Social-Spatial Group Queries with Keywords

Social networks with location enabling technologies, also known as geo-social networks, allow users to share their location-specific activities and preferences through check-ins. A user in such a geo-social network can be attributed to an associated location (spatial), her preferences as keywords (textual), and the connectivity (social) with her friends. The fusion of social, spatial, and textual data of a large number of users in these networks provide an interesting insight for finding meaningful geo-social groups of users supporting many real-life applications, including activity planning and recommendation systems. In this article, we introduce a novel query, namely, Top- k Flexible Socio-Spatial Keyword-aware Group Query (SSKGQ), which finds the best k groups of varying sizes around different points of interest (POIs), where the groups are ranked based on the social and textual cohesiveness among members and spatial closeness with the corresponding POI and the number of members in the group. We develop an efficient approach to solve the SSKGQ problem based on our theoretical upper bounds on distance, social connectivity, and textual similarity. We prove that the SSKGQ problem is NP-Hard and provide an approximate solution based on our derived relaxed bounds, which run much faster than the exact approach by sacrificing the group quality slightly. Our extensive experiments on real data sets show the effectiveness of our approaches in different real-life settings.

Human Identity and COVID-19

This chapter bases itself on the premise that the society that will emerge from this COVID-19 health crisis will inevitably differ from the current one. People have become more vulnerable, and this sense of vulnerability, fragility, and uncertainty has spread throughout society, and is no longer limited to certain social groups. The contemporary idea of security has also collapsed in societies that no longer seem secure, predictable, or under control. This situation of a weakened society is the first paradigm shift, brought forth alongside the notion of identity linked to time, space, and humanity. To that end, we carry out a review of the events which triggered the crisis in Europe and Africa.

Spectacular memory: Zombie pasts in the themed shopping malls of Dubai

Memory invariably involves sifting and sorting historical traces and reassembling them into societal representations of the past. Usually this has been done by social groups of different kinds or the cultural institutions associated with them, and has provided materials for the construction and maintenance of group identity. In what I term “spectacular memory,” however, the sifting and sorting of memory traces is performed by commercial and media institutions within a globalized cultural framework to create spectacles for mass consumption. Spectacular memory is enabled by the progressive breakdown of Halbwach’s “social frameworks of memory”—the association of memory with face-to-face relations within social groups. In late modern societies, “memory” as a coherent body of representations which is the property of more-or-less bounded social groups has largely devolved into a globalized store of representations curated and diffused through the media, advertising, tourism and entertainment industries. This article uses the example of the history-themed shopping malls of Dubai to characterize this form of memory.

Algorithmic solutions to the problem of assessing the information impact on the electorate during election campaigns

In the article, to solve the problem of assessing the information impact on the electorate during election campaigns, algorithmic solutions, including a mathematical model, a numerical scheme and algorithmic implementations, are formed. This assessment is reduced to determining the instantaneous values of the number of voters who prefer a candidate (party), taking into account: the positive or negative stochastic nature of the impact of mass media; interpersonal interaction; two-step assimilation of information; the presence of a variety of mass media, social groups and a list of candidates. The mathematical model is based on a generalized model of information confrontation in a structured society and, with the introduction of stochastic components in the intensity of agitation, it is reduced to solving the FokkerPlanckKolmogorov equation. For its study in the formulation of the Galerkin method, a numerical scheme is proposed and the order of its convergence is determined. In relation to the basic procedures of the numerical scheme, the features of the algorithmic implementation are clarified.

The formation of a Kinh traditional village in Huế in early modern Vietnam

This article traces the transformation of Huế from an open migrant society to a closed community from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries through an examination of the village documents of Thanh Phước in Thừa Thiên Huế province. In Thanh Phước, the expansion of cultivated land reached its limits around the end of the seventeenth century. Subsequently, continuous population pressure resulted in the emergence of social groups with closed and fixed membership called làng and dòng họ after the eighteenth century. A significant feature of this social development was that the patrilineal kinship favoured by Confucianism was used to protect the vested interests of the earliest inhabitants of the village and their descendants. This indicates that the penetration of Confucianism among the common people and the development and stagnation of agriculture in early modern Vietnam were mutual, complementary phenomena.

We stand in solidarity with you (if it helps our ingroup)

Intraminority solidarity research has previously focused on how similarities in discrimination experiences can facilitate stigma-based solidarity. Yet, research on a lay theory of generalized prejudice has demonstrated that people tend to perceive attitudes towards stigmatized social groups as co-occurring. Integrating these lines of research, the present studies sought to examine if the extent to which prejudices are perceived to co-occur can facilitate stigma-based solidarity for marginalized social groups, and in turn promote interest in coalitional justice. Recruiting heterosexual Black Americans (Study 1), White women (Studies 2–3), and White men (Study 4), the present research demonstrates that perceiving prejudices as co-occurring increases stigma-based solidarity that in turn produces greater interest in coalitional justice efforts that include the ingroup. The present findings demonstrate the importance of focusing on beliefs about perpetrators’ attitudes when examining intraminority solidarity and highlight the limitations of a lay theory of generalized prejudice to fight prejudices broadly.

Art and memory: Magdalenas por el Cauca

Adopting an interdisciplinary framework of Memory Studies and Art and employing semiotics with a multimodal and multimedia character, it is explored how social groups in Colombia memorialise the violence of the internal armed conflict. The reflection associates the victims’ experiences with those expressions of commemoration and remembrance that are narratives embodied in visual and scenic art. It is explored how a semiotic landscape of memory is created through a performative artistic proposal. In this landscape, not only cultural frames can be determined, but also the semiotic-discursive resources that give meaning to the relationship between art and memory. The aim is to characterise the performance known as Magdalenas por el Cauca (2008) which was recorded audiovisually in several spaces on the internet. It means that, in addition to the ephemeral mise-en-scène, there are records of the performative and communicative work. In this article, we analyse the video X PEREGRINACION TRUJILLO y MAGDALENAS POR EL CAUCA (2010), one of the records that perpetuates Magdalenas por el Cauca. This reparation act is an audiovisual narrative with ethical and political character and produced collectively by relatives of victims, witnesses, artists and other interlocutors, which interpret and assign new meanings to the performance.

Costs dictate strategic investment in dominance interactions

Dominance is important for access to resources. As dominance interactions are costly, individuals should be strategic in whom they interact with. One hypothesis is that individuals should direct costly interactions towards those closest in rank, as they have most to gain—in terms of attaining or maintaining dominance—from winning such interactions. Here, we show that male vulturine guineafowl ( Acryllium vulturinum ), a gregarious species with steep dominance hierarchies, strategically express higher-cost aggressive interactions towards males occupying ranks immediately below themselves in their group's hierarchy. By contrast, lower-cost aggressive interactions are expressed towards group members further down the hierarchy. By directly evaluating differences in the strategic use of higher- and lower-cost aggressive interactions towards competitors, we show that individuals disproportionately use highest-cost interactions—such as chases—towards males found one to three ranks below themselves. Our results support the hypothesis that the costs associated with different interaction types can determine their expression in social groups with steep dominance hierarchies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

GIS-Based Approach for the Analysis of Geographical Education Paths

This paper presents a new geospatial approach, and a proposal to study the geographic educational path of individuals or social groups identified by researchers using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and spatial statistics. A scheme of research proceedings has been proposed, including obtaining data from various sources (including surveys and other sources, e.g., from the university and OpenStreetMap), their proper preparation and categorisation into one geodatabase on the GIS system, followed by visualisation and the calculation of statistics. The whole research procedure was carried out in GIS. The results can be useful for detecting patterns of educational paths in different countries and social groups, and comparing them. Indirectly, they can be used to study mobility, and to indicate the spatial range of studied schools. The study was carried out among a group of students of geoinformation at the University of Lodz. Visualization and analysis of their geographical educational path showed that most of them attended schools close to where they lived, indicating low mobility during their education. The results obtained may be relevant to the “spatial turn” in education research.

Challenging the Argentine Melting Pot: Peronism, Hispanidad, and Cultural Diversity

On 12 October 1947, Argentine President, Juan Domingo Perón, used the events of the Hispanidad Day to extoll the Spanish heritage in Latin America. Within a few years, however, Perón well understood the futility of using Hispanidad as the basis of a new national consciousness for the Argentine immigrant society. Instead, he opted for a corporative mode of political representation under the aegis of the ‘organized community’. This model was designed to be of an inclusive nature and to offer space not only to different social groups, but also to the variety of ethnic and immigrant groups of Argentine society. This new concept of corporative citizenship facilitated a heightened recognition of collective rights, which manifested in the gradual integration of Argentines of Jewish, Arab, or Japanese origins in the political system, as well as that of indigenous peoples’ movements. By the early 1950s, Peronism had adopted a more inclusive perspective and began to demonstrate respect for all religions. Peronism aspired to confront the transgressions of the privileged few by protecting the rights of minorities and marginalized groups. Thus, it also challenged the traditional melting pot with its emphasis on White, European, and Christian Argentines.