The role of memes in the construction of Facebook personae

Abstract

This research is based on the assumption that social media sites – such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – have changed the way in which memes (culturally transmitted ideas) are transmitted or spread. It is argued that social media have provided the most fertile environment for the replication of memes to date. The social networking site Facebook is the main social media example used throughout the research. The way in which Facebook is represented in film, as well as the ways in which the offline lives of the characters are affected by their social media profiles, specifically as depicted in the film Catfish (Joost and Schulman 2010) are analysed. Lastly, it is argued that one can construct an entirely new persona, or merely experiment with different aspects of who you are, on social media sites. This online persona can be influenced by the memes one chooses to spread online. Naturally, all memes carry connotations, values and judgements. These memes collate with one's profile and, thus, the connotations attached to the memes one shares are then associated with one's online persona/profile. It is found that although a social networking user tries to portray him/herself in an idealised manner, these memetic connotations give a true impression of his/her offline persona. As a result, there is not much difference between the user's online and offline personae.     

Social Sustainability in Agriculture: An Anthropological Perspective on Child Labour in Cocoa Production in Ghana

Based on historical sources and ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, the article presents child labour in cocoa communities as the outcome of a complex myriad of micro-level factors. It argues that many policy initiatives to address this problem have been hindered by a lack of understanding of the social and historical context impacting child rights in cocoa-producing communities. It also argues that by enabling a more grounded and gender-sensitive understanding of the household dimension of poor labour practices and of the plurality of factors underlying them, ethnography makes an important contribution to debates on unfree labour.     

Critical Legal Theory’s Turn to Schmitt: Not Waving but Drowning?

I examine the current enthusiasm among some academics, whom I shall broadly refer to as critical legal theorists (CLT), for the work of Carl Schmitt which has at times been accompanied by disenchantment with Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical insights. I examine the reasons for this turn to Schmitt which I attribute to the sensitivity of CL theorists to the complaint that an over-reliance on Levinas leads to a disengaged and irrelevant discourse. I contrast their antithetical approaches through their conceptions of the Other (which in Schmitt’s case is developed through his friend and enemy distinction) and explain how, together with state of exception theory; it has appeared to some CL theorists to offer a platform for exposing the liberal democratic attempt to export human rights as a violent imperialising mission. I argue that Schmitt’s thinking represents an intellectual cul-de-sac and that Levinas continues to offer a more rewarding model of critique.     

A comparison of the neuropsychological profiles of adult male sex offenders and non-offenders with a learning disability

Abstract

The present study compared the neumpsychologlcal pmfiles of a group of adult male sex offenden with a laming disability (n-42) with a group of adult male non-offenders with a learning disability (n-42) using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised (1986). The groups wen matched for full-scale IQ. Thc study found that the non-offender group had significantly higher Verbal 1Q scorn than the sex offender group. No significant differences wen found for Performance IQ. The non-ofinder group was also found to have significantly hlgher scores on the Vocabulary sub-test than the sex offender group and the sex offender group was found to have significantly higher scores on the ObJecr Assembly subtest than the non-ofinder group. Finally. the sex offender group was found to have a significantly lower Verbal IQ than Performance IQ. No significant Verbal-Performance discrepancy was found for the non-offender group. Possible implications of these findings are dlscusscd.     

The Physiology of Political Participation

Political involvement varies markedly across people. Traditional explanations for this variation tend to rely on demographic variables and self-reported, overtly political concepts. In this article, we expand the range of possible explanatory variables by hypothesizing that a correlation exists between political involvement and physiological predispositions. We measure physiology by computing the degree to which electrodermal activity changes on average when a participant sequentially views a full range of differentially valenced stimuli. Our findings indicate that individuals with higher electrodermal responsiveness are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of traditional demographic variables are taken into account, suggesting that physiological responsiveness independently contributes to a fuller understanding of the underlying sources of variation in political involvement.