This book explores cultural polarization resultant decline in social cohesion in society and how information and communication technologies exacerbate the cultural polarization through phenomenon such as “echo chambers” of information that damage the quality of online discourse. This book examines the nature of the information that is shared. Further this book identifies how the quality of online discourse and polarization induced through it leads to offline harm and negative outcomes in our society. This book discusses how wide-ranging information exchange on digital media can lead to two scenarios, namely, the formation of the public sphere or the formation of echo chambers. While the public sphere, which promotes greater diversity, is a well-researched domain, substantially less research has been conducted on echo chambers in relation to sociocultural activities, products or services. This book states that polarization induced by the formation and evolution of echo chambers in sociocultural realm such as around epidemic outbreaks, vaccination, healthcare, education, and climate change is an emerging avenue of research due to its enormous impact in the shaping of our society. Therefore, this book argues that understanding the characteristics of sociocultural products related controversies is critical and valuable in developing interventions to reduce unhealthy societal and organizational polarisations. The development of systematic knowledge is required to understand and address such a large scale and complex societal challenge so as to facilitate a deeper understanding and offer solutions to the growing issue of polarization in sociocultural context driven primarily through echo chambers. This book examines how technology enabled social media usage increases, and the complex structural outcomes such as echo chambers are likely to have an increasingly important role in shaping public opinion. This book appeals to readers with interest in developing a deeper and broader understanding of issues and initiatives related to the polarization of opinions on cultural products. These include readers and scholars from various disciplines, along with engaged organizational leaders, activists, policy makers, and common citizens.

In this edited book, we provide foundational tenets of Gandhian perspective, and present examples of social organizations that are aiming to insulate themselves by adopting community and village-centered approaches to restructuring socially-embedded economic activities that align with Gandhian principles. These cases highlight the relevance of Gandhi's thoughts in the field of social entrepreneurship. We examine key principles such as Sarvodaya (the welfare of all), Antodaya (the upliftment of the weakest), self-sufficiency, self-reliance, Nai Talim (holistic education), and Trusteeship. We explore how social organizations implement these principles to promote resilience and well-being at the community level. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed unsustainable practices in the world, including disrupted supply chains, contagious effects of integrated global economy that ignore the local self-reliance, and unsustainable internal displacement that make cities dependent on rural labor and rural population dependent on urban areas for jobs. These issues show that there are systemic problems with how our society and market are structured. The traditional way of development that focuses on profit maximization and unlimited wants has caused problems like inequality, resource depletion, and disproportionate wealth accumulation. Unlimited growth in a limited world has led us to social, economic, and ecological crises. However, degrowth, as an approach has been criticized for wanting to go back to pre-industrial times. In this context, Gandhi's ideas offer alternatives. Gandhi promotes moderation in how market activities are structured and how individual consumption practices are followed. This can help reduce the negative impact of economic activities on people and the planet, and move towards a more structured and inclusive economy.

This two-volume set LNCS 14025 and 14026 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media, SCSM 2023, held as part of the 25th International Conference, HCI International 2023, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in July 2023. The total of 1578 papers and 396 posters included in the HCII 2023 proceedings was carefully reviewed and selected from 7472 submissions. The SCSM 2023 conference offers a wide range of topics related to the design, development, assessment, use, and impact of social media.

Material flow management offers enterprises a high potential for realizing new economic competitive advantages. The eco-efficient optimization of material flow cutS costs while simultaneously achieving long-term ecological sustainability. This book summarises the fundamental concepts and tools of material flow management, and presents contemporary methods and findings. Case studies illustrate the results from recent research projects conducted in cooperation with industrial companies.

The challenge of disentangling political communication processes and their effects has grown with the complexity of the new political information environment. But so have scientists’ toolsets and capacities to better study and understand them. This edited volume focuses on the use of Computational Communication Science (CCS) to address key questions in political communication, highlighting methodological innovations and the theoretical, practical, and institutional challenges in the field. Topics include clickbaiting, propaganda, political polarization, and media framing. The book starts by mapping the challenges and opportunities of data collection and analysis, focusing on computational methods to address theory-driven questions in political communication. Chapters highlight the theoretical, empirical, and institutional aspects of Computational Communication Science (CCS) relevant to the field, assessing the challenges of data requirements, digital signal semantics, and the crucial role of infrastructures, academic institutions, ethics, and training in computational methods. Considering all of these aspects, individual chapters showcase methodological innovations, applying CCS to topics like clickbaiting in the context of propaganda in authoritarian regimes, the visual content produced by political elites, political and affective polarization, and the media coverage of public policy as well as framing in the news media. The volume also offers scholarly contributions on the theoretical, practical, and institutional significance of CCS and the challenges in realizing its potential in political communication. A significant contribution to the field of political communication, this volume will be a key resource for scholars and researchers of communication studies, politics, media studies and sociology. It was originally published in Political Communication.

The past decade has been characterized by a burgeoning interest in new concepts of individual and social well-being. The impetus for this new research has stemmed from increased demand from policy makers and civil society for measures of progress that go beyond the traditional measures of GDP, as well as improved datasets allowing individuals and households to be tracked over their life course. The aim of this Handbook is to chart these developments and provide extensive surveys of many of the recent themes that have emerged in the research literature. Some of the topics addressed include poverty. relative deprivation and satisfaction, economic insecurity, social exclusion and inequality, income and social polarization, and social fractionalization and diversity. Each topic is first analyzed from a theoretical perspective, followed by detailed empirical discussion.

Responding to the increasingly blurred boundaries between humans and technology, this innovative Handbook reveals the intricate patterns of interaction between individuals, machines, and organizations. Using cutting-edge data and analysis, expert contributors provide new insight into the rapidly growing digitalization of society.

Over the last decade, Malay ethnic identity has taken on new life compared to religious identity in and outside Malaysia. This book explores key emblematic features of ethnic and religious identity and the idea of “Malayness” in Australia at a time when Islamic identity has gained prominence on the global stage. The author explores topics such as: • Religion as a powerful basis of personal and collective identification for Malay-Muslim postgraduate students in Western Australia; • Experiences of Malay-Muslim postgraduate students and their relation to Islamic values; • Islamic revivalism and the middle class; • Ethnic and religious factors related to interpersonal communication. Other studies on Malays in Australia tend to focus on the past instead of the problems that new Malays possibly going to face when they reach the continent. This book overcomes that limitation and makes headway in addressing cultural differences related to identity, ethnicity, and religion.

This book investigates how victims of a large-scale traumatic event converge and diverge in metaphor use in describing their traumatic experiences. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the book identifies patterns that are shared by this group of trauma victims. By juxtaposing linguistic data with psychometric data, it also explores how metaphor use can vary with the speakers’ psychopathological symptoms. While metaphorical language has been a rare focus in clinical contexts, this book establishes metaphor use as a previously overlooked yet rewarding avenue for studying mental health communication.

The three volume set provides a systematic overview of theories and technique on social network analysis.Volume 2 of the set mainly focuses on the formation and interaction of group behaviors. Users’ behavior analysis, sentiment analysis, influence analysis and collective aggregation are discussed in detail as well. It is an essential reference for scientist and professionals in computer science.