The Futurians, Gamergate, and Fandom

From the science fiction fan clubs of the 1930s to the modern gamers, devoted fans have found one another and formed groups bonded over their shared interest. As groups formed, social identities began to emerge, distinguishing ingroups and outgroups. Social identity theory helps to explain the formation of groups as well as inevitable competition over resources and power. As technology became more sophisticated, fans were able to communicate with greater ease facilitating ingroup social identification. The inherent properties of video games reinforce both the cooperation among ingroup members as well as the rivalry with outgroups. Understanding the mechanisms within video games as well as the affordances of CMC and social media help to explain the group dynamics that support the Gamergate social identity.

A Beautiful Friendship—and a Lesson about Friends and Colleagues: A Classic Partnership Revisited

David Warner, M.D., and Michael Todd, M.D., first met in 1985. They began working together at the University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa) a year later with a shared interest in both laboratory and clinical neuroscience—and in the operative care of neurosurgical patients. That collaboration has now lasted for 35 yr, resulting in more than 70 joint publications. More importantly, they have had the privilege of working together with close to 1,000 colleagues from around the world, in a dozen medical specialties. Their careers are an example of what can be accomplished by friendship, mutual commitment, persistence, and a willingness to join with others.

Self, Free Will and Compassion: Shared Constructs in Neuroscience and Buddhism

The authors, a neuroscientist and a Buddhist monastic who met through the Emory Tibet Science Initiative, highlight similarities in the understanding of mental activities found in both traditions. An important principle discovered is the parallel processing of multiple mental activities, which reveals the existence of a unitary self and free will as illusions. These insights provide the rationale in Buddhism to develop a culture of compassion. Meanwhile western psychology and neuroscience have found brain circuits that have evolved to support social and even altruistic behaviors, giving compassion a physical basis in our brains as well. These insights then set the stage for a shared interest in an altruistic compassionate society.

A Viewpoint on Population Analyses

Population analyses have become an indispensable tool to computational chemists. Yet implementation within popular quantum chemistry software has buried the interesting philosophical choices made when partitioning the electron density into atomic contributions. There is further historical context that has significantly influenced common conceptions of chemical bonding and reactivity. This work reviews select aspects of orbital and spatial decomposition schemes of the density matrix, pointing out essential linear algebraic considerations and associated tools of shared interest to us and Prof. Mayer.

USE OF RHETORIC IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING

This study aimed to analyze how identification worked as a key to persuasion among agents in Frontrow Enterprise, an MLM company. Specifically, it sought to find the prevalent source of identification, identification strategy used by the Frontrow agents in their speeches, and their level of persuasion. This study employed descriptive-qualitative design which utilized critical analysis using the Theory of Identification and Consubstantiality. Results show that the highest frequency source of identification found in the speeches is the idealistic identification and the highest frequency identification strategy is the common ground. Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that persuasion is manifested using shared interest, attitude, perceptions, values, beliefs, and ideas through establishing common grounds with the audience. KEYWORDS: Multi-level Marketing, Identification and Consubstantiality, Level of Persuasion, Agents’ Speeches, Sources of Identification, Identification Strategies

Harness the Hidden Treasure! Freeing Knowledge, Energies and Learning Opportunities in Child and Youth Homes to Benefit Children, Youth, Staff, Leaders and the Organisation as a Whole

Daily life in a child and youth home is created jointly by staff, children, youth and leaders. However, three important resources often remain unavailable for the development of the organisation and its promotion of the young people: (1) the knowledge of the organisation, and different perspectives on the organisation, that these persons hold, (2) the energies freed when they perceive the quality of the child and youth home as a matter of shared interest and join forces to develop it, and (3) the organisation and the processes of shaping it as learning opportunities in themselves, especially for children and youth. By participating in shaping the organisation that they live in, they not only make a contribution to its quality that only they can make, but also strengthen important competences for their independent lives. Examples from practice and research in Brazil, Hungary and Switzerland illustrate the three resources and how they can benefit both the organisation and all the persons in it, especially the children and youth. Readers are encouraged to harness the ‘hidden treasure’ that these resources represent, for the benefit of the child and youth homes as well as the children and youth in their care.

Resisting the global neoliberal economy

As a Western citizen, am I responsible for the serious injustices, such as sweatshop labour, characterising our global economy? Benjamin McKean’s terrific new book, Disorienting Neoliberalism: Global Justice and the Outer Limit of Freedom, shows why this is a misleading question – one that will not properly orient us in relation to the neoliberal economy. McKean argues that we need to recognise that we are unfree under unjust transnational economic institutions and thus we have a shared interest in resisting neoliberalism. This means that we should become disposed to heed the calls for solidarity by others across the world whose freedom is also impaired by neoliberal institutions. McKean’s book offers a powerful and persuasive new account of global (in)justice and solidarity; it is an inspiring call to arms for egalitarian theorists. Although I will raise two friendly critical observations about McKean’s argument, I recognise that this book is a major contribution to international political theory and that it sets a superb example of how to combine scholarly rigour with what might be called activist theorising.

Norms, Procedures and Practices of Transnational Criminal Law in 18th and Early 19th-Century Europe

Karl Härter explores the 18th and 19th century ‘breeding ground’ of many of the transnational criminal procedures dealt with later in this volume. His focus is on early modern Europe and the ius commune, where, as he illustrates, acceptance of jurisdictional claims to enforce domestic law over conduct that occurred extra-territorially was driven by a shared interest in acting against certain kinds of criminals with loose connections to particular states.

NEW MOMS USE OF MEDIA TECHNOLOGY IN PARENTING

Literature review from as early as 2004 till 2020 was analyzed from various databases such as Web of Science (WoS), SAGE Publications, Wiley-Blackwell, Elsevier, and ACM. These literature reviews were within the area of new media and new moms and their transition towards parenthood. Seeing that new moms are navigating ubiquitous territory of parenting coupled with isolation and insufficient face-to-face contact, more urban new moms are utilizing technology to obtain information and support. The researcher created three blocks of searches with keywords ranging from parenting, new media and social media groups to obtain these literatures. Pertinent literature was highlighted in this research. Results from combing the literature indicates that new moms are utilizing various types of technology to obtain information and support ranging from general internet search engines, bulletin boards, blogs and Facebook as these platforms provides the interactivity and ease of use for exchange of information as well as the sense of belonging to a community with shared interest.