Hasil untuk "Political institutions and public administration - Asia (Asian studies only)"

Sangpil Youm, Nari Yoo, Sou Hyun Jang

Studies on intergenerational relationships between parents and children in Asian American families highlight their impact on mental health and well-being. This study investigates the role of ambivalent emotions in online narratives shared by Asian and Asian American children on the subreddit, r/Asianparentstories. By employing a BERT-based model to detect emotion at the sentence level and depressive symptoms at the post level, we analyze mixed feelings to better understand how they predict depressive symptoms. First, among 28 detectable, eight (realization, approval, sadness, anger, curiosity, annoyance, disappointment, disapproval) comprise over 50%, exhibiting significant co-occurrence among themselves and with other emotions. Second, we find the co-occurrence of multiple emotions, indicating that emotions in a single post are not limited to consistently positive or negative feelings. Finally, our findings indicate that while negative emotion pairs (e.g., confusion-grief, anger-grief) are associated with depressive symptoms, positive emotion pairs (e.g., admiration-realization, amusement-joy) negatively correlate with depressive symptoms, and combinations of ambivalent emotions indicate varied results in predicting depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of automated emotion classification and the need to consider emotional ambivalence, which holds practical and clinical implications for understanding the dynamics of parent-child relationships.

Byunghwee Lee, Sangyeon Kim, Filippo Menczer et al.

Due to the correlational structure in our traits such as identities, cultures, and political attitudes, seemingly innocuous preferences like following a band or using a specific slang can reveal private traits. This possibility, especially when combined with massive, public social data and advanced computational methods, poses a fundamental privacy risk. As our data exposure online and the rapid advancement of AI are increasing the risk of misuse, it is critical to understand the capacity of large language models (LLMs) to exploit such potential. Here, using online discussions on DebateOrg and Reddit, we show that LLMs can reliably infer hidden political alignment, significantly outperforming traditional machine learning models. Prediction accuracy further improves as we aggregate multiple text-level inferences into a user-level prediction, and as we use more politics-adjacent domains. We demonstrate that LLMs leverage words that are highly predictive of political alignment while not being explicitly political. Our findings underscore the capacity and risks of LLMs for exploiting socio-cultural correlates.

Feng LI

East Asia can optimise its manufacturing capacities, leverage regional integration, and boost its productivity through innovation potentials. These factors provide key regional advantages for supply chain connectivity in the region. Currently, the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) countries have achieved consensus and progress in connectivity. Value chains and low-carbon initiatives are two key concerns in the future. To improve APT supply chain connectivity, a long-term cooperation mechanism and intraregional policy coordination are an imperative, with full utilisation of connected infrastructure and shared technology.

Mohammad Laelalizadeh, Mohsen Dianat

The government, as a special political institution that plays a role in political and social developments and the development of societies, its interaction with society is always emphasized. Meanwhile, the interaction between the government and the society, the distribution of power and the influence of different groups and institutions is one of the issues that have been defined in different ways among thinkersIn this research, with a sociological approach and in the framework of Joel Migdal's theoretical model of the government in society and the network society and in the form of a descriptive-analytical method by collecting documents and library information related to the relationship between society and the government during the Islamic Revolution., it was determined that in the form of a qualitative method and understanding of the interaction between the government and society in Iran after the Islamic revolution and the collection of documentary and library information; It was found that in the interaction between the government and the society after the Islamic revolution, the government in the components of the ability to influence the society; And the distribution/allocation of resources has not performed successfully, however, it has been successful in the component of resource extraction and has also performed relatively successfully in social control. Despite the formation of a networked society, its hard and impenetrable shell has caused the government to resort to tough institutions such as the military and security agencies, and a strong and developmental government is not being formed towards change and transformation. Therefore, the relationship between the state and society and the link between society and power in the policy-making process is determined. By analyzing the Migdal network society, a model of policy making in the period after the Islamic Revolution is proposed. There are various theories about the relationship between the state and society, which can be considered in the form of theories of rentier government, absolute patrimonial government, authoritarian bureaucratic government, theory of oriental tyranny, theory of Sultanate systems, theories of development and modernization. Many existing approaches to understanding social and political transformations in the third world have underestimated the conflict between the state and society (especially in modernization theories), or ignored certain types of conflict that only occasionally have a class basis (such as Marxist content) or Those who are blind to the most important dynamics within the society (such as the theories of dependence and the world system). The current research may suggest a new model to help overcome the traditional (modernist) understanding of the hegemonic role of the state to control society. Such a paradigm can show the vital role of religious networks and other civil society organizations in development. This study proposes Joel Migdal's (1994) government-in-society approach, which conceptualizes the government (a political organization) and other agents of community development as competing social forces in different arenas of society. According to Migdal, the state is neither an organic entity nor an ontological status, because it does not exist outside or beyond society, but it is a part of society, like other factors affecting development. The current research, considering the theoretical framework of Joel Migdal's network society, intends to deal with the type of interaction between the Iranian government and society after the Islamic Revolution. Knowing this relationship and how the government interacts with society is an important factor in understanding the country's position in the path of development. With the formation of these power networks and groups, the gap between the government and society has deepened so much that the society has been able to confront the government; But this capability of the society does not mean its strengthening, but rather the weakening of the government, which could not have the ability to influence the society and respond to the demands of the society according to the resources at its disposal and within the framework of the regulation of desirable social relations. The society has become extremely hard and impenetrable, and the government has resorted to hard and efficient institutions such as parties, the military, and security agencies to implement its decisions, as a result of which the distance between the government and society has increased. In fact, the existence of a powerful and stable government is indeed necessary for political development, but the existence of an active civil society, which consists of political, social, and trade union institutions and organizations independent of the government, is also one of the most essential elements of political development. Conclusion: The findings and data analysis of the Islamic Republic period based on Migdal's point of view, indicate that the focus has changed from the government as a structural approach based on an independent and centralized organization to a process-oriented and network view of the government and society. Therefore, according to this perspective, the policy model regarding the government and society can also be reviewed with a new perspective.

David Sabin-Miller, Mary McGrath, Marisa C. Eisenberg

The concept of ``ideology" is central to political discourse and dynamics, and is often cast as falling primarily on a one-dimensional scale from ``left-wing/liberal" to ``right-wing/conservative", but the validity of this simple quantitative treatment is uncertain. Here we investigate and compare various high-resolution measures of ideology, both internal (individuals self-identification and policy-stance agreements) and external (estimating the ideological position of political opinion statements). We find strong consistency between internal measures, although policy-stance agreement ideology yields a systematically centralizing and liberalizing portrait relative to subjective measures. More remarkably, we find that external assessments of ideology, while noisy, are largely consistent across observers, even for highly dissonant ideas and regardless of speaker identity markers. This supports the use of these responses as meaningful, comparable quantities, which general members of the public reliably project from the abstract space of political thought onto a shared one-dimensional domain. We end with observation of some broad initial patterns of political opinion acceptance, feelings towards the major political parties, and propensity for extreme thinking, finding mostly ideologically symmetric results strongly stratified by strong/lean/Independent political party identity. We hope these perspectives on quantification of political ideology serve as an invitation for a broader range of quantitative scientists to model and understand this vital societal arena.

Isaac Alpizar-Chacon, Hieke Keuning, Imke de Jong et al.

The application of Artificial Intelligence, in particular Generative AI, has become more widespread among educational institutions. Opinions vary widely on whether integrating AI into classrooms is the way forward or if it is detrimental to the quality of education. Increasingly, research studies are giving us more insight into the consequences of using AI tools in learning and teaching. Studies have shown how, when, and why students use AI tools. Because developments regarding the technology and its use are moving fast, we need frequent, ongoing, and more fine-grained investigation. One aspect that we do not know much about yet is how students use and think about AI across \textit{different types of education}. In this paper, we present the results of a multi-institutional survey with responses from 410 students enrolled in the computing programs of 23 educational institutions, representing high schools, colleges, and research universities. We found distinct usage patterns across the three educational institution types. Students from all types express excitement, optimism, and gratitude toward GenAI. Students in higher education more often report worry and skepticism, while high school students report greater trust and fewer negative feelings. Additionally, the AI hype has had a minimal influence, positive or negative, on high school students' decision to pursue computing. Our study contributes to a better understanding of inter-institutional differences in AI usage and perception and can help educators and students better prepare for future challenges related to AI in computing education.

Jun Zhang

Abstract The full understanding of the importance of submarine cables as part of the global network infrastructure in the digital economy era, along with decades of knowledge accumulation in this field, has not prevented Hong Kong from facing increasing difficulties in gaining more access to submarine cable systems since 2017. Given that geopolitical differences between China and the U.S. are dividing the international network infrastructure, the business interests of Hong Kong enterprises and the urban development prospects of the Hong Kong government have been forced to defer to Beijing’s security concerns. Meanwhile, in recent years China has been acquiring data power by modelling the “data collection – data sharing – data space governance” path that the United States and its allies set previously. During this process, the power shaped by China’s unique technological, social and institutional characteristics offers an alternative to American dominance, although it exacerbates the global divergence of internet infrastructure. Many projects along the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road are the examples of China’s data power projection, and will bring opportunities for Hong Kong’s own submarine cables sector and for the city’s role as a super connector in the coming years.

Widya Cancer Rusnita, Adlin Persada

Dumai City is one of Indonesia’s strategic regions, characterized by complex social dynamics, including the management of people with mental disorders (ODGJ). This study aims to analyze the service quality of the Dumai City Civil Service Police Unit (Satpol PP), motivated by the increasing number of ODGJ disrupting public order, particularly in strategic locations, and the challenges faced by Satpol PP in addressing these issues. This research employs a qualitative method with data collection techniques, including observation, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. The study utilizes the SERVQUAL approach, which encompasses five dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, empathy, and assurance. The findings reveal that in terms of reliability, while Satpol PP has consistently responded to public reports following established procedures, the absence of standardized operational procedures (SOP) and specialized training presents significant challenges. Regarding responsiveness, the unit demonstrates commendable responsiveness; however, limited personnel and the absence of personal protective equipment (PPE) hinder operational efficiency. The tangibles dimension highlights that while operational facilities, such as vehicles, are adequate, supporting equipment like restraints and PPE remains highly limited. The empathy dimension shows that persuasive and humane approaches have been applied, although training related to empathy is insufficient. Finally, the assurance dimension indicates effective inter-agency coordination, albeit not optimal during non-working hours.The study recommends enhancing the quality of Satpol PP services in managing ODGJ through the development of clear SOPs, increased training programs, improved inter-agency collaboration, and better resource allocation. These improvements are expected to enable Satpol PP to handle ODGJ effectively, safely, and humanely, thereby increasing public trust in government institutions

Heidar Shahriari

IntroductionNational security theorists used to view security primarily as a hardware issue, focused on military and government-oriented concerns. However, more recent theorists approach national security from a software perspective, emphasizing civic and public issues. The security governance model is one of the recent models for providing national security. The model highlights the role of various public and private sectors, alongside the central government, in creating, maintaining, and distributing security in today’s complex world. Moreover, an often overlooked but crucial component of the political system that can contribute to national security is the political party system, which has been largely ignored by security theorists. The present study aimed to address how national security is influenced by the political party system, assuming that it is impossible to achieve security within the security governance model without the development of a political party system. Political parties are so integral to the realization of security governance that they determine the success or failure of security governance. A review of existing literature reveals that few works directly address the topic, though some relevant studies exist. Notable works include “Foreign Politics and National Security Governance” (Yazdanfam, 2023), “Political Parties and the Provision of Non-State Security in Lebanon” (Stedem, 2021), and “Conceptualizing Security Governance” (Krahmann, 2003). The current research is based on the hypothesis that political parties significantly influence various dimensions of the security governance model, such as the involvement of public and private sectors in the security provision process, decentralized policymaking and decision-making, acquisition, and accumulation of resources and benefits of security, etc. Moreover, political parties contribute to the model’s foundations, such as coordination, accountability, competition, socialization, etc. The study examined the influence of political parties on national security in two phases. The first phase concerns their impact on the dimensions of security governance, and the second phase focuses on how political parties affect the foundations of security governance.Materials and MethodsThe present study adopted a multi-level, mixed-method approach, in which various methods were used in combination in line with different stages of the study. Having collected the data through a library–documentary method, the research relied on two levels of analysis: causal explanation and structure–agency explanation. The causal framework was used to explain the impact of political parties on the realization of security governance, whereas the structure–agency analysis helped explain the realization of the indicators and foundations of security governance.Results and DiscussionThe analysis investigated the relationship between the political party system and the provision of national security within the governance model. According to the research findings, political parties can influence security governance indicators such as the involvement of public and private sectors in the security provision process, policymaking, decentralized policymaking and decision-making, acquisition and accumulation of resources and benefits of security, civic participation, and decentralized geography. Second, political parties can impact the foundations of security governance, including coordination, accountability, promulgation of the non-ideological viewpoint, socialization, and development of the prismatic perspective. Additionally, one of the most significant findings is the interplay between individual dynamics and the collective environment, which drives the provision of national security. In other words, political parties cannot automatically achieve security governance on their own; rather, they facilitate its realization through the cooperation of political and social structures and agents.Conclusion The effectiveness of the model is contingent upon the growth and development of robust political parties with robust organizational structures, which are essential for making the security governance model feasible, efficient, and effective. It is also important to note that the security governance model—regardless of how it is formulated or implemented—offers greater efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability than traditional security models, particularly in today’s pluralistic and complex world.  Finally, the results of the study proved its theoretical innovations, addressed a gap in the existing literature, and provided a foundation for future research to analyze other factors influencing the security governance model through comparative studies.

Hazem Ibrahim, Farhan Khan, Hend Alabdouli et al.

Social media platforms play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and amplifying political discourse, particularly during elections. However, the same dynamics that foster democratic engagement can also exacerbate polarization. To better understand these challenges, here, we investigate the ideological positioning of tweets related to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. To this end, we analyze 1,235 tweets from key political figures and 63,322 replies, and classify ideological stances into Pro-Democrat, Anti-Republican, Pro-Republican, Anti-Democrat, and Neutral categories. Using a classification pipeline involving three large language models (LLMs)-GPT-4o, Gemini-Pro, and Claude-Opus-and validated by human annotators, we explore how ideological alignment varies between candidates and constituents. We find that Republican candidates author significantly more tweets in criticism of the Democratic party and its candidates than vice versa, but this relationship does not hold for replies to candidate tweets. Furthermore, we highlight shifts in public discourse observed during key political events. By shedding light on the ideological dynamics of online political interactions, these results provide insights for policymakers and platforms seeking to address polarization and foster healthier political dialogue.

Inrinofita Sari, Suswanta Suswanta

The issue of the relocation of Indonesia's capital city has garnered increasing coverage by the Indonesian news media. The media has a crucial position in shaping public narratives concerning policymaking. Furthermore, it is well known that news media has an influential role in shaping public narratives especially in public policy process. This study uses Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the general public and policymaking actors narrative in news media related to the issue of Indonesia’s capital city relocation. This study uses qualitative research methods with the QDAS (Qualitative Data Analysis Software) approach. The data sources used for this study is collected from five widely-known online news media in Indonesia. The findings of this study indicate that the pro-side who support the decision to relocate the capital city is more influential. Through actors who are pro towards the policy, the most significant pro narrative is found in the indicators of Equitable Development and Economy. Relocating the capital city to Kalimantan is claimed to be one of the solutions implemented by the Jokowi government to balance the development on the island of Java and outside Java. Meanwhile, the main narrative in the opposing side (cons) is that relocating the capital city is not urgent because it cannot be implemented in time and that the economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic still overshadows Indonesia's economic conditions.

Sulistianingsih Sulistianingsih

The government encourages people with disabilities to participate as civil servants, through the policy of the Minister of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform of the Republic of Indonesia Number 27 of 2021 concerning Procurement of Civil Servants (PNS). The involvement of people with disabilities in public services is strengthened by the Society 5.0 era, where technology is seen as a life support tool. This research aims to analyze the participation of people with disabilities as civil servants in the context of Society 5.0. The research method used is SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats). Implementation of policies regarding the procurement of civil servants in Indonesia has still not reached the target, in 2022 only 0.017% of people with disabilities will become civil servants from the targeted 2% quota. Based on this data, it is necessary to evaluate the involvement of people with disabilities as civil servants, whether the PANRB Ministerial Regulation Number 27 of 2021 has been implemented or not by the Ministries/Institutions and Regional Governments. The 2% representation of persons with disabilities must be maintained in the procurement of civil servants in the future, even if it is possible to increase the quota. Apart from that, it will be even more effective if this policy is followed by sanctions for Ministries/Institutions and Regional Governments that have not implemented the procurement of civil servants with disabilities.

Imam Hanafi, Sartika Ayu Wulandari

Saat ini, urgensi penilaian kinerja anggaran birokrasi semakin meningkat seiring dengan kebutuhan pengukuran kinerja sektor publik dalam manajemen kinerja sektor publik. Salah satunya adalah pengukuran kinerja pelaksanaan anggaran satuan kerja yang kemudian dinilai berdasarkan Indikator Kinerja Pelaksanaan Anggaran (IKPA). IKPA telah dirancang sebagai suatu mekanisme penilaian yang pada akhirnya memberikan stimulus positif bagi birokrasi untuk dapat lebih efektif, efisien, dan ekonomis dalam perencanaan dan pelaksanaan anggaran satuan kerja sesuai prinsip Value for Money. Penelitian kuantitatif ini menunjukkan bahwa ada beda rata-rata nilai akhir IKPA satuan kerja di lingkup KPPN Blitar di Tahun 2022 dan Agustus 2023, sehingga perlu analisa lebih lanjut untuk mengelompokkan satuan kerja menggunakan Fuzzy C-Means berdasarkan nilai capaian delapan indikator IKPA formulasi Tahun Anggaran 2022. Dari hasil clustering diperoleh 2 (dua) klaster optimal dengan banyak anggota 41 satuan kerja di klaster pertama dan 44 satuan kerja di klaster kedua. Pengelompokan menunjukkan bahwa pada klaster pertama diperlukan dorongan dalam pencapaian kinerja indikator Deviasi Halaman III DIPA dan indikator Penyerapan Anggaran dan pada klaster kedua diperlukan dorongan untuk pencapaian indikator Data Kontrak dan Penyelesaian Tagihan. Hasil pengelompokan diharapkan dapat dijadikan dasar pengambilan kebijakan dalam manajemen dan pengukuran kinerja anggaran, khususnya untuk memenuhi ekspektasi penegasan arah kebijakan IKPA 2023.

Phoebe Inggrid Angeline Romauli, Deasy Silvya Sari

The Covid-19 pandemic, which has had a significant impact on international mobility restrictions, has caused the global tourism sector to experience a serious setback. This is also felt in Indonesia, which relies on the tourism sector as a source of income. The Covid-19 pandemic has crippled Indonesia's tourism sector, with thousands of hotels closing and millions of workers threatened to be fired. One way to restore the condition of Indonesian tourism is to convince tourists to keep trusting Indonesian tourism by increasing nation branding in the tourism section, namely Wonderful Indonesia. This research used qualitative methods with data collection through literature review. The author uses the theory of nation branding proposed by Dinnie (2015). This research found that the Government of Indonesia has made efforts to recover the tourism sector by implementing nation branding strategies, namely, conducting Wonderful Indonesia nation branding advertisements through websites, social media, and tourism-related media agencies; doing online branding and social media on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and developing virtual tourism platforms; and then conducting tourism campaigns

Marcia Ferreira, Rodrigo Costas, Vito Servedio et al.

Scientific institutions play a crucial role in driving intellectual, social, and technological progress. Their capacity to innovate depends mainly on their ability to attract, retain, and nurture scientific talent and ultimately make it available to other organizations, industries, or the economy. As researchers change institutions during their careers, their skills are also transferred. The extent and mechanisms by which academic institutions manage their internal portfolio of scientific skills by attracting and sending researchers are far from being understood. We examine 25 million publication histories of 9.2 million scientists extracted from a large-scale bibliographic database covering thousands of research institutions worldwide to understand how the skills of mobile scientists align with those present in-house. We find a clear association between top-ranked institutions and greater skill alignment, i.e., the degree to which skills of incoming academics match those of their colleagues at the institution. We uncover similar high-alignment for scientists leaving top-ranked institutions. This type of academic alignment is more pronounced in engineering and life, health, earth, and physical sciences than in mathematics, computer science, social sciences, and the humanities. We show that over the past two decades, institutions generally have become more closely aligned in their overall skill profiles. We interpret these results in terms of levels of proactive management of the composition of the scientific workforce, diversity, and internal collaboration strategies at the institutional level.

Vincent J. Straub, Deborah Morgan, Youmna Hashem et al.

Calls for new metrics, technical standards and governance mechanisms to guide the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in institutions and public administration are now commonplace. Yet, most research and policy efforts aimed at understanding the implications of adopting AI tend to prioritize only a handful of ideas; they do not fully connect all the different perspectives and topics that are potentially relevant. In this position paper, we contend that this omission stems, in part, from what we call the relational problem in socio-technical discourse: fundamental ontological issues have not yet been settled--including semantic ambiguity, a lack of clear relations between concepts and differing standard terminologies. This contributes to the persistence of disparate modes of reasoning to assess institutional AI systems, and the prevalence of conceptual isolation in the fields that study them including ML, human factors, social science and policy. After developing this critique, we offer a way forward by proposing a simple policy and research design tool in the form of a conceptual framework to organize terms across fields--consisting of three horizontal domains for grouping relevant concepts and related methods: Operational, Epistemic, and Normative. We first situate this framework against the backdrop of recent socio-technical discourse at two premier academic venues, AIES and FAccT, before illustrating how developing suitable metrics, standards, and mechanisms can be aided by operationalizing relevant concepts in each of these domains. Finally, we outline outstanding questions for developing this relational approach to institutional AI research and adoption.

Baijian Yang, Carolyn Ellis, Preston Smith et al.

In order to operate in a regulated world, researchers need to ensure compliance with ever-evolving landscape of information security regulations and best practices. This work explains the concept of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and the challenges it brings to the research institutions. Survey from the user perceptions showed that most researchers and IT administrators lack a good understanding of CUI and how it is related to other regulations, such as HIPAA, ITAR, GLBA, and FERPA. A managed research ecosystem is introduced in this work. The workflow of this efficient and cost effective framework is elaborated to demonstrate how controlled research data are processed to be compliant with one of the highest level of cybersecurity in a campus environment. Issues beyond the framework itself is also discussed. The framework serves as a reference model for other institutions to support CUI research. The awareness and training program developed from this work will be shared with other institutions to build a bigger CUI ecosystem.

Caroline Lillian Schopp

What does it mean to care for Austrian art history? This question, raised in recent public discourse in Vienna, is relevant well beyond the Austrian context, for it speaks to the conundrum of trying to sustain a nationally defined art history. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, director of the Albertina Museum and the newly opened Albertina Modern (both in Vienna), expressed his concern to the press: “Nobody else will care for our art history. The Germans, the French, the Americans all pursue their own.”1 Specifically, he is arguing for the creation of a permanent dedicated professorship for Austrian art at the University of Vienna. There has never been such a position, but throughout the art history department’s long history, such Austrian art historians as Alois Riegl and Hans Sedlmayr have, to different extents, championed the study of local and regional artworks, architecture, and collections. Today, Schröder suggests, the department is guided by a “falsely understood internationalism”; a poorly worded article subheading derides its emphases on “Asia and Islam.”2 One could speculate as to how Riegl, thinker of cross-cultural forms like the arabesque, might have responded. If Schröder’s comments were made as an act of cultural politicking, they were also an advertisement for the opening of the new Albertina Modern at the end of May 2020, after a three-month delay due to COVID-19. As a museum dedicated to exhibiting modern and contemporary Austrian art, the Albertina Modern presents, under Schröder’s direction, one way to “care for our art history.” The inaugural exhibition and German-languageonly catalog, The Beginning: Kunst in Österreich, 1945 bis 1980, equate this task with the project of producing a canon that offers a restitutive image of art made in Austria after 1945 for a certain “us.” The English-language phrase in the title is indicative of the tensions at work in contemporary cultural institutions that advocate for national art but ultimately depend on attracting international tourism. Given the enthusiastic attendance at the show, especially in the weeks after the first COVID-19 lockdown, the museum appears to be succeeding in its aims. The Albertina Modern provides a new home for the Essl Collection—a private collection of particular significance for its holdings of modern and contemporary Austrian art—following the closure of the Essl Museum in 2016. Forty percent of the collection now belongs to the Albertina and 60 percent—on long-term loan through 2044— belongs to entrepreneurs Karlheinz Essl and Hans Peter Haselsteiner. Haselsteiner also funded the fifty-seven-million-euro renovation of the Künstlerhaus, the building that now houses the Albertina Modern. Once completed in 1868, the Künstlerhaus served as the major local meeting and exhibition space for contemporary artists until those who became known as the Vienna Secession broke away from it. After being used by the Austrian Red Cross to treat the wounded in World War I and the German Wehrmacht to store supplies in World War II, the building fell into disrepair. The Albertina Modern thus also contributes to the revivification of a historic work of Viennese architecture, which today houses a theater, a cinema, the exhibition space of the Künstlerhaus for contemporary art, and the offices of the Society of Visual Artists of Austria. If the site it occupies is a palimpsest of histories, then with its first exhibition the Albertina Modern sought to capitalize on just one historical moment. The Beginning argued for what the curatorial team— including Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Elisabeth Dutz, Berthold Ecker, Antonia Hoerschelmann, and the new chief curator of the Albertina Modern, Angela Stief— defines in the massive, generously illustrated catalog as “the really new Austrian art history” (32). Significantly, this meant relegating to the past figures like Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Otto Wagner, whose work has come to signify internationally for Austrian art history. The Beginning thus refers not to an art historical moment but to a political one—namely, the founding of the Second Republic of Austria in 1945. It begins after the end of the annexation of Austria to “Greater Germany,” after World War II and the Holocaust, after Austria was declared to have been the “first victim” of National Socialism and henceforth a free country. As Schröder writes in his introduction to the catalog, the exhibition aspired “to present the canon of postwar Austrian art” (39) by distilling “what is of lasting importance” (40) and remembering “discounted artists” whose significance “we here in this country . . . have become accustomed to forgetting” (44). The Beginning presented this canon in 360 artworks by seventy-four artists and with an array of, at times, conflicting curatorial strategies. Spaces were arranged around single artists, local groups, internationally recognized movements, and broader themes. The tendency in the monographic sections of both the exhibition and the catalog was to elucidate biography. On the main floor of the exhibition, large galleries were dedicated to three artists’ work: the iconic spiral paintings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an architect and theorist of biomorphic structure (he argued adamantly against the production of ninety-degree angles in any art form); an excellent collection of paintings by Maria Lassnig that show the artist’s concern for figuring relationships of the self—to a tiger, a mother, flesh; and the eclectic work of Lassnig’s one-time partner Arnulf Rainer, who is best known for his technique of overpainting. Dutz’s catalog essay on Hundertwasser illuminates his prescient concerns for ecology, sustainability, and waste reduction, even if it was difficult to locate these in his painterly practice as seen in the exhibition. In her detailed account of Lassnig, whose 2014 show at MoMA PS1 introduced US viewers to her late paintings, Hoerschelmann makes clear just how committed Lassnig was to her art, especially when “the general climate in Vienna is not very friendly to women” (116). Lassnig and Kiki Kogelnik—both of whom, like Hundertwasser and Rainer, spent significant periods of time practicing outside of Austria—were the only two women whose work had been shown early on at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan, one of Vienna’s few venues for contemporary art in the immediate postwar years.

Andong Luis Li Zhao, Andrew Paley, Rachel Adler et al.

A politically informed citizenry is imperative for a welldeveloped democracy. While the US government has pursued policies for open data, these efforts have been insufficient in achieving an open government because only people with technical and domain knowledge can access information in the data. In this work, we conduct user interviews to identify wants and needs among stakeholders. We further use this information to sketch out the foundational requirements for a functional political information technical system.

Prasad hajare, Sadia Kamal, Siddharth Krishnan et al.

Computational methods to model political bias in social media involve several challenges due to heterogeneity, high-dimensional, multiple modalities, and the scale of the data. Political bias in social media has been studied in multiple viewpoints like media bias, political ideology, echo chambers, and controversies using machine learning pipelines. Most of the current methods rely heavily on the manually-labeled ground-truth data for the underlying political bias prediction tasks. Limitations of such methods include human-intensive labeling, labels related to only a specific problem, and the inability to determine the near future bias state of a social media conversation. In this work, we address such problems and give machine learning approaches to study political bias in two ideologically diverse social media forums: Gab and Twitter without the availability of human-annotated data. Our proposed methods exploit the use of transcripts collected from political speeches in US congress to label the data and achieve the highest accuracy of 70.5% and 65.1% in Twitter and Gab data respectively to predict political bias. We also present a machine learning approach that combines features from cascades and text to forecast cascade's political bias with an accuracy of about 85%.