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2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhayan Mukerjee

Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into various other ways in which audience fragmentation can manifest in these often-overlooked countries. In this paper, I use the case of online India as an example to offer a theoretical framework – that of news reading publics – for understanding audience fragmentation as a more global socio-political phenomenon that allows for rigorous comparative research, without being restrictive in scope. I draw from existing theories in communication and related disciplines and show how such a framework can be situated within existing social science theory. I argue that this framework should make us think of audience fragmentation in western contexts to be special cases of a more general model. I also show how network analysis can be used as a context-agnostic tool for identifying news reading publics and demonstrate the utility of such a method in complementing this theoretical framework. Finally, I discuss potential future research directions that this framework generates.Keywords: news consumption, online news, uses and gratifications, issue publics, audience behavior, audience fragmentation, network analysis, India


2021 ◽  
Vol Publish Ahead of Print ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste Pang ◽  
Julie Hallet ◽  
Tyler R. Chesney ◽  
Barbara Haas ◽  
Frances C. Wright ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612110192
Author(s):  
Alex Broom ◽  
Sophie Lewis ◽  
Rhiannon Parker ◽  
Leah Williams Veazey ◽  
Katherine Kenny ◽  
...  

What does migrancy mean for personhood, and how does this flow through caring relations? Drawing on life history interviews and photo elicitation with 43 people who identify as migrants and live with cancer, here we argue for the significance of recognising complex personhood as it inflects illness and care. Drawing on social science theory around temporalities, moralities and belonging, we assemble a series of cross-cutting themes at the intersection of personhood and care; relations that transcend cultural origins yet are vividly illustrated in relation to migrant pasts. In seeking a multidimensional view of personhood, we attend to the intersecting layers of complexity that make up care in this context vis-a-vis an emphasis on forms of difference, vulnerability and otherness. In this way, we develop an approach to personhood and care that broadens the lens on migrancy and cancer, but also, one that speaks to the importance of recognition of complexity and how it shapes care more generally.


Author(s):  
Tally Katz-Gerro

This document summarizes the capital approach to sustainable well-being in the domain of culture. It provides an overview of the components of cultural capital discussed in the scientific literature, with an emphasis on cultural participation, as this is the single most important indicator whose links to well-being have been evaluated. The document provides an initial mapping of the critical components of cultural capital specific to the Israeli context, building on previous work conducted in other countries and on social science theory in this area. It presents the theoretical approach to the definition of these components and the international experience of using it for measuring sustainable well-being. The emphasis on cultural participation as one possible operationalization of cultural capital has three motivations. First, research points to a certain set of cultural participation indicators as representing cultural skills that are legitimate and desirable in society. Second, this set of cultural participation indicators has been shown to be associated with returns in the educational system and the labor market. Third, this set has been investigated in relation to indicators of psychological and physical well-being.


Author(s):  
Changkui LI ◽  
◽  

In the second half of 2016, the author of this article signed "Introduction to Cross-border E-commerce", "Comprehensive Training and Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Cross-border E-commerce", "Cross-border E-commerce Single Window Practice", and "Cross-border E-commerce Law" wtih China Machine Press. The author of this article signed "Introduction to Cross-border E-commerce" (Higher Vocational Edition) book publishing contract with the People’s Posts and Telecommunications Publishing House. Due to limited conditions, the author has not yet completed the manuscript. Now, the relevant content of the first chapter of the book "Introduction to Cross-border E-commerce" is briefly processed and published in "Social Science Theory and Practice". Unless otherwise stated, the information in this article is as of December 2016. Starting from the connotation and characteristics of cross-border e-commerce, this paper analyzes the current situation, development stage and driving force of cross-border e-commerce, and innovates the cross-border e-commerce talent training system.


Author(s):  
Charles W. Greenbaum ◽  
Muhammad M. Haj-Yahia ◽  
Carolyn Hamilton

The introductory chapter presents the major goal of this volume: creating a forum for the integration of three areas: theory and research on the effects of exposure to political violence (EPV), intervention to aid victims of EPV, and the prevention of EPV. It notes the relative lack of application of social science research and theory to prevention of EPV. The chapter presents suggested definitions of political violence and what is meant by child, and describes the gap between international law forbidding political violence to children and a recent increase in children’s EPV. The chapter also presents an overview of social science theory related to research and intervention and descriptions of the three sections in the book. Section I involves research on effects of EPV, Section II addresses intervention, and Section III discusses prevention of EPV. The introduction concludes with summaries of each chapter and a description of the relation of these chapters to the overall perspective of the book.


A major goal of this volume is to create a forum for the integration of three areas: theory and research on the effects of exposure to political violence (EPV), intervention to aid victims of EPV, and the prevention of EPV. It notes the lack of application of social science research and theory to prevention of EPV. The introductory chapter presents a description of the gap between international law forbidding political violence against children and recent increases in children’s EPV, an overview of social science theory related to research and intervention, and descriptions of the contributions of each chapter. Section I, on research, presents reviews of research, original quantitative and qualitative research reports, and a chapter on methodology and ethics. Section II, on intervention, contains research on intervention with children who have experienced EPV in school, their family, and community contexts, and a chapter on issues related to individual therapy with such children. Section III, on prevention, provides chapters on legal and social issues in the prevention of recruitment of children as child soldiers in armed groups, on the role of the International Criminal Court in deterring children’s EPV, and on the use of transitional justice for preventing recurrence of children’s EPV. The concluding chapter reviews the major findings of the volume and emphasizes the need for prevention of EPV. It describes the legal framework for prevention, social science theory that could explain the prevalence of EPV despite legal and moral sanctions against it, possible means of protecting children in armed conflict, and possible future directions in research.


In careers that spanned six decades, Padma Bhushan award winners Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph elaborated seminal insights about Indian politics. The Rudolphs’ rigorous and remarkably empathetic study of India coupled with their extensive reading of social science theory served as the basis for their development of a broader interpretive mode of political analysis centered on the complex processes by which people construct meaning and motivation for political action. The eminent contributors to this volume pay tribute to the Rudolphs’ scholarship by examining its contributions to their own cutting-edge research as they advance the frontiers of the study of Indian politics and social science writ large. Their engaging essays analyze vital topics including how ‘situated knowledge’ shapes discourse, moral imagination, political strategies, and institutional change. They apply this interpretive approach to Indian politics to illuminate how the interaction of caste, class, gender, and religion has structured political mobilization, how changing social and political relations have affected education policy and civil–military relations, and how political leadership is forging the future of Indian politics.


Author(s):  
Bruno Hamnell

This article examines debates on historical theory in the journals Historisk tidskrift and Scandia between 1965, when theory is frequently said to have been introduced in Swedish historiography, and 2009. The study focuses on discussions on the epistemological concepts “theory”, “objectivity”, “relativism”, “truth”, and “neutrality”. It is shown that some historians initially perceived theory as a threat to empirically driven studies. Theory was sometimes understood as synonymous with social science theory and sometimes as synonymous with historical materialism. This was only the case up until the late 1970s, when the notion that theory in some sense should be part of historical research gained increasing acceptance. It was no longer thought of as a threat to empiricism and realist epistemology. Accepting the place of theory in historical research led to insights about the impossibility of neutrality, which brought about debates on relativism, objectivity, subjectivism, and truth. The threat from relativism was intensified as postmodernism was introduced in the journals in the late 1980s. Postmodernism was initially seen as the antithesis to knowledge, and some commentators thought that postmodernism reduced history to fiction. However, by the end of the studied period, postmodernism was rather thought of as a possible “inspiration” than as a threat. Epistemological stances are seldom articulated in the debate and central concepts are rarely defined. For this reason, many of the historians talk past one another and have trouble navigating between the extreme positions of total relativism and absolute objectivism, even though few historians actually embrace either of these positions. The main argument of the article is that what is primarily at stake in the debates is a realist view of knowledge. Most historians share the view of knowledge as correspondence and the idea that history is supposed the create representations of a past reality. Postmodernism and theory are only accepted as long as they do not question this underlying assumption. The article concludes by suggesting that history should abandon the realist view of knowledge and its associated vocabulary for a pragmatic approach to historiography. According to Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, such an approach would look upon history as a rational practice and a matter of argumentation, rather than representation.


Vaccines ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Piltch-Loeb ◽  
Ralph DiClemente

Vaccines are the optimal public health strategy to prevent disease, but the growing anti-vaccine movement has focused renewed attention on the need to persuade people to increase vaccine uptake. This commentary draws on social and behavioral science theory and proposes a vaccine uptake continuum comprised of five factors: (1) awareness of the health threat; (2) availability of the vaccine; (3) accessibility of the vaccine; (4) affordability of the vaccine; and (5) acceptability of the vaccine to effectively approach this rising challenge.


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