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Topic Review
Context Collapse
Context collapse refers to the phenomenon in digital communication where distinct social spheres or contexts intersect, leading to challenges in managing audience expectations, privacy boundaries, and self-presentation. It occurs when content intended for one audience becomes visible to multiple, potentially disparate audiences, blurring the boundaries between personal, professional, and social identities online. Context collapse often raises concerns about privacy, authenticity, and social repercussions in digital environments.
  • 6.2K
  • 08 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Social Media and the Arab Spring
The role of social media in the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012, remains a highly debated subject. Uprisings occurred both in states with very high levels of Internet usage (such as Bahrain, with 88% of its population online in 2011) and in states with some of the lowest levels of Internet penetration (such as Yemen and Libya).
  • 6.1K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Paradigm Shift
A paradigm shift refers to a fundamental change in the underlying assumptions, beliefs, or frameworks that guide a particular field of knowledge or practice. It represents a transformative departure from established models of thought, leading to a reevaluation of existing principles and often opening new avenues for understanding and problem-solving within that domain.
  • 6.1K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Worldview
A worldview refers to an individual's comprehensive framework of beliefs, values, assumptions, and perceptions that shape their understanding of reality, identity, and purpose in life. It encompasses one's philosophical, religious, cultural, and ideological perspectives, influencing their interpretation of the world, moral judgments, and decision-making processes.
  • 5.9K
  • 02 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the same sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Along with bisexuality and heterosexuality, homosexuality is one of the three main categories of sexual orientation within the heterosexual–homosexual continuum. Scientists do not yet know the exact cause of sexual orientation, but they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences and do not view it as a choice. Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor biologically-based theories. There is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial, biological causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males. There is no substantive evidence which suggests parenting or early childhood experiences play a role with regard to sexual orientation. While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research shows that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects. There is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation. The most common adjectives for homosexual people are lesbian for females and gay for males, but the term gay also commonly refers to both homosexual females and males. The percentage of people who are gay or lesbian and the proportion of people who are in same-sex romantic relationships or have had same-sex sexual experiences are difficult for researchers to estimate reliably for a variety of reasons, including many gay and lesbian people not openly identifying as such due to prejudice or discrimination such as homophobia and heterosexism. Homosexual behavior has also been documented in many non-human animal species, though homosexual orientation is not significantly observed in other animals. Many gay and lesbian people are in committed same-sex relationships. These relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships in essential psychological respects. Homosexual relationships and acts have been admired, as well as condemned, throughout recorded history, depending on the form they took and the culture in which they occurred. Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a global movement towards freedom and equality for gay people, including the introduction of anti-bullying legislation to protect gay children at school, legislation ensuring non-discrimination, equal ability to serve in the military, equal access to health care, equal ability to adopt and parent, and the establishment of marriage equality.
  • 5.8K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Environmental Awareness and Individual’s Altruism
Environmental awareness is the level of how much people are interested in or care about environmental issues. Environmental awareness can be either local or global one depending on the type of environmental problem. Studies have argued that this awareness tends to be related to an individual’s altruism, which is one’s action that benefits others without expecting some kind of external reward. The connection between environmental awareness and altruism is getting attention from scholars since both concepts are prosocial ones but it is uncertain if people who are highly aware of environmental issues may not be always acting altruistically. However, it is likely that altruistic people are more likely to have high environmental awareness.
  • 5.8K
  • 28 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Mindsponge Mechanism
The mindsponge mechanism (mindsponge framework, mindsponge concept, or mindsponge process) provides a way to explain how and why an individual observes and ejects cultural values conditional on the external setting. The term “mindsponge” derives from the metaphor that the mind is analogized to a sponge that squeezes out unsuitable values and absorbs new ones compatible with its core value. Thanks to the complexity and well-structuring, the mechanism has been used to develop various concepts in multiple disciplines. One such concept is "cultural additivity" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0189-2). Recently, the mindsponge mechanism has been developed into mindsponge theory based on various evidence from natural sciences.
  • 5.8K
  • 01 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Lifestyle (Sociology)
Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, The Case of Miss R., with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban metropolis. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborhoods' degrees of affluence and proximity to natural and cultural environments. For example, in areas near the sea, a surf culture or lifestyle can often be present.
  • 5.8K
  • 13 Oct 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
The New Sociology of Religion
The new sociology of religion differs from the classical and mainstream sociology, which was in force until the end of the last century, in that it no longer considers religion only as an independent variable, but places it together with other dependent variables, so that it becomes possible to investigate new themes, especially those that do not consider religious involvement—from atheism to the phenomenon of ‘nones’ (non-believers and non-practicing), from spirituality to forms of para-religions and quasi-religions and the varied set of multiple religions. 
  • 5.7K
  • 13 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Algorithmic Journalism
A term that attempts to describe the procedures that have been brought about by recent technological changes in the field of journalism. Characterized by researchers as “the process of using software or algorithms to automatically generate news stories" (Graefe 2016) and “the combination of algorithms, data, and knowledge from the social sciences to supplement the accountability function of journalism” (Hamilton and Turner 2009).
  • 5.5K
  • 03 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Sustainability Green Industry 4.0
The Sustainability Green Industry (SGI) 4.0 framework captures the relations of Industry 4.0, green processes and sustainability in manufacturing. The framework is structured into three vertical levels: technological, process and development, integrated through the circular economy. The SGI 4.0 framework’s purpose is to explain how Industry 4.0 technologies create sustainability outcomes through green processes. The facilitating, enabling and supporting functions of green processes allow to understand how modern technologies can be linked to the concept of sustainability. In the literature we can find various concepts connecting Industry 4.0 and sustainability, however, the key role of green processes is not mentioned.
  • 5.4K
  • 25 Jun 2021
Topic Review
White Privilege
White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With roots in European colonialism and imperialism, and the Atlantic slave trade, white privilege has developed in circumstances that have broadly sought to protect white racial privileges, various national citizenships, and other rights or special benefits. In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States , academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh described the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal. Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a proxy but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose alternative definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups. Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the seemingly sudden hostility from right-wing critics since approximately 2014.
  • 5.4K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Belief
In sociology, the concept of beliefs refers to the mental acceptance or conviction that certain statements or propositions are true. Beliefs are subjective and personal convictions that individuals hold about the nature of reality, the social world, and various aspects of life. These cognitive constructs play a fundamental role in shaping human behavior, influencing decision-making processes, and contributing to the formation of individual and collective identities within a society.
  • 5.4K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Normative
Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible. A norm in this normative sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. Normative is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term normative to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical. Normative has specialised meanings in different academic disciplines such as philosophy, social sciences, and law. In most contexts, normative means 'relating to an evaluation or value judgment.' Normative propositions tend to evaluate some object or some course of action. Normative content differs from descriptive content. One of the major developments in analytic philosophy has seen the reach of normativity spread to virtually all corners of the field, from ethics and the philosophy of action, to epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. Saul Kripke famously showed that rules (including mathematical rules, such as the repetition of a decimal pattern) are normative in an important respect. Though philosophers disagree about how normativity should be understood, it has become increasingly common to understand normative claims as claims about reasons. As Derek Parfit explains:
  • 5.4K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Social Change
Social change refers to the transformation of societal structures, institutions, and behaviors over time. It involves shifts in values, norms, and practices that impact the way individuals and groups interact, ultimately influencing the broader dynamics of a society. Social change can result from various factors, including technological advancements, cultural evolution, political movements, and economic developments.
  • 5.3K
  • 26 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Social Status
Social status refers to the position or rank that an individual holds within a social hierarchy, often determined by factors such as wealth, occupation, education, and social connections. It influences an individual's access to resources, opportunities, and privileges, as well as their social standing and reputation within society. Social status can be hierarchical, with some individuals occupying higher positions than others, and can vary across different social contexts and cultures.
  • 5.3K
  • 02 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Necropolitics
Necropolitics is a concept that originates from postcolonial theory and refers to the politics of death and the power dynamics surrounding the control and regulation of life and death. Coined by Achille Mbembe, necropolitics examines how state power and sovereignty are exercised through the management of mortality, including the deployment of violence, surveillance, and exclusionary practices that determine who lives and who dies within a society.
  • 5.3K
  • 08 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Authority
Authority refers to the legitimate power or right to give commands, make decisions, and enforce obedience. It is a social, organizational, or governmental structure that establishes individuals or institutions as having the rightful power to lead, guide, or govern others. Authority is an essential aspect of social order, as it helps maintain stability and facilitates the functioning of institutions, organizations, and societies.
  • 5.2K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Organizational Silos
Organizational silos are herein defined and contextualized from a behavioral perspective. Specifically, silos are not only seen as barriers to communication and information flow, but they are analyzed in terms of their consequences on organizational structure, process and function. This three-tier division drawn from the literature on complex systems and networks is next adapted to fit a framework of behavior in organizations, which is a function of its environmental consequences. As learning may occur, the concept of silos can be informed by complexity theory, findings from cognitive-behavioral sciences, and a socio-cultural perspective. Moreover, the role of clusters are discussed in light of the aforementioned approaches to silos in organizations.
  • 5.2K
  • 27 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Love Bombing
Love bombing is an attempt to influence a person by demonstrations of attention and affection. It can be used in different ways and for either positive or negative purposes. Psychologists have identified love bombing as a possible part of a cycle of abuse and have warned against it. Critics of cults use the phrase with the implication that the "love" is feigned and that the practice is psychological manipulation in order to create a feeling of unity within the group against a society perceived as hostile. In 2011 clinical psychologist Oliver James advocated love bombing in his book Love Bombing: Reset Your Child's Emotional Thermostat, as a means for parents to rectify emotional problems in their children.
  • 5.1K
  • 20 Oct 2022
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