How Right-Wing Populists Engage with Cross-Cutting News on Online Message Boards: The Case of ForoCoches and Vox in Spain

Anecdotal evidence suggests a link between online message boards and the rise of far-right movements, which have achieved growing electoral success globally. Press accounts and scholarship have suggested these message boards help to radicalize like-minded users through exposure to shared media insulated from cross-cutting viewpoints (e.g., Hine et al. 2017 ; Palmer 2019). To better understand what role online message boards might play for supporters of right-wing populist movements, we focus on the Spanish political party Vox and its supporters’ use of the message board ForoCoches, a fan site for car enthusiasts, which became an important platform for the party. Using more than 120,000 messages collected from threads mentioning the party between 2013–2019, we examine the URLs shared to show how mainstream news media events shape the conversation online and how users not only were exposed but deeply engaged with cross-cutting news sources. We argue that the use of sites such as ForoCoches should be viewed in the context of a broader increasingly hybrid political and media landscape where activity online and offline cannot be understood separate from one another. Moreover, our findings suggest that the online political discussions that take place in Vox-related threads on ForoCoches resemble normatively positive deliberative spaces—albeit in this case in support of illiberal political positions. In other words, our findings complicate conventional notions about the benefits of political talk, especially online, as a democratically desirable end in and of itself.

Digital hermeneutics: scaled readings of online depression discourses

When it comes to understanding experiences of illness, humanities and social sciences research have traditionally reserved a prominent role for narrative. Yet, depression has characteristics that withstand the form of traditional narratives, such as a lack of desire and an impotence to act. How can a ‘datafied’ approach to online forms of depression writing pose a valuable addition to existing narrative approaches in health humanities? In this article, we analyse lay people’s depression discourses online. Our approach, ‘digital hermeneutics’, is inspired by Gadamer’s dialogical hermeneutics. It consists of a ‘scaled reading’ on five different scales: platform hermeneutics; contextual reading with term frequency—inverse document frequency (TF–IDF); distant reading with natural language processing topic modelling; hyper-reading with concordance views and close reading. Our corpus consisted of three data sets, from the blogs and message boards of, respectively, time-to-change.org.uk, a UK-based social organisation and movement that aims to counter mental health discrimination and alleviate social isolation by spreading awareness; Sane.org.uk, a leading UK mental health charity that seeks to help people in facing the challenges of mental illness and to improve quality of life; and the subreddit ‘r/depression’ on web discussion platform reddit. We found that the manner in which people express experiences of illness online is very much dependent on the specific affordances of platforms. We found degrees of ‘narrativity’ to be correlated to authorship and identity markers: the less ‘anonymous’ the writing, generally speaking, the more conventionally ‘narrative’ it was. Pseudonimity was related to more intimate and singular forms, with less pressure to conform to socially accepted and positive narratives of the ‘restitution’ type. We also found that interactive affordances of the platforms were used to a limited extent, nuancing assumptions about the polyvocality of online depression writing. We conclude by making a claim for increased cooperation between digital and medical humanities that might lead to a field of ‘Digital Medical Humanities’.

Station facilities and noise assessment: A multilevel analysis on light rail train stations

Noise is one of the most frequent consequences of traffic. Public transportation systems, such as the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) authority provides various modes of transportation. Even though the availability of commuting service for the public is a boon to communities, mass transit systems are potential sources of excessive sound levels in daily urban life. This article examines the nexus between the transit station facilities of light rail train (LRT) stations and noise implications at both station and neighborhood scales by studying selected LRT stations. A multilevel linear analysis was conducted to understand the degree of train station amenities and neighborhood characteristics that affect sound levels. Using a type II sound pressure level (SPL)meter, sound measurements were obtained during the weekdays and weekends over several weeks. Upon examining the station amenities, and built environment and sociodemographic characteristics of the neighborhood, findings of this comprehensive research reveal significant implications for sound levels. Stations with ticket vending machines and informative message boards include a higher degree of significance on SPLs, while shelters, crew rooms, bike lockers, restrooms, and windshields are significantly and negatively associated with the noise levels. Additionally, neighborhoods with dense roads, higher speed limits, more neighborhood facilities, and a higher number of transit routes have an increased likelihood of noise levels. Recommendations include creating transformative policies for implementation, and approaches addressing noise for transit authorities, transportation engineers, and planners are presented. Planning and engineering aspects of comfort, aesthetics, safety, and public health, as train stations are daily use spaces for commuters and surrounding communities, should also be considered.

Development of a system for adaptive control of the components of an intelligent educational environment

The article discusses the issues of creating software and tools for managing the processes of training specialists in an intellectual educational environment. The complex of tools is being developed as part of a hyper-converged computing ecosystem to support open personalized learning technologies and is designed to customize and adaptively update educational programs and content, taking into account the requirements of federal standards and regional labor markets. At the first stage, the tools solve the problems of searching, collecting, consolidating and intelligent analysis of requirements for specialists extracted from open sources on the Internet, such as sections with employers’ vacancies on the websites of enterprises, recruitment agencies, labor exchanges, message boards, forums, chats, groups of social networks and messengers. At the next stage, the process of adaptive adjustment and synchronization of educational programs is implemented, taking into account the consolidated information and predicted data on the required competencies in the short and medium term in a given region. Setting up the educational process in an open information environment occurs during the evolutionary transition to a convergent learning model, continuous updating of educational programs and content, personalization of training trajectories. The convergent model determines the convergence of educational programs and content for different specialties in accordance with the digitalization processes of all spheres of human life, which is reflected in the requirements for competencies in professional and educational standards, as well as on the part of employers. The processes of actualization and personalization make it possible to increase the efficiency and quality of training specialists by reducing the risks of obtaining a low-quality and morally obsolete education. The architecture of the adaptive management system of the educational environment includes the following components: a) Learning Management System (LMS), b) Education Content Management System (ECMS), c) Learning Activity Management System (LAMS), d) tools for searching, collecting and analyzing employers’ requirements, e) cloud storage of educational content.

Desafios metodológicos na pesquisa com fóruns digitais de discussão de história

Os fóruns digitais de discussão, também conhecidos como message boards ou discussion boards, são um caso interessante de uma ferramenta que se adaptou ao surgimento de novas estruturas tecnológicas e passou a integrar a web desde seu início, mantendo sua popularidade até os dias de hoje. A partir desse panorama, o objetivo deste artigo é refletir acerca dos desafios metodológicos da análise de fóruns de discussão de história, levando em consideração sua historicidade, bem como a estrutura que possibilita as discussões entre os usuários. Elaborar uma estratégia metodológica para a pesquisa com fóruns digitais envolve, nesse sentido, a necessidade de refletir acerca de sua materialidade, alterada no processo de arquivamento, e sobre a possibilidade de aliar análises qualitativas bem como quantitativas, uma vez que as discussões frequentemente são avaliadas em tempo real por seus participantes.

Temporal Brokering: A Measure of Brokerage as a Behavioral Process

Extant research in organizational networks has provided critical insights into understanding the benefits of occupying a brokerage position. More recently, researchers have moved beyond the brokerage position to consider the brokering processes (arbitration and collaboration) brokers engage in and their implications for performance. However, brokering processes are typically measured using scales that reflect individuals’ orientation toward engaging in a behavior, rather than the behavior itself. In this article, we propose a measure that captures the behavioral process of brokering. The measure indicates the extent to which actors engage in arbitration versus collaboration based on sequences of time stamped relational events, such as emails, message boards, and recordings of meetings. We demonstrate the validity of our measure as well as its predictive ability. By leveraging the temporal information inherent in sequences of relational events, our behavioral measure of brokering creates opportunities for researchers to explore the dynamics of brokerage and their impact on individuals, and also paves the way for a systematic examination of the temporal dynamics of networks.

Inner Mongolian Online Identity

In the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR) of China, herders and settled youth from herding communities are utilizing online message boards to build new communities, network across international borders, and negotiate what it means to be from a herding community in modern-day China. This chapter examines the ways that local and international supporters recorded and debated about a 2012 road protest during which a herder was run over and dragged to his death by a mining truck. Focusing on the use of ICTs by rural citizens, this chapter finds that herders were able to publish their own narratives in real time, often challenging narratives presented by the state. Additionally, through these narratives, youth in IMAR identified with and expressed a herding tradition and identity, even while living largely settled lives.

INTERACTIVITY IN DISTANT CLASSES OF RUSSIAN AS FOREIGN

Distant Russian as foreign teaching requires use of new teaching techniques and methods, allowing to compensate for the following disadvantages of online learning: the lack of "live" contact with students, high-quality interaction between the teacher and the students, difficulties in objective assessment of the students’ knowledge, weak interest of students in learning the material, their lack of motivation. The article discusses the possibilities of organizing online learning using the Moodle platform and Zoom application, which allows not only to get in touch with students, but also has some additional features (sharing the screen, message boards, demonstrating various documents with the ability to make notes to both the teacher and students, showing videos, listening to audio files, students working in mini-groups and pairs using session halls), optimizing the process of interaction between participants of the educational process. In addition, the author views interactive Internet programs, the use of which in the classroom and in the independent work of students contributes to the involvement of students in educational activities, form a positive motivation, interest in the process of obtaining knowledge, activate interaction between students and teachers, make the process of online communication more "alive".

The asymmetric online talk effect

PurposeThe authors investigate the extent to which online talk can influence contemporaneous and future stock trading, especially when market news is unpresented.Design/methodology/approachThe authors propose an improved sentiment formula incorporating online hype, neutral sentiment and poster reputation. In addition, they conduct event study, OLS regression analyses and probit models.FindingsFirst, investors tend to be more talkative in relation to firms that are (1) smaller size, (2) more growth-like, (3) with lower prices and higher short interests and (4) of higher beta. Second, the bullish tone of investors positively affects the abnormal returns of small-capitalization stocks. However, online talk has little impact on large-capitalization stocks, except that more postings boost trading liquidity. Third, online talk predicts the presence of future news regardless of firm size, with stronger predictive power found for small-capitalization stocks.Practical implicationsIt is of interest to practitioners and researchers to study online talk so as to better understand the trading psychology of retail investors and the effects on the stock market. Furthermore, policymakers are interested in tracking activities on stock message boards in order to prevent security fraud and protect investors' interests.Originality/valueThe results are robust and suggest that online talk has significant impacts on stock trading exploiting an information asymmetry. This study of stock message board posting activities helps researchers to understand whether message contents contain valuable and unique content compared with information available via more traditional media channels.