2,039 research outputs found
Propagation of social representations
Based on a minimal formalism of social representations as a set of associated cognems, a simple model of propagation of representations is presented. Assuming that subjects share the constitutive cognems, the model proposes that mere focused attention on the set of cognems in the field of common conscience may replicate the pattern of representation from context into subjects, or, from subject to subject, through actualization by language, where cognems are represented by verbal signs. Limits of the model are discussed, and evolutionist perspectives are presented with the support of field data
Statistics of opinion domains of the majority-vote model on a square lattice
The existence of juxtaposed regions of distinct cultures in spite of the fact
that people's beliefs have a tendency to become more similar to each other's as
the individuals interact repeatedly is a puzzling phenomenon in the social
sciences. Here we study an extreme version of the frequency-dependent bias
model of social influence in which an individual adopts the opinion shared by
the majority of the members of its extended neighborhood, which includes the
individual itself. This is a variant of the majority-vote model in which the
individual retains its opinion in case there is a tie among the neighbors'
opinions. We assume that the individuals are fixed in the sites of a square
lattice of linear size and that they interact with their nearest neighbors
only.
Within a mean-field framework, we derive the equations of motion for the
density of individuals adopting a particular opinion in the single-site and
pair approximations. Although the single-site approximation predicts a single
opinion domain that takes over the entire lattice, the pair approximation
yields a qualitatively correct picture with the coexistence of different
opinion domains and a strong dependence on the initial conditions. Extensive
Monte Carlo simulations indicate the existence of a rich distribution of
opinion domains or clusters, the number of which grows with whereas the
size of the largest cluster grows with . The analysis of the sizes of
the opinion domains shows that they obey a power-law distribution for not too
large sizes but that they are exponentially distributed in the limit of very
large clusters. In addition, similarly to other well-known social influence
model -- Axelrod's model -- we found that these opinion domains are unstable to
the effect of a thermal-like noise
On the geometry of Siegel-Jacobi domains
We study the holomorphic unitary representations of the Jacobi group based on
Siegel-Jacobi domains. Explicit polynomial orthonormal bases of the Fock spaces
based on the Siegel-Jacobi disk are obtained. The scalar holomorphic discrete
series of the Jacobi group for the Siegel-Jacobi disk is constructed and
polynomial orthonormal bases of the representation spaces are given.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, AMS fonts, paper presented at the the International
Conference "Differential Geometry and Dynamical Systems", August 25-28, 2010,
University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romani
Mass media destabilizes the cultural homogeneous regime in Axelrod's model
An important feature of Axelrod's model for culture dissemination or social
influence is the emergence of many multicultural absorbing states, despite the
fact that the local rules that specify the agents interactions are explicitly
designed to decrease the cultural differences between agents. Here we
re-examine the problem of introducing an external, global interaction -- the
mass media -- in the rules of Axelrod's model: in addition to their
nearest-neighbors, each agent has a certain probability to interact with a
virtual neighbor whose cultural features are fixed from the outset. Most
surprisingly, this apparently homogenizing effect actually increases the
cultural diversity of the population. We show that, contrary to previous claims
in the literature, even a vanishingly small value of is sufficient to
destabilize the homogeneous regime for very large lattice sizes
Social representations of HIV/AIDS in five Central European and Eastern European countries: A multidimensional analysis
Cognitive processing models of risky sexual behaviour have proliferated in the two decades since the first reporting of HIV/AIDS, but far less attention has been paid to individual and
group representations of the epidemic and the relationship between these representations and reported sexual behaviours. In this study, 494 business people and medics from Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Russia sorted free associations around HIV/AIDS in a matrix completion task. Exploratory factor and multidimensional scaling analyses revealed two main dimensions (labelled ‘Sex’ and ‘Deadly disease’), with significant cultural and gender variations along both dimension scores. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in the light of growing concerns over the spread of the epidemic in this region
Social representations and the politics of participation
Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representations are systems of common-sense knowledge and social practice; they provide the lens through which to view and create social and political realities, mediate people's relations with these sociopolitical worlds and defend cultural and political identities. Social representations are therefore key for conceptualising participation as the activity that locates individuals and social groups in their sociopolitical world. Political participation is generally seen as conditional to membership of sociopolitical groups and therefore is often linked to citizenship. To be a citizen of a society or a member of any social group one has to participate as such. Often political participation is defined as the ability to communicate one's views to the political elite or to the political establishment (Uhlaner, 2001), or simply explicit involvement in politics and electoral processes (Milbrath, 1965). However, following scholars on ideology (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990) and social knowledge (Jovchelovitch, 2007), we extend our understanding of political participation to all social relations and also develop a more agentic model where individuals and groups construct, develop and resist their own views, ideas and beliefs. We thus adopt a broader approach to participation in comparison to other political-psychological approaches, such as personality approaches (e.g. Mondak and Halperin, 2008) and cognitive approaches or, more recently, neuropsychological approaches (Hatemi and McDermott, 2012). We move away from a focus on the individual's political behaviour and its antecedents and outline an approach that focuses on the interaction between psychological and political phenomena (Deutsch and Kinnvall, 2002) through examining the politics of social knowledge
Modesty, liberty, equality: Negotiations of gendered principles of piety among Muslim women who cover
This article draws on a qualitative research study with Muslim women who cover to investigate how they represent the Islamic virtue of modesty. The article details findings that Muslim women elaborate modesty as an autonomous labour of ethical self-regulation and a relational virtue that is concerned with devotion to family and the de-sexualisation of day-to-day social interactions. It argues from analysis of representational content and dynamics that these accounts of modesty involve processes of affirming as well as resisting the liberal norms of equality, sexuality and agency that define Muslim veiling in the eyes of others
Information and Communication Flows through Community Multimedia Centers: Perspectives from Mozambican Communities.
Community multimedia centers (CMCs) are considered by initiating agencies as instruments able to inform, entertain and educate the population, as well as to offer them a voice into knowledge society and to public initiatives. This article presents a quali-quantitative content analysis of 230 interviews held with staff members, users of the venues, people of the community who listen to their radio component but do not use their telecenters, and community members not using CMCs. The sample includes 10 CMCs around Mozambique. The purpose of the study is to investigate the perception of local communities of inbound, outbound, and shared information and communication flows connected to CMCs. Results highlight how CMCs are perceived as inbound information enablers, mostly by means of their community radio component, and as means to share information and communication within the communities' boundaries. Yet, CMCs still do not appear to be widely recognized as participation means to a reality that transcends the communities' physical borders
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