS Individuals from the general population with 18 or more years of age living in Portugal were included. Data was collected between 10 November 2020 and 10 February 2021. An exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling method was applied to recruit participants. An online survey was prepared and shared on social network applications (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, and WhatsApp groups) and through e-mail mailing lists for the recruitment of the “seeds”. RESULTS Analysis will be performed in accordance to the different variables and outcomes of interest based on quantitative methods, qualitative methods or mixed-methods, accordingly. As of 10 February 2021, 929 individuals had completed the survey. Results of the survey will be disseminated in national and international scientific journals during 2021-2022. CONCLUSIONS Our findings will have broad implications for understanding the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Portuguese residents as well as aspects related to informal economy. We also hope to be able to provide insights and guidelines for action to the Portuguese Government. In the end, we expect this protocol to provide a roadmap for other countries and researchers that would like to implement a similar questionnaire considering the related conclusions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klea Faniko ◽  
Till Burckhardt ◽  
Oriane Sarrasin ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna McCrory

UNSTRUCTURED Users of highly visual social media (HVSM), such as Snapchat and Instagram, share their messages through images, rather than relying on words. A significant proportion of people that use these platforms are adolescents. Previous research reveals mixed evidence regarding the impact of online social technologies on this age group’s mental wellbeing, but it is uncertain whether the psychological effects of visual content alone differ from text-driven social media. This scoping review maps existing literature that has published evidence about highly visual social media, specifically its psychological impact on young people. Nine electronic databases and grey literature from 2010 until March 2019 were reviewed for articles describing any aspect of visual social media, young people and their mental health. The screening process retrieved 239 articles. With the application of eligibility criteria, this figure was reduced to 25 articles for analysis. Results indicate a paucity of data that exclusively examines HVSM. The predominance of literature relies on quantitative methods to achieve its objectives. Many findings are inconsistent and lack the richness that qualitative data may provide to explore the reasons for theses mixed findings.


Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.


Author(s):  
Amy E. Nivette ◽  
Renee Zahnow ◽  
Raul Aguilar ◽  
Andri Ahven ◽  
Shai Amram ◽  
...  

AbstractThe stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.


Risks ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Ignatowski ◽  
Łukasz Sułkowski ◽  
Bartłomiej Stopczyński

Nepotism and cronyism are forms of favoritism towards certain people in the workplace. For this reason, they constitute a problem for organization managers, ethicists and psychologists. Identifying the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the increase of nepotism and cronyism may provide a basis for organizations to assess their extent and to take possible measures to prevent their negative effects. At the same time, the research presented in the article may provide a basis for further research work related to nepotism and cronyism at the times of other threats, different from the pandemic. The aim of the article is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on growing acceptance for nepotism and cronyism in Polish enterprises. Qualitative and quantitative methods have been included in the conducted research. Qualitative study aimed at improving knowledge of nepotism and cronyism and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these phenomena, followed by a quantitative study conducted in order to verify the information obtained in the qualitative study. This research has demonstrated that Nepotism and cronyism in the workplace, are phenomenon that are basically evaluated negatively. They adversely influences social and economic development, but the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on nepotism and cronyism is not significant.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193896552110335
Author(s):  
John W. O’Neill ◽  
Jihwan Yeon

In recent years, short-term rental platforms in the lodging sector, including Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway, have received extensive attention and emerged as potentially alternative suppliers of services traditionally provided by established commercial accommodation providers, that is, hotels. Short-term rentals have dramatically increased the available supply of rooms for visitors to multiple international destinations, potentially siphoning demand away from hotels to short-term rental businesses. In a competitive market, an increase in supply with constant demand would negatively influence incumbent service providers. In this article, we examine the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance in different cities around the world. Specifically, we comprehensively investigate the substitution effects of short-term rental supply on hotel performance based on hotel class, location type, and region. Furthermore, we segment the short-term rental supply based on its types of accommodations, that is, shared rooms, private rooms, and entire homes, and both examine and quantify the differential effects of these types of short-term rentals on different types of hotels. This study offers a comprehensive analysis regarding the impact of multiple short-term rental platforms on hotel performance and offers both conceptual and practical insights regarding the nature and extent of the effects that were identified.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026975802110106
Author(s):  
Raoul Notté ◽  
E.R. Leukfeldt ◽  
Marijke Malsch

This article explores the impact of online crime victimisation. A literature review and 41 interviews – 19 with victims and 22 with experts – were carried out to gain insight into this. The interviews show that most impacts of online offences correspond to the impacts of traditional offline offences. There are also differences with offline crime victimisation. Several forms of impact seem to be specific to victims of online crime: the substantial scale and visibility of victimhood, victimisation that does not stop in time, the interwovenness of online and offline, and victim blaming. Victims suffer from double, triple or even quadruple hits; it is the accumulation of different types of impact, enforced by the limitlessness in time and space, which makes online crime victimisation so extremely invasive. Furthermore, the characteristics of online crime victimisation greatly complicate the fight against and prevention of online crime. Finally, the high prevalence of cybercrime victimisation combined with the severe impact of these crimes seems contradictory with public opinion – and associated moral judgments – on victims. Further research into the dominant public discourse on victimisation and how this affects the functioning of the police and victim support would be valuable.


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