ETHOS: a multi-label hate speech detection dataset

Online hate speech is a recent problem in our society that is rising at a steady pace by leveraging the vulnerabilities of the corresponding regimes that characterise most social media platforms. This phenomenon is primarily fostered by offensive comments, either during user interaction or in the form of a posted multimedia context. Nowadays, giant corporations own platforms where millions of users log in every day, and protection from exposure to similar phenomena appears to be necessary to comply with the corresponding legislation and maintain a high level of service quality. A robust and reliable system for detecting and preventing the uploading of relevant content will have a significant impact on our digitally interconnected society. Several aspects of our daily lives are undeniably linked to our social profiles, making us vulnerable to abusive behaviours. As a result, the lack of accurate hate speech detection mechanisms would severely degrade the overall user experience, although its erroneous operation would pose many ethical concerns. In this paper, we present ‘ETHOS’ (multi-labEl haTe speecH detectiOn dataSet), a textual dataset with two variants: binary and multi-label, based on YouTube and Reddit comments validated using the Figure-Eight crowdsourcing platform. Furthermore, we present the annotation protocol used to create this dataset: an active sampling procedure for balancing our data in relation to the various aspects defined. Our key assumption is that, even gaining a small amount of labelled data from such a time-consuming process, we can guarantee hate speech occurrences in the examined material.

Streams of the Self

This article offers a working draft of a larger qualitative analysis of the popular smartphone application Instagram. It offers a reading of the ubiquitous contemporary form of self-portraiture, the selfie, locating its origin in the longer evolution of digital photography into a form of social media. Though its function as a basic self-portrait and signifier for our various social profiles appears straightforward, it has somehow become the ‘face’ of online sociality and subjectivity, a portrait of the promise and peril of our online existence. And yet, a closer look at the various feeds and streams in which the selfie appears reveals that it is one genre amongst many, no more or less common than a variety of landscapes, still-lifes, and other modes of photographic observation. Taken together, these various views of the world reveal an emplaced mode of image-driven autobiography, one far more complex and nuanced than a straightforward meme would appear to be. Image Credit: Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Ruthenian Devotional Songs As Collectors’ Items?

At the turn of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, syllabic devotional songs in Ruthenian (RDS) make their first appearance as occasional appendices or notes in the margins of manuscripts serving quite divergent functions (triodia, evangelia and the like). The first systematic collections of RDS were compiled abroad by Ruthenian monks having left Ukraine for monasteries around Moscow from the 1660s onwards. It required several more decades, till the beginning of the eighteenth century, before these songs were also being systematically collected in song manuscripts throughout the Ruthenian lands themselves. The article argues against established views to the effect that this documentary gap was due to a massive loss of seventeenth-century Ruthenian song manuscripts. It should rather be taken at face value as an indication that some perceptual change with respect to devotional songs is likely to have taken place among Ruthenian literate classes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is argued that the rise of Ruthenian song manuscripts marks the beginning of a collecting culture, which treats devotional songs as a cherished and coveted collectable, where heretofore no particular value seems to have been accorded to these songs. The article explores the social profiles of song collectors and the individual makeup of song collections to offer a hypothetical outline of this emerging collecting culture, addressing issues of modes of exchange, methods of collecting and compiling, the specific relationship between collector and collectable, with a view to arguing for a highly individualized and intimate culture between private devotion and incipient object-oriented consumerism.

Trends in Destination Choice in Tourism Research: A 25-year Bibliometric Review

Evolution of family leisure time have increased the demand for attractive destinations. In tourism, destination choice (DC) is considered a critical, complex and contextual decision. This, first of its kind, comprehensive, mix method bibliometric analysis of 627 papers from Scopus database spanning 25 years, is aimed to identify and review the most influential DC literature. It shows that DC is an interdisciplinary and evolving subject. Five themes, namely DC conceptualization, DC decision-making, DC modelling, DC internal and external factors are prevalent. DC conceptualization is explained by modified TPB and other models. DC decision-making process is hierarchical, sequential, multistage and varies across psychological, demographic and social profiles. Multiple choice, econometric and utility maximization models along with push–pull internal and external motivational factors have been extensively published. Growing academic interest in DC is evident from a threefold jump in average number of articles post-2007, 2500+ citations in 2019 out of 21,664 across 25 years, a growing trend of cross-country collaboration, rising number of publications in mainstream journals and 9 out of top 10 authors getting published in the short period of 2008–2016. Future research themes include empirical investigations of models, non-linear multifaceted decision-making and the pandemic’s impact on motivational factors.

Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Socio-Spatial Analysis

This study investigates the socio-spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during 1880s. Drawing on a unique population registry, it reconstructs the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis to question how visible Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism. It claims that Sufism was an integral part of the Ottoman life since Sufi lodges were space of religion and spirituality, art, housing, and health. Despite their large presence in Istanbul, Sufi lodges were extensively missing in two main areas: the districts of Unkapanı-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While the lack of lodgess in the latter area can be explained by the Western encroachment in the Ottoman capital, the explanation for the absence of Sufis in Unkapanı-Bayezid is more complex: natural disasters, two opposing views about Sufi sociability, and the locations of the central lodges.

Elites and Culture: Social Profiles in the Cultivated Population

Since the 1990s, the central references of the sociology of cultural practices have been the theoretical frameworks developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Richard A. Peterson around the concepts of distinction and omnivorousness. This article is based on these frameworks; it revises them together with those of Donnat and Lahire and postulates that the terms of cultural classification and especially those of the upper classes (distinguished and omnivorous) require revision. The article also claims that there are diverse socio-cultural profiles due to the fact that there is never a single logic of differentiation of tastes, and that the results of the present research demand a new conceptual framework capable of showing the operation of diverse logics of differentiation and hierarchy. In order to do this, an analysis of the socio-cultural profiles of the cultivated groups in Spanish society is carried out on the data obtained from the Survey of Cultural Habits and Practices in Spain 2018/19. This work proves the existence of three types of cultivated population – classical, modern and syncretic – with notable differences in their cultural interests and practices, as well as in their underlying sociodemographic features and aesthetic logics, and concludes by posing the need to delve into the latter in what it defines as the study of cultural practice regimes.

Qui a le droit d’étudier le genre et comment ? Réflexions sur le point de vue situé et la catégorisation du sexe à partir d’une enquête par méthodes mixtes sur les trans’

Who Has the Right to Study Gender and How ? Reflections on the Situated Point of View and the Categorisation of Sex Based on a Mixed Method Study of Trans People. Trans people are often reticent when it comes to research. Looking back over a mixed method study, this article analyses the causes of this phenomenon. There are two main reasons for trans people’s distrust. The first relates to expert opinion and more specifically the point of view of professional experts, insofar as trans people have often already been objectivized by non-trans medical and legal experts. The second concerns the categorisation of sex. Some people do not recognise themselves in the man/woman binary applied by professional experts. However, the trans population is heterogeneous: criticism and refusal to participate were more common with certain social profiles than others, varying according to sex assigned at birth, age, generation, and level of education. By paying attention to this plurality, this article provides avenues for allowing researchers to navigate the trans field and also contributes to reflections on the situated point of view and the categorisation of sex in the social sciences.

Social Specific Image: Format of Methodology and Auditing

The modern period of demand for image-logical knowledge allows raising questions not only about image-enlightenment and image-education, when information and telecommunication technologies become the determining factors in the development of society, but also about the peculiarities of teaching image-logical knowledge in higher educational institutions. At this stage, there is also the need to introduce the scientific and applied direction of the discipline “Imageologyˮ, as a component of social education, into the system of training specialists for a wide range of professions in the “person-to-personˮ sphere. The article explores a number of innovative approaches to teaching a special educational course “Imageologyˮ for students of humanitarian and social profiles. The article contains an analysis of scientific studies of the main methodological principles, tasks and parameters of the development of imageology as a practice-oriented sociological direction in the context of the training of Masters and specialists, sociologists, psychologists, journalists, advertising and public relations specialists. The authors identified the most important ways and directions for the formation of the sociology of the image, determined the subject and purpose of the discipline. For seminars and practical classes, as well as for students 'independent work, specialized scientific topics, an original image analysis questionnaire scheme are offered, and scenarios of specific events and actions in image creation are modeled for the development of students' professional and creative abilities.