Critical analysis of the main discourses of the Spanish press about the rescue of the ship «Aquarius»

This article presents an analysis of the main discourses that appear in a sample of Spanish newspapers before and after the arrival of the Aquarius at the port of Valencia in June 2018, in order to observe if there is a solidarity discourse or one that rejects the arrival of the rescued immigrants in Spain. The corpus consists of all the news published from June 10 to July 10, 2018 in the electronic version of the Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia. The methodology is mainly qualitative-descriptive. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was chosen to observe the main linguistic characteristics of the collected news items and the topics that appear in the articles. The analysis shows that the testimonies of politicians and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) predominate, but there are few testimonies of immigrants. The solidarity and acceptance of Spain are strengthened, as well as the defense of human rights. This contrasts with the discourses that the press presents after the arrival of the ship in Valencia. A discourse related to the health of immigrants and their need for help and resources predominates, a fact that contributes to the alarm of the majority group.

Some Important Factors Hindering the Civic Integration of Ethnic Minorities

The purpose of this article is to compile and group the list of problems that hinder the integration of ethnic minorities in the political, economic and cultural life of the country, based on research conducted by various organizations over the past 10 yearს. According to these studies, the main problem is, on the one hand, the language barrier and, on the other hand, ethnic-nationalist tendencies and stereotypes. These national mythologies and notions play one of the crucial roles in the formation of national self-identification. Ethno-nationalist tendencies are strong both in minorities and in ethnic Georgians. There are several factors behind the emergence of the ethnonationalism in Georgia First of all, it is the legacy of Soviet totalitarianism, as well as the result of the current socio-political situation. Understanding these two factors will give us a better answer as to why ethnic-nationalist sentiments are still prevailing in Georgia and why the integration of the ethnic minorities is hindered, despite being repeatedly declared by the state. The language barrier of ethnic minorities is also an important problem in the process of integration into society. The education system should make the knowledge of the state language accessible to ethnic minorities and, at the same time, ensure the protection of minority languages. To do this, the state must maximize and encourage local staff; The general system of education should ensure the upbringing of the citizen of the country and not put any group (even the majority) in an advantageous situation. show the advantage of any (even the majority) group.

Negative Shocks and Political Parties’ Territorial Demands: The Institutional Roots of Party Competition

Why do political parties set an extreme or a more moderate position on the territorial dimension? Despite previous works have paid recent interest on the dynamics of the political competition on the territorial dimension, we know much less about the factors that lead to a centrifugal or a centripetal party competition on the same dimension. In this article, we offer a new way of understanding it: we argue that parties’ policy position on the decentralization continuum not only depends on the level of territorial decentralization, but also on the credibility of the institutional agreement established through the country’s constitutional rigidity. If the original territorial pact does not guarantee that the majority group will have its “hands tied” so that it does not reverse the territorial agreement, political parties will have incentives to adopt more extreme positions on the territorial dimension. We test this argument with a dataset covering around 460 political parties clustered in 28 European countries from 1999 to 2019 and by exploiting the fact that the 2008 economic crisis unleashed a shock on the territorial design. Our results confirm our expectations. We show that both the federal deal and the credibility of the institutional arrangement through constitutional rigidity are necessary conditions to appease parties’ demands on the territorial dimension. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how institutions shape political competition along the territorial dimension.

Gazing Into the Crystal Ball: Are Majority Groups Threatened by a Minority-Majority Future?

<p>By the mid to late 21st century, it is projected that ethnic European majority groups will account for less than half the total populations of many Western countries. As a result of this projected ethnic shift, these countries will become “minority-majority” nations. Three experiments were conducted in New Zealand to investigate how present-day majority group members (New Zealand Europeans) perceive and react to a projected minority-majority future. It was found that those exposed to a minority-majority future expressed greater feelings of ingroup sympathy than those presented with present-day demographic information. However, contrary to the findings of similar research conducted in North America, the minority-majority future was not associated with negative attitudes towards migrants or greater ingroup serving biases. When comparing two projected future conditions (New Zealand European-majority future vs. a minority-majority future), participants in the minority-majority condition expressed greater belief that the nation would possess more positive characteristics than those in the New Zealand European-majority condition. Additionally, the experimental condition was found to moderate the relationship between future expectations and present-day attitudes and action intentions. Depending on the strength of expectations for future societal dysfunction, development, and benevolence, participants in the minority-majority condition were more or less likely to engage in present-day pro-diversity actions or perceive diversity as threatening. Implications for theoretical research and New Zealand intergroup dynamics are discussed.</p>

Gazing Into the Crystal Ball: Are Majority Groups Threatened by a Minority-Majority Future?

<p>By the mid to late 21st century, it is projected that ethnic European majority groups will account for less than half the total populations of many Western countries. As a result of this projected ethnic shift, these countries will become “minority-majority” nations. Three experiments were conducted in New Zealand to investigate how present-day majority group members (New Zealand Europeans) perceive and react to a projected minority-majority future. It was found that those exposed to a minority-majority future expressed greater feelings of ingroup sympathy than those presented with present-day demographic information. However, contrary to the findings of similar research conducted in North America, the minority-majority future was not associated with negative attitudes towards migrants or greater ingroup serving biases. When comparing two projected future conditions (New Zealand European-majority future vs. a minority-majority future), participants in the minority-majority condition expressed greater belief that the nation would possess more positive characteristics than those in the New Zealand European-majority condition. Additionally, the experimental condition was found to moderate the relationship between future expectations and present-day attitudes and action intentions. Depending on the strength of expectations for future societal dysfunction, development, and benevolence, participants in the minority-majority condition were more or less likely to engage in present-day pro-diversity actions or perceive diversity as threatening. Implications for theoretical research and New Zealand intergroup dynamics are discussed.</p>

Perception and innovativeness level of farmers on the integration system of rice and cattle farming

Farmers’ perceptions of the disseminated technology influence the speed and rate of its adoption. The integration system of rice and cattle farming, named SITT, was developed to increase rice and beef production based on a zero-waste concept. Information on farmers’ perceptions of the SITT technology’s characteristics is needed to improve the technology. This study analyzed farmers’ perceptions of the SITT technology’s characteristics, social characteristics, economic capabilities, and innovativeness level. This research was carried out in October 2018 in Serdang Bedagai District, North Sumatra. Data were collected through interviews using a structured questionnaire to 40 farmers who applied the SITT technology and selected purposively. Data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative descriptive methods. The result proved that, in general, the farmers’ perceptions of the SITT technology have a greater relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, and less complexity. Most of the farmers are not involved in the farmer group’s management (94.9%). Farmers stated that the financing source for farming activities was their capital (55.0%). The level of farmers’ innovativeness concluded that 43.6% of farmers were in the late majority group. The acceleration of SITT technology needs to be carried out continuously with methods following the specifics of the location and the farmers’ level of innovation. This dissemination activity will provide assurance and trust to farmers in SITT technology to be applied in their farming activities to increase production, productivity, and profits.

Article: Watching people decide: decision prediction using heatmaps of reading a decision-support document

Introduction: Previous studies show that reading behavior varies with the readers’ Levels of Expertise (LoE) in a task area. Except for LoE, other factors like acquired information plays a role in this process. In the area of health policymaking, people read supporting documents to inform their decisions. This leads to a natural question: could it be possible to predict the decisions based on the reading pattern of the supporting document on top of their LoE? Method: We collected eye tracker data from a group of people with various LoE. We used the heatmaps as the primary pattern of reading. These were prepared using the average fixation duration of the individuals. First, we performed a hierarchical cluster analysis with the pairwise correlation matrix between the heatmaps, to see whether heatmaps as A single feature were effective to reach our goal. In the second step, we made an ensemble of the features of the reading patterns from the heatmaps and pupillometric features, and LoE, with the decision made by the participants as an outcome, using AdaBoost regressor. In this decision-making task, one could choose one among expensive, prudent, and midway. Result: The first analysis reveals to us that there are a minority number of individuals who read less than the majority group. This minority group tends to make decisions in the extremities. The result of AdaBoost-regressor, shows us 1. the LoE is a stronger feature than the patterns of reading to predict the decision to be taken. 2. the pupillometric features are weaker feature than the reading patterns from the heatmaps for our task. Conclusion: Reading patterns could be useful for forecasting a decision, given the LoE of the individual. Heatmaps can be used as both qualitative and quantitative measures for reading patterns.

Spain

The Spanish political system limits individual MP participation in parliamentary debate favoring parties and parliamentary groups. Using data of the 7th to 10th legislative terms of Spain’s lower chamber (2000–2016) to explore the role of inter- and intra-party factors to MP floor participation, results show that parties and groups constrain MP behavior through three mechanisms. First, monitoring over MP activity ensures MP discipline and predicts very well how much MPs speak and for how long. Second, committee assignments help parliamentary groups regulate MP floor access reducing it to a few relevant MPs. Third, a strong executive minimizes dissent within the majority group in the chamber. Given these mechanisms and a set of rules that privilege party and group structure and restrain parliamentary fragmentation and individuation, legislative debate in Spain features just a few MPs within a model of representation that strongly favors central party-structure control over candidate-constituency bonding mechanisms.

Composition of place, minority vs. majority group-status, & contextualized experience: The role of level of group representation, perceiving place in group-based terms, and sense of belonging in shaping collective behavior

The current studies (N = 1,709) explore why demographic composition of place matters. First, this work demonstrates that relative level of group representation affects one’s experience of place in the form of self-definition (self-categorization), perceptions of place being representative or characteristic of factors that distinguish the group from others (place-prototypicality), and sense of belonging (place-identification; Studies 1a-1e; Studies 2a & 2b). Second, the studies illustrate that group representation within place shapes the way group member’s approach (i.e., expectations of group-based treatment and procedural justice; Studies 2a-2c), understand (i.e., attribution for group-based events, Study 2b; responsiveness to bias-reduction intervention, Study 4a; sense of solidarity, Study 4b), and behave (i.e., prejudice, Studies 3a & 3b; collective action, Study 4c). More broadly, I present a Social identity Paradigm for Contextualized Experience (SPACE) that provides an organizing framework for the study of the impact of characteristics of place on social identity-based contextualized experience and (in turn) collective behavior. Taken together, the findings provide evidence of distinct psychological experience and orientation as a function of minority versus majority-group status within place, as well as for a group-based approach to place. Implications for the study of collective and intergroup behavior are discussed.