Minor Parties In English Local Government

This thesis examines the electoral performance of minor parties in English local government from 1973 to 2008, a period that has seen a sharp increase in the numbers of candidates from such parties. Beginning with an overall assessment of the extent to which candidates from minor parties have contested local elections and the level of success in being elected, the thesis then explores the spatial distribution of minor party candidates, the types of people that become candidates and, considering the relative lack of electoral success, their motivations for standing. Traditional studies of party systems frequently exclude parties that do not win a relatively large share of votes and seats or are incapable of forming part of a subsequent government or administration. However broader definitions of what constitutes a party allow that small political parties can influence policy and the behaviour of mainstream parties simply because they are present in an electoral contest. Using the concept of presence, this thesis demonstrates that there has been an unprecedented increase in contestation by minor parties over the past 10 years that has not been proportionally matched by vote share and electoral success. Examination of patterns of contestation reveals that the growth in minor party contestation is uneven across England but is not apparently related to the different electoral systems used by local authorities. Furthermore, it becomes clearer that minor party contestation appears to be primarily a function of temporal local factors and is not necessarily influenced by electoral history, thus making it difficult to predict beforehand where and when such parties may begin to contest local elections and the relative level of electoral support they might subsequently enjoy. Having examined at a general level the electoral nature of minor party activity the thesis offers a new typology, an analytical framework within which to locate the various types of minor parties that feature in modern English local government. Using individual level data we examine whether it is possible to distinguish between candidates based on their party’s location within this typology, thus testing whether the recent increase in minor party activity is due to the rise of a new political class. Initial survey observations subsequently inform the development of a multinomial logistic regression model that seeks to identify similarities and differences between candidates standing for the range of parties currently contesting English local elections. This modelling suggests that candidates from across the range of minor parties are rather similar to each other and, moreover, similar to candidates from major parties. There does not, therefore, appear to be any association between the rise in the frequency of minor party candidates and the existence of a new political class of candidates that are different to those already located within the party political mainstream. Consequently, the value of the typology as a heuristic for establishing a better understanding of minor party activity is brought into question and further research into the phenomenon of minor party contestation in English local government is recommended.ESR

A retrospective on state of the art social media research methods: Ethical decisions, big-small data rivalries and the spectre of the 6Vs

This concluding chapter offers critical reflections on some of the key themes covered in the Handbook. Ethics emerged as a concern for many scholars, both for those engaging in quantitative and qualitative approaches. Scholars agree in that there is no overarching set of rules that can be applied to all projects blindly, rather they see ethical decisions as being grounded in the specifics of the data being collected, the social group under study, and the potential repercussions for subjects. A second central theme was the value of qualitative approaches for understanding ‘anomalies’ within larger data sets. Qualitative approaches are seen as valuable and a stand-alone means of collecting, analyzing and making sense of social media data, in particular for projects where context is essential. Finally, as the contributions in this volume demonstrate that many of the challenges posed by the nature of social media data are being tackled and addressed, this chapter ends with a reorientation of the 6Vs which focuses on the primacy of the researcher in the decision-making process. We argue that the provision of technical solutions alone do not entirely address the 6V problem and clarity of thought around research design is still just as important as ever

Ocean-atmosphere trajectories of extended drought in southwestern North America

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 124(16), (2019): 8953-8971, doi: 10.1029/2019JD030424.Multiyear droughts are a common occurrence in southwestern North America (SWNA), but it is unclear what causes these persistent dry periods. The ocean‐atmosphere conditions coinciding with droughts have traditionally been studied using correlation and composite methods, which suggest that cool conditions in the tropical Pacific are associated with SWNA droughts and warm conditions are associated with wet periods in SWNA. Nevertheless, the extent to which multiyear droughts are truly consistent with this paradigm remains unknown. This is, in part, because the temporal trajectory of ocean‐atmosphere conditions during these dry periods have not been sufficiently characterized. Here we examine the continuum of ocean‐atmosphere trajectories before, during, and after multiyear droughts in SWNA using observation‐based data and an ensemble of climate model simulations from the Community Earth System Model. An examination of sea surface temperature patterns at the beginning, middle, and end of SWNA droughts shows that an El Niño event tends to precede SWNA droughts, a cool tropical Pacific occurs during droughts, and central Pacific El Niño events end droughts. However, moderate El Niño events can occur in the middle of persistent droughts, so a warm tropical Pacific does not always end these dry periods. These findings are important for drought predictability and emphasize the need to improve simulations of the magnitude, life cycle, and frequency of occurrence of El Niño events.L. Parsons thanks the Washington Research Foundation for funding support and thanks R. Jnglin Wills and D. Battisti for suggestions related to tropical Pacific‐SWNA comparisons. We thank B. Otto‐Bliesner and acknowledge the CESM1(CAM5) Last Millennium Ensemble Community Project and supercomputing resources provided by NSF/CISL/Yellowstone. Support for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project version 2c data set is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research (BER), and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office. GPCC Precipitation data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/).2020-02-0

Towards an ethical framework for publishing Twitter data in social research: taking into account users’ views, online context and algorithmic estimation

New and emerging forms of data, including posts harvested from social media sites such as Twitter, have become part of the sociologist’s data diet. In particular, some researchers see an advantage in the perceived ‘public’ nature of Twitter posts, representing them in publications without seeking informed consent. While such practice may not be at odds with Twitter’s terms of service, we argue there is a need to interpret these through the lens of social science research methods, that imply a more reflexive ethical approach than provided in ‘legal’ accounts of the permissible use of these data in research publications. To challenge some existing practice in Twitter based research, this paper brings to the fore i) views of Twitter users through analysis of online survey data, ii) the effect of context collapse and online disinhibition on the behaviors of users, and iii) the publication of identifiable sensitive classifications derived from algorithms

Crime sensing with big data: the affordances and limitations of using open-source communications to estimate crime patterns

This paper critically examines the affordances and limitations of big data for the study of crime and disorder. We hypothesise that disorder-related posts on Twitter are associated with actual police crime rates. Our results provide evidence that naturally occurring social media data may provide an alternative information source on the crime problem. This paper adds to the emerging field of computational criminology and big data in four ways: i) it estimates the utility of social media data to explain variance in offline crime patterns; ii) it provides the first evidence of the estimation offline crime patterns using a measure of broken windows found in the textual content of social media communications; iii) it tests if the bias present in offline perceptions of disorder is present in online communications; and iv) it takes the results of experiments to critically engage with debates on big data and crime prediction

Linking Twitter and Survey Data: The Impact of Survey Mode and Demographics on Consent Rates Across Three UK Studies

In light of issues such as increasing unit nonresponse in surveys, several studies argue that social media sources such as Twitter can be used as a viable alternative. However, there are also a number of shortcomings with Twitter data such as questions about its representativeness of the wider population and the inability to validate whose data you are collecting. A useful way forward could be to combine survey and Twitter data to supplement and improve both. To do so, consent within a survey is first needed. This study explores the consent decisions in three large representative surveys of the adult British population to link Twitter data to survey responses and the impact that demographics and survey mode have on these outcomes. Findings suggest that consent rates for data linkage are relatively low, and this is in part mediated by mode, where face-to-face surveys have higher consent rates than web versions. These findings are important to understand the potential for linking Twitter and survey data but also to the consent literature generally

Project POKE: Developing a STEM Community to Offset Learning Loss Amidst COVID Pandemic Through Aerospace Technologies Project-Based Learning in Hawaii\u27s K-12 Classrooms

Project POKE (Providing an Opportunity for the Keiki in Engineering) is a unique opportunity for middle and high school keiki (‘children’ in Hawaiian) in Hawaii to gain hands-on aerospace experience through interaction with a 1U CubeSat kit. The focus of the project is to build a STEM community based on collaboration and project-based learning to offset learning loss amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Project POKE program includes an educator course, CubeSat kit, collaborative digital space, open-ended design challenge, and symposium. Middle and high school teachers concurrently participate in the program’s educator course and meet with their students to teach the provided content. Project POKE builds off of the Artemis CubeSat Kit while adapting the educator course materials to K-12 education. Students are challenged to develop a mission concept to study a problem affecting their community using a CubeSat and present their design concept to STEM professionals at the culminating symposium. The first iteration of the program was completed in the 2021-2022 school year with 14 teachers and over 100 students. Surveyed participants indicated positive sentiment and several learning outcomes upon completing the program. Project POKE creates a diversified STEM community in Hawaii, while demystifying space science and aerospace engineering

Dusty OB stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud - II: Extragalactic Disks or Examples of the Pleiades Phenomenon?

We use mid-infrared Spitzer spectroscopy and far-infrared Herschel photometry for a sample of twenty main sequence O9--B2 stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with strong 24 micron excesses to investigate the origin of the mid-IR emission. Either debris disks around the stars or illuminated patches of dense interstellar medium (ISM) can cause such mid-IR emission. In a companion paper, Paper I, we use optical spectroscopy to show that it is unlikely for any of these sources to be classical Be stars or Herbig Ae/Be stars. We focus our analysis on debris disks and cirrus hot spots. We find three out of twenty stars to be significantly extended in the mid-IR, establishing them as cirrus hot spots. We then fit the IR spectral energy distributions to determine dust temperatures and masses. We find the dust masses in the SMC stars to be larger than for any known debris disks, although this evidence against the debris disk hypothesis is circumstantial. Finally, we created a local comparison sample of bright mid-IR OB stars in the Milky Way (MW) by cross-matching the WISE and Hipparcos catalogs. All such local stars in the appropriate luminosity range that can be unambiguously classified are young stars with optical emission lines or are spatially resolved by WISE with sizes too large to be plausible debris disk candidates. We conclude that the very strong mid-IR flux excesses are most likely explained as cirrus hot spots, although we cannot rigorously rule out that a small fraction of the sample is made up of debris disks or transition disks. We present suggestive evidence that bow-shock heating around runaway stars may be a contributing mechanism to the interstellar emission. These sources, interpreted as cirrus hot spots, offer a new localised probe of diffuse interstellar dust in a low metallicity environment. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 23 pages, 11 figures, 8 table

University of Hawaii\u27s Spaceflight-Ready, Low-Cost, Open-Source, Educational Artemis CubeSat Kit

The Artemis CubeSat Kit is a spaceflight-ready, low-cost, educational 1U CubeSat kit, which acts as a foundation enabler in aerospace engineering education and commercializing small satellites. The hardware kit accompanies a standalone Spacecraft Mission Design curriculum in the public domain, which includes a self-guided course outline, textbook, and digital lab modules. Funded by NASA\u27s Artemis Student Challenge Program, the Kit is developed and maintained by students attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa and supervised by the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory (HSFL). The purpose of the Artemis CubeSat Kit and accompanying curriculum is to provide educational accessibility for university-level students and faculty interested in designing, building, and flying their own small satellite missions. This paper describes the technical design of the Artemis 1U CubeSat, the topology of the standalone curriculum, and the lessons learned by the team while developing the Artemis CubeSat Kit