Comment letters on Proposed SOP on Accounting for ESOPs

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Political fandom and the myth of the establishment: how a politically partisan online network engaged with dissonant media texts

This thesis engages with the question of how participants in politically partisan online networks engage with events that disrupt consensus expectations. My research asks how participants in one such network engaged with political subjects through sharing and interpreting media texts, maintaining consensus and coherency even if these texts initially appeared to be dissonant with established framings of events. Focusing on a large and impactful network of supporters of former US President Donald Trump as a case study, this research uses netnographic tools to analyse the field site, engaging in qualitative content analysis of both a large-scale ‘overview’ dataset and an indepth analysis of two specific events that disrupted consensus. This research builds on existing literature relating to online ‘echo chambers’ and political fan subcultures, providing an in-depth analysis not just of which media texts were shared to a politically partisan online network, but also what participants did with these texts through the participatory practices of political fandom. I identify three broad strategies used to engage with ostensibly dissonant texts: the interpretation of all events through a dynamic of knowledgeable insiders and an imagined ‘establishment’ mainstream; the use of reliable framing devices such as ‘media bias’ to articulate an ‘establishment’ position to oppose; and the development of a carnivalesque ‘content world’ of familiar reference points, in-jokes and narratives in which an implied consensus was an assumed part of insider status. My research demonstrates that online political networks do not necessarily exclude ‘dissonant’ texts, such as those produced by opponents or those that disprove the claims of allies, from their media consumption. Instead, they can engage omnivorously with whatever texts are available, engaging with the media field surrounding political events as a stock of potential resources to be used in the creation of content to share in a range of participatory practices

Cybernationalism and cyberactivism in China

El nacionalismo en la era de Internet se está convirtiendo cada vez más en un factor esencial que influye en la agenda-setting de la sociedad china, así como en las relaciones de China con los países extranjeros, especialmente con Occidente. Para China, una mejor comprensión de la estructura teórica universal y de los patrones de comportamiento del nacionalismo facilitaría la articulación social general de esta tendencia y potenciaría su papel positivo en la agenda-setting social. Por otra parte, un estudio del cibernacionalismo chino basado en una perspectiva china en el mundo académico occidental es un intento de transculturación. Desde el punto de vista de las relaciones internacionales y la geopolítica actuales, que son bastante urgentes, este intento ayudaría a mejorar la compatibilidad de China con el actual orden mundial dominado por Occidente, a reducir la desinformación entre China y otros países y a sentar las bases culturales e ideológicas para otras colaboraciones internacionales. Teniendo en cuenta el estado actual de la investigación sobre el nacionalismo chino y la naturaleza participativa de las masas del cibernacionalismo, esta disertación se centra en el cibernacionalismo en las tres partes siguientes. El primero es un estudio de los orígenes históricos del cibernacionalismo chino. Esta sección incluye tanto una exploración del consenso social en la antigua China como un estudio de la influencia del nacionalismo en la historia china moderna. El estudio de los orígenes históricos no sólo nos muestra la secuencia cronológica de la experiencia del desarrollo y la evolución tanto del proto-nacionalismo como del nacionalismo en China, sino que también revela un impulso decisivo para las reivindicaciones y comportamientos actuales del cibernacionalismo. La segunda parte trata del proceso de formación y ascenso del cibernacionalismo desde el siglo XXI. El importante antecedente del paso del nacionalismo al cibernacionalismo es el proceso de informatización de la sociedad china. Una vez completado el estudio de la situación básica de la sociedad china de Internet, especialmente el estudio de los medios sociales como espacio público, podemos vincular Internet con el nacionalismo y examinar el nuevo desarrollo del nacionalismo en la era de la participación de masas. El objetivo final es conectar el proto-nacionalismo, el nacionalismo y el cibernacionalismo, y seguir construyendo una comprensión del cibernacionalismo que sea coherente tanto con los principios universales del nacionalismo como con el contexto chino. Por último, validamos los resultados derivados del estudio anterior a través de la realidad social, es decir, estudiando las prácticas de ciberactivismo del cibernacionalismo para juzgar su suficiencia general así como su validez. Llevaremos a cabo varios estudios de caso de natural language processing basados en big data para reproducir la lógica de comportamiento y el impacto real del ciberactivismo de la manera más cercana posible a la realidad de Internet, evitando al mismo tiempo los defectos de argumentación unilateral y de infrarrepresentación de los estudios de caso tradicionales.Nationalism in the Internet age is increasingly becoming an essential factor influencing agendasetting within Chinese society, as well as China’s relations with foreign countries, especially the West. For China, a better understanding of the universal theoretical structure and behavioral patterns of nationalism would facilitate the overall social articulation of this trend and enhance its positive role in social agenda setting. On the other hand, a study of Chinese cybernationalism based on a Chinese perspective in western academia is an attempt at transculturation. From the viewpoint of the current rather urgent international relations and geopolitics, such an attempt would help to enhance China’s compatibility with the current western-dominated world order, reduce misinformation between China and other countries, and lay the cultural and ideological groundwork for various other international collaborations. Considering the current state of Chinese nationalism research and the mass participatory nature of cybernationalism, this dissertation focuses on cybernationalism in the following three parts. The first is a study of the historical origins of Chinese cybernationalism. This section includes both an exploration of the social consensus in ancient China and a survey of the influence of nationalism in modern Chinese history. The historical origins study not only shows us the chronological sequence of experiencing the development and evolution of both proto-nationalism and nationalism in China, but also reveals a decisive impetus for the current claims and behaviors of cybernationalism. The second part deals with the process of formation and rise of cybernationalism since the 21st century. The important background for the move from nationalism to cybernationalism is the informatization process of Chinese society. After we have completed the study of the basic situation of Chinese Internet society, especially the study of social media as a public space, we can link the Internet with nationalism and examine the new development of nationalism in the era of mass participation. The ultimate goal is to connect the proto-nationalism, nationalism, cybernationalism, and furtherly construct an understanding of cybernationalism that is consistent with both the universal principles of nationalism and the Chinese context. Finally, we validate the results derived from the previous study through social reality, i.e., by studying the cyberactivism practices of cybernationalism to judge its general sufficiency as well as validity. We will conduct several natural language processing case studies based on big data to reproduce the behavioral logic and actual impact of cyberactivism in the closest possible way to the Internet reality while avoiding the unilateral argumentation and under-representation flaws of traditional case studies

Participatory Construction of Wildfire Risk Scenarios in the Brazilian Amazon and galicia to Advance Risk Governance

This dissertation focuses on wildfire risk governance in the state of Rondônia (Brazilian Amazon) and in Galicia (Spain). Wildfires affect both areas, on different scales and in different contexts, but they present similar challenges. Wildfires are considered as historic processes, which complexity has been increasing over time because of changes resulting from anthropogenic action, induced by multiple socio-economic processes and political decisions. The role of the main actors and the risk communication are analyzed as well as the possibilities of the use of participative techniques as instruments that allow social learning process about disaster risk. For that purpose, interviews with key-actors and focus groups were used as a means of balancing risk factors. Via the negotiation and collective learning processes it is possible to tackle the complexity of the problem and construct future wildfire risk scenarios, which allows an interpretation of current and potential conditions in which risk governance is necessary for both studied areas. The social and political actors’ participation in the process encourages the improvement of risk management and participative governance

The American futures studies movement (1965-1975); its roots, motivations, and influences

In the 1960s and 1970s many Americans of widely dissimilar motivations used the study of possible futures as an open forum to express their desires, fears, and visions. Their efforts led to new organizations, publications, conferences, and university programs, which constituted an intellectual movement with far-reaching influences. The emergence of post-WWII futurism is a multi-stranded history involving people with diverse motivations and backgrounds who aspired to revolutionize policymaking at all levels. Their efforts crossed national borders and often transcended Cold War divisions. Many futurists hailed from governmental, business, or scientific backgrounds and advocated for issues ranging from national economic planning boards, or future-consciousness at corporate levels of decision-making, to sustainable ecological practices. One of their many historical strands went back to the early Cold War years and the philosopher-mathematicians employed by the RAND Corporation. Given the sensitive forecasting challenges brought by Cold War unknowns, these architects of futurist methodologies believed they needed to devise better - more scientific - opinion technologies. Their search for improving the tools, such as the Delphi method, of future-minded decision-making continued into the 1960s and 1970s. While qualitative assessments still reigned supreme in the social sciences, quantitative analysis became increasingly important during the 1960s. Futurists used social, political, and economic indicators to study alternative futures and comment on their presents. These futures researchers prized the quantification of past and present values both for physical and social concepts. From these numbers, they aspired to clarify the future: how to predict and understand it, and ultimately how to change it for the better. Futurists cared about many things, not only about perfecting their methodologies or epistemic foundations, but also about addressing current, pragmatic, and popular issues. The desire to disseminate their ideas more widely and have their methodology gain greater influence compelled futurists to organize and formalize their field. The field\u27s momentum slowed down by the 1980s as many critics disapproved of futurist methods and the deterministic, wishful, or simplistic outlooks that some futurists imagined. Although the movement in the United States was unique, other international case-studies developed in distinct yet comparable ways. Although futures researchers around the globe for centuries had enjoyed speculating about the future, this twentieth-century movement promised better predictions that were more systematic, detailed, controlled, quantitative, and expert

On Computing Non-hypocritical Consensuses in Standard Logic

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Nongmingong going online: an ethnography of the mediated work and life experience of the Chinese working-class in ‘digital China’

This dissertation, based primarily on 10-month fieldwork in the Weida factory in Dongguan, China and home visits with workers I met there, explores the subjective experience of nongmingong, rural-to-urban migrant workers, confronting China’s recent ICTs-driven economic restructuring in both work and leisure. This study contributes to sociology of labour research in China by addressing the new complexities brought about by digital technologies, and internationally to debates of digital labour and the future of work from the vintage point of the subjective experience of working class in Global South developing economies. Whether supported by the state or driven by market forces, digital technologies are becoming integrated into nongmingong’s life at an unprecedented pace, adding new complexities to the process of class formation. Incorporating the theory of the mutual shaping of technology and user/society into the larger framework of working class formation, this research takes nongmingong’s ICTs-enabled practices as the starting place for an intersectional analysis that considers class and gender, in order to understand their ICTs-mediated politics of class formation in terms of work and leisure. The findings show that ICTs-enabled jobs provide nongmingong with opportunities to improve the harsh factory working conditions and contribute to their economic security at a time of economic turbulence, allowing them to address their felt responsibilities and concerns in ways that are classed and gendered, especially as regards the family’s subsistence and upward mobility. The findings show further that taking up these opportunities positions nongmingong in various technologically-mediated production regimes, engendering different dynamics of exploitation and resistance. Politics of production aside, in the cultural realm the commercially-produced and politically-censored ICTs-enabled media entertainments allow them to negotiate alienating dagong (working for a boss) life, but they also confine them in a web of dominant meanings. In face of this discursive domination, nongmingong actively select and interpret media meanings, accepting some while rejecting others, according to a bitter and precarious structure of feeling

'Pauper aliens' and 'political refugees':A corpus linguistic approach to the language of migration in nineteenth-century newspapers

The widespread digitisation of their source base means that historians now face an overwhelming body of material. This historical ‘big data’ is only going to continue to expand, not just because digitisation features prominently on the agendas of institutions, but also because those studying late twentieth, and twenty-first century, history will have to deal with large quantities of ‘born digital’ material as they turn their gaze to the internet age. Although the interfaces currently used to access digital sources have their strengths, there is an increasing need for more effective ways for historians to work with large amounts of text. This thesis is one of the first studies to explore the potential of corpus linguistics, the computer-assisted analysis of language in very large bodies of text, as a means of approaching the ever-expanding historical archive. This thesis uses corpus linguistics to examine the representation of migrants in the British Library’s nineteenth-century newspaper collection, focusing specifically upon the discourses associated with ‘aliens’ and ‘refugees’, and how they changed over time. The nineteenth century saw an increase in global movement, which led to considerable legislative changes, including the development of many of Britain’s present-day migration controls. This thesis finds that ‘alien’ migration increased in topicality in the 1880s and 1890s and that ‘alien’ saw a striking shift in its associations that, significantly, coincided with an increase in, predominantly Jewish, migrants from the Russian Empire. Although only a small proportion of Britain’s ‘alien’ population, this group dominated newspaper reporting, which became characterised by increasingly negative language, including a strong association between the ‘alien’ and poverty. Although ‘refugee’ was often associated with more positive language than ‘alien’, this thesis finds that the actions of a small number of violent individuals influenced newspaper reporting upon political refugees, who became implicated in the alleged ‘abuse’ of the ‘right of asylum’

Harnessing Chaos

"Harnessing Chaos" is an explanation of changes in dominant politicalized assumptions about what the Bible really means in English culture since the 1960s. James G. Crossley looks at how the social upheavals of the 1960s, and the economic shift from the post-war dominance of Keynesianism to the post-1970s dominance of neoliberalism, brought about certain emphases and nuances in the ways in which the Bible is popularly understood, particularly in relation to dominant political ideas. This book examines the decline of politically radical biblical interpretation in parliamentary politics and the victory of (a modified form of) Margaret Thatcher's re-reading of the liberal Bible tradition, following the normalisation of (a modified form of) Thatcherism more generally