Mobilizing Public Will For Social Change

Examines the theory and strategies of "public will" campaigns and offers tangible criteria for their evaluation. It provides a rich inventory of strategies for use in mobilizing the public will through an integration of models of agenda building, social problem construction, issues management, social movements, media advocacy, and social capital. In addition, the paper provides cases and examples of public will campaigns directed at various social problems, along with criteria for evaluating these campaigns at various stages of a social problem's life cycle

Spiral of Silence and the use of Social Media by Sexual Violence Survivors

Sexual violence has been a global health concern for over decades, but activism on social media such as #MeToo has increased public discourse and awareness about this issue. In its early advent, the #MeToo movement raised ample awareness, stimulated free discourse, and placed this issue as an important concern to address. While countries have implemented austere laws to prevent such hate crimes against women, societal norms and codes have deemed this type of violence as stigma or taboo resulting in the underreporting of the majority of sexual violence-related crimes. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in 2015 reported that one in five women experience attempted or completed rape during her lifetime. In other words, 43.6% of women in the United States experience some form of sexual misconduct during their life including more than a third of women who reported unwanted sexual contact or, groping for example, in their lifetime (Smith, S.G., Zhang, X., Basile, K.C., Merrick, M.T., Wang, J., Kresnow, M., & Chen, J., 2018).). This study examines individuals’ willingness to talk about sexual violence on social media. Using the spiral of silence theoretical framework, a survey was distributed online to understand who is willing to talk about social violence and under what conditions. Analysis of (n=108) responses found that gender and experience with sexual violence were key predictors of individuals\u27 willingness to share their experiences or opinions on social media. More than half of the respondents (n=63) or 58% reported having experienced some form of sexual violence, but only a small number (n=9) or 14% had shared their personal experiences on social media. Participants identifying as cisgender females (n=32) or 41.6% reported their willingness to share their opinions on social media. Willingness to share opinions on social media about sexual violence was positively associated with the perception of public perception. Male participants (n=9) or 38% who perceived their opinion to be shared by their followers were more likely to express their views about sexual violence. The results indicate that women are more likely to be vocal about the issue of sexual violence and less likely to experience the spiral of silence effect

Spiraling Down into Corruption: A Dynamic Analysis of the Social Identity Processes that Cause Corruption in Organizations to Grow

To date, theory and research on corruption in organizations have primarily focused on its static antecedents. This paper focuses on the spread and growth of corruption in organizations. For this purpose three downward organizational spirals are formulated: the spiral of divergent norms, the spiral of pressure, and the spiral of opportunity. Social Identity Theory is used to explain the mechanisms of each of these spirals. Our dynamic perspective contributes to a greater understanding of the development of corruption in organizations and opens up promising avenues for future research.corruption;dynamics;social identity theory;organizational factors

Voice and silence in public debate: Modelling and observing collective opinion expression online

This thesis investigates how group-level differences in willingness of opinion expression shape the extent to which certain standpoints are visible in public debate online. Against the backdrop of facilitated communication and connection to like-minded others through digital technologies, models and methods are developed and case studies are carried out – by and large from a network perspective. To this end, we first propose a model of opinion dynamics that examines social- structural conditions for public opinion expression or even predominance of different groups. The model focuses not on opinion change, but on the decision of individuals whether to express their opinion publicly or not. Groups of agents with different, fixed opinions interact with each other, changing the willingness to express their opinion according to the feedback they receive from others. We formulate the model as a multi-group game, and subsequently provide a dynamical systems perspective by introducing reinforcement learning dynamics. We show that a minority can dominate public discourse if its internal connections are sufficiently dense. Moreover, increased costs for opinion expression can drive even internally well-connected groups into silence. We then focus on how interaction networks can be used to infer political and social positions. For this purpose, we develop a new type of force-directed network layout algorithm. While being widely used, a rigorous interpretation of the outcomes of existing force-directed algorithms has not been provided yet. We argue that interpretability can be delivered by latent space approaches, which have the goal of embedding a network in an underlying social space. On the basis of such a latent space model, we derive a force-directed layout algorithm that can not only be used for the spatialisation of generic network data – exemplified by Twitter follower and retweet networks, as well as Facebook friendship networks – but also for the visualization of surveys. Comparison to existing layout algorithms (which are not grounded in an interpretable model) reveals that node groups are placed in similar configurations, while said algorithms show a stronger intra-cluster separation of nodes, as well as a tendency to separate clusters more strongly in retweet networks. In two case studies, we observe actual public debate on the social media platform Twitter – topics are the Saxon state elections 2019, and violent riots in the city of Leipzig on New Year’s Eve in the same year. We show that through the interplay of retweet and reply networks, it is possible to identify differences in willingness of opinion expression on the platform between opinion groups. We find that for both events, propensities to get involved in debate are asymmetric. Users retweeting far-right parties and politicians are significantly more active, making their positions disproportionately visible. Said users also act significantly more confrontational in the sense that they reply mostly to users from different groups, while the contrary is not the case. The findings underline that naive reliance on what others express online can be collectively dangerous, especially in an era in which social media shapes public discourse to an unprecedented extent

Persuasive Communication Pattern of Public Service Announcement, A Highlight of Cancer Education by Indonesia Government in Television

As one of a non-communicable disease, cancer has become threatening disease for many people in the world. In Indonesia, the prevalence of this disease is increasing from year to year. To reduce the number of cancer patients, Indonesian Government through Ministry of Health has variety of efforts, including communicate to people about the important of having healthy lifestyle so that cancer can be prevented. Communication through education about cancer and healthy lifestyle conducts by several mediums and one of these is through Public Service Announcement (PSA) on television. PSA is needed to raise awareness about cancer among people and give them understanding about how to prevent cancer by implementing a certain lifestyle. It takes proper persuasive communication so that the PSA can perform its function to influence people to change their behavior in a positive way. This persuasive effort becomes interesting to be studied considering persuasive communication is related to various aspects, such as attitude, behavior and knowledge of target audience. In the context of cancer education, persuasive communication is needed to convince people to be more concerned about cancer by implementing a healthy lifestyle so that cancer can be prevented. This study aims to find a pattern of persuasive communication about cancer education in PSA to support behavior change in society. The research was conducted in Cirendeu, Ciputat. Data survey was obtained from the students of the University of Muhammadiyah Jakarta and advertising practitioner who became informants. The research method used is qualitative descriptive, through data collection procedure of FGD and in-depth interview. The data is analyzed qualitatively which is then interpreted and presented in the form of a description or narrative followed by conducted theoretical interpretation to give meaning to the result of the research that has been done. Result of this study was indicate that communication pattern of PSA about cancer education refers to these three important things; first, endorsers, second, message execution approach such as animation, and third longer duration for presenting more detail information. First, informants prefer endorsers who are considered close and familiar with their daily lives. They also had trust with medical workers to endorse cancer prevention. Second, animated version is considered a fairly appealing advertisement message that is easy to understand, keep in mind and able to provide solutions for cancer prevention. The unique, local animal character like “Kancil” brought PSA into energetic and passionate message to the informants. Third, the informants preferred longer version of the PSA since it was more persuasive and detailed for the information

The 'Incel' Phenomenon in the Digital Era--How Echo Chambers have Fueled the Incel Movement

The “incel” phenomenon began after 2010 when like-minded young – mostly straight white – men started to share similar thoughts and worldviews on certain digital platforms and online forums leading to an exclusive community. The phenomenon is characterized by misogynism, racism and homophobia. The most extreme forms of the phenomenon have led to violent hate crimes. The aim of this paper is to understand this phenomenon and analyze it by applying the echo chamber theory