scholarly journals Does partisan grassroots mobilization matter in the digital age?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bischof ◽  
Thomas Kurer

Political parties have long thrived on systematic grassroots mobilization of support. But does traditional partisan bottom-up mobilization still matter in an interconnected digital age turning the world into a `global village'? We address this question by studying the impact of the populist Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) on the rejection of the 2016 constitutional referendum in Italy. The movement's unusual practice to coordinate activities on a public event platform provides a unique opportunity to collect the complete event history of a modern political party. We merge this data consisting of over 200'000 geo-coded meetings by 1'000 local chapters with referendum results and individual panel data. Relying on regression, matching, and instrumental variable models, we find a small but consistent effect of M5S activity on the referendum outcome. Our findings demonstrate the continued relevance of bottom-up mobilization and highlight direct democratic means as an influential channel for populist movements.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney J. Shep

Emoticons are usually associated with the digital age, but they have numerous precursors in both manuscript and print. This article examines the circulation of emotional icons in nineteenth-century typographical journals as a springboard to understanding the relationship between emotion, materiality, and anthropomorphism as well the pre-digital networks of the “typographical press system.” It draws on literature from textual and typographical analysis, including the history of punctuation. It also demonstrates the ubiquity of emoticons in contemporary society and culture outside the world of computers, text messaging, and chat rooms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Joris van Eijnatten

The overwhelming popularity in academic writing of such concepts as transnationalism, anti-essentialism and postcolonialism illustrate the impact of the postmodern critique of once-stable entities ranging from the nation and the state to culture and civilization. We no longer believe in the steady orderings of humanity bequeathed by ‘heavy modernity’. But does this mean that concepts like the nation and civilization are obsolete? This article takes issue with the current hype of transnationalism, and suggests a correction to the current focus on interconnectedness, networks and flows by introducing the concept of ‘reference cultures’. It claims that in the history of the world, robust collective mentalities act as a counter-balance to cultures in motion.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaas Berkel ◽  
Guus Termeer

The University of Groningen has been an international university since its foundation in 1614. The first professors formed a rich international community, and many students came from outside the Netherlands, especially from areas now belonging to Germany. Internationalization, a popular slogan nowadays, is therefore nothing new, but its meaning has changed over time. How did the University of Groningen grow from a provincial institution established for religious reasons into a top-100 university with 36,000 students, of whom 25% come from abroad and almost half of the academic staff is of foreign descent? What is the identity of this four-century-old university that is still strongly anchored in the northern part of the Netherlands but that also has a mind that is open to the world? The history of the university, as told by Klaas van Berkel and Guus Termeer, ends with a short paragraph on the impact of the corona crisis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Pipas

ABSTRACTThis summer marks the 51st anniversary of the DNA tumor virus meetings. Scientists from around the world will gather in Trieste, Italy, to report their latest results and to agree or disagree on the current concepts that define our understanding of this diverse class of viruses. This article offers a brief history of the impact the study of these viruses has had on molecular and cancer biology and discusses obstacles and opportunities for future progress.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-358
Author(s):  
Andrew Scull

Michel Foucault remains one of the most influential intellectuals in the early twenty-first century world. This paper examines the origins and impact of his first major work, Folie et déraison, on the history of psychiatry, particularly though not exclusively in the world of Anglo-American scholarship. The impact and limits of Foucault’s work on the author’s own contributions to the history of psychiatry are examined, as is the larger influence of Madness and Civilization (as it is known to most Anglophones) on the nascent social history of psychiatry. The paper concludes with an assessment of the sources of the appeal of Foucault’s work among some scholars, and notes his declining influence on contemporary scholars working on the history of psychiatry.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (S349) ◽  
pp. 474-478
Author(s):  
Rosa M. Ros ◽  
Beatriz Garca

AbstractJust as in the past, the development of the natural sciences and in particular of astronomy has changed the history of humanity. If we think about the role of our discipline into the future, it shows its enormous power in the field of education, owing to the possibility of awakening interest in science in very varied audiences. Within the framework of the enormous progress made in the technologies related to astronomy, many of them of daily use, the role of the astronomer in the era of Communications acquires fundamental importance.In this presentation, we will try to make a journey through the different ways of presenting astronomical topics for different audiences over the last 100 years. In turn, we will show some specific achievements, associated with education programmes of the discipline. We discuss the impact produced by proposals that are both rigorous in terms of content, and also appeal to the development of the human being in an integral manner, within the framework of citizen science activities.For this research, we have taken into account the uninterrupted development of the NASE programme, which has performed 112 courses in 24 countries throughout the world and in different languages. NASE has involved 4966 secondary teachers in the last eight years.


Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Fanton

In this paper, we take the freedom to paraphrase Stephen Hawking's well-known formula and approach, for a reflection about metrology. In fact, metrology has a past, a present, and a future. The past is marked by a rich series of events, of which we shall highlight only those which resulted in major turns. The impact of the French Revolution is indisputably one of them. The present corresponds to a significant evolution, which is the entry of metrology into the world of quantum physics, with the relevant changes in the International System of units (SI). An apercu of the actual state of the art of metrological technology is given. The future is characterised by a persisting need for a still enhanced metrology, in terms of performance and domain covered. In this respect, soft metrology seems to constitute a promising field for research and development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Qiao Yao

China is the world biggest country in terms of population. It has the highest number of internet and mobile users. The world most substantial labor forces reside in China. A large proportion of the world is dependent on its exports. Chinas economy grew, in the last decade because of its exports, it got attention all over the world. Economy experts consider China as an economic threat to the USA. However, more studies are mainly focused on China populations, Exports, and labor focus because of the high quantity. The dynamics of the economy has changed in the last decade because of internet penetration across the globe. The Chinas role in digital aspects is least studied. Therefore this paper has focused on providing an overview of E-economy of China. Through literature and world-leading financial and consultancy firms reports it has been observed that just like other aspects of the economy, the e-economy of China is also growing. Today in 2019 where more than 50% of the world has access to the internet, It is considered that the Silicon Valley of USA is deriving the digital age because all big tech companies are located in the USA. USA main exports are Internet-related or Tech products. It is a fact that the USA E-economy contributes more to GDP compared to China. However, China has a potentially bright future in this area and can be the leading country in technology. Exploring the future possibilities, the opportunities which China has to grow in the digital age, the researchers found already there are areas in digital aspects where China has to outnumber the USA. For instance, the Fintech China got more Capital venture investments in 2016 compared to the USA. China is the world second country after the USA in attracting venture capital investment for Virtual Reality, Autonomous Driving, Wearables technologies, Education Technology, Robotics and drones, and 3D Printing. China is in the third position in terms of attracting investment for big data and artificial intelligence. The study concludes that China needs to focus more on big data and AI to continue its growth.  The growing digitalization can improve agriculture and industrial activities as the economy is maturing. The paper is useful for digital experts to view the understand the e-economy in depth, future researchers can narrow down the topic to observe the impact of E-economy on agriculture and industrial sector.


1875 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. v-xcvii

IT is a mere truism in the history of revolutions to assert that they are seldom brought to a close by the persons or political parties with whom they originate. Men whose existence was perhaps scarcely known to the world at large when the onward movement took its origin rise in succession to the surface, acquire the government, and carry forward the work to lengths and heights which their predecessors never contemplated. It is in tracing this sequence of political parties, the gradual growth of what was looked upon in the first instance as a contemptible and almost senseless faction, its struggles for the mastery, the arts (too often unworthy) by which it acquired the ascendancy, its acts whilst in a condition of dominancy, and finally the errors by which it forfeited power and made way for the next in turn, that much of the interest of historical narrative is found.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (162) ◽  
pp. 210081
Author(s):  
Andrew Kouri ◽  
Ronald J. Dandurand ◽  
Omar S. Usmani ◽  
Chung-Wai Chow

175 years have elapsed since John Hutchinson introduced the world to his version of an apparatus that had been in development for nearly two centuries, the spirometer. Though he was not the first to build a device that sought to measure breathing and quantify the impact of disease and occupation on lung function, Hutchison coined the terms spirometer and vital capacity that are still in use today, securing his place in medical history. As Hutchinson envisioned, spirometry would become crucial to our growing knowledge of respiratory pathophysiology, from Tiffeneau and Pinelli's work on forced expiratory volumes, to Fry and Hyatt's description of the flow–volume curve. In the 20th century, standardization of spirometry further broadened its reach and prognostic potential. Today, spirometry is recognized as essential to respiratory disease diagnosis, management and research. However, controversy exists in some of its applications, uptake in primary care remains sub-optimal and there are concerns related to the way in which race is factored into interpretation. Moving forward, these failings must be addressed, and innovations like Internet-enabled portable spirometers may present novel opportunities. We must also consider the physiologic and practical limitations inherent to spirometry and further investigate complementary technologies such as respiratory oscillometry and other emerging technologies that assess lung function. Through an exploration of the storied history of spirometry, we can better contextualize its current landscape and appreciate the trends that have repeatedly arisen over time. This may help to improve our current use of spirometry and may allow us to anticipate the obstacles confronting emerging pulmonary function technologies.


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