Skills are considered a key determinant of workers’ labor market opportunities, especially in times of rapid technological change. However, existing research rarely conceptualizes and measures skills in their own right, instead relying on occupations as a proxy. How does this limit our understanding of the labor market structure and of wage inequality? In this article, we leverage a unique dataset of millions of online job postings in the United Kingdom to measure the skill profiles of jobs and analyze their similarity within and between occupational categories. Our data-driven approach reveals substantial discrepancies between occupational classifications and the actual skill content of jobs. We further demonstrate that job-level variation in skill content constitutes an independent source of wage inequality—one that is obscured by analyses at the occupational level. These findings challenge the conventional view of occupations as coherent bundles of skills, offering new avenues for analyzing labor market stratification.
Yu-Zheng Lin, Bono Po-Jen Shih, Hsuan-Ying Alessandra Chien
et al.
The rapid emergence of autonomous large language model agents has given rise to persistent, large-scale agent ecosystems whose collective behavior cannot be adequately understood through anecdotal observation or small-scale simulation. This paper introduces data-driven silicon sociology as a systematic empirical framework for studying social structure formation among interacting artificial agents. We present a pioneering large-scale data mining investigation of an in-the-wild agent society by analyzing Moltbook, a social platform designed primarily for agent-to-agent interaction. At the time of study, Moltbook hosted over 150,000 registered autonomous agents operating across thousands of agent-created sub-communities. Using programmatic and non-intrusive data acquisition, we collected and analyzed the textual descriptions of 12,758 submolts, which represent proactive sub-community partitioning activities within the ecosystem. Treating agent-authored descriptions as first-class observational artifacts, we apply rigorous preprocessing, contextual embedding, and unsupervised clustering techniques to uncover latent patterns of thematic organization and social space structuring. The results show that autonomous agents systematically organize collective space through reproducible patterns spanning human-mimetic interests, silicon-centric self-reflection, and early-stage economic and coordination behaviors. Rather than relying on predefined sociological taxonomies, these structures emerge directly from machine-generated data traces. This work establishes a methodological foundation for data-driven silicon sociology and demonstrates that data mining techniques can provide a powerful lens for understanding the organization and evolution of large autonomous agent societies.
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with emergence discussed include universality, order, complexity, unpredictability, irreducibility, diversity, self-organisation, discontinuities, and singularities. Emergent phenomena are widespread across physics, biology, social sciences, and computing, and are central to major scientific and societal challenges. Understanding emergence involves considering the stratification of reality across different scales (energy, time, length, complexity), each with its distinct ontology and epistemology, leading to semi-autonomous scientific disciplines. A central challenge is bridging the gap between macroscopic emergent properties and microscopic component interactions. Identifying an intermediate mesoscopic scale where new, weakly interacting entities or modular structures emerge is key. Theoretical approaches, such as effective theories (describing phenomena at a specific scale) and toy models (simplified systems for analysis), are vital. The Ising model exemplifies how toy models can elucidate emergence characteristics. Emergence is central to condensed matter physics, chaotic systems, fluid dynamics, nuclear physics, quantum gravity, neural networks, protein folding, and social segregation. An emergent perspective should influence scientific strategy by shaping research questions, methodologies, priorities, and resource allocation. An elusive goal is the design and control of emergent properties.
Le financement basé sur la performance (FBP) est un type de mécanisme de paiement du fournisseur où une incitation financière liée à la performance est accordée aux prestataires des soins. Cela implique le fait que les structures de santé sont considérées comme des organismes autonomes qui peuvent réaliser un bénéfice au profit d’objectifs de santé publique. Les études explorant la perception et l’expérience des personnels de santé sur la mise en œuvre du PBF demeurent rare en RDC et à Kinshasa en particulier. L’étude avait pour objectif d’évaluer l’expérience et la perception de personnels de santé dans l’implémentation du PBF dans les structures sanitaires au premier trimestre 2022 à Kinshasa.
Scientific social stratification is a classic theme in the sociology of science. The deep integration of social media has bridged the gap between scientometrics and sociology of science. This study comprehensively analyzes the impact of social media on scientific stratification and mobility, delving into the complex interplay between academic status and social media activity in the digital age. [Research Method] Innovatively, this paper employs An Explainable Logistic Attribution Analysis from a meso-level perspective to explore the correlation between social media behaviors and scientific social stratification. It examines the impact of scientists' use of social media in the digital age on scientific stratification and mobility, uniquely combining statistical methods with machine learning. This fusion effectively integrates hypothesis testing with a substantive interpretation of the contribution of independent variables to the model. [Research Conclusion] Empirical evidence demonstrates that social media promotes stratification and mobility within the scientific community, revealing a nuanced and non-linear facilitation mechanism. Social media activities positively impact scientists' status within the scientific social hierarchy to a certain extent, but beyond a specific threshold, this impact turns negative. It shows that the advent of social media has opened new channels for academic influence, transcending the limitations of traditional academic publishing, and prompting changes in scientific stratification. Additionally, the study acknowledges the limitations of its experimental design and suggests future research directions.
Introducción: la competencia en creación de contenido digital ha caído en un nivel entre básico e intermedio que aparenta imposibilidad de pasar a un nivel avanzado. El propósito del presente estudio fue implementar un laboratorio H5P para el fortalecimiento de dicha competencia en el profesorado universitario UNAH. Metodología: mediante un enfoque cuantitativo de tipo descriptivo, se identificó el nivel de autopercepción que tiene el profesorado en torno a dos dimensiones: creación de contenido digital y reelaboración y creación de objetos virtuales de aprendizaje (OVA). Asimismo, el laboratorio H5P se construyó mediante un Modelo ADDIE y la fase de diseño con Modelo de Cascada. Resultados: se obtuvieron de una muestra de 25 docentes en la cual se observa para ambas dimensiones un nivel de desarrollo básico A1. No obstante, competencias específicas como los procesadores de texto y el uso de presentaciones poseen un nivel intermedio. Discusión: por otro lado, se determinó que el Modelo ADDIE es eficaz para el proceso de estructuración y organización de contenidos. Asimismo, el diseño bajo un Modelo de Cascada resultó ser eficiente para proyectos pequeños por su simplicidad y facilidad para identificar fortalezas y debilidades en los pasos secuenciales del Laboratorio H5P. Concluciones: al considerar la herramienta H5P para la creación de OVA en el marco de fortalecer la competencia en creación de contenido digital, se puede establecer un proceso de formación específico (teórico-práctico) que ayude a alcanzar los mejores niveles competenciales en el profesorado universitario.
The binary division between ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ as an analytical tool has long been criticised within the research field of ‘critical religion’ in religious studies. There has also been a parallel critique in the academic discussion about post-secularity. Recently, sociologists have picked up and deepened this criticism, as expressed in Mitsutoshi Horii’s book ‘<i>Religion</i>’ <i>and</i> ‘<i>Secular</i>’ <i>Categories in Sociology: Decolonizing the Modern Myth</i> (2021). Based on a critical processing of Horii’s application to sociology, the aim of this article is to discuss the challenges for non-confessional religious education (RE) that the ongoing dismantling of this binary division entails. In particular, it looks at how a non-confessional RE could be designed that transcends the binary division and how powerful knowledge could be understood in a non-binary context.
В статье делается попытка переопределения термина «сообщество» применительно к исследованиям площадок группового общения транснациональных мигрантов в интернете. Сегодня платформы виртуальных социальных сетей позволяют создавать группы общения, объединяющие людей с общими интересами, но не обязательно знакомых друг с другом. В исследовательской литературе для анализа такого рода феноменов широкое распространение получило понятие «сообщество». Однако насколько такое решение является правомерным? Всегда ли онлайн-группы являются сообществами? Какие механизмы обеспечивают их активность? Для ответа на данные вопросы автор проводит концептуальный анализ различных антропологических и социологических моделей сообщества в контексте их приложения к онлайн-среде. На основании проведенного анализа формулируется определение сообщества как состояния максимальной солидаризации группы, возникающей в фокусированных коллективных ритуалах взаимодействия. В качестве теоретико-методологического основания статьи выступает теория ритуалов взаимодействия Рэндалла Коллинза, которая позволяет определить цепочки успешных ритуалов как ключевой механизм, лежащий в основе устойчивой групповой активности. Успешные ритуалы способствуют производству и/или воспроизводству символов идентичности группы и эмоциональной энергии (готовности вступать в схожие взаимодействия). Выработанный способ концептуализации применяется к исследованию двух русскоязычных Facebook-групп (деятельность социальной сети запрещена на территории РФ), объединяющих трудовых мигрантов из стран СНГ в Южной Корее и из стран Средней Азии в России. Проведенный анализ демонстрирует, что воспроизводство активности онлайн-групп в значительной степени опирается на эмоционально насыщенные символы, даже если основная часть сообщений сосредоточена вокруг сугубо инструментальных целей (таких как поиск вакансий). Тем не менее различия в культурном капитале могут препятствовать возникновению групповой солидарности, даже если участники номинально разделяют общие эмоции по отношению к одному и тому же объекту внимания.
Благодарность. Мы благодарим Полину Антонову, Анастасию Бабикову, Елизавету Кучерову, Анастасию Лаптеву, Дарью Юдину, а также Наталью Трегубову за ценные комментарии к первым вариантам статьи и за помощь в сборе данных.
Amalachukwu Chijindu Ananwude, Steve Nkem Ibenta, Gideon Kasie Ezu
et al.
Purpose - This paper investigates the effect of commercial bank regulations, namely the price, product, and geographic regulations, on the intermediation function of commercial banks in Nigeria.
Methods - Using secondary data from 1986 to 2017 from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the World Bank, this study employs the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model and Granger causality framework.
Findings - This paper provides evidence of a long-run relationship between commercial bank regulation and intermediation function represented by private sector credit to RGDP (regional gross domestic product). It also finds that commercial banks' regulation index through price, product, and geographic regulation has a positive relationship with intermediation function. Furthermore, the long-run relationship between commercial bank regulation and intermediation function described by private sector credit to RGDP is affirmed.
Implication - The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) needs to relax the product regulation to allow commercial banks to engage in various conventionally non-banking activities.
Originality - The paper contributes to the literature by ascertaining the commercial banks' intermediation function to Nigeria's economic growth and development.
Economic growth, development, planning, Regional economics. Space in economics
The article is dedicated to the analysis of the Ukrainian society social cohesion challenges in the pandemic conditions of digitally mediated interactions. Based on the results of qualitative sociological research, as well as a secondary analysis of the results of other sociological studies and statistics data, the author explores the phenomenon of social cohesion in the unity of three social levels of its presence - macro, meso and micro. The study has shown the dialectical nature of social cohesion and the opposite tendencies of its reproduction at different social levels – inner circle, professional communities and society as a whole. In the macro-social perspective, the pandemic has become a «common challenge», intensifying social consolidation at the level of civil society institutions; on the other hand, it has created a new axis of social inequality, deepening local differences and awareness of the different degree of «protection» from crisis conditions. It is concluded that the digitally mediated everyday interactions, characterized by a lack of social actors' co-presence in space and time, contributes to the spread of systemic integration in those social systems for which it was previously uncharacteristic. This, in turn, leads to the «frozen» functioning of social systems. In contemporary digital age, social actors are increasingly beginning to experience «digital loneliness» due to the loss of coexistence in physical time and space and the weakening of binding social capital, making familiar identification patterns less stable and definite. The «shift» of the concentration of interactions from different social circles to the level of the inner circle – the family one sets a double scenario of its reproduction either as a space of cohesive values, the highest level of trust, participation and social security, or as an environment for everyday conflicts. The article emphasizes the urgency of further conceptualization of a new type of capital – digital, which in conditions of systemic integration of social systems «puts into action» the activation of other types of capital.
In this paper we give a systematic review of the theory of Gibbs measures of Potts model on Cayley trees (developed since 2013) and discuss many applications of the Potts model to real world situations: mainly biology, physics, and some examples of alloy behavior, cell sorting, financial engineering, flocking birds, flowing foams, image segmentation, medicine, sociology etc.
Cultural and creative industries are now an established area of academic research. Yet, the welcome innovations that are associated with the development of a new field of study are also matched by confusions and conjectures. The term itself, ‘cultural and creative industries’, is the subject of extensive debate. It goes hand in hand with closely related concepts such as ‘creative economy’, as well as reflecting definitional struggles aimed at conjoining or demarcating the creative and the cultural. Many of these debates have been the subject of sociological research and research in Sociology. This collection considers that specific role of sociology, and Sociology, to the study of cultural and creative industries. The e-special issue collects articles ranging from early empirical and theoretical precursors to the formal establishment of cultural and creative industries as a field of study, to more recent work considering the coherence and usefulness of the category itself.
A folk devil has the ability to elicit a community’s fear over crime. Notorious late gangster, Bindy Johal, occupies this position as his legacy stirs the social anxieties over gang violence by some in the Punjabi-Sikh community in Western Canada. A competing narrative of Johal’s legacy has emerged, which frames him in a more sympathetic light, and as an individual who overcame systemic racial barriers that subordinated the masculinity of South Asian men in British Columbia. Based on interviews with 34 authorities in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, and drawing attention to his status as both a folk devil and hero, the discussion reveals two dueling narratives framing his legacy. The overall effect of these contradictory narratives is the overshadowing of racism, class oppression and a regional history within Sikh extremist movements that illustrate why gang involvement may appeal to some disenfranchised boys and men in the Indo-Canadian community.
In this paper, we present an empirical study of the opinion dynamics of a large-scale sample of online social network users. We estimate opinions of users as continuous scalars based on their subscriptions to information sources and analyze how friendship connections affect the dynamics of these estimations. Distinguishing between positive (toward opinions of friends) and negative (away from opinions of friends) opinion shifts, we find that the existence and magnitude of opinion shifts are positively related (largely through a linear form or an inverted U-shaped form) to the degree of divergence in opinions between user and their friends. Additionally, we moderate the balance between positive and negative shifts using opinion divergence: if the opinions of the focal user and their friends are too similar or dissimilar, there is a relatively low chance of a positive shift.
Статья посвящена социологическому анализу состояния конфликтологической грамотности населения в одном из регионов Российской Федерации – Алтайском крае и обоснованию необходимости ее повышения в настоящее время. В работе приводятся данные социологического исследования, проведенного автором в регионе методом стандартизированного интервью по месту жительства респондентов. Установлен достаточно высокий уровень неграмотности населения региона в плане использования ими определенных способов разрешения своих конфликтов. Автором выясняются основные причины подобного явления, намечены пути его преодоления. В работе сделан вывод о важности повышения конфликтологической грамотности населения регионального социума.
O artigo analisa os envolvimentos escolares e os sentidos de injustiça à volta da escola a partir de uma pesquisa de terreno nas ocupações das escolas públicas secundárias do Rio de Janeiro no primeiro semestre de 2016. Para tanto, procura-se explicitar o vocabulário de motivos das ocupações das escolas e discutir a complexidade da demanda pelo bem educacional à luz dos múltiplos envolvimentos na escola e seus significados plurais.
Mateja Šmid Hribar, Jani Kozina, David Bole
et al.
Namen prispevka je proučiti in jasno opredeliti pojme javno dobro, skupni viri in skupno. V članku smo na podlagi prostorsko-časovne analize, intervjujev in delavnic med splošno in strokovno javnostjo osvetlili dojemanje javnega dobra in skupnega v Sloveniji kot tranzicijski družbi. Analiza je pokazala, da na razumevanje teh pojmov med splošno javnostjo še vedno močno vpliva poudarjanje socialne pravičnosti, enakosti in dostopnosti dobrin za vse iz obdobja socializma, kar je lahko v nasprotju s pravico do zasebne lastnine. Neustrezno upravljanje dobrin, ki so dojete kot javno dobro, v resnici pa so skupni viri, lahko vodi v konflikte in razvrednotenje skupnih virov, s čimer bomo izgubili prednosti, ki nam omogočajo kakovostnejše življenje. Ker smo od omejenih naravnih virov življenjsko odvisni, je treba o njih nujno ozavestiti splošno in strokovno javnost, izpostaviti ranljivost teh virov in pojasniti, dane morejo biti dostopni vsem v neomejenih količinah. V mednarodnem okolju želimo s predstavljenim slovenskim primerom prispevati k boljšemu razumevanju človeškega vedenja in pričakovanj do javnega dobra in skupnih virov v postsocialističnih tranzicijskih družbah.
How do the Internet and social media technology affect our romantic lives? Critics of the Internet's effect on social life identify the overabundance of choice of potential partners online as a likely source of relationship instability. This study examines longitudinal data showing that meeting online does not predict couple breakup. Meeting online (and particularly meeting through online dating websites) predicts faster transitions to marriage for heterosexual couples. I do not claim to measure any causal effect of Internet technology on relationship longevity or marriage formation. Rather, I suggest that the data are more consistent with a positive or neutral association between Internet technology and relationships than with a negative association between the Internet and romantic relationships.