Hasil untuk "Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology"

Mark Hamilton

This article explores the potential of restorative justice as a vehicle through which to hear stories of environmental harm from Oceania. Conferencing, a restorative justice process, is a face-to-face dialectic exchange where people are heard, their views valued, and repair of harm is central. As well as human voices, such conferencing is broad enough to encompass the voices of nature and unborn generations through human representatives. Recognising two central questions relating to the use of restorative justice will determine such use in the context of environmental harm in Oceania (including from climate change). Firstly, a definitional question: is the use of restorative justice in the face of environmental harm consistent with the theoretical boundaries of restorative justice? Secondly, a relational question: what is the relationship between restorative justice and traditional Indigenous conflict resolution (i.e., Indigenous justice) in Oceania? That is, has restorative justice co-opted and misappropriated Indigenous justice and what effect, if any, does that have in hearing voices from Oceania?

Nima Motamed, Nina Otter, Emily Roff

The algebraic analysis of social systems, or algebraic social network analysis, refers to a collection of methods designed to extract information about the structure of a social system represented as a directed graph. Central among these are methods to determine the roles that exist within a given system, and the positions. The analysis of roles and positions is highly developed for social systems that involve only pairwise interactions among actors - however, in contemporary social network analysis it is increasingly common to use models that can take into account higher-order interactions as well. In this paper we take a category-theoretic approach to the question of how to lift role and positional analysis from graphs to hypergraphs, which can accommodate higher-order interactions. We use the framework of universal coalgebra - a 'theory of systems' with origins in computer science and logic - to formalize the main concepts of role and positional analysis and extend them to a large class of structures that includes both graphs and hypergraphs. As evidence for the validity of our definitions, we prove a very general functoriality theorem that specializes, in the case of graphs, to a folkloric observation about the compatibility of positional and role analysis.

Theofanis P. Raptis, Chiara Boldrini, Marco Conti et al.

The Metaverse is redefining digital interactions by merging physical, virtual, and social dimensions, yet its effects on social networking remain largely unexplored. This work examines the role of independent avatars (autonomous digital entities capable of managing social interactions on behalf of users), to optimize social time allocation and reshape Metaverse-based Online Social Networks. We propose a novel computational model that integrates a quantitative and realistic representation of user social life, grounded in evolutionary anthropology, with a framework for avatar-mediated interactions. Our model quantifies the effectiveness of a partial replacement of in-person interactions with independent avatar interactions. Additionally, it accounts for social conflicts and specific socialization constraints. We leverage our model to explore the benefits and trade-offs of an avatar-augmented social life in the Metaverse. Since the exact problem formulation leads to an NP-hard optimization problem when incorporating avatars into the social network, we tackle this challenge by introducing a heuristic solution. Through simulations, we compare avatar-mediated and non-avatar-mediated social networking, demonstrating the potential of independent avatars to enhance social connectivity and efficiency. Our findings provide a foundation for optimizing Metaverse-based social interactions, as well as useful insights for future digital social network design.

Natalie Stahl, Amy Bositis, Carolyn Damato-MacPherson et al.

Abstract Background Methadone treatment (MT) is the “gold standard” treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). However, patients face significant barriers to enrollment at opioid treatment programs (OTPs), e.g. need for proof of identity, lack of transportation, and limited intake hours. For patients experiencing homelessness or unstable housing, those barriers are magnified. Objective We created a multifactorial intervention to address the above-described barriers to facilitate prompt OTP admission for patients with OUD and housing instability. Methods Our target population was patients with OUD and unstable housing who utilize the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center mobile health unit (MHU) and syringe services program (SSP) in Lawrence, MA. As part of the HEALing Communities Study, we developed an expedited referral process whereby mobile health clinicians provided preliminary clearance for MT. SSP staff, recovery coaches, and OTP staff assisted with outreach, engagement, coordination, and intake. Patients who completed psychosocial intake could start dosing at the OTP within 1–3 days. Results Over six months, 87 individuals were linked to treatment and 64 were admitted and dosed at the OTP. Many patients who had previously assumed they could not seek treatment with methadone were eager to do so when barriers to access were reduced. Conclusions Efforts to reduce barriers to methadone initiation via partnerships between mobile health programs, SSPs, and OTPs can be a tool in combating the overdose crisis.

Renukanandan Tumu, Cristian Ioan Vasile, Victor Preciado et al.

We present the Social Influence Game (SIG), a framework for modeling adversarial persuasion in social networks with an arbitrary number of competing players. Our goal is to provide a tractable and interpretable model of contested influence that scales to large systems while capturing the structural leverage points of networks. Each player allocates influence from a fixed budget to steer opinions that evolve under DeGroot dynamics, and we prove that the resulting optimization problem is a difference-of-convex program. To enable scalability, we develop an Iterated Linear (IL) solver that approximates player objectives with linear programs. In experiments on random and archetypical networks, IL achieves solutions within 7% of nonlinear solvers while being over 10x faster, scaling to large social networks. This paper lays a foundation for asymptotic analysis of contested influence in complex networks.

Pranav Venkatesh, Kami Vinton, Dhiraj Murthy et al.

Social bots-automated accounts that generate and spread content on social media-are exploiting vulnerabilities in these platforms to manipulate public perception and disseminate disinformation. This has prompted the development of public bot detection services; however, most of these services focus primarily on Twitter, leaving niche platforms vulnerable. Fringe social media platforms such as Parler, Gab, and Gettr often have minimal moderation, which facilitates the spread of hate speech and misinformation. To address this gap, we introduce Entendre, an open-access, scalable, and platform-agnostic bot detection framework. Entendre can process a labeled dataset from any social platform to produce a tailored bot detection model using a random forest classification approach, ensuring robust social bot detection. We exploit the idea that most social platforms share a generic template, where users can post content, approve content, and provide a bio (common data features). By emphasizing general data features over platform-specific ones, Entendre offers rapid extensibility at the expense of some accuracy. To demonstrate Entendre's effectiveness, we used it to explore the presence of bots among accounts posting racist content on the now-defunct right-wing platform Parler. We examined 233,000 posts from 38,379 unique users and found that 1,916 unique users (4.99%) exhibited bot-like behavior. Visualization techniques further revealed that these bots significantly impacted the network, amplifying influential rhetoric and hashtags (e.g., #qanon, #trump, #antilgbt). These preliminary findings underscore the need for tools like Entendre to monitor and assess bot activity across diverse platforms.

André Vinícius Oliveira da Paz, Roberto Garcia Lopes Pagliuso

O problema da ausência de regulação das prestadoras de serviços de ativos virtuais despertou patente preocupação com o cenário de intensificação da criminalidade por intermédio da utilização de criptoativos, que impactam as economias nacional e mundial. Este artigo objetiva a análise das proposições de cunho criminal da Lei 14.478/2022 e sua interface com aspectos de Direito Penal Econômico.

Zaire Cullins, Michael Forrest Behne, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein

Abstract Background Understanding the health conditions of those under carceral control is often made difficult due to lack of access to data. Yet, as has been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that data is essential to understand the scope of disease and how best to allocate resources. To better understand the needs of criminal legal oriented research and non-profit organizations, we interviewed stakeholders to better understand how they use existing data, what data they lack, and what data they would like to have to optimally assess the health of people who are incarcerated. Results Stakeholders reported a lack of trust and data availability as key issues. Many perceived the few institutions that do collect and disseminate data as obfuscating data or having a bias in collection and reporting. Additionally, concerns such as balancing the interest of systems-impacted people with advocacy were described as concerning for participants. Conclusions To tackle these issues of transparency and availability, the authors believe that an independent oversight body could be instrumental to ensuring accurate and timely data collection and reporting. As many participants turned to creating their own data, coalition building could be influential as a large network of resources may support capturing the varied experiences of people who are incarcerated.

Dvora Shmulewitz, Roi Eliashar, Maor Daniel Levitin et al.

Abstract Background Substance use is a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality worldwide. Population-wide screening for problematic substance use in primary health care may mitigate the serious health and socio-economic consequences of such use, but the standard Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST 3.1) may be too long for wide-scale screening. How well validated shorter versions (ASSIST-Lite, ASSIST-FC) perform in identifying those with ASSIST 3.1 problematic use in different settings is unclear. Methods General population Jewish adults in Israel (N = 2,474) responded to an online survey that included the ASSIST 3.1 and sociodemographics. Across substances (alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, sedatives, prescription stimulants, prescription painkillers), receiver operator characteristic curve analysis determined that ASSIST-FC scores performed better than ASSIST-Lite at identifying those with problematic use, and evaluated differential ASSIST-FC performance by gender or age. Test characteristics and agreement were evaluated for binary ASSIST-FC versions, with ASSIST 3.1 problematic use as the gold standard. Results ASSIST-FC scores showed high ability to identify ASSIST 3.1 problematic use, with minimal differences by gender or age. Binary ASSIST-FC (most substances: threshold 3+; alcohol: 5+) showed high specificity and positive predictive value, acceptable sensitivity, and good agreement. Conclusions The ASSIST-FC, which assesses frequency of use and other’s concerns about use, appears useful for very brief screening in primary care to identify patients who may benefit from intervention. Early identification of those at-risk may prevent more severe consequences and ultimately decrease the significant costs of problematic substance use on the individual and population level.

Yolanda de Lucchi López-Tapia

Izabel Aguiar, Johan Ugander

When people are asked to recall their social networks, theoretical and empirical work tells us that they rely on shortcuts, or heuristics. Cognitive Social Structures (CSS) are multilayer social networks where each layer corresponds to an individual's perception of the network. With multiple perceptions of the same network, CSSs contain rich information about how these heuristics manifest, motivating the question, Can we identify people who share the same heuristics? In this work, we propose a method for identifying cognitive structure across multiple network perceptions, analogous to how community detection aims to identify social structure in a network. To simultaneously model the joint latent social and cognitive structure, we study CSSs as three-dimensional tensors, employing low-rank nonnegative Tucker decompositions (NNTuck) to approximate the CSS--a procedure closely related to estimating a multilayer stochastic block model (SBM) from such data. We propose the resulting latent cognitive space as an operationalization of the sociological theory of social cognition by identifying individuals who share relational schema. In addition to modeling cognitively independent, dependent, and redundant networks, we propose a specific model instance and related statistical test for testing when there is social-cognitive agreement in a network: when the social and cognitive structures are equivalent. We use our approach to analyze four different CSSs and give insights into the latent cognitive structures of those networks.

Helene O. I. Gundhus

This article examines Operation Migrant, initiated by the Norwegian police following the so-called migration crises in Europe in 2015. One of its central aims was, by predicting challenges related to increased migration, to improve resource allocation and prevent crime. By drawing on research on risk and threat assessment as a form of power, this article aims to analyze how risk categories are distributed and translated into a multilayered institutional arrangement where migration is policed as a potential crime. The article examines the indicators that the risk assessments are based on and the measures applied and investigates how discretionary practices make immigrants objects for law enforcement and policing. The article contributes to research on migration control in an ordinary police context, where immigration identity checks become part of the crime reduction strategy. Applying the concept of interpretive flexibility (Collins 1981), I will identify the steps in this chain of translation to explore the leap from targeting potentially criminal asylum seekers to targeting broader groups with temporary residency in Norway. The article analyzes the conditions determining how policing, technologies, and migrants are “co-constructed” in a chain of mediation and translation, which reinforces the view of migrants as risky and criminal. The final section discusses how risk and threat analysis is affected by the notion of the “crimmigrant other” (Franko 2020). In Norway, selectively targeting unwanted migrants as criminals has become dominant in police decision-making at a policy level and everyday practices affecting not only third country nationals but also unwanted eastern Europeans.

Sarah S. Monshi, Jennifer Ibrahim

Abstract Background The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was developed to assist nations in reducing the demand and supply of tobacco. As of 2020, 182 nations joined the FCTC, agreeing to implement the recommended tobacco control measures. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) ratified the WHO FCTC by August 2006. Given the unique political, cultural, and religious context – and known tobacco industry efforts to influence tobacco use- in these nations, a careful examination of the translation of FCTC measures into policy is needed. This study aimed to assess the implementation of FCTC tobacco control measures at the national level within the six GCC countries. Method We collected and coded the FCTC measures that were implemented in the GCC countries. We examined trends and variations of the implementation between 2008 and 2020. Results GCC countries implemented most FCTC measures targeting the demand for and supply of tobacco, with some variation among countries. Bahrain and Qatar were more comprehensively implementing FCTC measures while Kuwait and Oman implemented the least number of the FCTC measures. Implementing measures related to tobacco prices and eliminating the illicit tobacco trade has slowly progressed in GCC countries. All GCC countries entirely banned smoking in workplaces while three countries implemented a partial ban in restaurants. Only Oman has restrictions on tobacco ads shown in media. There is progress in implementing FCTC measures related to tobacco packaging, cessation, and sale to minors in most GCC countries. Conclusions Given the influence of the tobacco industry in the Gulf region, the findings suggest a need for ongoing surveillance to monitor the proliferation of tobacco control measures and evaluate their effectiveness. Efforts required to address tobacco use should correspond to the unique political and cultural background of the GCC countries.

Matthew Baker, Katie A. Berens, Shanna Williams et al.

Social workers involved in child maltreatment investigations faced considerable challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interactions with children and families carried new restrictions and risks, which resulted in changes in practice. We conducted a two-phase, mixed-methods study which examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social workers who work with maltreated children from both urban and rural areas across Canada. More specifically, we examined changes in service delivery, as well as perceptions of safety, stress, worry, and how support differed between urban and rural social workers. Fifty social workers (62% urban, 38% rural) responded to the Phase 1 survey, disseminated in May 2020, with 34 (76% urban, 24% rural) responding to the Phase 2 survey in November 2020. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that rural social workers reported more worry, stress and a greater need for mental health support, in addition to receiving less support than urban social workers during the first wave of COVID-19 cases. However, during the second wave of cases, urban social workers reported more stress, a greater need for mental health support, and receiving less support than rural social workers. Additional research is needed to further uncover the nature of the differences between rural and urban social workers, and to identify the prolonged effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social workers.

Nir Lotan, Einat Minkov

This paper introduces SocialVec, a general framework for eliciting social world knowledge from social networks, and applies this framework to Twitter. SocialVec learns low-dimensional embeddings of popular accounts, which represent entities of general interest, based on their co-occurrences patterns within the accounts followed by individual users, thus modeling entity similarity in socio-demographic terms. Similar to word embeddings, which facilitate tasks that involve text processing, we expect social entity embeddings to benefit tasks of social flavor. We have learned social embeddings for roughly 200,000 popular accounts from a sample of the Twitter network that includes more than 1.3 million users and the accounts that they follow, and evaluate the resulting embeddings on two different tasks. The first task involves the automatic inference of personal traits of users from their social media profiles. In another study, we exploit SocialVec embeddings for gauging the political bias of news sources in Twitter. In both cases, we prove SocialVec embeddings to be advantageous compared with existing entity embedding schemes. We will make the SocialVec entity embeddings publicly available to support further exploration of social world knowledge as reflected in Twitter.

Zexun Chen, Sean Kelty, Brooke Foucault Welles et al.

Social structures influence a variety of human behaviors including mobility patterns, but the extent to which one individual's movements can predict another's remains an open question. Further, latent information about an individual's mobility can be present in the mobility patterns of both social and non-social ties, a distinction that has not yet been addressed. Here we develop a "colocation" network to distinguish the mobility patterns of an ego's social ties from those of non-social colocators, individuals not socially connected to the ego but who nevertheless arrive at a location at the same time as the ego. We apply entropy and predictability measures to analyse and bound the predictive information of an individual's mobility pattern and the flow of that information from their top social ties and from their non-social colocators. While social ties generically provide more information than non-social colocators, we find that significant information is present in the aggregation of non-social colocators: 3-7 colocators can provide as much predictive information as the top social tie, and colocators can replace up to 85% of the predictive information about an ego, compared with social ties that can replace up to 94% of the ego's predictability. The presence of predictive information among non-social colocators raises privacy concerns: given the increasing availability of real-time mobility traces from smartphones, individuals sharing data may be providing actionable information not just about their own movements but the movements of others whose data are absent, both known and unknown individuals.

Behrooz Hamzeh, Vahid Farnia, Mehdi Moradinazar et al.

Abstract Background Smoking is a social epidemic and one of the main risk factors for premature deaths and disabilities worldwide. In the present study, we investigated the Pattern of Cigarette Smoking: intensity, cessation, and age of the beginning. Methods Data collected from the recruitment phase of Ravansar (a Kurd region in western Iran) Non-Communicable Disease (RaNCD) cohort study was analyzed by using Chi-square test, univariate and multivariate logistic regressions, Poisson regression, and linear regression. Results Totally 10,035 individuals (47.42% males) participated in the study. Mean age was lower for males (47.45 yr) than for females (48.36 yr). Prevalence of smoking was 20% (36.4% of males and 5.23% of females). Compared to female participants, males showed a 7-fold higher prevalence of smoking and started smoking about 4 years earlier. Being married, having a lower BMI, living in rural areas, and being exposed to secondhand smoke (SHS) were predictors of higher smoking prevalence rates. Furthermore, current exposure to SHS, higher smoking intensity, later smoking initiation, male gender, younger age, lower education, and lower BMI were related to lower likelihood of stopping smoking. Heavy smokers began to smoke about 4 years earlier than casual smokers did. Finally, being divorced/ widow/ widower/ single and childhood exposure to SHS were found to increase the likelihood of becoming a smoker. Conclusions Based on present research results, health programs specific to smoking cessation should take socio-demographic factors, smoking history, and current smoking behavior into account.

Tuan Minh Pham, Imre Kondor, Rudolf Hanel et al.

With the availability of cell phones, internet, social media etc. the interconnectedness of people within most societies has increased drastically over the past three decades. Across the same timespan, we are observing the phenomenon of increasing levels of fragmentation in society into relatively small and isolated groups that have been termed filter bubbles, or echo chambers. These pose a number of threats to open societies, in particular, a radicalisation in political, social or cultural issues, and a limited access to facts. In this paper we show that these two phenomena might be tightly related. We study a simple stochastic co-evolutionary model of a society of interacting people. People are not only able to update their opinions within their social context, but can also update their social links from collaborative to hostile, and vice versa. The latter is implemented such that social balance is realised. We find that there exists a critical level of interconnectedness, above which society fragments into small sub-communities that are positively linked within and hostile towards other groups. We argue that the existence of a critical communication density is a universal phenomenon in all societies that exhibit social balance. The necessity arises from the underlying mathematical structure of a phase transition phenomenon that is known from the theory of a kind of disordered magnets called spin glasses. We discuss the consequences of this phase transition for social fragmentation in society.

Lucia Hargašová

The purpose of the paper is to describe the transformation of the Slovak residential care system over the last two to three decades. The goal is to analyse the benefits and costs of the most important changes in light of the political, theoretical and ideological shifts. The residential care system for children in Slovakia has improved significantly in many respects. Children's homes have been transformed from large facilities into smaller units; and children under the age of six can only be placed in foster families or family care. Children's rights have been implemented through care policies, and there has been gradual recognition of the need to address the difficulties faced by birth families. Many decisions in policy and practice have been underpinned by a pro-family orientation and concepts such as attachment theory. Nonetheless, the process of pursuing better quality care and of building a system that meets international quality criteria has been followed by collateral shifts. Re-education, diagnostic and specialist facilities have not been the primary focus. The labelling of children in care as problematic and a derogatory discourse about Roma children has persisted to a significant extent. With the facilities no longer being under the direct control of the state administration and the education and health ministries, some of their psychological and pedagogical experience and knowledge has been lost.

Maria Carmelita Yazbek, Maria Inês Bravo, Raquel Raichelis