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The challenges of supervised machine learning in sociological applications
27-42.Views:24The sociological applications of supervised machine learning, already well proven in industrial/
business applications, raise specific questions. The reason for this specificity is that in these applications, the algorithm is tasked with learning complex concepts (e.g. whether a tweet contains hate speech). Supervised learning consists of learning to classify previously annotated (hate
speech/non-hate speech) texts by the algorithm, looking for characteristic text patterns. The
questions that arise are: how to prepare annotation? How can a hermeneutic challenge such as
hate speech recognition be performed by annotators? Are routinely applied, detailed annotation
guidelines helpful? The article also discusses how large companies perform coding on crowdsourcing platforms, and describes AI bias, which in this case means that annotators themselves
introduce bias into the data. I illustrate these issues with our own research experiences. -
“Can’t you see that we are in trouble?” – The environmental protection-related ignorance, its appearance in visual attentional patterns, and some possible explanation/interpretation
49-69Views:36The environmental crisis is an outstanding topic nowadays. Given that it is basically caused
by human activity, this issue is worth examining at all levels of society. The present study
investigated the individuals’ visual attentional patterns and the possible attentional biases related to pictures displaying environmental problems, in comparison to undisturbed nature
and social scenes as control stimuli, within the framework of a reaction-time task. Changes
in participants’ mood and their self-reported environmental awareness were also measured.
However, only the negative social scenes resulted attentional bias, the environmental topics
were not able to do that. Albeit the mood of the participants deteriorated during the experiment,
it did not have any correlation with any other variables, and either did the environmental
awareness. We displayed the stimuli during the task only for a short period of time, thereby we
targeted to reach automatic attentional responses. Our results reflect to the fact, that the topic
of the environmental crisis is not suitable to do this. This phenomenon propounds the demand of
explanations behind this phenomenon (like the possible evolutionary background). -
Debunking Myths about the American Presidential Elections of 2016 and Failures in the Social Sciences
51-61Views:26Throughout the campaign and following the elections of 2016, the two major political parties
cherished stories about what happened, and why it happened. Some of these stories have some
basis in fact, while others are completely mythical, and nevertheless believed. These stories, or
myths, arise from the political desires and belief systems of those who tell them. In what follows
we will examine these stories in the lights of the facts -
Effectively influence on people: or are helping professionals free to utilize manipulative impacts?
78-108Views:43The economic and political crises of the last two decades have been greatly influenced by the fact
that, impacted by manipulative effects, instead to follow their rational judgements people have
made their decisions under the influence of emotional and instinctive temtation, deception and
manipulation. So far, these manipulative influences dominate contemporary commercial or populist political communication. The paper below shares the author’s hesitation that, while
non-rational factors bias from rational arguing and reasoning, both in decision-making and in
communicative impacts on the other person inevitably present, is it acceptable to manipulate
the users/clients by assisting professionals/social workers while exercising influence on decision-making of their clients? And if so, under what conditions, what specific constraints could be
exercised such impacts and „professional power”? Likewise, when and what can and should be
done to immunize clients against manipulation, to mitigate manipulative effects, to „gain back”
rational mind and „empower” clients to follow rational consideration and make wiser decisions?
The article does not undertake to provide „only” true and correct answers, rather gives insights
and tries to provoke its reader to contribute to clarifying this important issue.