Psycho-Social Factors of Terrorism in Nigeria

The present study aims to build a thorough understanding and causes of terrorism. It discusses probable psychological and sociological factors for terrorist activities. Paper elaborates the presence of psychopathologies and cultural influences that harbor mindsets of terrorist individuals. It also highlights the relationship between religion and violence and elaborates the impact of media and its role for terrorism. The identification of psycho-social factors linked with terrorism and violence serve as a way to better understand the phenomenon. This is likely to promote peace, harmony, and love in Nigerian societies

A weakly supervised Bayesian model for violence detection in social media

Social streams have proven to be the most up-to-date and inclusive information on current events. In this paper we propose a novel probabilistic modelling framework, called violence detection model (VDM), which enables the identification of text containing violent content and extraction of violence-related topics over social media data. The proposed VDM model does not require any labeled corpora for training, instead, it only needs the incorporation of word prior knowledge which captures whether a word indicates violence or not. We propose a novel approach of deriving word prior knowledge using the relative entropy measurement of words based on the intuition that low entropy words are indicative of semantically coherent topics and therefore more informative, while high entropy words indicates words whose usage is more topical diverse and therefore less informative. Our proposed VDM model has been evaluated on the TREC Microblog 2011 dataset to identify topics related to violence. Experimental results show that deriving word priors using our proposed relative entropy method is more effective than the widely-used information gain method. Moreover, VDM gives higher violence classification results and produces more coherent violence-related topics compared to a few competitive baselines

Alternative Explanations: Examining Exposure Recall, Selective Perception, And Response Bias In The Evaluation Of A Domestic Violence Prevention Radio Campaign

This dissertation explores the program evaluation results from a domestic violence prevention initiative designed to reach African American adults with a dramatic radio campaign. The impact evaluation found associations between program exposure and outcomes, consistent with a claim of impact, however, low exposure levels and evidence of selectivity led evaluators to reject the hypothesis of impact. This paper addresses the question of explaining an association between exposure and outcomes if it is not due to program effects. Two prominent alternate explanations are explored: selectivity and response bias. Through two paired analyses I approach the data set in two different ways. In the first pair I seek evidence of variables that explain two exposure measures - program recall and false exposure claims. The first analysis corroborates the finding of selectivity, as beliefs and behaviors related to domestic violence prevention explain recall, as do racial identification and media use. Domestic violence-related measures are also positively related to false exposure claims. In addition, respondents who are male, listen to the radio more, and spoke with Black interviewers, are more likely to falsely claim exposure. vi In the next paired analysis I reexamine the selectivity hypothesis, testing whether other factors underlie the association between domestic violence measures and the two exposure measures. No other factors account for the association between domestic violence measures and recall, and I conclude that listeners respond differently to a persuasive message depending on their prior beliefs, intentions and behaviors. Most of the association (79%) between domestic violence measures and false exposure remains, while racial identification and media use each account for a small portion (11% and 5% respectively) of the associations. I conclude that issue involvement leads to central processing of the message and consequent recall. The program may thus serve to reinforce and strengthen prosocial norms. I also conclude that the tendency to falsely claim exposure does not reflect social desirability, but demand compliance in response to the interview situation. The study suggests that selective perception and response bias are distinct cognitive processes motivated by different factors

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe

Europe is a continent of immigration, emigration and internal migration. In this chapter, we review recent literature that demonstrates that immigrants to Europe face prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Levels of prejudice, discrimination and violence targeted at immigrants vary between European countries, over time and the particular immigrant group under scrutiny. Classical psychological explanations regarding causes and reasons for rejection are supported in the European context: These include dispositional influences, such as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation; situational influences, such as high nationalistic identification, intergroup anxiety and threat, lack of contact; and macro-level influences, such as politics and media coverage. Based on the reviewed literature, we propose a model of micro-macro influences on prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants that organizes the existing research and reveals important areas for future research, especially research investigating micro-macro interactions. Looking into the future, we criticize that the continuation of the current walling of Europe against immigrants will reinforce future processes of devaluation and dehumanization

Profiling Hate Speech Spreaders on Twitter

Hate speech is defined as any public communication that depreciates a person or a group by expressing hate or encouraging violence. From the identification of the profiles of hate propagators, it is possible to avoid the spread of hate speech and keep social networks healthier. In this study, I focused on Twitter. Simply analyzing words in tweets is a good starting point to identify hate speech and people who spread hate speech. However, we believe there is value in considering other expressions that are commonly seen in tweets. The purpose of this study was to explore a variety of expressions and unveil a set of common patterns that could lead to identifying user profiles that promote hate speech on social media (Twitter)

Mecca or Mexico City? : social media, empathy, and movement in contemporary Indonesia

Contemporary Indonesia is at a critical juncture. The intense forces of globalization are shaping how Indonesians position themselves in relationship with the intensifying, transnational movement of bodies wrought by state violence and neoliberal economics. This thesis examines how certain Indonesians perform empathetic responses to these global motions via social media. The first case study looks at Indonesian Islam and Twitter through the lens of the #saverohingya movement. It examines a protest action performed by fans of the Persib Bandung soccer club and the attendant discourse it elicited on Twitter. The second case study examines the Instagram presence of Komunitas Salihara, a cosmopolitan private arts venue in South Jakarta which presented a variety of Latin American themed programming contemporaneously to the #saverohingya movement. I posit that social media not only serves as an archive of performance but that it also accretes performative context, allowing users to enact their identification with transnational Islamic identities or cosmopolitan neoliberal logics through their engagement with the media in a way that troubles extant performance studies and dance studies literature on archive, repertoire, and empathy.Theatre and Danc

Analisis Framing Majalah Daring Magdalene.Co Mengenai Kekerasan Perempuan

Nowadays, it can be calculated that cases of violence that occur in Indonesia are increasing every year. As a consequence, it becomes the subject of mass media coverage in Indonesia. However, most of the mass media often publish the news disproportionately and women are frequently marginalized in the reporting. This phenomenon has made one party look bad or negative in the existing reality. This research aims to discuss the framing analysis related to violence against women in Magdalene.co Online Magazine from February to September 2019 edition. This research uses Robert N. Entman’s framing analysis model with qualitative research method. Nine articles on social and political rubric contained in Magdalene.co indicate that Magdalene.com has created four categories in framing the news namely Problem Identification, Casual Interpretation, Moral Evaluation, and Treatment Recommendation. Problem Identification defines that violence against women is a problem that arises as a result of weak legal protection. According to Casual Interpretation, Magdalene.co sees the problem is caused by many factors. One of them is the protection of female victims of violence when they often experience confusion. According to Moral Evaluation, Magdalene.co tries to write down moral choices in this case that the protection of female victims is not yet firm. The last is Treatment Recommendation. According to it, Magdalene.co strengthens the protection for victims of violence and the issue of violence against women is considered a serious problem

The Polarization of the French society: a study of the Yellow Vests movement

On November 17th, 2018, French people, wearing a yellow security vest, came together in the streets of the big cities and on the roundabouts of the country towns. This movement stood out as particularly violent, on the part of the Yellow Vests, especially in Paris, and by severe repression on the part of the government. What was then called the Yellow Vests movement highlighted Social Polarization, as Structural Violence revealed social patterns. From a sociological and constructivist approach, this paper aims to understand the different actors and their role in the polarization of society in the specific conflict that was the Yellow Vests movement. The thesis questions the construction of values and norms and the perpetration of ancient cleavages in today’s French society. It analyses the consequences of prolonged embedded Structural Violence on the different ways people identify, creating a polarization of identities. Furthermore, this paper researches the media’s impact on the polarization of French society and how it became a tool of power. In conclusion, this study aims to investigate how different actors participated in the polarization of French society in the context of the Yellow Vests movement. This study was conducted using critical discourse analysis on thirty-five newspaper articles from six different newspapers and on fifteen interviews with four different actors, namely, Yellow Vests, journalists, police officers, and politicians. The analysis made in this research highlights the particular impact of media on public opinion and how they are used to pursue personal and political goals. Key findings suggest that the conflict emphasized an opposition between the privileged and the underprivileged and significant Structural Violence between the different economic classes. It also emphasizes the importance of Identification and Othering in the manufacturing of Structural Violence. This research stands within the scope of research about social movements and peace and conflict studies. Conclusively, I summarize the ”situation” with a discussion of possible solutions that could contribute to a more Positive Peace in the effort to end Structural Violence in France

Becoming global (un)civil society: struggles in the global indymedia network

In this paper we ask how actors and organisations can become constructed and treated as part of ‘uncivil society’. We contest the notion that ‘uncivil’ necessarily equates with the dark of qualities of violence and organised criminality. Instead, we take a Gramscian perspective in suggesting that what becomes ‘uncivil’ is any practice and organisation that attempts to contest and escape the disciplining enclosures of the hegemonic order, of which civil society is a necessary part. To trace this phenomenon, we consider several ways in which a global media network called Indymedia has established and maintained itself as a counter-hegemonic mediaproducing organisation. In this case, a conscious positioning and self-identification as counter-hegemonic has been accompanied by the framing and sometimes violent disciplining of nodes of this network as ‘uncivil’ by cooperating state authorities. This is in the absence of association of this network with organised violence or crime. We intend our reflections to contribute to a deepening theorisation of the terms ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ as they are becoming used in international relations and social movement studies

Theoretical Motivations for Posting in #MeToo

In 2017, actress Alyssa Milano shared a tweet encouraging survivors of gendered violence to write “me too.” A media storm ensued as survivors answered her call in the millions. Anyone can look back at what survivors posted during the height of #MeToo, but we still don’t know why they felt the need to post in the first place. To answer this question, the social identity model of deindividuation effects and spiral of silence were utilized. The social identification, perceived anonymity affordances, and willingness to self-censor scales were used for this research, along with a perceived deindividuation scale that was created for this study and found reliable. Snowball recruitment focusing mainly on Reddit and other SNSs yielded 256 eligible participants. Through a quantitative survey, it was found that survivors who posted in #MeToo had stronger group identification with others posting, higher perceptions of anonymity afforded on social networking sites, and higher perceptions of deindividuation during #MeToo compared to survivors who chose not to post. Furthermore, survivors who posted had lower willingness to self-censor during #MeToo and in the present day when compared to non-posters. This lends evidentiary support to a causal relationship between posting in #MeToo and a survivor’s willingness to self-censor today