Voting in the Echo Chamber? Patterns of Political Online Activities and Voting Behavior in Switzerland

Understanding the political consequences of digitalization is among the key challenges for modern societies. A pressing issue is the question whether political online activities make individuals more close-minded and less willing to consider alternative arguments. We examine this question using a peculiarity of the Swiss electoral system – the possibility to split votes – as a behavioral outcome measure. We argue that political online activities might either make individuals less likely to split votes (“echo chamber”-argument) or more likely to spread their votes across parties (“deliberation”-argument). Empirically, we use data from the Swiss Election Study Selects 2019 to test these arguments. The results of a hierarchical logistic regression analysis do not support any of the conflicting arguments. Yet, additional analyses suggest that political interest moderates the relationship between online activities and vote splitting: political interest makes online activists more likely to split votes

Was EU-wide vaccine procurement the strategy Germans wanted?

Last year the EU made the decision to buy and distribute COVID-19 vaccines centrally, which has since proved controversial. Ann-Kathrin Reinl, Steffen Pötzschke and Alexia Katsanidou (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) surveyed public opinion to find out whether Germans initially agreed with the strategy

Discovering and interpreting audio media generation units: A typological-praxeological approach to the mediatization of everyday music listening

To deal with methodological challenges, which confront current mediatization research due to the ongoing digitalization of media, we suggest a mixed methods approach that is an adopted form of media repertoire analysis based on the generation unit concept of Karl Mannheim. Essentially, we propose that discovery and life cycle analysis of culturally meaningful media generation units may be achieved by ‘quantitative’ media repertoire studies on the societal level. However, interpretation of underlying orientation patterns, which explain empirically observed emergence, decline and metamorphoses of media generation units should be realized on micro level by reconstructive ‘qualitative’ methodologies that are able to differentiate between generational identity and generational habitus in the spirit of praxeological sociology of knowledge. Our critical-realist approach is demonstrated by a latent class analysis of Germans’ audio media repertoires in 2012 and extracts of the documentary analysis of verbal material from narrative interviews with selected media generation unit members.DFG, 223657291, Survey Musik und Medien. Empirische Basisdaten und theoretische Modellierung der Mediatisierung alltäglicher Musikrezeption in DeutschlandDFG, 131502115, SPP 1505: Mediatisierte Welten: Kommunikation im medialen und gesellschaftlichen Wande

Sound, materiality and embodiment challenges for the concept of 'musical expertise' in the age of digital mediatization

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Within academic music research, 'musical expertise' is often employed as a 'moderator variable' when conducting empirical studies on music listening. Prevalent conceptualizations typically conceive of it as a bundle of cognitive skills acquired through formal musical education. By implicitly drawing on the paradigm of the Western classical live concert, this ignores that for most people nowadays, the term 'music' refers to electro-acoustically generated sound waves rendered by audio or multimedia electronic devices. Hence, our article tries to challenge the traditional musicologist's view by drawing on empirical findings from three more recent music-related research lines that explicitly include the question of media playback technologies. We conclude by suggesting a revised musical expertise concept that extends from the traditional dimensions and also incorporates expertise gained through ecological perception, material practice and embodied listening experiences in the everyday. Altogether, our contribution shall draw attention to growing convergences between musicology and media and communications research

Minimal cut sets in a metabolic network are elementary modes in a dual network

Motivation: Elementary modes (EMs) and minimal cut sets (MCSs) provide important techniques for metabolic network modeling. Whereas EMs describe minimal subnetworks that can function in steady state, MCSs are sets of reactions whose removal will disable certain network functions. Effective algorithms were developed for EM computation while calculation of MCSs is typically addressed by indirect methods requiring the computation of EMs as initial step. Results: In this contribution, we provide a method that determines MCSs directly without calculating the EMs. We introduce a duality framework for metabolic networks where the enumeration of MCSs in the original network is reduced to identifying the EMs in a dual network. As a further extension, we propose a generalization of MCSs in metabolic networks by allowing the combination of inhomogeneous constraints on reaction rates. This framework provides a promising tool to open the concept of EMs and MCSs to a wider class of applications. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin

The usage of multidisciplinary physical therapies at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Summer Games: an observational study

Objective: To describe the usage of physical therapies services –physiotherapy, osteopath, chiropractic, and sports massage –by athletes and non-athletes at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Polyclinic, and across different sports. Methods: Treatments delivered by the multidisciplinary team of physical therapies were recorded throughout the 32 days of operation of the Olympic Polyclinic by entry into an Electronic Medical Record system. Encounters included information on provider discipline, treatment modalities, and athlete reason for use of the service. Cold-therapy total immersion ice baths (TIIB) were provided as part of the services, but were reported and analysed separately.Results: There were 4,993 encounters (4,038 athlete, 955 non-athlete encounters) in 1,395 athletes and 393 non-athletes, (12.4%) of all athletes seeking treatment. For all four provider disciplines, as well as for TIIB, the primary reason for athlete attendance was for recovery (52% of all encounters), followed by injury treatment (30%), and maintenance (16%). Athletes reported “injury” as the main reason for physiotherapy visits (92% of all encounters,2.8 encounters per athlete), chiropractic (94%,1.9) and osteopathy (91%,1.8) visits. Almost all TIIB visits were used for recovery purposes (98% of all TIIB encounters; 2.1 encounters per athlete). Athletes from handball (37% of all handball athletes), followed by judo (22%), and athletics (21%), presented the largest user groups. Conclusion: This is the first paper from an Olympic Polyclinic to evaluate the physical therapies’ activity, and athlete’s reason for use of the multidisciplinary physical therapies team, including total immersion ice bath provision. These results emphasise the importance of a multidisciplinary approach

Olympic Games 2010 Sports injuries and illnesses during the Winter

ABSTRACT Background Identifi cation of high-risk sports, including their most common and severe injuries and illnesses, will facilitate the identifi cation of sports and athletes at risk at an early stage

Comparing Frequency Transfer via GNSS and Fiber in a Common-clock Configuration

Realizing a clock-based geodetic network with a relative uncertainty level of 10?18 has been a significant objective for the scientific community. This network can be utilized for realizing more accurate geodetic reference frames and for testing the fundamental laws of physics, such as the theory of relativity. Typically, optical fibers are connecting optical clocks in such a network. For the last decades, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) have built a trustful and easy-setup method for frequency and time transfer. However, recently optical fiber link networks showed better frequency instability. In this study, we investigate the limits of GNSS-based frequency transfer links with the help of an optical fiber link as ground truth. Therefore, we analyze the GNSS data acquired in a dedicated common-clock experiment over a 52 km baseline. We focus on developing two algorithms to estimate the receiver clock differences, hence the frequency instability. These are the single difference (SD) approach with ambiguity fixing as a common view technique, and precise point positioning as an all in-view technique. We discuss the frequency instability achieved by the optical fiber link as well. We evaluate further the performance by computing the modified Allan deviation for both cases. The results show that the ambiguity-fixed solution of SD-CV improves the relative frequency instability via GNSS to reach the order of 3–5 · 10^?17 at one day averaging time. In the optical fiber link, which is the basis of the common clock setup, the round-trip instability shows better performance for all averaging times