110 research outputs found
the example of resource use in ICT products
Information and communication technology (ICT) products are one telling
example for increasingly globalized production and consumption patterns and
resulting distributional effects on a global scale. Consumption, which still
takes place primarily in âNorthernâ countries, is connected to a flow of
valuable resources from developing countries to the industrialized world and
at the same time leads to increasing environmental and social pressures mostly
in developing states, where environmental costs are not internalized. For
example, the mining of rare materials that are crucial for the production of
electronic devices often involves poor working conditions and high
environmental impacts; or an increasing quantity of electronic waste is
exported to developing states where disposal and recycling takes place under
dire working and health conditions. Both phenomena imply shifts of
environmental burdens into developing countries. Therefore, the paper touches
issues of international justice and equity. It deals with the questions how
âNorthernâ countries can cope with the issue of transboundary environmental
problems, which are caused by their domestic consumption, but which appear
outside their own territory and outside their authoritative reach. It will be
argued that achieving a more resource efficient society and economy would be
one way to deal with this problem. Drawing on an analysis of the main
obstacles on the way towards higher resource efficiency, and using the example
of ICT-products, the paper offers concrete policy proposals. In order to gain
better knowledge about global material flows and the material input (incl.
'ecological rucksacks') per product, the implementation of information
obligations following the 'No Data, No Market' principle could be a promising
approach. On this information basis, dynamic standards and green public
procurement could foster the production and consumption of resource efficient
ICT-products. This policy mix of both supply- and demand-side instruments
would have the potential to minimize translocated environmental burdens
a survey of positions and expectations of civil society organisations in six European countries on the green economy
This report presents findings from an online survey and a number of expert
interviews on the perspectives of European civil society on Sustainable
Development and the Green Economy in the run-up to the 2012 UN Conference on
Sustainable Development. The survey was sent out to civil society
organisations in six selected European countries to gain a better
understanding of their views on specific aspects of the Green Economy concept.
In addition to this, the data analysis allows the authors to compare
respondentsâ answers across different groups of civil society as well as
between countries. The survey questions range from the definitional aspects of
what the Green Economy is and what its elements are to the conflict dimensions
identified in the first part of the study as well as the risks and
opportunities seen in the Green Economy. Finally, it includes the questions
what role governments should take and what policy and financing instruments
should be used more widely in the transition to the Green Economy
Green economy discourses in the Run-Up to Rio 2012
The study analyses central contributions to the debate on the concept of a
Green Economy in the run-up to the 2012 United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development. It does so by identifying the pillars on which the
various understandings of a green economy are based as well as analysing
policy concepts published and statements made. It concludes that currently
there are three distinguishable discourses on the green economy and that the
political challenge for the Rio+20 conference will lie in building bridges
between these different understanding to build a consensus. A central role for
the EESC is seen in supporting the EUâs role as a role model and helping to
build the bridges and adapt the concept in other countries
The analysis of collective mindsets: Introducing a New Method of Institutional Analysis in Comparative Research
This article presents a specific qualitative method â the Collective Mindset Analysis (CMA) â that is applicable within the frame of institutional analysis to map the cognitive and normative institutions at work. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss the method and its methodology as well. The paper will elaborate on how the method is applied to international research and will provide concrete examples drawn from a bigger research project on economic elites in eleven countries. It will demonstrate the steps of interpretation of interview material from this project with the help of CMA, using concrete text sequences. The sequences have been extracted from interviews with Brazilian top managers that were conducted in the context of an international research project. The paper will show, how an institutional approach, that is relying on the sociology of knowledge, can be supported by a method, that helps to reconstruct the cognitive and normative rules in a given culture and to analyze, how these rules are translated in action orientations to solve culturally significant problems. Thus, the method can be a remedy for the shortcomings of institutional analysis in mapping and comparing the knowledge stocks in different cultures and a new tool in international comparative research
Testing the stress of higher status hypothesis. Variation of occupational stress among physicians and nurses at a German university hospital
Studies show especially for the UK and the US that physicians experience more occupational stress than nurses. It has also been shown that a higher status within the medical and nursing hierarchy is associated with less occupational stress. Our study's aim is to examine whether these results also can be found in the context of the German university hospital sector. Thus, we test the stress of higher status hypothesis in and between the occupational groups of nurses and physicians at a German university hospital. Based on two cross-section surveys in the years of 2016 and 2019 this paper compares the perceived level of occupational stress between physicians (n = 588) and nurses (n = 735). Perceived levels of occupational stress-measured via the effort-reward imbalance model and the job demand-control model-are differentiated by status positions within and between both occupational groups. Descriptive as well as inferential statistics (Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis H test) are used to test the stress of higher status hypothesis. Contrary to the stress of higher status hypothesis, our main result is that physicians and nurses perceive similar levels of occupational stress. Furthermore, within each hierarchy the perceived degree of work stress decreases with increasing status for both groups. Our main conclusion is that the stress of higher status hypothesis must be rejected in the German university hospital context and the competing resources of higher status hypothesis must be assumed. The findings can be explained by the unique relationship between physicians and nurses and the role of New Public Management in the German hospital sector
Finding Qs: Profiling QAnon Supporters on Parler
The social media platform "Parler" has emerged into a prominent fringe
community where a significant part of the user base are self-reported
supporters of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of
elites controls global politics. QAnon is considered to have had an influential
role in the public discourse during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
However, little is known about QAnon supporters on Parler and what sets them
aside from other users. Building up on social identity theory, we aim at
profiling the characteristics of QAnon supporters on Parler. We analyze a
large-scale dataset with more than 600,000 profiles of English-speaking users
on Parler. Based on users' profiles, posts, and comments, we then extract a
comprehensive set of user features, linguistic features, network features, and
content features. This allows us to perform user profiling and understand to
what extent these features discriminate between QAnon and non-QAnon supporters
on Parler. Our analysis is three-fold: (1) We quantify the number of QAnon
supporters on Parler, finding that 34,913 users (5.5% of all users) openly
report to support the conspiracy. (2) We examine differences between QAnon vs.
non-QAnon supporters. We find that QAnon supporters differ statistically
significantly from non-QAnon supporters across multiple dimensions. For
example, they have, on average, a larger number of followers, followees, and
posts, and thus have a large impact on the Parler network. (3) We use machine
learning to identify which user characteristics discriminate QAnon from
non-QAnon supporters. We find that user features, linguistic features, network
features, and content features, can - to a large extent - discriminate QAnon
vs. non-QAnon supporters on Parler. In particular, we find that user features
are highly discriminatory, followed by content features and linguistic
features.Comment: Accepted at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
(ICWSM, 2023
Russian propaganda on social media during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was accompanied by a
large-scale propaganda campaign. Here, we analyze the spread of Russian
propaganda on social media. For this, we collected N = 349,455 messages from
Twitter with pro-Russian content. Our findings suggest that pro-Russian
messages were mainly disseminated through a systematic, coordinated propaganda
campaign. Overall, pro-Russian content received ~251,000 retweets and thereby
reached around 14.4 million users, primarily in countries such as India, South
Africa, and the United States. We further provide evidence that bots played a
disproportionate role in the dissemination of propaganda and amplified its
proliferation. Overall, 20.28% of the spreaders are classified as bots, most of
which were created in the beginning of the invasion. Together, our results
highlight the new threats to society that originate from coordinated propaganda
campaigns on social media in modern warfare. Our results also suggest that
curbing bots may be an effective strategy to mitigate such campaigns
Autonomieverlust der Medizin? Zum Strukturwandel moderner GroĂkrankenhĂ€user in Deutschland, Ăsterreich und der Schweiz
Der Beitrag untersucht im LĂ€ndervergleich zwischen Deutschland, Ăsterreich und der Schweiz, inwiefern sich die Strukturen der groĂen KrankenhĂ€user in Richtung einer Ăkonomisierung, verstanden als zunehmende Geltung von Wirtschaftlichkeitskriterien, verĂ€ndern. Der mögliche Autonomieverlust der Medizin durch betriebswirtschaftliches Management und betriebswirtschaftliche Effizienzprinzipien infolge dieser institutionellen Weichenstellungen kann Folgen fĂŒr die Konstellation in den Arbeitsbeziehungen im Krankenhaus zeitigen. Auf Basis von Struktur-, Lebensverlaufs- und Inhaltsanalysen lĂ€sst sich erkennen, dass die VerĂ€nderung der institutionellen Verfasstheit der GroĂkrankenhĂ€user und der Leitungs- und Qualifikationsstrukturen je nach lĂ€nderspezifischem Kontext unterschiedlich stark dafĂŒr sorgen, dass der konservative Pfad durchbrochen wird und die institutionellen Weichenstellungen in Richtung zunehmender Ăkonomisierung zeigen: in der Schweiz am weitreichendsten, in Ăsterreich am geringsten.A comparative study of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the article discusses the question of how far current changes in public hospitals have induced a shift towards commodification and managerialism. As a consequence of the increasing importance of management, business and efficiency principles, resulting in a decline in medicine's autonomy, labour relations in hospitals are likely to be effected. Based on structural analysis, life course analysis and content analysis the findings indicate how changes in the management and qualification structure of large hospitals have resulted in them abandoning their conservative path. To varying degrees commodification is modifying the institutional structures of large hospitals in all three countries. Whilst Switzerland can be shown to be setting the commodification pace, such a process has had the least impact in Austria
Occurrence, synthesis and applications of natural and designed [3.3.3]propellanes
The synthetically challenging [3.3.3]propellane core has caught a lot of attention over the last 50 years. This comprehensive review details all synthetic strategies reported in the period 1978â2019 to facilitate the synthesis of carbocyclic [3.3.3]propellanes. The described strategies span from acid-catalyzed rearrangements and photo-mediated cycloadditions of ketones, heteropropellanes and dispiroundecanes to thermal rearrangements of acetylenes and alkenes. Other approaches, such as radical reactions with halogenated alkenes, domino cyclizations, the smart use of epoxide-carbonyl rearrangements and intramolecular palladium-catalyzed ring contractions are discussed as well. A special section is dedicated to triptindanes, a subclass of [3.3.3]propellanes which are of interest to material sciences
Online Emotions During the Storming of the U.S. Capitol: Evidence from the Social Media Network Parler
The storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 has led to the killing of
5 people and is widely regarded as an attack on democracy. The storming was
largely coordinated through social media networks such as Twitter and "Parler".
Yet little is known regarding how users interacted on Parler during the
storming of the Capitol. In this work, we examine the emotion dynamics on
Parler during the storming with regard to heterogeneity across time and users.
For this, we segment the user base into different groups (e.g., Trump
supporters and QAnon supporters). We use affective computing to infer the
emotions in content, thereby allowing us to provide a comprehensive assessment
of online emotions. Our evaluation is based on a large-scale dataset from
Parler, comprising of 717,300 posts from 144,003 users. We find that the user
base responded to the storming of the Capitol with an overall negative
sentiment. Akin to this, Trump supporters also expressed a negative sentiment
and high levels of unbelief. In contrast to that, QAnon supporters did not
express a more negative sentiment during the storming. We further provide a
cross-platform analysis and compare the emotion dynamics on Parler and Twitter.
Our findings point at a comparatively less negative response to the incidents
on Parler compared to Twitter accompanied by higher levels of disapproval and
outrage. Our contribution to research is three-fold: (1) We identify online
emotions that were characteristic of the storming; (2) we assess emotion
dynamics across different user groups on Parler; (3) we compare the emotion
dynamics on Parler and Twitter. Thereby, our work offers important implications
for actively managing online emotions to prevent similar incidents in the
future
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