scholarly journals The Selectionist Paradigm: More Implications for Sociology

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Marsden

This paper argues that despite 50 years of empirical research, the phenomenon of social contagion is still poorly understood. Social contagion research has produced an eclectic, largely confused and jumbled body of evidence that lacks any comprehensive organising principle or conceptual framework. Whilst the great majority of this empirical research has identified and confirmed existence of the social contagion phenomenon, results have been undermined because the phenomenon itself has been variously and ambiguously defined and operationalised. This has meant that the potential radical implications of social contagion research findings for an orthodox understanding of the human individual as a rational Cartesian agent, have been largely ignored. It is suggested that the emerging evolutionary paradigm of memetics may providea novel conceptual framework for understanding and explaining the empirical phenomenon of social contagion, by understanding it as the observable action of selfish memes replicating through a population. The article concludes by proposing a memetic theory of social contagion, and ends with a call for the synthesis of the two bodies to create a comprehensive body of theoretically informed research.

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Barney-McNamara ◽  
James Peltier ◽  
Pavan Rao Chennamaneni ◽  
Keith Eric Niedermeier

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a detail review of the social selling literature and to offer future research needs. Social selling has gained the attention of sales researchers. Rather than merely a new tool, social selling redefines the traditional sales process. However, the literature is spread across topics of social media and sales, social customer relationship management, salesforce automation and social selling, and does not provide an agreed-upon definition or tested construct for implementation. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a comprehensive literature review of social selling and all related terminology. Findings The authors propose a social selling framework that includes personal branding, information exchange, networking and social listening to define and outline the construct while suggesting the antecedents and outcomes to guide future research. Findings from a literature review include outlining key theories used in social selling research. Originality/value This review offers a conceptual framework of social selling, including both antecedents and outcomes, to inform future research and guide academics and practitioners.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 92-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Pahl

The aim of this article is to outline and discuss theoretical approaches to the study of family life and to make suggestions about how these approaches might apply in planning and carrying out empirical research on sleep. It argues that, while theories about power and gender can inform research on sleep, the findings from research on sleep will help to extend and enrich theoretical approaches to family life and the social order. The article is concerned especially with gendered power relations and with ‘sharing sleep’. It draws on Morgan's sociological analysis of family life, and on the distinction he makes between the political economy, the moral economy and the emotional economy. It uses research findings on the allocation of money and on domestic violence to examine different theoretical approaches and to consider how these theories might be used in research on sleep. In the past many of the battles which rage within bedrooms were individualised as ‘her’ or ‘his’ fault. Applying sociological understanding and theoretical approaches may enable some of these individual and very private troubles to be seen as more general issues, while making a contribution to the new sociology of sleep.


2017 ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Nguyen Thi Tuyet ◽  
Hung Nguyen Vu ◽  
Linh Nguyen Hoang ◽  
Minh Nguyen Hoang

This study focuses on examining the impact of three components of materialism on green purchase intention for urban consumers in Vietnam, an emerging economy. An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is applied as the conceptual framework for this study. The hypotheses are empirically tested using survey data obtained from consumers in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. The regression results show support for most of our hypotheses. The findings indicate that two out of three facets of materialism are significant predictors of green purchase intention. Specifically, success is found to be negatively related to purchase intention, while happiness is related positively to the intention. All three antecedents in the TPB model, including attitude towards green purchase, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are also found to have positive impacts on purchase intention. The research findings are discussed and implications for managers and policy makers are provided.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014303432098520
Author(s):  
Ma. Jenina N. Nalipay ◽  
Yuyang Cai ◽  
Ronnel B. King

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether parents’ utility value perceptions predicted their children’s utility value perceptions, demonstrating social contagion effects. We also examined whether utility value would predict achievement. This is a cross-sectional study that utilized data from a subsample of adolescent students from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2015), which focused on science learning and achievement from 18 regions. We performed multi-level structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Results revealed that parents’ utility value perceptions predicted students’ utility value perceptions, which, in turn, predicted science achievement. The findings of this study provide evidence of the social contagion of utility value perceptions from parents to their children and the critical role of utility value in predicting achievement across various regions/countries. Our study highlights the crucial role parents play in adolescents’ motivational and learning outcomes and suggest parental involvement in programs toward enhancing adolescents’ motivation and achievement.


Author(s):  
Petah Atkinson ◽  
Marilyn Baird ◽  
Karen Adams

Yarning as a research method has its grounding as an Aboriginal culturally specified process. Significant to the Research Yarn is relationality, however; this is a missing feature of published research findings. This article aims to address this. The research question was, what can an analysis of Social and Family Yarning tell us about relationality that underpins a Research Yarn. Participant recruitment occurred using convenience sampling, and data collection involved Yarning method. Five steps of data analysis occurred featuring Collaborative Yarning and Mapping. Commonality existed between researcher and participants through predominantly experiences of being a part of Aboriginal community, via Aboriginal organisations and Country. This suggests shared explicit and tacit knowledge and generation of thick data. Researchers should report on their experience with Yarning, the types of Yarning they are using, and the relationality generated from the Social, Family and Research Yarn.


2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110214
Author(s):  
King-Ho Leung

This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’ of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic state and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order can not only provide IR theory with a way to re-imagine the relation between the human, the state and world order. Moreover, Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world and human life.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hove

Abstract Communication scholars have begun to investigate various links between empirical research and normative theory. In that vein, this article explores how Boltanski and Thévenot’s sociology of critique can enhance our empirical and normative understanding of controversies in media ethics. The sociology of critique and its justification model provide a comprehensive descriptive framework for studying practices of moral evaluation and the social goods at stake in them. First, I discuss some prevailing approaches in media ethics. Second, I explicate how the sociology of critique defines situations of normative justification and supplies a model of their basic requirements. Third, I show how this model can be used to analyze the social background of a media ethics controversy. Last, I suggest how the descriptive approach of the sociology of critique can identify conditions in morally pluralistic social settings that pose challenges to normative theories.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402110063
Author(s):  
Isaac Owusu Asante ◽  
Jiaming Fang ◽  
Dennis Fiifi Darko ◽  
Hossin M. D. Altab

Donations to articles on social media, as a new behavior, have been trending in recent years. Unlike donations to a charitable and nonprofit organization or victims, donations to social media articles have been accorded minimal attention from academic researchers. From the stimuli–organism–response framework, this study proposed a model to investigate the factors that influence the donation intentions of users on social media toward articles. Our results demonstrate that the credibility of the article determines users’ donation intentions. The results also indicate that the perceived value (usefulness and enjoyment) of the article mediates the effects of article credibility on users’ donation intentions. The social contagion nature of the article is also proven to moderate the magnitude of impacts on donation intention by users’ perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and perception of article credibility.


2021 ◽  
Vol 563 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Stochmal ◽  
Jan Maciejewski ◽  
Andrzej Jarynowski

The article presents the results of the secondary analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in relation to social research conducted in Poland during the pandemic. The research results were introduced on the basis of analyzes of 180 projects carried out by scientific and commercial institutions in the period from January to May 2020. The aim of the project is to present a standard way of conducting empirical research for social researchers who undertake the challenge of identifying the phenomena accompanying the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We are interested in the possibility of drawing conclusions that go beyond individual research projects carried out in the social field. The conclusions recommended by us concern the following issues: mitigating the polarization of social attitudes dynamically changing during a pandemic, practical solving – and not only diagnosing – problems revealed in COVID reality and supplementing the deficiencies of theoretical assumptions accompanying research works.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-107
Author(s):  
D. S. Gorbatov ◽  
◽  
P. Yu. Gurushkin ◽  

The purpose of the empirical research described in the article was to study the range of judgments that characterize the social perception of the student youth of Internet news memes with political overtones. The research method was a focus group interview using the Microsoft Teams platform. The four groups included 28 undergraduate students of higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg. The results of the study characterize the attitude of students to attempts to impose political overtones on Internet news memes, reflect their opinions about the mistakes made by the authors, contain arguments about the reasons for the anonymity of the authors of memes, describe the range of views on the problem of the responsibility of the authors of memes for violations of laws. In addition, students ' perceptions about changes in Internet memes, in particular, news memes, in the future were revealed.


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