Best of both worlds or refusal to comply? The rich kids of Tehran on Instagram

ABSTRACT

This article offers a textual analysis and semiotic reading of the Rich Kids of Tehran's (RKOT’s) Instagram page. Contributing to scholarship on Iranian youth media practices, this article interrogates how the RKOT navigate urban and rural space to engage in everyday processes of resistance against global and local systemic oppression. Grounding their visual representations on Instagram in historical and cultural context, the author questions how and when quotidian actions are transformed into political transgressions when posted on social media. This article emphasizes the RKOT's agency in shaping their brand by analyzing representations of gender performance, intertextuality, and national identity on Instagram.     

“Wealth Makes Many Friends”: Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals

Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4–10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed.     

Analyzing Food Science Research for Publishing Characteristics as a Model for Understanding the Needs of Researchers

Abstract

This paper provides a methodology to study the characteristics of the research output from a university department. The faculty publications and their cited references over a 10-year period were used as the basis for this study to identify their publishing patterns and the types of material they are publishing; a core set of journals and other resources they are publishing in and citing over this period; the characteristics of the journals in which they publish and cite; the degree of openness of their publications and their citation advantage; and the age of resources that are referenced.     

Using the Information Structure Model to Compare Profile-Based Information Filtering Systems

In the IR field it is clear that the value of a system depends on the cost and benefit profiles of its users. It would seem obvious that different users would prefer different systems. In the TREC-9 filtering track, systems are evaluated by a utility measure specifying a given cost and benefit. However, in the study of decision systems it is known that, in some cases, one system may be unconditionally better than another. In this paper we employ a decision theoretic approach to find conditions under which an Information Filtering (IF) system is unconditionally superior to another for all users regardless of their cost and benefit profiles.It is well known that if two IF systems have equal precision the system with better recall will be preferred by all users. Similarly, with equal recall, better precision is universally preferred. We confirm these known results and discover an unexpected dominance relation in which a system with lower recall will be universally preferred provided its precision is sufficiently higher.     

Acculturation orientations of competing host communities toward valued and devalued immigrants

This study explored how members of competing host communities may endorse different acculturation orientations towards valued and devalued immigrants settled in the bilingual city of Montreal. Francophone (N=422) and Anglophone (N=401) host community students from low-, medium- and high-ethnic diversity colleges completed the host community acculturation scale (HCAS) along with a questionnaire monitoring a range of social psychological correlates of acculturation orientations. Results showed that Anglophones were more integrationist and individualist and less assimilationist than Francophones. Both Francophones and Anglophones were more integrationist and individualist and less assimilationist, segregationist and exclusionist toward valued than devalued immigrants. Attending a multiethnic college had no influence on respondents’ acculturation orientations. The more welcoming acculturation orientations of Anglophones compared to Francophones was corroborated by results obtained with immigrants attending the French and the English colleges. Social psychological profiles of the respective acculturation orientations were similar across both host communities thus supporting the construct validity of the HCAS. Attitude toward co-national outgroup was a significant determinant of each acculturation orientations, suggesting that intergroup relations between rival host communities has an impact on acculturation orientations toward immigrants.