69,418 research outputs found
Analyzing gender inequality through large-scale Facebook advertising data
Online social media are information resources that can have a transformative
power in society. While the Web was envisioned as an equalizing force that
allows everyone to access information, the digital divide prevents large
amounts of people from being present online. Online social media in particular
are prone to gender inequality, an important issue given the link between
social media use and employment. Understanding gender inequality in social
media is a challenging task due to the necessity of data sources that can
provide large-scale measurements across multiple countries. Here we show how
the Facebook Gender Divide (FGD), a metric based on aggregated statistics of
more than 1.4 Billion users in 217 countries, explains various aspects of
worldwide gender inequality. Our analysis shows that the FGD encodes gender
equality indices in education, health, and economic opportunity. We find gender
differences in network externalities that suggest that using social media has
an added value for women. Furthermore, we find that low values of the FGD are
associated with increases in economic gender equality. Our results suggest that
online social networks, while suffering evident gender imbalance, may lower the
barriers that women have to access informational resources and help to narrow
the economic gender gap
Weight outcomes audit for 34,271 adults referred to a primary care/commercial weight management partnership scheme
Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Examining Connections between Gendered Dimensions of Inequality and Deforestation in Nepal
The United Nations recognizes empowering women as a key component of achieving numerous development-related goals. Qualitative studies suggest that communities where men and women have equal levels of agency over resource allocation and land tenure sometimes experience decreases in forest degradation and deforestation, all else being equal. However, these patterns are spatially heterogeneous, as are patterns of gender inequality in terms of land tenure and agency. This paper uses data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to quantify the relationship between gender inequality and ecosystem degradation using three linear regression models, Empirical Bayesian Kriging, and mapping the intersections between gender inequality and deforestation. Results from LASSO, Ordinary Least Squares, and Stepwise regression models show that there is no linear relationship between gender inequality and deforestation. Additionally, the distributions of gender inequality as it pertains to land tenure and deforestation are highly heterogeneous over space, indicating potential sociocultural and sociodemographic factors not captured in my data. Further work should focus on identifying ways to incorporate complex gender dynamics into environmental planning at multiple levels of forest governance
Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey
Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social
nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational
linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article
we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics"
that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive
overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the
relation between language and social identity, language use in social
interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the
potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how
the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement
existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and
challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey
the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and
conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication:
18th February, 201
The Nutrition Elite: Do Only the Highest Levels of Caloric Knowledge, Obesity Knowledge, and Motivation Matter in Processing Nutrition Ad Claims and Disclosures?
This study examines the role of the highest levels of caloric knowledge, obesity consequences knowledge, and motivation to search for nutrition information in the processing of relative nutrient content claims in advertisements, such as “half the calories” or “half the fat,” for products relatively high in total calorie levels. After controlling for the impact of demographics, dietary habits, body mass index, relative ad claims and disclosures, perceived weight gain risk, and other variables, the authors find curvilinear (quadratic) effects for caloric knowledge, obesity consequences knowledge, and motivation to search for nutrition information on intent to buy an advertised, high-calorie snack bar. This suggests a strengthening of the negative relationship for intent for consumers at the highest levels of caloric knowledge, obesity consequences knowledge, and motivation (i.e., the “nutrition elite”). The authors offer public policy implications, including whether achieving such exceedingly high levels of nutrition knowledge and motivation is realistic for the general public in light of other policy alternatives, such as market-based solutions (e.g., reducing serving sizes, standardized front-of-package icons)
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