Abstract
76.1398 ADAM, Frane ; GORIŠEK, Maruša —
This article discusses the meaning of open science, and in particular the concept of citizen science, in a broader socio-political and scientific context. The authors highlight the ambivalence of these concepts and the lack of critical reflection on the possible (unwanted) negative implications of the establishment of these ideas. The authors address these issues using an international comparative analysis based primarily on documentation and secondary data analysis. Research approaches in the sense of open science and citizen science can, in many cases, be useful for researchers as well as for cognitively active citizens. They can enable the enrichment of knowledge and the potential for (social) innovation. However, there are also risks and unwanted side effects that diminish the relevance and status of scientific research. It is particularly dangerous to create illusions about the potential of ad hoc citizen science projects and their outstanding, immediate results. The campaign for open science may serve as a cover-up for some of the problems and anomalies in the realm of science. The authors also see danger in the potential erosion of the autonomy of science and diverting attention from some of the more pressing problems in science. [R]
76.1399 BEIGEL, Fernanda ; MONTOYA, Victor —
Article Processing Charges (APC) play a crucial role in the dynamics that structure science and are at the heart of many debates. In this article, we analyze the perceptions, challenges and stances towards APCs of 3,313 researchers from CONICET (Argentina) who responded to the survey carried out as part of the GRIP APC project. Based on field theory (Bourdieu) and on the concept of structural heterogeneity, we formulate two hypotheses, which we test through multiple correspondence analysis: firstly, that the space of positions taken with regard to APC reveals the heterogeneity of a space marked by the existence of bifrontier elites, characteristic of the polarized functioning of a semi-peripheral scientific field such as Argentina’s; secondly, that there is a structural homology between the space of positions taken and scientific fields. [R]
76.1400 BINDER, Alice, et al. —
During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have faced a lot of challenges related to their daily work. This article introduces a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, which particularly focuses on methodological challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a brief review of the literature as well as the studies in this issue, we argue that the pandemic has sparked significant methodological innovations with respect to design, data collection, study documentation, and scholarly collaboration. We distinguish two types of innovations, both conceptualized as the outcome of an unprecedented external shock. First, “methodological compromises” that enabled data collection during the pandemic, but are inferior to established approaches. These methodological compromises, therefore, may be abandoned in post-pandemic times. Second, there are also “methodological game changers” that are superior to classic approaches and thus may prevail in the long run. Regardless of the type, we call scholars in the social and behavioral sciences to systematically test, compare, and evaluate the methodological innovations brought to us as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. [R]
76.1401 BOOMGAARDEN, Hajo ; KATSANIDOU, Alexia ; EBERL, Jakob-Moritz —
Ensuring universal access to scientific research and upholding the principles of keeping data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable is of paramount importance to the democratization of science. However, upholding these principles becomes increasingly complex with the increasing scope of data collection, the more different types of data we collect (e.g., survey, text, or institutional and country-level macro data), and the more research teams are involved in data collection. In the domain of democracy research, scientists across Europe are therefore joining forces to launch the research infrastructure monitoring electoral democracy (MEDem), which aims to establish itself as an open platform where the fragmented crowd of researchers in the various research fields can coordinate and develop common standards for data collection both retrospectively as well as prospectively to make their data interoperable, and (comparative) democracy research more productive. Moreover, MEDem will help make democracy research data and findings accessible to the general public (e.g., citizens, journalists, and policymakers). [R]
76.1402 BORCHERS, Nils S. ; BADERMANN, Mandy ; ZURSTIEGE, Guido —
With its physical distancing rules, the COVID-19 pandemic regulations urged researchers working in a qualitative paradigm to find pandemicready approaches to data collection. While many researchers turned to modern videoconferencing software, we explored an alternative route, and revisited audio observations. Audio observations replace the researcher as observer with audio recorders. Audio observations were pioneered in the 1960s, and continued to attract interest into the 1980s. Connecting with the methods literature from this earlier phase of interest, we evaluate a study design that combines audio observations with an interactive task that we applied to study active parental mediation of harmful media content. Drawing on a re-coding of data from two waves of data collection, we report on participants’ awareness of the observation episodes, issues with the recording quality, and the situational control during the observation episodes. We conclude that, although truly not a panacea, the combination of audio observations with interactive tasks not only helps to confront the challenges of physical distancing but also constitutes a serious alternative to more established qualitative data gathering approaches — even beyond pandemic restrictions. Thus, this article contributes to the extension of the methods repertoire in qualitative research. [R]
76.1403 BURNHAM, Michael —
Stance detection is identifying expressed beliefs in a document. While researchers widely use sentiment analysis for this, recent research demonstrates that sentiment and stance are distinct. This paper advances text analysis methods by precisely defining stance detection and outlining three approaches: supervised classification, natural language inference, and in-context learning. I discuss how document context and trade-offs between resources and workload should inform your methods. For all three approaches I provide guidance on application and validation techniques, as well as coding tutorials for implementation. Finally, I demonstrate how newer classification approaches can replicate supervised classifiers. [R]
76.1404 CHEN, Yanan ; ZHOU, Xiaoguang ; JI, Jiaxi —
In the current expert set models, experts can only express approval or disapproval attitudes about the existing evaluation grades, without adjusting the existing grades to a more reasonable state. This paper proposes a bidirectional adjustable N-soft expert set model. First, this model can describe the experts’ attitudes to the existing grades and make two-way adjustments about existing grades by the proposed expert bidirectional adjustable coefficients. In addition, some related operations and propositions are derived. Then, the PROMETHEE-II (preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation II) method based on the
bidirectional adjustable N-soft expert set is introduced, which not only limits unconditional compensability among the attribute values but also considers the degree of priority among the objects. Further, the cut sets mentioned can set different standards under different attributes to deal with the data according to the actual situations. Finally, this paper takes hospital evaluation as an example to describe the specific application process of the model. And the effectiveness and superiority of the model are verified through comparison and analysis with other methods. [R]
76.1405 CIANETTI, Licia ; PANTA, Gianni Del ; OWEN, Catherine —
This article examines how scholars use the concept of “regime” in comparative politics to provide stronger conceptual foundations for the future development of regime studies. We analyse 196 articles in five leading political science journals published between 1996 and 2023. We find that “regime” is rarely explicitly defined, but usage coalesces around three implicit definitions: a procedural approach that focuses on the rules for accessing and wielding political power; an actor-centred approach that defines regime in terms of the ruling elites and power coalition; and a sociological approach that foregrounds the character of existing relations between rulers and ruled. We demonstrate that each usage reveals essential aspects of “regime”, but definitions are often unreflectively applied and used differently for different regime types, risking biased and partial comparison. This results in fragmented debates on how regimes operate and, especially, change and in missed opportunities for advancing knowledge. To show a path forward, we highlight the (rare) scholarship that works at the intersection of multiple definitions, exploring the new avenues that this opens up. More generally, we argue that the future of regime studies must be grounded in better concept building. This article provides the needed groundwork for this to take place. [R]
76.1406 DANIEL, Jan ; KARMAZIN, Aleš —
This article introduces the Debate on editing and publishing (in) Political Science and International Relations journals in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Debate brings together editors of PoliSci and IR journals published in four CEE countries to examine the practice of publishing (in) these disciplines and explore the diverse strategies journals, and their editors employ to navigate the semiperipheral context of CEE. Going beyond structuralist accounts of semiperipheral inferiority, we introduce CEE journals as institutions endowed with agency, self-reflection and responsibility towards their academic communities. The Debate discusses if and in which sense these journals try to become (limited) innovators, how they are bound by different conditions stemming from the national or regional contexts, how they work with or challenge them and which opportunities they exploit to advance their goals. [R] [Introduction to a series of articles. See Abstr. 76.1411, 1417, 1418, 1423, 2184]
76.1407 ELVEN, Julia —
This paper presents an empirical case study of university-based Green Offices. The goal is to explore and elaborate on the potentials of convention theory in the conceptualization and analysis of organizational learning processes. Since 2010, “student-driven and staff-supported” Green Offices have been widely instituted at European universities as a special organizational form of sustainability management (Spira and Baker-Shelley 2015, 208). The Green Office Movement has formulated specific ideas about the autonomous and instructional role of students, which correspond with current notions of students as co-producers of university processes (McCulloch 2009). This new perception of the role of students implies a fundamental organizational shift for universities. Educational organizations rely on clearly defined membership roles; in other words, students are “qualified” as students in a specific way (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). I argue that a change in such qualification requires an organizational learning process. To examine this process, I analyze the practice of organizational learning (Elven 2025; Elven and Schwarz 2016; Florian and Fley 2004) using the concepts of Économie des Conventions (EC). Organizational learning emerges as a process that is characterized by competition between interferences of different orders of worth, eventually leading to new organizational conventions, stabilized through form investments (Diaz-Bone 2011). [R]
76.1408 ERICES-OCAMPO, Paulina ; LUBBERS, Miranda J. ; ADAMS, Jimi —
Social capital is among the most broadly used concepts in social science. Despite its shared understanding as beneficial resources available from the connections between people, authors vary widely in their conceptualizations of social capital. To extract clarity from these disparate perspectives, we offer a systematic framework for conceptualizing social capital, which identifies three primary theoretical dimensions of scholars’ conceptualizations of social capital: (1) where beneficial resources reside, ranging from within individuals to the relationships between individuals; (2) beneficial network structure, differentiating closure from brokerage arrangements; and (3) the level to which rewards accrue, distinguishing individual from collective benefits. We illustrate how combining these dimensions produces a unifying perspective that fosters reintegrating social capital’s disconnected conceptualizations. Finally, we draw on this framework to both reconcile seeming contradictions and gaps in social capital scholarship, and provide a principled means for prioritizing questions for future developments of social capital. [R]
76.1409 EWOLDSEN, David R. —
Communication scholars demonstrated a remarkable level of methodological creativity to overcome the restrictions on conducting research necessitated by the pandemic. This methodological creativity allowed us to provide answers to many critical questions that arouse during the pandemic. Now the risk is that scholars will diminish data gathered during the pandemic as tainted by pandemic-related confounds. Certainly, the pandemic offered many threats to the internal validity of research, but this should be embraced as an opportunity to learn from these unique confounds to increase the specificity of our theories. [R]
76.1410 FAUZI, Muhammad Ashraf, et al. —
The purpose of this study is to review the state-of-the-art science mapping on predatory journals and publishers. The academic world has changed to the extent that scientific publication has become a moneymaking industry. This phenomenon has jeopardized the credibility and reputation of legitimate journals and publishers in the name of science. This study applies a bibliometric analysis to uncover the knowledge structure of predatory and reveal its intellectual map based on the network of publications. Applying a bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis, the current and future research streams will provide substantial perspectives on scientific publication. Current research themes are related to open access, publication charge, determinants, reasons and characteristics of authors publishing in predatory journals. Future trends of predatory journals are associated with the impact of predatory publication promotion of ethics and integrity in scientific research. Implications include developing a holistic awareness of these illegitimate journals and publishers and creating ethical and sensible scholars equipped with knowledge and skills to identify, disengage, and dissuade the advance of predatory journals. This study would provide an effective knowledge base for understanding predatory journals, advance its research line, and highlight the evidencebased literature for future scholars to sustain professional judgment and exercise. This review contributes to creating a responsible mind-set among scholars, institutions and the scientific community. [R]
76.1411 GHICA, Luciana Alexandra ; TUFIS, Claudiu D. —
Romanian Political Science was institutionalized mostly after the fall of the communist regime. While the number of Political Science departments has declined after the 2000s, the number of journals continued to increase. We investigate this unusual pattern, focusing on the journals’ relationship with their home universities and editorial teams, and on their reaction to the opening of Romanian Political Science to the outside world. In a context characterized by low competition, lack of resources, and the absence of functioning professional associations and national conferences, the journals failed to cut across departmental boundaries and evolve into a national platform for scientific publishing. Changes in national academic standards also brought them into direct competition with international journals. Although, through internationalization, standards of scientific publishing have improved, the landscape of Romanian Political Science journals remains semiperipheral, and the national community continues to be fragmented and tribal. [R] [See Abstr. 76.1406]
76.1412 GIRAUT, Camille —
Since the mid-2000s, several higher education institutions in France have used merit and diversity as complementary principles in implementing equal opportunity programs. Through an ethnographic approach and an intersectional framework, this article examines how Sciences Po’s Conventions éducation prioritaire (CEP) program is received by candidates participating in preparatory workshops at high schools in Seine-Saint-Denis. The CEP candidate profile is shaped by a delicate balance of distinction from and resemblance to the imagined profile of an elite student. As a result, candidates experience both advantages and challenges depending on their intersecting identities and identifications throughout the admissions process. Their strategies for navigating the admissions process reveal the paradoxical expectations placed on students, who are required to negotiate diversity in a seemingly color-blind context where difference is simultaneously reified and denied. More broadly, this paper argues that while Sciences Po’s territorially based policy allows students to showcase diverse aspects of their backgrounds, it simultaneously places an uneven burden on the candidates and forces them to negotiate intersectional ascription, stereotypes, and expectations throughout the admissions process. [R] [See Abstr. 76.2636]
76.1413 GLEDITSCH, Kristian Skrede —
The 60th anniversary of the Department of Government at the University of Essex provides an opportunity to reflect on its many achievements and why these have been possible. This article argues that research excellence is a collective outcome that cannot be reduced to individuals. Research institutions tend to be successful because they manage to create productive environments, which can make individual scholars better and create synergies. The thesis is backed up by examples from the history of the department and more general research on the role of environments for research. The article considers possible insights with regard to present challenges to academic institutions, why productive environments can be difficult to maintain, and how we can try to nurture them. [R]
76.1414 GOLLUST, Sarah E., et al. —
A rigorous investigation of various characteristics of the past 50 years of scholarship in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law requires the application of large-scale computational text tools. The authors used four strategies to analyze research articles (N = 1,532): keyword searching, named entity recognition, unsupervised topic modeling, and large language modeling. They examined the following characteristics of the articles published in the journal since its founding: main topics, subtopics, and geographic foci; attention to equity/diversity, racism, women’s health, and LGBTQ+ people; and methodological approaches. Articles have examined a diversity of health policy topics, although most have concerned health care access and health insurance, and the majority have been based in the United States. The journal’s authors have consistently (more than 50% of articles) mentioned issues of health equity and health disparities. They have applied a range of methodological approaches, with empirical legal and policy analyses the most prominent. Qualitative approaches have been consistent while quantitative articles have seen an increase during the past decade. Findings demonstrate the utility of computational methods in future applications for health policy and politics scholarship. [R]
76.1415 GONG, Xuanjun ; HUSKEY, Richard —
Behavioral science demands skillful experimentation and high-quality data that are typically gathered in person. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many behavioral research laboratories to close. Thankfully, new tools for conducting online experiments allow researchers to elicit psychological responses and gather behavioral data with unprecedented precision. It is now possible to quickly conduct large-scale high-quality behavioral experiments online, even for studies designed to generate data necessary for complex computational models. However, these techniques require new skills that might be unfamiliar to behavioral researchers who are more familiar with laboratory-based experimentation. We present a detailed tutorial introducing an end-to-end build of an online experimental pipeline and corresponding data analysis. We provide an example study investigating people’s media preferences using drift-diffusion modeling (DDM), paying particular attention to potential issues that come with online behavioral experimentation. This tutorial includes sample data and code for conducting and analyzing DDM data gathered in an online experiment, thereby mitigating the extent to which researchers must reinvent the wheel. [R]
76.1416 JUPSKÅS, Anders R. ; SEGERS, Iris B. ; GAGNON, Audrey —
In an era marked by increasing polarization, academics face growing risks of harassment and threats, particularly when engaging in politically sensitive research or public discourse. This study investigates these challenges through a pilot survey of political scientists in Norway, focusing on harassment prevalence and institutional responses. Findings reveal that a small but significant share of surveyed political scientists reported experiencing harassment or threats over the past 5 years. Harassment frequently occurs digitally, with social media and online campaigns as common avenues. Institutional support appears inadequate, with few respondents indicating satisfaction with their institutions’ guidelines for handling such issues. The study underscores significant negative impacts on academics’ mental well-being, safety perceptions, and professional engagement. It also highlights the broader chilling effect on academic freedom, where fear of harassment deters scholarly inquiry and public participation. These findings stress the urgent need for universities to enhance support frameworks and safeguard researchers’ well-being, particularly those investigating controversial topics. Future research aims to extend this analysis across different national contexts, to better understand the relationship between harassment of scholars, institutional arrangements, political discourses, and academic freedom. [R]
76.1417 KARMAZIN, Aleš ; DANIEL, Jan —
The concluding article of this collection (Debate) summarises the preceding contributions and puts forward a scalar perspective on the position of CEE Political Science and International Relations journals. It draws attention to the interactions and tensions between international, national and local scales and discusses how journals navigate their positions on these scales. The article is structured around three questions that concern the purpose of publishing Political Science and International Relations journals in CEE, the relations of the journals with the disciplinary core and the role played by national science evaluation systems. In conclusion, the article highlights the split identity that many CEE journals have to assume due to their position on both national and international scales and the tensions stemming from the different and conflicting demands of these two scales. [R] [See Abstr. 76.1406]
76.1418 KOVAČEVIĆ, Marko ; EJDUS, Filip ; ZUPANČIČ, Rok —
This article analyzes the path of establishment of the Journal of Regional Security (JRS), an open-access journal which was built from scratch by a group of scholars interested in security and peace in the Western Balkans. The article shows that a successful building of an International Relations journal from scratch on the semiperiphery requires not only longterm commitment with slow and uncertain payoffs but also a lot of creativity and flexibility. Initially, the article delves into the Journal’s history, situating it within broader institutional and sociopolitical contexts that have shaped its development. Subsequently, it examines how JRS has positioned itself on the semiperiphery and within the emerging global International Relations program. The third section discusses effective strategies employed by the editorial team to navigate International Relations hierarchies and rankings, emphasizing creativity, innovation, networking, and dedication to the journal’s mission. Finally, it concludes by addressing the challenges and opportunities faced by JRS, suggesting that despite being a small, independent journal operating in a semiperipheral context, it can leverage its unique position to its advantage. [R] [See Abstr. 76.1406]
76.1419 KUSHNER, Harvey W. —
This article traces an academician’s transformation with respect to conceptualizing the concept of terrorism. The journey begins with a look back at the education necessary for entrance into the environment of academe. From inside its ivory tower walls, we see the ways that academia treats someone with real experiences gained from dealing directly with terrorism. The September 11, 2001 attacks unlike the 1979 Iranian Revolution bring new interest in the concept of terrorism. But within the academic community, old ways are hard to shake. This forces the academician to go outside the academy to make positions know. Armed with support from Polish and Ukrainian colleagues, the academician’s transformation in conceptualizing terrorism using abductive reasoning is finalized. [R]
76.1420 LENG, Ning ; PLANTAN, Elizabeth —
How does state censorship contribute to self-censorship in Chinese universities? How does self-censorship in turn affect academic output? This article addresses these questions by unveiling the mechanisms of selfcensorship and investigating their impact on social science research in and about China. First, we draw on in-depth interviews with scholars and students affiliated with Chinese universities to develop a typology of the mechanisms of self-censorship. Second, we analyze over 5,000 hand-coded publications of scholars based at US and Chinese universities from 1985 to 2022 to determine the consequences of self-censorship for the production of knowledge. The findings reveal which research topics have “disappeared” over time and which have “migrated” from Chinese-to English-language venues, often leading to broader self-censorship outcomes than the regime intended. Additionally, we find that USbased scholars are not immune to these pressures. These findings contribute to scholarship on authoritarianism, (self-)censorship, and academic freedom. [R]
76.1421 LIN, Gechun —
In many settings, scholars wish to estimate the similarity of political texts. However, the most commonly used methods in political science struggle to identify when two texts convey the same meaning as they rely too heavily on identifying words that appear in both documents. This limitation is especially salient when the underlying documents are short, an increasingly prevalent form of textual data in modern political research. Building on recent advances in computer science, I introduce to political science cross-encoders for precise estimates of semantic similarity in short texts. Scholars can use either off-the-shelf versions or build a customized model. I illustrate this approach in three examples applied to social messages generated in a telephone game, news headlines about US Supreme Court decisions, and Facebook posts from members of Congress. I show that cross-encoders, which utilize pair-level embeddings, offer superior performance across tasks relative to word-based and sentencelevel embedding approaches. [R]
76.1422 LUNDBOHM, Rachel, et al. —
The recent popularity of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools has forced students, educators, and administrators to explore the practical and ethical implications these widely available resources have on teaching and learning in higher education. The possibility of the inclusion and use of GAI in the classroom has created excitement and concern among faculty who are themselves trying to better understand how GAI can and should be used within the context of business education. There are varying perceptions of the usefulness of GAI, as well as a breadth of differing policies and procedures currently in place for the use of GAI in classroom settings. This article examines several key areas within the expanding scope of GAI literature, including the use of GAI broadly within higher education and business education in particular, its efficacy for student learning, how it can be used for assessment and how it can be assessed, challenges in detecting its usage in assignments, and the breadth of policies created for regulating its use. [R]
76.1423 MADEJ, Małgorzata —
The paper discusses the Polish Political Science Review as a case study of a semiperipheral scientific journal focused on political science and international relations and published by the University of Wrocław. The objective is to present the strategies adopted by the journal’s editors in a twofold context, which is critical for the journal: the international rankings and the national system of journal assessment in Poland. The paper discusses how the journal has to navigate the intersections of the requirements posed by the two systems as well as reasons why both are important. The Polish Political Science Review faces challenges typical for semiperipheral journals, building its recognisability and position on the Polish and international markets. While ensuring the high-standard quality of manuscripts is the mainstay of a journal’s strategy, functioning within the inconsistent and sometimes unpredictable environment requires a combination of internationalisation with strong local rooting. [R] [See Abstr. 76.1406]
76.1424 MENCHIK, Jeremy —
The author reflects on the use of the term “spirit” by political scientists. He argues that understanding the use has implications for conceptual clarity and the relationship between religion and political science. [R]
76.1425 MEYERS, Natalie —
This paper presents for a political science audience the Three Pillars Approach to the FAIR principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Re-usabilty for data and metadata. A portfolio of illustrative practical activities is offered that scholarly communities can take up to make their research more FAIR at disciplinary and subdisciplinary levels. [R]
76.1426 MUSTILLO, Thomas —
The digital age is bringing transformative changes to political science data practices and ecosystems, driven by advances in technology and a growing emphasis on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles. This paper uses a theory of “innovation cascades” to show how building bridges to distant knowledge domains in computer and information sciences, as well as legal and ethical studies, can foster rapid and widespread adoption of more efficient and productive data practices in the discipline. Through a percolation model, I illustrate how innovation emerges and reaches tipping points when discovery and cross-disciplinary collaboration reach critical thresholds. This framework implies that the disciplinary community can proactively shape its data-future and anticipate disruptive changes that lie beyond the current imagination. The findings suggest that by enhancing connectivity across domains, political science can foster a resilient, collaborative scientific infrastructure capable of advancing both research and public engagement. [R]
76.1427 QUINN, Sarah ; GÓMEZ-BAEZA, Francisca ; COLLINS, Devin —
Scholarship on finance has flourished in the aftermath of the Great Recession. While the sociology of finance typically centers developments since the financial turn of the 1970s, a burgeoning body of interdisciplinary scholarship sheds new light on the evolution of financial practices, institutions, and relations in earlier years. This review explores key contributions and themes from the new histories of finance, focusing on works published in the past decade that offer valuable insights for sociologists. We first review new contributions on ancient, medieval, and early modern finance, which illuminate the origins of money and credit, the development of financial thinking, and the relationship between finance and imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. Second, we survey new work on the development of modern financial markets in the long road to the financial turn of the 1970s. Together, these studies reveal how money, credit, and finance are embedded in political and legal institutions, and how financial systems act as tools of social policy, economic growth, war, and racial subjugation. Finally, long-run perspectives on finance provide an important reminder that borrowing, lending, and the management of attendant risks are not new phenomena unique to our neoliberal era. [R]
76.1428 SCHATTO-ECKRODT, Tim ; CLEVER, Lena ; FRISCHLICH,
Lena —
Planning and designing a study that links content analysis and panel data is a complex endeavor and managing a collaborative research project across multiple organizations involves many hurdles and challenges. Both, the complexity of a linkage design and the challenging nature of a collaborative research project are enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic, demanding creative solutions for many issues and a lot of planning by the researchers involved. Especially the challenges involved in gathering, storing, analyzing, and accessing data are amplified by the lack of face-to-face contact and standardized technical infrastructure for digital collaborative research projects. This article aims at giving an overview of the technical infrastructure involved in the content analysis part of a large-scale linkage study, providing researchers with a blueprint of the many moving parts involved in the study’s implementation. This overview will be discussed with a reflective eye toward the challenges encountered and solutions found in the process, the added layer of complexity of a global pandemic, and potential learnings for future projects like this. [R]
76.1429 SCHMID, Ursula Kristin ; KÜMPEL, Anna Sophie ; RIEGER,
Diana —
For researchers interested in studying users’ perceptions and immediate reactions to digital media content — even from a distance — this article introduces the remote self-confrontation interview method. This adapted version of the self-confrontation interview method uses videoconferencing software and combines four interrelated steps: First, participants are observed scrolling through/using a stimulus, which allows the assessment of attention, emotional reactions, and the intensity of participants’ engagement. Second, self-confrontation interviews are conducted, discussing and re-evaluating participants’ observed behavior. Third, further research aims are addressed in semi-structured interviews, and fourth, in problem-focused tasks. Weighting up advantages and challenges for participants and researchers, we discuss the method as an effective and broadly applicable approach to examine digital media users’ perceptions and evaluations. [R]
76.1430 SCHNEIJDERBERG, Christian —
Why are academics reactive to state-commissioned accreditation and evaluation regimes? The answer is: academic conventions have become embedded in a soft conditioning program (SoCoP) of law-applying. In a historical sociological perspective, the new SoCoP methodology is developed and reflected upon by analyzing the case of the German higher education accreditation regime. This provides an example of how the administrative and legal adaptation of a SoCoP in the specific environment is achieved by including the social partnership convention between the state and the academic profession and convention of academic peer review. Aiming at reactivity in social behavior, a SoCoP means “investments in forms” (Thévenot 1984), which establishes a long-term codification of procedures. The operational construction of legitimacy embedded in the SoCoP form is further theorized building on Luhmann’s ([1969] 1983) notion of procedures and their social orders according to an analytical framework of plural orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006). The conclusion presents an outlook on the use of the new SoCoP methodology, ranging from schools and health and welfare systems via the multi-national firm Amazon to governing grand challenges formulated in the Sustainable Development Goals. [R]
76.1431 SIERP, Aline —
This article surveys the recent literature on the politics of memory. It sets out the nature of research in this area over the last 25 years and distils its main trends and areas of focus. Investigating monographs and edited volumes published since the year 2000, it gives an overview of a rich and evolving area of study. It demonstrates the extent to which the increasing politicization and securitization of memory has started to underpin new strategies for political conflict with different groups on different levels using collective memory to assert identities. While the boundaries between the national and the transnational in studying the politics of memory are often blurred, the article broadly distinguishes between studying political conflict within and between states. [R]
76.1432 VANDERSTRAETEN, Raf —
Web of Science has rapidly expanded its coverage of the scientific literature in the past decades. We analyze the selection criteria applied in its databases, especially the Social Science Citation Index, and discuss how changes in the coverage of the scientific literature inform us about changes in the kinds of research that are being valued and prioritized. Scientometric data are presented for the period 1997-2023. These data show that ‘applied’ subject categories, such as nursing and education, educational research, have become more visible in the scientific databases, while the classic or ‘pure’ disciplines, such as anthropology and sociology, have become less visible. We argue that these changes indicate that science itself is increasingly defined in terms of its impact on the external world. Changing ideas about what constitutes good science and about the place of the social sciences in society are enhancing the status of applied disciplines and lead to their stronger presence in scientific databases. [R]
76.1433 ZWOLSKI, Kamil —
This paper advocates the integrated approach to higher education pedagogy, especially in EU Studies. The integrated approach is defined across two dimensions: the integration of space, which includes in-person and online sessions, as well as the integration of delivery method, which includes traditional lecture/seminar format and the more innovative, high-impact pedagogies such as simulations or technology-enhanced teaching. The paper illustrates this argument with the experience of delivering an undergraduate module on European power at a UK university. The integrated approach works well with EU Studies because of the timely and policy-oriented nature of the subject, with the history and structure of the EU encouraging simulation games and other innovative, high impact pedagogies, in order to get students more engaged. Conversely, the paper cautions against hastily moving towards either side of the spectrum, noting that, for example, eliminating lectures and organising a module entirely around student-led sessions can be ineffective if the wider institutional practice and culture does not follow a similar pathway. This paper is primarily aimed at advanced PhD students and early-career academic teachers. It intends to reassure them that one can have a systematic and well-grounded approach to teaching without becoming unnecessarily restrictive about what’s ‘innovative’ or ‘student-centric’. [R]