'The enemy among us': detecting cyber hate speech with threats-based othering language embeddings

Offensive or antagonistic language targeted at individuals and social groups based on their personal characteristics (also known as cyber hate speech or cyberhate) has been frequently posted and widely circulated via the World Wide Web. This can be considered as a key risk factor for individual and societal tension surrounding regional instability. Automated Web-based cyberhate detection is important for observing and understanding community and regional societal tension - especially in online social networks where posts can be rapidly and widely viewed and disseminated. While previous work has involved using lexicons, bags-of-words or probabilistic language parsing approaches, they often suffer from a similar issue which is that cyberhate can be subtle and indirect - thus depending on the occurrence of individual words or phrases can lead to a significant number of false negatives, providing inaccurate representation of the trends in cyberhate. This problem motivated us to challenge thinking around the representation of subtle language use, such as references to perceived threats from ‘the other’ including immigration or job prosperity in a hateful context. We propose a novel ‘othering’ feature set that utilises language use around the concept of ‘othering’ and intergroup threat theory to identify these subtleties, and we implement a wide range of classification methods using embedding learning to compute semantic distances between parts of speech considered to be part of an ‘othering’ narrative. To validate our approach we conducted two sets of experiments. The first involved comparing the results of our novel method with state of the art baseline models from the literature. Our approach outperformed all existing methods. The second tested the best performing models from the first phase on unseen datasets for different types of cyberhate, namely religion, disability, race and sexual orientation. The results showed F-measure scores for classifying hateful instances obtained through applying our model of 0.81, 0.71, 0.89 and 0.72 respectively, demonstrating the ability of the ‘othering’ narrative to be an important part of model generalisation

"I don't want to be touched all the time" - Street Harassment and the Indian Woman: Qualitative exploration of street harassment through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Dispositive Analysis

Street harassment is the gender-based sexual harassment of individuals in public spaces by strangers. Studies have shown that the majority of victims of street harassment are women and the perpetrators are men. Despite its serious implications on women’s quality of life and psychological well-being, street harassment remains an understudied area and has not been included in the wider ‘violence against women and girls’(VAWG) research and discourse. This research aimed to position street harassment as a distinct form of VAWG by exploring Indian women’s sense-making of their lived experiences of street harassment. The research was structured into two parts: Part 1 – The ‘Sociocultural Study’ implemented dispositive analysis of three recent Bollywood films of romantic genre to explore the construction of sociocultural discourses on Indian womanhood. Part 2 – The ‘Experiential Study’ explored the lived experiences of street harassment of adult Indian women by using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The participants included four single women (aged 25-35) and four mothers (aged 35-50) to teenage daughters. The Sociocultural Study provided the cultural context for the Experiential Study. The findings of the Sociocultural Study indicated that the concept of womanhood is constructed by the Indian male gaze—the virginal sanskari (traditional) Indian woman is considered the symbol of Indian womanhood, whereas the “westernised” vamp is the morally corrupt temptress of men. These patriarchal constructions were rooted in deeply ingrained sexism, sexual objectification, and rape myth acceptance, proposed as the ‘triad’ of core mediators of street harassment by this research. The ‘triad’ featured significantly in the meaning-making of the participants in the Experiential study. The participants interpreted their experiences in themes of disempowerment, emotional isolation, loss of sense of agency, identity conflicts, and stress in family relationships. The findings aligned with UN’s definition of ‘violence against women’. Recommendations for future research include better theoretical developments to explain street harassment; investigation of potential long-term effects of street harassment in women such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); designing studies with more male participants to explore an ‘insider’ view into harassment; and finally, development of new standardised quantitative instruments to measure various aspects of street harassment

Misogynistic Hate Speech on Social Networks: a Critical Discourse Analysis

The present dissertation aims at recognising online misogyny as a form of hate speech, by providing a qualitative analysis of this discourse on Twitter and Facebook. While recent reports in media coverage have revealed that sexist harassment is the most pervasive social problem on Web 2.0, much scholarly research has mainly focused on other types of hate speech (e.g., racist and xenophobic vilification), overlooking the seriousness of misogynistic verbal abuse. The multilayered impact of misogynous discourse on women’s lives shows the urgent need to recognise gender-based prejudice as a form of hate speech, and to provide a more thorough and updated theorisation of this phenomenon. For this reason, the present dissertation suggests considering online misogyny as a harmful speech act which employs different tactics and discursive strategies to harass and silence women who engage in online public conversation. Following the methodology of feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, it develops an extensive qualitative study of the abuse experienced online by six women who reside in three different countries (i.e., Australia, Italy, and the USA). By analysing the discursive strategies commonly employed in user-generated contents to reaffirm hegemonic patriarchal ideologies and fixed gender identities, this dissertation also examines the entanglement between gender prejudice and other types of discrimination (i.e., racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and ageism), and it identifies the articulation of online misogynistic hate speech through a series of tactics which harm women’s lives on multiple levels. Therefore, it presents a taxonomy of these impacts through a new model that was specifically developed for the research at issue, and that will hopefully guide future research on misogynistic hate speech. In conclusion, this study argues for the development of effective educational tools to tackle sexist hate speech online, to guarantee women’s digital citizenship, and to promote a more respectful conversation in cyberspace

Cross-cultural evidence for the influence of positive self-evaluation on cross-cultural differences in well-being

Poster Session F - Well-Being: abstract F197We propose that cultural norms about realism and hedonism contribute to the cross-cultural differences in well-being over and above differences in objective living conditions. To test this hypothesis, we used samples from China and the United States. Results supported the mediating role of positive evaluative bias in cross-cultural differences in well-being.postprin

Values and need satisfaction across 20 world regions

Poster Session F - Motivation/Goals: abstract F78Intrinsic valuing predicts the satisfaction of psychological needs (Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009). We conceptually replicate and extend this finding across 20 world regions. In multi-level models, Schwartz’s (1992) self-transcendence value was positively related to autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction, even when controlling for the Big Five.postprin

The Cultural Politics of Anti-Elitism

This book examines the highly ambivalent implications and effects of anti-elitism. It draws on this theme as a cross-cutting entry point to provide transdisciplinary analysis of current conjunctures and their contradictions, drawing on examples from popular culture and media, politics, fashion, labour and spatial arrangements. Using the toolboxes of media and discourse analysis, hegemony theory, ethnography, critical social psychology and cultural studies more broadly, the book surveys and theorizes the forms, the implications and the ambiguities and limits of anti-elitist formations in different parts of the world. Anti-elitist sentiments colour the contemporary political conjuncture as much as they shape pop cultural and media trends. Populists, right-wing authoritarian ones and others, direct their anger at cultural, political and, sometimes, economic elites while supporting other elites and creating new ones. At the same time, "elitist" knowledge and expertise, decision-making power and taste regimes are being questioned in societal transformations that are discussed much more positively under headlines such as participation or democratization. The book brings together a group of international, interdisciplinary case studies in order to better understand the ways in which the battle cry "against the elites" shapes current conjunctures and possible future politics, focusing on themes such as nationalist political discourse in India, Austria, the UK and Hungary, labour struggles and anti-oligarchy rhetoric in Russia, tax-avoiding elites and fiscal imaginaries, working-class agency, Melania Trump as a celebrity narrative in Slovenia, aesthetic codes of the Alt-Right, football hooliganism in Germany, "hipster hate" in German political discourse or the politics of expertise and anti-elite iconography in high fashion internationally. The book is intended for undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers

Uma Análise behaviorista radical da discussão feminista sobre o empoderamento da mulher

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Alexandre DittrichDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia. Defesa: Curitiba, 27/09/2017Inclui referências : f. 50-55Resumo: O movimento feminista, desde sua gênese, busca descrever as condições das mulheres por todo o mundo, destacando a falta de igualdade de direitos e de condições entre os gêneros. Junto a tal descrição, o feminismo é ativo em propor soluções para a problemática da desigualdade entre homens e mulheres. Uma das vias frequentemente citadas pelas feministas é a do empoderamento, que se refere tanto à tomada de consciência da desigualdade quanto à superação desta por meio de condições que libertem as mulheres, enquanto classe de indivíduos, dos contextos onde elas sofrem os efeitos da discriminação. No entanto, o termo é frequentemente usado para descrever uma grande variedade de condições e ações que podem ou não, segundo críticas das próprias vertentes feministas, ser de fato libertadoras. Entendendo empoderamento como um conjunto de comportamentos humanos, o presente trabalho realiza uma revisão das variáveis comportamentais que controlam o uso do termo em periódicos feministas - constituindo-se portanto como uma análise do comportamento verbal -, em uma tentativa de descrever em quais condições as feministas consideram comportamento(s) como empoderados/empoderadores, se utilizando, para isso, de duas categorias principais: empoderamento com base em estados internos e empoderamento com base no contracontrole. Após esta revisão, o trabalho analisa, de acordo com a perspectiva behaviorista radical, como as categorias de comportamentos descritos pela literatura se coadunam com os objetivos expressos pelo movimento feminista. Palavras-chave: empoderamento; feminismo; Behaviorismo Radical.Abstract: The feminist movement, from its genesis, describes conditions of women throughout the world, highlighting the lack of equality of rights and conditions between genders. Alongside this description, feminism is active in proposing solutions to the problem of inequality between men and women. One of the ways often cited by feminists is empowerment, which refers to the awareness of inequality and also to overcoming it through conditions that free women, as a class of individuals, from the contexts in which they suffer the effects of discrimination. However, the term is often used to describe a wide range of conditions and actions that may or may not, according to critics of feminist tendencies, be liberating. Understanding empowerment as a set of human behaviors, this work reviews behavioral variables that control the use of the term in feminist journals - thus constituting an analysis of verbal behavior - in an attempt to describe under what conditions feminists consider these behaviors empowered/empowering, using two main categories for this: empowerment based on internal states and empowerment based on countercontrol. After this review, this work analyzes, according to the radical behaviorist perspective, how the categories of behaviors described in the literature fit the goals expressed by the feminist movement. Keywords: empowerment; feminism; radical behaviorism

Global Politics in a Post-Truth Age

This book brings together ten chapters that reflect upon the state of global, regional and national politics in the twenty-first century within the context of post-truth. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of post-truth describes it as circumstances in which facts are less influential in shaping public opinion and political action than emotion, belief and distortion. What unites the chapters in this book, other than their focus on the meaning and nature of post-truth, is that they also consider the (supposed) erosion of many of the norms and patterns of political and social behaviour established in the second half of the twentieth century. This is especially pertinent given the rise in social media and the internet, political polarisation, and new patterns of state rivalries that harness post-truth politics. Each chapter is styled to engage with academic themes and leading-edge research, yet also to present complex ideas accessibly where possible

Legal Anarchism: Does Existence Need to Be Regulated by the State

This thesis asks does existence need to be regulated by the State? The answer relies on legal anarchism, an interdisciplinary, particularly criminal law and philosophy, and unconventional research project based on multiple methodologies with a specific language. It critically analyzes and consequently rejects State law because of its unjustified and unnecessary nature founded on unlimited violence and white-collar crime (Chapters 1-4), on the one hand, and suggests some alternatives to the Governmental legal system founded on agreement and peace (Chapter 5), on the other hand. It furthermore takes into account the elements of time and space, which means the ecological, local, national, regional, and international aspects of the legal system, in its analysis, critiques, and models