Changing Sociocultural Dynamics and Implications for National Security Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 Linking Culture, Language, Behavior, and Data
2 Linking Culture, Language, Behavior, and Data
Pages 7-20
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From page 7... ...
Presentations in this session illustrated how each of these approaches provides a unique way of understanding culture. MEASURING INDIVIDUALS: HOW CULTURAL VALUES SHAPE PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF RISK Dan Kahan, Yale University, presented his work on how beliefs and values can influence perceptions of science communication and the way 7
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According to this cultural cognition model, Kahan explained, people use their cultural worldviews -- preferences about how society should be organized -- to motivate their search for and processing of information. He added that people search for new information that is consistent with the positions of their affinity groups; in addition, "no matter where the information comes from, they are going to selectively credit it and discredit it in patterns that reflect and reinforce the position on some disputed policy fact within their group, and usually contrary to some competing group." Because people repeatedly apply this strategy, he continued, they develop a set of prior beliefs about an issue, and confirmation bias comes into play because those prior beliefs are highly correlated with the way they select and process new information.
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To explore the impact of people's worldview on their perception of risk, Kahan explained how the four different groups depicted in Figure 2-1 view gun control laws and regulations. Kahan and his colleagues found that those with hierarchical worldviews tend to view a gun as a piece of equipment that both provides its owner with status as a protector or hunter and reduces the risk of violent predation.
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However, Kahan reported, participants in the group that received information splintered in ways consistent with the patterns already noted in the views of hierarchical individualists and egalitarian communitarians regarding environmental risk. In their study, Kahan and his colleagues also investigated the finding from other surveys that the more people know about nanotechnology, as determined by their self-reported familiarity with the technology, the more they like it.
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EXAMINING SHARED BELIEFS AND BEHAVIORS: LIVING UP TO CULTURAL IDEALS William Dressler, University of Alabama, described advances made in studying "cultural consonance," which involves modeling the degree to which individuals' own beliefs and behaviors are similar to the prototypes for belief and behavior encoded in the shared ideas and practices of a culture. He explained that the concept of cultural consonance is embedded in a larger body of theory about what culture is and how it affects groups and individuals.
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Dressler described research he has conducted in Brazil to illustrate this approach.3 Dressler and his colleagues began by identifying cultural domains that were significant for people's everyday lives in the Brazilian city of Ribeirão Preto: lifestyle, social support, family life, national identity, and occupational and educational aspirations. These domains, he explained, either arose in spontaneous conversations with people or were of specific theoretical interest in the study of health and disease.
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He added that in a 2-year longitudinal study he and his colleagues found that changes in cultural consonance were associated with changes in depressive symptoms. More recently, he and his team have found that cultural consonance in life goals mediates depressive symptoms relative to both socioeconomic status and a sense of one's own personal agency.4,5 Moreover, he reported, other researchers have linked cultural consonance with other health outcomes, such as body composition, stress in pregnancy, and Internet gaming addiction.6 Research of this kind has pointed to the significant role of cultural domains in many cultures around the globe, he noted.
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He characterized this as a particular challenge to studying how media content influences people and spreads through networks. He noted that Twitter has been studied more frequently than other social media platforms in part because its interface facilitates gathering and working with its textual data.
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Although identifying meaningful visual attributes currently requires human coding, he and his team are seeking ways to apply the codes they develop to big data methods or other uses. In addition to examining online content, they examine data associated with the specific social media application.
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‘accidental' exposure." Murthy added that examining the YouTube API allows him and his colleagues to determine whether a video is recommending additional radical videos, and that this information can be used to create a map of connected videos. In addition, the researchers are able to capture information about whether a user has watched a particular video, although the interface does not provide access to user search terms.
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He gave the example of platforms where people can post anonymously, which often lead to more negative and vitriolic posting. He explained that his work to understand how these online cultures intersect with radicalization focuses on the attributes of anonymous videos that may speak to particular cultural practices.
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Another participant asked the panelists to consider the broader role of the rapidly changing information environment in culture, including whether it is causing an increase in attraction to radical ideologies. Murthy replied that many algorithms operating in online environments, such as
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." Challenges of Measuring Cultural Phenomena Dressler observed that the cognitive sciences have made important advances in the ability to conceptualize and measure cultural phenomena by breaking down concepts into manageable components, yet approaches to this research continue to evolve. The amount and types of data sources are changing, noted panel moderator Susan Weller.
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Kahan observed that researchers are also seeking the most cost-effective ways to gather data, whether, for example, through such online sources as Mechanical Turk (MTurk) ,11 samples recruited through public opinion firms, or random digit dial surveys.
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