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Varieties of Resonance: The Subjective Interpretations and Utilizations of Media Output in France
Get PDFThe resonance of media output plays an important role in the age of misinformation and fake news. While scholars have extensively studied resonance, they have mostly focused on whether and why particular messages align with the predispositions of their intended audience rather than systematically analyzing how they are interpreted by the wider population. Based on computational text analyses of the news media coverage from 118 outlets in France and weekly surveys of what people retained from the news during the same period, this paper investigates the ways in which the frames used by the media trigger different types of resonance in accordance with people’s diverse interpretations and utilizations of the messages to which they have been exposed. We theoretically argue that resonance is not just an objective alignment between a message and one’s predispositions, but a subjective interpretation and utilization of the message heard. We empirically identify three different types of subjective resonance: problem-solving, problem- aggravating, and problem-generating. This research contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms of resonance by expanding on previous works on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of resonance
The Conspiracy Theory Defense in Response to Whistleblower Accusations: Turning a Hero into a Villain
Get PDFWhistleblowers can be viewed as heroic actors who reveal institutional misdeeds. In contrast, conspiracy theorists are seen as members of a marginalized element perpetuating misinformation. Despite this apparent difference, the present analysis focuses on how similarities between the two constructs can allow a target to discredit a whistleblower accusation by countering that the whistleblower is operating as part of a conspiracy. More generally, this paper considers how the difficulty inherent in disproving conspiracy theory claims facilitates their utility as a defense. The case study of President Donald Trump’s responses to whistleblower accusations are considered to illustrate the arguments
e-Museletter: January 2021
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Seeking Nietzsche’s Great Tree of Humanity: The Overhuman and Powers’sThe Overstory
No full textThis essay reconstructs Nietzsche’s ecological and environmental thought by focusing on his idea of the human-earth (Menschen-Erde) and his deep concern for the natural world. It then articulates these thoughts in a coordinate reading of Richard Powers’s environmentally focused novel The Overstory (2019). Nietzsche understands that the human position on the Earth is precarious and that we are in danger of injuring our fragile environmental surround. I attempt to clarify the contemporary relevance of this thought by showing how his diagnosis chimes with current ecological thinking. Nietzsche saw not only dangers but opportunities in the relation of humans to their environment. His writings as well as his daily life exhibit intense interest in trees and forests. He foresaw that too much forest clearing could endanger the climate, leading to excessive warming. Nietzsche also imagined that the humans might foster a “great tree of humanity” (WS 188-89), a green expansion of their environment, and Zarathustra anticipates living in the world as a garden (Z “The Convalescent”). Richard Powers’s The Overstory speaks to a time that is much more deeply informed about our precarious ecological situation. The novelist dramatizes this in a narrative that brings together a number of disparate individuals, drawn to defend an old-growth US West Coast forest from the state-supported depradations of industrial logging. These figures learn about “the secret life of trees,” their mutual dependence and communication, as they experiment with a new life high among the branches. Their different fates pose a variety of questions relevant to Nietzsche’s ideas for a transvalued Earth
From Molecules to Solids: A vdW-DF-C09 Case Study of the Mercury Dihalides
No full textThe mercury dihalides show a remarkable diversity in the structural preferences in their minimum energy structure types, spanning molecular to strongly bound ionic solids. A challenge in the development of density functional methods for extended systems is to arrive at strategies that serve equally well such a broad range of bonding modes or structural preferences. The chemical bonding and the stabilities of mercury dihalides and the general utility and reliability of the van der Waals density functional with C09 exchange (vdW-DF-C09) in predicting or describing the energetics and structural preferences in these metal dihalides is examined. We show that, in contrast with the uncorrected generalized gradient approximation of the Perdew-Burke-Erzenhoff (PBE) exchange-correlation functional, qualitative and quantitative patterns in the bonding of the mercury dihalide solids are well reproduced with vdW-DF-C09 for the full series of HgX2 systems for X = F, Cl, Br, and I. The possible existence of a low-temperature cotunnite polymorph for HgF2 and PbF2 is posited
Passion contagion at work: Investigating formal and informal social influences on work passion
No full textWe integrate research in work passion, social influence, and social networks to examine whether work passion can be contagious and “spread” to others, such that an employee\u27s passion is influenced by the broader social milieu to become more similar to that of a social referent. We investigate formal (supervisory) and informal (trust-based) referents, and also consider direct and indirect (through common third-parties) avenues through which passion contagion may occur. Using data from 70 full-time employees (providing 4830 pairwise observations) in a non-profit organization, we found that respondents\u27 harmonious passion was more similar to that of people they trusted, but their obsessive passion was less similar to that of the same referents. Respondents who had similar trust relationships to third parties also reported less similar harmonious passion. For both forms of passion, we did not find evidence that employees\u27 passion was related to that of their supervisors, or of coworkers who shared the same supervisor. Overall, the findings provide nuanced insights into whether and which workplace relationships have a role in shaping one\u27s harmonious and obsessive work passion. In doing so, this study contributes to the work passion literature by extending the limited body of works on passion antecedents and the social aspects of passion
Replacing the CD with a Cassette Tape and Other Foundational Considerations Brought Upon by Remote Justice
Get PDFI once knew a couple who bought a brand new car but asked to remove the CD player and replace it with a cassette tape player. The couple thought the CD was just a fad. Putting aside that the CD is now obsolete (and the cassette tape before it), and some adult readers will not know what CDs were in the first place, those of us that do will chuckle at this choice. During the peak of the pandemic, justice moved completely online. As society contemplates a return to normal, the justice system considers whether to sustain those remote processes or return to prepandemic operations in full. Will remote justice be the removed CD player, replaced with the business-as-usual courthouse