1,720,988 research outputs found
What is cultural fit? From cognition to behavior (and back)
Full text linkHow people fit into social groups is a core topic of investigation across multiple sociological subfields, including education, immigration, and organizations. In this chapter, we synthesize findings from these literatures to develop an overarching framework for conceptualizing and measuring the level of cultural fit and the dynamics of enculturation between individuals and social groups. We distinguish between the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of fitting in, which previous work has tended to either examine in isolation or to conflate. Reviewing the literature through this lens enables us to identify the strengths and limitations of unitary—that is, primarily cognitive or primarily behavioral—approaches to studying cultural fit. In contrast, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates the two perspectives and highlights the value of considering their interplay over time. We then identify promising theoretical pathways that can link the two dimensions of cultural fit. We conclude by discussing the implications of pursuing these conceptual routes for research methods and provide some illustrative examples of such work.Published version2021-09-3
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Diaspora Philanthropy: Identity and Obligation Among Indian Engineers in the United States
Full text linkDiaspora philanthropy to India has grown rapidly over the past several decades. However, little is known about the motivations of Indians living in the U.S. to donate philanthropically to India. Extant studies have either focused on quantitative analysis of diaspora philanthropy or qualitative research on the receiving of diaspora philanthropy in India. The motivations and strategies of the Indian diaspora in the U.S. have not been explored, particularly, the informal mechanisms and strategies of making philanthropic donations to India and the obligations that underlie the practice of diaspora philanthropy remain neglected in the existing studies on diaspora philanthropy. My research addressed this gap in the existing literature on diaspora philanthropy by conducting qualitative face-to-face in-depth interviews with a snowball sample of 25 Indian engineers in San Diego, California. In my study, it was found that Indians preferred to channel funds for philanthropy in India through friends and family because of lack of trust in formal organizations and greater confidence in the activities of friends and family in India due to familiarity and better accountability. It was also found that Indians felt indebted to Indian society and the Indian nation-state for the free and subsidized education they had received in India, and therefore felt obligated to make philanthropic contributions to India in order to redeem the debt that they owe to India
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Slogans and Opposition Political Culture: Online Discourse in Iran's Green Movement
Full text linkIn this study I investigate the Iranian Green Movement supporters' use of slogans as political discourse on the Persian-language opposition website www.kaleme.com. Data was collected from the website's Kaleme section in the form of 22 articles and 3,500 user comments. A coding scheme was constructed to measure the presence of categories and themes in the site's comments section. Findings support the propositions of narrative theorists (e.g. Franzosi, 1998; Benford, 1993) that frequent use of slogans in the comments may reflect a unique cultural element of Persian-language political discourse and reinforce the Green Movement's narrative of opposition to the government
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Artificial Intelligence at Home: Alexa, Are You Influencing My Family?
No full textThe purpose of this research is to measure the social shifts that take place in a home where artificial intelligent (AI) devices like Echo Dot and Google Home are fully integrated into their everyday life. Research is currently limited, being that the widespread use of these devices is roughly seven years old. Three main outcomes of this study were related to how often Alexa is being used in homes to solve everyday problems, the lack of overall privacy and security concerns users had, and the level of integration into the home as a member of the family. Some limitations and challenges are my ability to compare the households before and after installing these devices in the home; pinpointing when and where the device is used (i.e., room placement); collecting data on whether the device is used often or sparingly; and the depth of interactions these families actually have with the device on a whole. The broader implications behind the increased integration of AI devices is centered around health, labor, social inequality and ethics
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Resettled: How Refugees Experience Employment and Unemployment in the United States
No full textResearch on immigration in the United States has commonly studied the employment experiences of refugees. Few studies on refugees have focused on both, refugees' employment and unemployment experiences in the United States. This article draws on twenty in-depth interviews with refugees, along with ethnographic observation at a local refugee resettlement agency, to investigate how refugees make sense of their employment and unemployment experiences in the United States. I find that refugee men and women experience different employment trajectories in the United States, which are shaped by gender inequality in the public and domestic spheres. I further find that refugees' navigation with work in the United Stated influences their unemployment experiences and work in the informal sector. My study extends previous literature on refugee incorporation by conceptualizing refugees' employment as a gendered process, which includes periods of formal paid work, informal paid work, and unemployment in the United States
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Female Adolescents and Death: a Qualitative Analysis
Full text linkThe purpose of this research design is to explore the meaning of death for the female adolescent. A qualitative design was used as the method of research. Twelve participants were selected from a snowball sample ten females and two males. Four participants reported witnessing the death of an individual, five reported a moderated death experience in which they were not present but were told after the fact and three reported no significant experience with death. The study indicated relationships and cause of death as among the pre-conditions towards meaning development for the adolescent female. The two main themes derived from the pre-conditions are an understanding of the inevitability of death for themselves and the experience of death as qualia. Consequences to the experience of death include increased emotional tolerance under stress and a perceived increased maturity suggesting resilience in the adolescent female following a loss. Future areas of research are also addressed
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Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, and Gender: Analyzing Gender at Raves
No full textDoing, undoing, and redoing gender debates have established the omnirelevance and performativity of gender. Yet, little is known about the ways that individuals "do" gender in spaces that provide the opportunity for norms to be disrupted, such as subcultures. This study offers an empirical investigation into the performance of gender within the subculture known as EDM (electronic dance music) culture. Using 20 in-depth interviews that were conducted virtually, I analyze the way ravers experience and give meaning to gender within the EDM culture. I find that individuals within the EDM culture can participate in the doing, undoing, and redoing of gender and do so through the embodiment of their subcultural beliefs and ideology, known as PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect). I argue that the embodiment of PLUR is gendered, and describe the body-reflexive practices that are associated with PLUR
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r/CryptoCurrency: Discussions of Climate Change
No full textIn this study, I examine how an online cryptocurrency community discusses the issue of climate change. In particular, I examine distinctive themes present within discussions that occur on the r/CryptoCurrency forum hosted by reddit.com. Existing research has demonstrated that there are significant carbon emissions linked to cryptocurrency. However, cryptocurrency primarily exists as a peer-to-peer system, meaning that the individual perceptions of cryptocurrency adopters may provide insight into how to address the emissions problem. Using latent Dirichlet allocation and publicly available textual data from Reddit, I find that Reddit's cryptocurrency community engages in robust discussions pertaining to the energy needed to power cryptocurrency systems, most of which is generated from fossil fuels. Therefore, the discussions identified in this study suggest that the social aspect of cryptocurrency may be important when examining the links between cryptocurrency and climate change since they help identify what subjects related to climate change are important for this community
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Not Just About a Piece of Cloth: Three Content Analysis of an Online Anti-Mandatory Hijab Movement in Iran
No full textThis dissertation investigates the My Stealthy Freedom (MSF) movement, an online movement against mandatory hijab laws in Iran, building on two leading lead social movements' theories, political processes and framing processes theories. Study 1 explores the utility of a tactical approach for explaining the movement's pace of insurgency. I employ a conceptual repertoire focused upon the political process model's core concepts of tactical innovation and tactical adaptations, supplementing these older concepts with the more recently proposed concept of tactical freeze and a newly proposed concept of tactical hashtags that is of particular relevance to online movements. Study 2 focuses on extracting hidden patterns and emotional characteristics in the MSF movement by conducting a topic modeling study on the text appearing in the captions of the main account of the movement on Instagram. It was shown that the actions of Masih Alinejad, the founder of the movement, represented by her online activity and extracted by means of topic modeling, is directly affected by the sequence of important events happening in Iran concluding to a transformation of a social movement to political one. Study 3 models how social movements use social media in the formation of affective publics and apply this model to Instagram post data from the MSF movement. Thematic analysis applied to samples of posts and comments revealed six main themes, one of which, aggression, includes three subthemes related to verbal aggression and physical violence. As the level of aggression increased in Instagram videos, the level of aggression in the comments increased as well, and videos containing verbal aggression and physical violence had more likes and comments than did non-aggressive and non-violent videos. In the conclusion, I consider implications of the three studies for social movement framing research and research on emotions and social movements
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Religious Identity and Interreligious Communications: Predicting In-Group and Outgroup Bias with Topic-Sentiment Analysis
Full text linkIntergroup relations and the factors affecting them constitute a subject of recurring interest within the academic community. Social identity theory suggests that group membership and the value we assign to it drives the expression of in-group favoritism and outgroup prejudice, among other intergroup phenomena. The present study examines how (ir)religious identities are related to topic-sentiment polarization in the form of positive in-group and negative outgroup bias during interreligious debates in YouTube commentaries. Drawing from the propositions of social identity theory, six hypotheses were tested. The data for the study, a product of a natural experiment, are comments posted on YouTube commentary sections featuring videos of interreligious debates between (a) Christian and atheist or (b) Christian and Muslim speakers. Using topic-sentiment analysis, a multistage method of topic modeling with latent semantic analysis (LSA) and sentiment analysis, 52,607 comments, for the Christian - atheist debates, and 24,179 comments, for the Christian - Muslim debates, were analyzed. The results offer support (or partial support) to the hypotheses demonstrating identity-specific instances of topic-sentiment polarization to the predicted direction. The study offers valuable insights for the relevance of social identity theory in real-world interreligious interactions, while the successful application of topic-sentiment analysis lends support for the more systematic utilization of this method in the context of social identity theory
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