Trolls Without Borders: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Victim Reactions to Verbal and Silent Aggression Online

Trolling—the online exploitation of website, chat, or game mechanics at another user's expense—can and does take place all over cyberspace. It can take myriad forms, as well—some verbal, like trash-talking an opponent in a game, and some silent, like refusing to include a new player in a team effort during an in-game quest. However, despite this variety, there are few to no studies comparing the effects of these differing trolling types on victims. In addition, no study has yet taken into account users' offline cultural context and norms into the trolling victim experience. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study put participants from three culturally-distinct countries—Pakistan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands—in a simulated trolling interaction using the Cyberball game. Participants were either flamed (read: harshly insulted) or ostracized by a member of their own cultural group (ingroup) or a minority member (outgroup), and the participants' emotional responses, behavioral intentions toward the other players, and messages sent during the game were taken as indicators of their response to the trolling. Results showed that our Taiwanese sample used the most reactive aggression when trolled and our Dutch sample was the most passive. In addition, ostracism generally produced the desire to repair relationships, irrespective of cultural context, and perpetrator culture (ingroup or outgroup) only produced an effect in the behavioral intentions of our Pakistani sample. Overall, it would appear that online and offline culture interact to produce the variety of responses to trolling seen in extant literature. Additional implications for future research into computer-mediated communication and online aggression are also discussed.

A Move Towards UNCAT Accession by Malaysia: Challenges and Prospects

The Convention against Torture and Other CAruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1984 (UNCAT) which was drafted after having regard to certain international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, is an instrument specifically drafted to put an absolute prohibition on any forms of torture, and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. So far, a majority number of 169 Member States of the United Nations has become State Parties to UNCAT, save for Malaysia and some other minority Member States. Although there have been calls for Malaysia to accede to UNCAT, Malaysia has always argued and maintained its position that it is not ready for accession. Therefore, this manuscript aims: (a) to establish a backdrop to this research by identifying the meaning of “torture” and “other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and State Parties’ duty under UNCAT; (b) to ascertain the challenges and potential for Malaysia in becoming a State Party to UNCAT and accordingly, to recommend the approach to be taken by Malaysia pertaining to UNCAT accession. A legal research methodology via qualitative method that uses primary sources such as international human rights instruments and secondary sources such as academic literatures, is adopted for the purpose of this article.

Location histogram privacy by Sensitive Location Hiding and Target Histogram Avoidance/Resemblance

A location histogram is comprised of the number of times a user has visited locations as they move in an area of interest, and it is often obtained from the user in the context of applications such as recommendation and advertising. However, a location histogram that leaves a user’s computer or device may threaten privacy when it contains visits to locations that the user does not want to disclose (sensitive locations), or when it can be used to profile the user in a way that leads to price discrimination and unsolicited advertising (e.g., as “wealthy” or “minority member”). Our work introduces two privacy notions to protect a location histogram from these threats: Sensitive Location Hiding, which aims at concealing all visits to sensitive locations, and Target Avoidance/Resemblance, which aims at concealing the similarity/dissimilarity of the user’s histogram to a target histogram that corresponds to an undesired/desired profile. We formulate an optimization problem around each notion: Sensitive Location Hiding ($${ SLH}$$SLH), which seeks to construct a histogram that is as similar as possible to the user’s histogram but associates all visits with nonsensitive locations, and Target Avoidance/Resemblance ($${ TA}$$TA/$${ TR}$$TR), which seeks to construct a histogram that is as dissimilar/similar as possible to a given target histogram but remains useful for getting a good response from the application that analyzes the histogram. We develop an optimal algorithm for each notion, which operates on a notion-specific search space graph and finds a shortest or longest path in the graph that corresponds to a solution histogram. In addition, we develop a greedy heuristic for the $${ TA}$$TA/$${ TR}$$TR problem, which operates directly on a user’s histogram. Our experiments demonstrate that all algorithms are effective at preserving the distribution of locations in a histogram and the quality of location recommendation. They also demonstrate that the heuristic produces near-optimal solutions while being orders of magnitude faster than the optimal algorithm for $${ TA}$$TA/$${ TR}$$TR.

Manipulating a synchronous or separatist group orientation to improve performance on a hidden profile task

Effective use of available information is a problem that plagues group decision-making tasks. Groups heavily favor shared information, or information that is known to all group members, which can lead to incorrect decisions and selection of inferior alternatives. However, groups may be less prone to overlooking unshared information if they are focused to value uniqueness and novel input from group members. The present research demonstrates that groups that value uniqueness, or a separatist orientation, correctly solved a hidden profile task more often than groups with a synchronous orientation, or groups that value similarity. Separatist groups repeated more unshared information than synchronous overall. Separatists also repeated more shared information than synchronous groups. Further, groups with a correct minority member also repeated more unshared information than groups with either a majority correct or no correct members. Results are discussed in terms of group focus and biases that affect the discussion of information.

Synagogue and State in the Israeli Military: A Story of “Inappropriate Integration”

The encounter between synagogue and state in Israel’s military context raises a variety of complex questions that defy conventional paradigms. While religious liberty continues to occupy a special place in most liberal democratic thought, the legal and philosophical literature pondering its various dimensions has largely lost analytic sight of the fascinating intersection of military and religion. This article embarks on analyzing the appropriate integration between loyalty to God and to country, and between religious male and secular female soldiers. Evaluating examples of synagogue-state tensions and accommodationist policies, this article explores the manner and extent to which the Israeli military (IDF) responds to the observant soldier’s multiple identities as a religious minority member and a faithful citizen of the larger secular polity. Against this backdrop, the article analyzes the vexed challenges posed to multicultural theory by the equivocal status of the Orthodox community as a numerical minority but “power majority” within the military, and by the IDF’s unique exercise of multiculturalist protection, termed herein “external restrictions,” imposed on majority group members. It concludes that the ongoing “religionization” of the IDF through the 2002 “Appropriate Integration” regulation has served as a powerful counterforce to gender equality, fostering a growing practice of female exclusion through which women are disenfranchised from core, non-negotiable protections of citizenship. The article identifies as the prime casualty of this aggressive multicultural accommodation not only secular women’s hard-won equality of opportunity, but also the very rights and status of minority women within their own religious community.

Analysis of Bacterial Communities during Clostridium difficile Infection in the Mouse

ABSTRACTClostridium difficileinfection (CDI) is a major cause of health care-associated disease. CDI initiates with ingestion ofC. difficilespores, germination in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and then colonization of the large intestine. The interactions betweenC. difficilecells and other bacteria and with host mucosa during CDI remain poorly understood. Here, we addressed the hypothesis that, in a mouse model of CDI,C. difficileresides in multicellular communities (biofilms) in association with host mucosa. To do this, we paraffin embedded and then sectioned the GI tracts of infected mice at various days postinfection (p.i.). We then used fluorescentin situhybridization (FISH) with 16S rRNA probes targeting most bacteria as well asC. difficilespecifically. The results revealed thatC. difficileis present as a minority member of communities in the outer (loose) mucus layer, in the cecum and colon, starting at day 1 p.i. To generate FISH probes that identify bacteria within mucus-associated communities harboringC. difficile, we characterized bacterial populations in the infected mouse GI tract using 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis of bacterial DNA prepared from intestinal content. This analysis revealed the presence of genera of several families belonging toBacteroidetesandFirmicutes. These data suggest that formation of multispecies communities associated with the mucus of the cecum and colon is an important early step in GI tract colonization. They raise the possibility that other bacterial species in these communities modulate the ability ofC. difficileto successfully colonize and, thereby, cause disease.

The Role of Values in Attitudes towards Violence: Discrimination against Moroccans and Romanian Gypsies in Spain

The first objective of this study was to investigate whether police violence is more tolerated when the victim is a member of a social minority (e.g., Moroccan immigrants and Romanian Gypsies in Spain) than when the victim is a member of the social majority (e.g., Spaniards). The second objective was to use Schwartz value theory to examine the moderating role of values on attitudes towards tolerance of police violence. The participants were 207 sociology and social work students from a public university in Madrid. Overall, in this study, police violence was more accepted when the victim was a member of a social minority; F(2, 206) = 77.91, p = .001, ηp2 = 0.433, and in general, values moderated this acceptance. Thus, greater adherence to the conservation and self-promotion values subsystems would strengthen support for police violence towards a social minority member. On the other hand, greater adherence to the openness to change and self-transcendence subsystems diminish this support.