scholarly journals Bots and misinformation spread on social media: A mixed scoping review with implications for COVID-19 (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
McKenzie Himelein-Wachowiak ◽  
Salvatore Giorgi ◽  
Amanda Devoto ◽  
Muhammad Rahman ◽  
Lyle Ungar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Protective Measures ◽  
State And Local

UNSTRUCTURED As of December 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been responsible for over 78 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, resulting in over 1.7 million deaths. In the United States in particular, protective measures against the COVID-19 pandemic have been hampered by political polarization and discrepancies among federal, state, and local policies. As a result, a huge amount of information surrounding COVID-19, some of it contradictory or blatantly false, has proliferated on social media. In this mixed scoping review, we survey the role of automated accounts, or “bots,” in spreading misinformation during past epidemics, natural disasters, and politically polarizing events through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also review strategies used by bots to spread (mis)information and machine learning methods for detecting bot activity. We conclude by conducting and presenting a secondary analysis of known bots, finding that up to 66% of bots are discussing COVID-19. The proliferation of COVID-19 (mis)information by bots, coupled with human susceptibility to believing and sharing misinformation, may well impact the course of the pandemic.

scholarly journals “Believe Me”

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Margaret Brennan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Archival Studies ◽  
Information Culture ◽  
Legal Evidence ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Governmental Institutions

This article addresses current issues in authenticating and managing digital-born social media records, with reference to the Twitter output of the sitting President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and members of his Administration. Focusing on Trump’s considerable corpus of tweets created after his inauguration on January 20, 2017, it employs scholarship from archival studies, legal studies, and communication and media studies to explore conjunctive questions of authenticity and its components of identity and integrity in social media records, as well as those records’ roles as archivable objects, legal evidence, and expressions of American information culture within the digital public sphere. Due to the perpetually changing nature of the subject, this article highlights complexities of and raises questions about governmental creation and management of problematized social media records in the United States more than answers them, with the hope that it can act as a springboard for further research. Ultimately, it aims to lead toward a praxis of information management in the United States that eventually rebuilds public trust in governmental institutions and practices, and most importantly, strengthens the transparency and accountability of political leadership on the federal, state, and local levels. Pre-print first published online 03/03/2019

Is This the Care We Need?: An Examination of Childcare Policy in Pennsylvania

Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Sweet-Cushman ◽  
Ashley Harden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Current System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Women And Politics ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Childcare Policy

For many families across Pennsylvania, child care is an ever-present concern. Since the 1970s, when Richard Nixon vetoed a national childcare program, child care has received little time in the policy spotlight. Instead, funding for child care in the United States now comes from a mixture of federal, state, and local programs that do not help all families. This article explores childcare options available to families in the state of Pennsylvania and highlights gaps in the current system. Specifically, we examine the state of child care available to families in the Commonwealth in terms of quality, accessibility, flexibility, and affordability. We also incorporate survey data from a nonrepresentative sample of registered Pennsylvania voters conducted by the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics. As these results support the need for improvements in the current childcare system, we discuss recommendations for the future.

The Energy Politics of the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 371-405
Author(s):  
Juliann Emmons Allison ◽  
Srinivas Parinandi
Keyword(s):  
Energy Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Future Research Agenda ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Energy Politics ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Subnational Governance

This chapter examines the development and politics of US energy policy, with an emphasis on three themes: the distribution of authority to regulate energy between national (or federal) and subnational governments, the relationship between energy and environmental policy and regulation, and the role of climate action in energy politics. It reviews patterns of energy production and consumption; provides an overview of national energy politics; and reviews literatures on federalism and energy politics and policy, the increasing integration of energy and environmental policies, and the politics of energy and climate action. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a future research agenda that underscores the significance of political polarization, subnational governance, and technological innovation for understanding US energy policy.

scholarly journals The Role of Value Stream Mapping in Healthcare Services: A Scoping Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 951
Author(s):  
Juan A. Marin-Garcia ◽  
Pilar I. Vidal-Carreras ◽  
Julio J. Garcia-Sabater
Keyword(s):  
Scoping Review ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Sustainability Indicators ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Value Stream Mapping ◽  
Value Stream ◽  
Starting Point

Lean healthcare aims to manage and improve the processes in the healthcare sector by eliminating everything that adds no value by improving quality of services, ensuring patient safety and facilitating health professionals’ work to achieve a flexible and reliable organization. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is considered the starting point of any lean implementation. Some papers report applications of VSM in healthcare services, but there has been less attention paid to their contribution on sustainability indicators. The purpose of this work is to analyze the role of VSM in this context. To do so, a scoping review of works from recent years (2015 to 2019) was done. The results show that most applications of VSM reported are in the tertiary level of care, and the United States of America (USA) is the country which leads most of the applications published. In relation with the development of VSM, a heterogeneity in the maps and the sustainability indicators is remarkable. Moreover, only operational and social sustainability indicators are commonly included. We can conclude that more standardization is required in the development of the VSM in the healthcare sector, also including the environmental indicators.

scholarly journals Polarization in the contemporary political and media landscape

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne E Wilson ◽  
Victoria Parker ◽  
Matthew Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
Polarization Phenomena ◽  
Partisan Media ◽  
Over Time

Political polarization is on the rise in America. Although social psychologists frequently study the intergroup underpinnings of polarization, they have traditionally had less to say about macro societal processes that contribute to its rise and fall. Recent cross-disciplinary work on the contemporary political and media landscape provides these complementary insights. In this paper, we consider the evidence for and implications of political polarization, distinguishing between ideological, affective, and false polarization. We review three key societal-level factors contributing to these polarization phenomena: the role of political elites, partisan media, and social media dynamics. We argue that institutional polarization processes (elites, media and social media) contribute to people’s misperceptions of division among the electorate, which in turn can contribute to a self-perpetuating cycle fueling animosity (affective polarization) and actual ideological polarization over time.

Within Source Diversification When the Going Gets Tough: Examining Alterations to Human Service Nonprofit Funding by Levels of Government

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Funding ◽  
Federal State ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Nonprofit Funding ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Government

Government increasingly relies on nonprofit organizations to deliver public services, especially for human services. As such, human service nonprofits receive a substantial amount of revenue from government agencies via grants and contracts. Yet, times of crises result in greater demand for services, but often with fewer financial resources. As governments and nonprofits are tasked to do more with less, how does diversification within the government funding stream influence government-nonprofit funding relationships? More specifically, we ask: How do the number of different government partners and the type of government funder—federal, state, or local—influence whether nonprofits face alterations to government funding agreements? Drawing upon data from over 2,000 human service nonprofits in the United States, following the Great Recession, we find nonprofit organizations that only received funds from the federal government were less likely to experience funding alterations. This helps to illustrate the economic impact of the recession on state and local governments as well as the nonprofit organizations that partner with them.

The Contours of Repression

2019 ◽  
pp. 184-208
Author(s):  
David M. Struthers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
World War One ◽  
International Borders ◽  
The World ◽  
Sedition Act ◽  
State And Local

This chapter examines the World War One period in which the federal, state, and local governments in the United States, in addition to non-state actors, created one of the most severe eras of political repression in United States history. The Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, changes to immigration law at the federal level, and state criminal syndicalism laws served as the legal basis for repression. The Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and other anarchists took different paths in this era. Some faced lengthy prison sentences, some went underground, while others crossed international borders to flee repression and continue organizing. This chapter examines the repression of radical movements and organizing continuities that sustained the movement into the 1920s.

The Development of the Underclass

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marne L. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Local Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact ◽  
History Of Race

Chapter 4, “The Development of the Underclass,” contextualizes the history of race in Los Angeles within the history of the American West (1870 – 1900). It explores how local white Angelenos combated notions of criminality and attempted to portray Los Angeles as atypical compared to other western American centers, hoping to pin its social ills on the small racialized communities (black Latino/a, and Chinese) that they were actively trying to segregate and minimize. It also explores California’s legal history, and examines the impact of federal, state, and local legislation on the communities of racialized minorities, particularly African American, Native American, and Chinese people. This chapter also examines the role of the local media in shaping mainstream attitudes towards local people of color.

Once and Future Trees

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard G. Wilshire ◽  
Richard W. Hazlett ◽  
Jane E. Nielson
Keyword(s):  
Flood Control ◽  
Forest Ecology ◽  
Urban Pollution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Biological Interactions ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Forest Lands

Along the Colorado Plateau’s high-standing Mogollon Rim in northern Arizona’s Coconino National Forest stands a small patch of big trees that matured well before Europeans came to North America. Massive ponderosa pines, and even pinyon pines and western junipers, tower above the forest floor, shutting out all but the most shade-tolerant competitors. Few places like this one still exist anywhere in the United States, even on national forest lands. A tourist hoping to see all the diversity that earliest European arrivals found commonplace in the western landscape must seek out a wide scattering of isolated enclaves across the region. Western forests no longer contain the grand glades and lush thickets that our forerunners encountered because most woodlands, especially those owned by the public, largely serve a wide variety of human purposes, as campsites or home sites, board-feet of lumber, potential jobs, recreational playgrounds, and even temples of the spirit. We also rely on forests to maintain habitat for endangered species and seed banks for restoring depleted biodiversity—and to provide us with clean air and water, stable hillside soils, and flood control in wet years. Forests must perform these roles while being consumed, fragmented by roads, and heavily eroded. But there is no guarantee that these most beloved and iconic of natural resources can sustain such a burden. Federal, state, and local government agencies oversee and regulate western U.S. forest lands and their uses, trying to manage the complex and only partly understood biological interactions of forest ecology to serve public needs. But after nine decades of variable goals, and five decades of encroaching development, western woodlands are far from healthy. Urban pollution and exotic tree diseases, some brought by humans, are killing pines, firs, and oaks. Loggers have more than decimated the oldest mountainside forests—most valuable for habitat and lumber alike—with clearcutting practices that induce severe soil erosion. Illegal clearings for marijuana farms are increasing.

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