373,712 research outputs found
âI am just a part of the communityâ: Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Women and the Third Person Perception
This article focuses on the third-person perception (TPP) of Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. TPPâs central insight is that consumers believe media influences âher/himâ (the third person) much more than âmeâ (the first person). Since media technologies pose challenges to these womenâs sense of religious devotion, their TPP toward secular media contributes to the discussion about religion, gender, and media. The study uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including a survey, participant observation, and interviews, to answer three research questions: (1) Do Amish and Ultra-Orthodox women have the third-person perception, reflected by their estimation that the negative influence of secular media will be greater on others than on themselves? (2) What are these womenâs perceptions of secular mediaâs potential danger to their community, family, and themselves? (3) What can we learn when comparing womenâs perceptions in these two religious settings about secular media influences? The results show that nearly all Amish and Ultra-Orthodox women perceive that secular media holds potential danger for their community, family, and themselves and that no support exists in this study to argue that these women are experiencing the TPP. Their qualitative responses reflect their perceptions about potential dangers to their community, family, and selves. The comparison addressed the two groupsâ key similarity: the high perception of the mediaâs risks and dangers. Simultaneously, it also reveals a key difference: Amish women keep thinking about their resourcesâmind, soul, and timeâwhile Ultra-Orthodox womenâs responses show that they are much more familiar with popular culture. [Abstract by author.
Similarity and the trustworthiness of distributive judgements
When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, this leads to choices that are inconsistent with all standard theories of justice. We argue that this demonstrates the untrustworthiness of distributive judgments in cases that elicit similarity-based choice
Non-Gaussian statistics in space plasma turbulence, fractal properties and pitfalls
Magnetic field fluctuations in the vicinity of the Earth's bow shock have
been investigated with the aim to characterize the intermittent behaviour of
strong plasma turbulence. The observed small-scale intermittency may be the
signature of a multifractal process but a deeper inspection reveals caveats in
such an interpretation. Several effects, including the anisotropy of the
wavefield, the violation of the Taylor hypothesis and the occasional occurrence
of coherent wave packets, strongly affect the higher order statistical
properties. After correcting these effects, a more Gaussian and scale-invariant
wavefield is recovered.Comment: 13 pages (including 13 postscript figures), to appear in Nonlinear
Processes in Geophysic
Nostalgia videogames as playable game criticism
The aim of this paper is to consider the emergence of nostalgia videogames in the context of playable game criticism. Mirroring the development of the nostalgia film in cinema, an increasing number of developers are creating videogames that are evocative of past gaming forms, designs, and styles. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the extent to which these nostalgia videogames could be considered games-on-games: games that offer a critical view on game design and development, framed by the nostalgia and cultural memory of both gamers and game developers. Theories of pastiche and parody as applied to literature, film, and art are used to form a basis for the examination of recent nostalgia videogames, all of which demonstrate a degree of reflection on the videogame medium
Mechanisms in Dynamically Complex Systems
In recent debates mechanisms are often discussed in the context of âcomplex systemsâ which are understood as having a complicated compositional structure. I want to draw the attention to another, radically different kind of complex system, in fact one that many scientists regard as the only genuine kind of complex system. Instead of being compositionally complex these systems rather exhibit highly non-trivial dynamical patterns on the basis of structurally simple arrangements of large numbers of non-linearly interacting constituents. The characteristic dynamical patterns in what I call âdynamically complex systemsâ arise from the interaction of the systemâs parts largely irrespective of many properties of these parts. Dynamically complex systems can exhibit surprising statistical characteristics, the robustness of which calls for an explanation in terms of underlying generating mechanisms. However, I want to argue, dynamically complex systems are not sufficiently covered by the available conceptions of mechanisms. I will explore how the notion of a mechanism has to be modified to accommodate this case. Moreover, I will show under which conditions the widespread, if not inflationary talk about mechanisms in (dynamically) complex systems stretches the notion of mechanisms beyond its reasonable limits and is no longer legitimate
Co-Following on Twitter
We present an in-depth study of co-following on Twitter based on the
observation that two Twitter users whose followers have similar friends are
also similar, even though they might not share any direct links or a single
mutual follower. We show how this observation contributes to (i) a better
understanding of language-agnostic user classification on Twitter, (ii)
eliciting opportunities for Computational Social Science, and (iii) improving
online marketing by identifying cross-selling opportunities.
We start with a machine learning problem of predicting a user's preference
among two alternative choices of Twitter friends. We show that co-following
information provides strong signals for diverse classification tasks and that
these signals persist even when (i) the most discriminative features are
removed and (ii) only relatively "sparse" users with fewer than 152 but more
than 43 Twitter friends are considered.
Going beyond mere classification performance optimization, we present
applications of our methodology to Computational Social Science. Here we
confirm stereotypes such as that the country singer Kenny Chesney
(@kennychesney) is more popular among @GOP followers, whereas Lady Gaga
(@ladygaga) enjoys more support from @TheDemocrats followers.
In the domain of marketing we give evidence that celebrity endorsement is
reflected in co-following and we demonstrate how our methodology can be used to
reveal the audience similarities between Apple and Puma and, less obviously,
between Nike and Coca-Cola. Concerning a user's popularity we find a
statistically significant connection between having a more "average"
followership and having more followers than direct rivals. Interestingly, a
\emph{larger} audience also seems to be linked to a \emph{less diverse}
audience in terms of their co-following.Comment: full version of a short paper at Hypertext 201
The Mystical Path of Total Abandonment to God in Jean-Pierre de Caussade and the Bhagavad-Gita
One of the creative tensions in Hinduism is the concept of God as Impersonal Absolute vs. the concept of God as Personal. In the Bhagavad-Gita (written c. 400-200 B.C.), the concept of God as personal, loving and compassionate is emphasized. It is not surprising, therefore, that many scholars and spiritual writers have found in the Bhagavad-Gita a rich source of comparison with Christian spirituality
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