Hasil untuk "Political science (General)"

Jiayi Zhang, Shu Yang, Junchao Wu et al.

Fine-tuning Large Language Models on a political topic will significantly manipulate their political stance on various issues and unintentionally affect their stance on unrelated topics. While previous studies have proposed this issue, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the internal representations of these stances and the mechanisms that lead to unintended cross-topic generalization. In this paper, we systematically explore the internal mechanisms underlying this phenomenon from a neuron-level perspective and how to mitigate the cross-topic generalization of political fine-tuning. Firstly, we propose Political Neuron Localization through Activation Contrasting (PNLAC) to identify two distinct types of political neurons: general political neurons, which govern stance across multiple political topics, and topic-specific neurons} that affect the model's political stance on individual topics. We find the existence of these political neuron types across four models and datasets through activation patching experiments. Leveraging these insights, we introduce InhibitFT, an inhibition-based fine-tuning method, effectively mitigating the cross-topic stance generalization. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness of identified neuron types across various models and datasets, and show that InhibitFT significantly reduces the cross-topic stance generalization by 20% on average, while preserving topic-specific performance. Moreover, we demonstrate that selectively inhibiting only 5% of neurons is sufficient to effectively mitigate the cross-topic stance generalization.

Allisson Andrea Vera-Vera, Axel Alfredo Saltos-Chávez, Nelson García-Reinoso

Se analizó la incorporación de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) en emprendimientos turísticos de los cantones Pedernales, Manta y Portoviejo, en la provincia de Manabí. El objetivo fue evaluar su nivel de implementación y proponer estrategias prácticas para su integración. Se aplicó una metodología mixta estructurada en tres fases: revisión sistemática de la literatura científica sobre ODS y turismo sostenible; aplicación de un cuestionario con escala Likert a 206 empresarios turísticos; y diseño de estrategias mediante la matriz 5W2H, herramienta que permitió estructurar acciones específicas. El análisis estadístico se realizó con el software IBM SPSS Statistics v30.0. Los resultados revelaron un alto desempeño en condiciones laborales justas (6.91) e igualdad de género (6.63), frente a debilidades como alianzas estratégicas (4.60) y uso de proveedores locales (4.69). Con base en estos hallazgos, se propusieron cinco estrategias clave: alianzas institucionales, cadenas de suministro sostenibles, reducción de huella de carbono, gestión de aguas residuales y capacitación especializada en ODS.

José Augusto Lacerda Fernandes, Natanael Silva Correia

Apesar de sua incontestável importância para a preservação da biodiversidade e para o combate às mudanças climáticas, a floresta amazônica está passando por um alarmante processo de destruição. Com índices de preservação muito acima da média geral, as terras indígenas evidenciam o papel central dos povos originários no enfrentamento do desmatamento e de outros tantos desafios amazônicos, convidando a olhares mais atentos para as práticas, estratégias e estruturas organizacionais adotadas no âmbito do movimento indígena. Atento para a relevância dos recursos financeiros na dinâmica dessas iniciativas, este artigo buscou compreender a construção e a gestão de um mecanismo de financiamento não apenas voltado para indígenas, mas também criado e gerido por eles. Por meio do caso do Fundo Podáali, apontamos como mecanismos de financiamento inovadores, adaptados às especificidades da Amazônia, podem desburocratizar o acesso a recursos e ainda fortalecer os saberes ancestrais e os modos de vida dos povos originários.

Ozan Evkaya, Miguel de Carvalho

As a result of recent advancements in generative AI, the field of data science is prone to various changes. The way practitioners construct their data science workflows is now irreversibly shaped by recent advancements, particularly by tools like OpenAI's Data Analysis plugin. While it offers powerful support as a quantitative co-pilot, its limitations demand careful consideration in empirical analysis. This paper assesses the potential of ChatGPT for data science analyses, illustrating its capabilities for data exploration and visualization, as well as for commonly used supervised and unsupervised modeling tasks. While we focus here on how the Data Analysis plugin can serve as co-pilot for Data Science workflows, its broader potential for automation is implicit throughout.

Joseba Fernandez de Landa, Rodrigo Agerri

Social media users express their political preferences via interaction with other users, by spontaneous declarations or by participation in communities within the network. This makes a social network such as Twitter a valuable data source to study computational science approaches to political learning inference. In this work we focus on three diverse regions in Spain (Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia) to explore various methods for multi-party categorization, required to analyze evolving and complex political landscapes, and compare it with binary left-right approaches. We use a two-step method involving unsupervised user representations obtained from the retweets and their subsequent use for political leaning detection. Comprehensive experimentation on a newly collected and curated dataset comprising labeled users and their interactions demonstrate the effectiveness of using Relational Embeddings as representation method for political ideology detection in both binary and multi-party frameworks, even with limited training data. Finally, data visualization illustrates the ability of the Relational Embeddings to capture intricate intra-group and inter-group political affinities.

Sangyeon Kim

As new technologies rapidly reshape patterns of political communication, platforms like Twitch are transforming how people consume political information. This entertainment-oriented live streaming platform allows us to observe the impact of technologies such as ``live-streaming'' and ``streaming-chat'' on political communication. Despite its entertainment focus, Twitch hosts a variety of political actors, including politicians and pundits. This study explores Twitch politics by addressing three main questions: 1) Who are the political Twitch streamers? 2) What content is covered in political streams? 3) How do audiences of political streams interact with each other? To identify political streamers, I leveraged the Twitch API and supervised machine-learning techniques, identifying 574 political streamers. I used topic modeling to analyze the content of political streams, revealing seven broad categories of political topics and a unique pattern of communication involving context-specific ``emotes.'' Additionally, I created user-reference networks to examine interaction patterns, finding that a small number of users dominate the communication network. This research contributes to our understanding of how new social media technologies influence political communication, particularly among younger audiences.

V. A. Traag

Citations in science are being studied from several perspectives, among which approaches such as scientometrics and science of science. In this chapter I briefly review some of the literature on citations, citation distributions and models of citations. These citations feature prominently in another part of the literature which is dealing with research evaluation and the role of metrics and indicators in that process. Here I briefly review part of the discussion in research evaluation. This also touches on the subject of how citations relate to peer review. Finally, I conclude by trying to integrate the two literatures. The fundamental problem in research evaluation is that research quality is unobservable. This has consequences for conclusions that we can draw from quantitative studies of citations and citation models. The term ``indicators'' is a relevant concept in this context, which I try to clarify. Causality is important for properly understanding indicators, especially when indicators are used in practice: when we act on indicators, we enter causal territory. Even when an indicator might have been valid, through its very use, the consequences of its use may invalidate it. By combining citation models with proper causal reasoning and acknowledging the fundamental problem about unobservable research quality, we may hope to make progress.

Mohsen Abbaszadeh Marzbali

As one of the most visible aspects of political life in recent years, the populist rises imply the ‘crisis of representation’ that means the existing institutional mechanism of representative democracy is ineffective in representing the variety of social demands. While this situation, according to the liberal democratic approach, warns of the revival of mass society and new versions of authoritarianism, the radical democratic approach considers it a possibility to retrieve democracy. Which variables determine the contending evaluations of the impact of populism on democracy? The present paper presupposes that the contending evaluations are driven by different conceptions of the principal constituent of democracy (rule of law or general will?) and the populism entity (a manner of governance or a movement constructing collective will?). Given the postulates of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical), the paper hypothesizes that evaluating the effects of populism on democracy depends on the way of interaction of some variables: a) the content of the populist discourse (egalitarian articulation of plural demands or discriminatory one?); b) the context in which the populist movement arises (democratic structure of opportunity or authoritarian one?) c) the mutual strategy of political actors whether from opposition or in position ones (the connection between street politics and institutional one or disconnection?). Taking advantage of the contending democratic theories (liberal and radical) in a combinative theoretical framework, the paper attempts to justify the hypothesis by highlighting the fact that both democratic theories are built on one aspect of the conception of democratic order. Marking the elements such as individual subjectivity, rationality, the rule of law, pluralism, etc. as characteristics of democratic order, a liberal democratic approach considers populist popular and exclusionary (i.e., determined by populists’ particular definition of the people) orientation as a threat to democracy. It is because such orientation restricts public debates and leads to weakening democratic institutions, the opposition’s rights, and the plurality of society. On the contrary, the radical democratic approach points to the significance of the populist mobilization for the democratization of status quo democracies owing to re-politicization of the issues neglected by the sovereign elite, provided that to articulate accumulated demands around a democratic egalitarian nodal point. Such evaluation emanates from the fact that this approach identifies democracy with collective subjectivity, general will, participation, and so on. It seems that a non-paradoxical and justifiable reference to both the above-mentioned approach in an analysis of the effect of populism on democracy entails taking their different concentrations into account. It means ‘populism-in-power’ (as a way of governance) puts the structural foundations of democracy in danger and facilitates the emergence of authoritarianism due to its anti-institutionalism, anti-pluralism, and tendency to mass politics. It is whilst, in the status of ‘opposition’ (a mobilizing movement), populism might be an opportunity to revive democratic politics. This argument resorts to the action of constructing a new collective will, in populist strategies of mobilizations, which reveals shortages of representative systems such as the monopoly of a minority, technocratic elitism, and so on. Nevertheless, the actualization of the progressive effects of the populist movements on democracy depends heavily on the interaction of variables which are as follows.   a) If the populist discourse articulates accumulated social demands around a democratic egalitarian will, then the populist moment (as the moment of crisis in a representative democracy) can be of progressive connotations for democracy-deepening. Conversely, discriminatory articulation (like racist or class populism) paves the way for authoritarianism. Hence in terms of democratization and de-democratization, various populisms can be imagined; ranging from democratic populism to authoritarian, leftist to far-right. b)  Realization of the above-mentioned progressive version of populism depends on the ‘democratic structure of political opportunity’. The possibility of mobilization by democratic egalitarian populism is only imaginable where the rules of the democratic competition are guaranteed. In other words, if there is no equal and fair opportunity to declare the policies in electoral campaigns and implement them after taking into power, then there can be just governmental types of populism that mobilize the mass for advocating governmental policies and decisions. Here, populism appears in its authoritarian face in a mass society. c) The third variable is the strategy that political actors of both realms, movement, and institution, in a political structure adapt. If the populist movement ties its street activism with institutional bargaining (e.g. by resorting to parliamentary parties) and, mutually, the government opens up the policy-making input to populist demands (rather than rejecting them), then the rise of a democratic egalitarian populist movement might result in democracy- deepening. Otherwise, populism can bring about some contending de-democratizing mass mobilizations, whether in the shape of authoritarian up-to-down governmental populism or fruitless gross-root radical populism. In brief, the paper maintains that by vindicating ‘popular sovereignty’, populism has double-edged effects in terms of weakening or strengthening democracy; ranging from an infertile radicalism leading to authoritarianism to radical reformism containing the possibility of retrieval of democracy. Hence democratic theory needs to develop an order that balances the rule of law and public will as two sides of democracy. It calls for a new social contract based on a balanced relationship between specialism and democratic responsibility. To reach such a situation, more inclusive politics should be targeted by current-day democracies. The key, however, is hearing the demands of populist advocators rather than populist leaders’ programs.

Erica Weintraub Austin, Porismita Borah, Shawn Domgaard

Communities of color, suffering equity gaps and disproportionate COVID-19 effects, also must resist ongoing disinformation campaigns designed to impede their political influence. A representative, national survey (N=1264) of adults conducted June-July 2020 found that nonwhite respondents tended to report less COVID-19 knowledge, media literacy, and voting intent than white respondents, but more acceptance of COVID-19 disinformation and for risks associated with protesting for social justice. General media literacy skills are associated with COVID-19 knowledge and political engagement, while science media literacy is associated with less acceptance of COVID-19 disinformation. Media literacy skills appear important for empowering and informing communities of color.

Vicente Bagnoli

O objetivo do artigo é investigar a concorrência nos mercados digitais e o papel da política de concorrência nas economias em desenvolvimento para um crescimento inclusivo e prosperidade compartilhada com ferramentas inovadoras para uma melhor aplicação da lei. Sua metodologia analisa relatórios e pesquisas internacionais. As economias em desenvolvimento devem fortalecer sua capacidade de desenhar políticas de concorrência nos mercados digitais de acordo com suas particularidades sociais e econômicas de desenvolvimento, observando o que as economias desenvolvidas vêm fazendo em seu próprio mercado. A UE tem conduzido a política de concorrência nos mercados digitais, e o Digital Markets Act e o Digital Services Act são mais duas iniciativas capazes de facilitar as economias em desenvolvimento na concepção de sua própria regulamentação nos mercados digitais. O resultado do artigo indica que não existe um formato único e, como conclusão, a experiência e os bons padrões devem ser avaliados e ajustados.

Jaime Goded

En una sociedad dividida en clases la cultura es un fenómeno claramente enlazado con las relaciones de producción. La clase dominante asigna a la cultura, entre otras, la función de consolidar su predominio a través del poder que otorga el saber. La burguesía intenta apropiarse de las diversas actividades culturales para convertirlas, al mismo tiempo, en un signo de privilegios de clase y en un instrumento de eliminación y segregación social. Este instrumento puede ser, en diferentes momentos y circunstancias, el latín como lengua culta, las matemáticas, la novela, el teatro o la música moderna.

Yong Zhao, Jian Du, Yishan Wu

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1970) was one of the most eminent scientists in molecular biology, and also regarded as the founding father of the Science of Science. His book The Social Function of Science laid the theoretical foundations for the discipline. In this article, we summarize four chief characteristics of his ideas in the Science of Science: the socio-historical perspective, theoretical models, qualitative and quantitative approaches, and studies of science planning and policy. China has constantly reformed its scientific and technological system based on research evidence of the Science of Science. Therefore, we analyze the impact of Bernal Science-of-Science thoughts on the development of Science of Science in China, and discuss how they might be usefully taken still further in quantitative studies of science.

George Heald, Sui Ann Mao, Valentina Vacca et al.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will answer fundamental questions about the origin, evolution, properties, and influence of magnetic fields throughout the Universe. Magnetic fields can illuminate and influence phenomena as diverse as star formation, galactic dynamics, fast radio bursts, active galactic nuclei, large-scale structure, and Dark Matter annihilation. Preparations for the SKA are swiftly continuing worldwide, and the community is making tremendous observational progress in the field of cosmic magnetism using data from a powerful international suite of SKA pathfinder and precursor telescopes. In this contribution, we revisit community plans for magnetism research using the SKA, in the light of these recent rapid developments. We focus in particular on the impact that new radio telescope instrumentation is generating, thus advancing our understanding of key SKA magnetism science areas, as well as the new techniques that are required for processing and interpreting the data. We discuss these recent developments in the context of the ultimate scientific goals for the SKA era.

Hatef Monajemi, Riccardo Murri, Eric Jonas et al.

Modern data science research can involve massive computational experimentation; an ambitious PhD in computational fields may do experiments consuming several million CPU hours. Traditional computing practices, in which researchers use laptops or shared campus-resident resources, are inadequate for experiments at the massive scale and varied scope that we now see in data science. On the other hand, modern cloud computing promises seemingly unlimited computational resources that can be custom configured, and seems to offer a powerful new venue for ambitious data-driven science. Exploiting the cloud fully, the amount of work that could be completed in a fixed amount of time can expand by several orders of magnitude. As potentially powerful as cloud-based experimentation may be in the abstract, it has not yet become a standard option for researchers in many academic disciplines. The prospect of actually conducting massive computational experiments in today's cloud systems confronts the potential user with daunting challenges. Leading considerations include: (i) the seeming complexity of today's cloud computing interface, (ii) the difficulty of executing an overwhelmingly large number of jobs, and (iii) the difficulty of monitoring and combining a massive collection of separate results. Starting a massive experiment `bare-handed' seems therefore highly problematic and prone to rapid `researcher burn out'. New software stacks are emerging that render massive cloud experiments relatively painless. Such stacks simplify experimentation by systematizing experiment definition, automating distribution and management of tasks, and allowing easy harvesting of results and documentation. In this article, we discuss several painless computing stacks that abstract away the difficulties of massive experimentation, thereby allowing a proliferation of ambitious experiments for scientific discovery.

Benjamin Adams

Over the last decade, the term spatial computing has grown to have two different, though not entirely unrelated, definitions. The first definition of spatial computing stems from industry, where it refers primarily to new kinds of augmented, virtual, mixed-reality, and natural user interface technologies. A second definition coming out of academia takes a broader perspective that includes active research in geographic information science as well as the aforementioned novel UI technologies. Both senses reflect an ongoing shift toward increased interaction with computing interfaces and sensors embedded in the environment and how the use of these technologies influence how we behave and make sense of and even change the world we live in. Regardless of the definition, research in spatial computing is humming along nicely without the need to identify new research agendas or new labels for communities of researchers. However, as a field of research, it could be helpful to view spatial data science as the glue that coheres spatial computing with problem-solving and learning in the real world into a more holistic discipline.

Tanima Chatterjee, Bhaskar DasGupta

The topic of this paper is "gerrymandering", namely the curse of deliberate creations of district maps with highly asymmetric electoral outcomes to disenfranchise voters, and it has a long legal history. Measuring and eliminating gerrymandering has enormous implications to sustain the backbone of democratic principles of a society. Although there is no dearth of legal briefs involving gerrymandering over many years, it is only more recently that mathematicians and applied computational researchers have started to investigate this topic. However, it has received relatively little attention so far from the computational complexity researchers dealing with theoretical analysis of computational complexity issues, such as computational hardness, approximability issues, etc. There could be many reasons for this, such as descriptions of these problem non-CS non-math (often legal or political) journals that theoretical CS (TCS) people usually do not follow, or the lack of coverage of these topics in TCS publication venues. One of our modest goals in writing this article is to improve upon this situation by stimulating further interactions between the gerrymandering and TCS researchers. To this effect, our main contributions are twofold: (1) we provide formalization of several models, related concepts, and corresponding problem statements using TCS frameworks from the descriptions of these problems as available in existing non-TCS (perhaps legal) venues, and (2) we also provide computational complexity analysis of some versions of these problems, leaving other versions for future research. The goal of writing this article is not to have the final word on gerrymandering, but to introduce a series of concepts, models and problems to the TCS community and to show that science of gerrymandering involves an intriguing set of partitioning problems involving geometric and combinatorial optimization.

Seyed Hussain Fallahzadeh

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the reasons for not adhering to political power and provide the necessary mechanisms to overcome it from Imam Ali's perspective. The research method was descriptive-analytical and the results showed that, based on the relics of Imam Ali (A.S.), the causes of the reasons for not adhering to political power can be attributed to self-esteem and forgetfulness of God's greatness and power, the notion of survival of power and neglect of its decline, and being surrounded of the ruler by sycophantic consultants and so on. In his view, the mechanisms of political power control can be categorized into both internal and external. Worship and piety, theism and faith in the Day of Judgment are among the internal factors; and the free space to speak to the ruler and to criticize him, to impose Enjoining good and forbidding wrong in community, to present the agenda and goals of the mission to the agents, to put overseers and monitors on their behaviors, to admonish and remind them of their weaknesses and dealing with offenders seriously, are of external mechanisms of controlling political power in Imam Ali's political opinions.

Jack Lucas, Alison Smith

Whether it’s a big city or a small town, all Canadian municipalities have core issues that their elected politicians are concerned about. Regardless of size, the daily business of a municipality must be managed and policies determined about such bread-and-butter issues as garbage collection, snow removal, wastewater and sewage, fire protection, economic development and fixing potholes. However, when size increases, so do the layers of issues that engage municipal politicians. This paper examines the results of a cross-Canada survey of more than 1,000 mayors and councillors from communities ranging in population size from 5,000 to more than two million. With an increase in population size, the numbers and complexity of issues creep up as well. Tiny municipalities typically aren’t concerned with issues such as immigrant settlement, homelessness and public transit. Those issues are much more pressing for larger municipalities. A focus on some types of issues, such as public transit, grows right alongside population growth. The physical size of large municipalities means they contain a population whose needs are naturally more diverse than they are in smaller cities, towns and villages, thus shifting politicians’ concerns to such things as homelessness and climate change. However, issues such as relations with Indigenous people and climate change also tend to hold regional, not just municipal, importance. They may be extremely important to a small municipality because of its geographic location and less important in a larger municipality located elsewhere. For example, municipal politicians in British Columbia reflect regional concerns with their emphasis in the survey on the importance of tackling homelessness, affordable housing, climate change and Indigenous relations. Yet, next door in Alberta, Indigenous relations and climate change ranked in the survey as being of low importance, along with climate change, despite the presence of two cities in the province with populations hovering around the million mark. The number one issue for municipalities regardless of size is economic development, since job creation and attracting investment are key for a healthy municipality regardless of its location or size. And nearly every politician surveyed listed planning, water supply and transportation infrastructure (roads, highways and bridges) as being of deep importance to their communities. Of almost equal importance in the survey were a second slate of issues including emergency planning, parks and recreation, public health, solid waste removal and policing. The results of this survey are intended to lay the groundwork for future researchers who want to focus on specific problems in the area of urban policy-making. Those who want to study the bread-and-butter issues can do so among a wide range and size of municipalities, knowing that these issues are vital to all. Those with an interest in homelessness and immigrant populations can focus on the big cities while being assured they are not missing out on key points among smaller communities. This survey will be highly beneficial for researchers in urban policy issues as it will help them to decide where to look and exactly what to look for.

Gerardo Luis Dorantes y Aguilar

Este artículo expone los resultados de una investigación descriptiva cuyo objetivo fue determinar la situación actual de la práctica de la producción y difusión de contenidos académicos en, por y para la red por parte del personal académico de la UNAM. Se trata del primer trabajo que aborda de manera específica la incorporación de tecnologías convergentes para el desarrollo de una cultura académica digital universitaria. Para ello se encuestó a una muestra representativa de miembros del claustro. Los resultados sugieren que los académicos emplean la red sólo para consulta y descarga de documentos, mas no para procesar datos ni divulgar los resultados de sus investigaciones, por lo que se concluye que son necesarios mayores esfuerzos por alcanzar una auténtica transformación de la cultura digital académica.