The social amplification of risk on Twitter: the case of ash dieback disease in the United Kingdom

It has long been recognised that the traditional media play a key role in representing risk and are a significant source of information which can shape how people perceive and respond to hazard events. Early work utilising the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) sought to understand the discrepancy between expert and lay perceptions of risk and patterns of risk intensification and attenuation with reference to the media. However, the advent of Web 2.0 challenges traditional models of communication. To date there has been limited consideration of social media within the SARF and its role in mediating processes of risk perception and communication. Against this backdrop, we focus on the social media platform Twitter to consider the social amplification of risk in relation to ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus); a tree health issue that attracted intense media attention when it was first identified in the UK in 2012. We present an empirical analysis of 25,600 tweets in order to explore what people were saying about ash dieback on Twitter, who was talking about it and how they talked about it. Our discussion outlines the themes around which talk about ash dieback was orientated, the significance of users’ environmental ‘affiliations’ and the role of including links (URLs) to traditional media coverage. We utilise the notion of ‘piggybacking’ to demonstrate how information is customised in line with group/individual identities and interests and introduce the concept of the ‘frame fragment’ to illustrate how information is selected and moved around Twitter emphasising certain features of the messages. The paper affords a detailed consideration of the way in which people and organisations simultaneously appropriate, construct and pass on risk-relevant information. A conclusion is that social media has the potential to transform the media landscape within which the SARF was originally conceived, presenting renewed challenges for risk communication.     

A new method for early detection of mass concern about public health issues

During a public health crisis, risk communication professionals and other risk managers need timely and reliable information about the public reaction as soon as possible in order to effectively carry out their responsibilities. Based on a data-set of microblog news posts, this article presents a method that can forecast to what extent news about a public health issue will be disseminated. The study makes advances in rapidly tracking citizens’ reaction towards public health issues by monitoring news media on microblog sites. The findings show that the proposed method can detect early on the intensity of social reaction on a public health issue as well as provide alert signals. The method can also complement existing risk detection systems and help in the design of other powerful risk analytics tools.     

The Effects of Social Spending on Economic Activity: Empirical Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries*

The aim of this paper is to assess the short‐term effects of social spending on economic activity. Using a panel of OECD countries from 1980 to 2005, the results show that social spending has expansionary effects on GDP. In particular, we find that an increase of 1 per cent in social spending increases GDP by about 0.1 percentage points, which, given the share of social spending in GDP, corresponds to a multiplier of about 0.6. The effect is similar to that of total government spending, and it is larger in periods of severe downturns. Among spending subcategories, social spending on health and on unemployment benefits have the greatest effects. Social spending also positively affects private consumption, while it has negligible effects on investment. The empirical results are economically and statistically significant, and robust.     

Public sector risk managers and spending cuts: mitigating risks

This paper reports case study research, the results of which are used to consider whether councils have recognised the potentially substantially increased social risks they may create as they seek to reduce their spending in line with the UK Government’s programme of public sector austerity. It discusses the conceptual shift in the public sector risk management literature towards social risk management (SRM), presents empirical evidence of social risks and considers the approach to SRM developed by other organisations. It finds no evidence of SRM within the case study authorities and so advocates a shift in the public sector risk management culture from a preoccupation with defensive-institutional risk management practices to a more proactive social dimension. In so doing, it discusses the goals of SRM, the constraints limiting their achievement, metrics for measuring social risk, tools for mitigating social risk and the problems faced when operationalising SRM.     

城乡居民社会保障性支出对消费水平影响比较研究——基于15个省市面板数据的实证分析

本文以具有一定代表性的15个省市城乡居民2004—2010年7年的城乡居民人均社会保障性支出水平、人均工资收入水平、消费支出水平为例进行探讨,利用省际静态面板数据分析工具和模型对社会保障性年人均支出水平如何影响城乡居民年人均消费支出水平二者进行了面板实证分析并且做出了对比性研究。研究发现,近年来我国农村居民的社会保障支出总体水平较城镇居民依然差距较大,但是其对于消费水平的影响程度约为社会保障性支出对城镇居民消费水平影响程度的1．2倍,各地区之间、省市之间差异明显。该结论在有力模型论证的基础上较好地反映了近几年来城乡之间社会保障性支出水平发展的轨迹及在内需拉动方面的效用。     

Accounting students access to social media related resources and the risk of tacit social exclusion

ABSTRACT

The use of social media platforms to facilitate teaching and learning requires resources (hardware and Internet access) to enable active student participation. Limited access to these resources may impair students’ learning and, should the students consequently fail to graduate, tacitly contribute to their social exclusion. The results of a survey amongst students at a South African university, identified statistically significant differences relating to hardware and Internet access between more affluent students, and lower income students. Using social media may, therefore, be countering the objective of widening the admissions to universities in South Africa as an attempt to address past exclusionary practices. This study raises awareness with instructors and administrators globally, about the risk of tacit social exclusion, as a result of the tools selected to facilitate learning.     

Government social media and corporate tax avoidance

With the advent of the new media era, government social media have become an important paradigm for social governance. We perform a large-sample regression and reveal that the higher the quality of taxation bureaus’ operation of government social media, the lower the degree of local enterprises’ tax avoidance, which works through reducing tax avoidance incentives and increasing the difficulty of committing tax avoidance. Moreover, government social media play a substitution effect on tax enforcement and administration. We also find that government social media should focus on strengthening its official, formal and professional characteristics. Given the significant recent changes in how enterprises handle taxation, the proportion of information that taxation bureaus post on system operation should be appropriately increased.     

政绩诉求、政府控制与边际社会性支出——基于地方国有上市公司的研究

本文实证检验了政绩诉求——政府控制——边际社会性支出这样一条政府干预国有企业所产生经济后果的传导机制。研究发现:当地方政府在面临财政收入不足、国有经济面临的就业压力更大和经济增长缓慢时,地方政府往往会加大对国有企业的控制程度。尤其在面临就业压力时,会倾向于加强对员工规模大的企业的控制。随着地方政府对国有企业控制程度的加强,会导致国有企业发生更多的边际社会性支出,如非效率投资和冗员等。     

The Role of Social Media in the Capital Market: Evidence from Consumer Product Recalls

We examine how corporate social media affects the capital market consequences of firms’ disclosure in the context of consumer product recalls. Product recalls constitute a “product crisis” exposing the firm to reputational damage, loss of future sales, and legal liability. During such a crisis it is crucial for the firm to quickly and directly communicate its intended message to a wide network of stakeholders, which, in turn, renders corporate social media a potentially useful channel of disclosure. While we document that corporate social media, on average, attenuates the negative price reaction to recall announcements, the attenuation benefits of corporate social media vary with the level of control the firm has over its social media content. In particular, with the arrival of Facebook and Twitter, firms relinquished complete control over their social media content, and the attenuation benefits of corporate social media, while still significant, lessened. Detailed Twitter analysis confirms that the moderating effect of social media varies with the level of firm involvement and with the amount of control exerted by other users: the negative price reaction to a recall is attenuated by the frequency of tweets by the firm, while exacerbated by the frequency of tweets by other users.     

Beyond under the dome: an environmental documentary amplified public risk perception about air pollution in China

Abstract

Air pollution is a major environmental problem in China and it poses serious risks to public health. Based on the social amplification of risk framework (SARF), this study examines how media, in particular, an impactful environmental documentary titled Under the Dome, influenced Chinese citizens’ risk perception about air pollution. Survey results showed that exposure to the documentary amplified risk perception and risk perception was significantly related to viewers’ information seeking behaviors, policy support, and individual mitigation action about this issue.     

社会保障与消费关系研究

社会保障本身就是消费的重要组成部分,而且随着社会保障制度的健全和社会保障资金规模的扩大,在居民消费中占比越来越高。由于收入分配差距扩大,引发新的公共消费风险,给社会保障制度带来很大压力;社会保障制度的不完善,使人们对未来消费缺乏信心,提高了人们的消费预期;同时由于社会保障的不完善,使低收入阶层消费能力薄弱,制约消费结构的升级换代。为此,要从分配与再分配人手,增加城乡居民的收入,改革完善社会保障制度,特别关注和提高低收入群体的消费能力,实现社会保障制度完善和促进消费的＂双赢＂。     

Budgetary earmarking and the control of the extravagant woman in Australia, 1850–1920

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Australian women (and Melbournian women in particular) were chastised for extravagance in dress. Excessive expenditure on fashionable clothing was considered a threat to personal solvency and domestic tranquillity. Female profligacy was also deemed self indulgent and unpatriotic in periods of economic and military crisis. Drawing on Zelizer's [Zelizer VA. The social meaning of money. New York: Basic Books; 1994] study of The social meaning of money the paper examines how the state attempted to contain female extravagance in dress by re-orientating spending priorities in household budgets. The earmarking ideology of patriotic thrift was conveyed by apparatuses such as cultural and communications media, the political system and voluntary associations. The earmarking ideology represented an onslaught on fashionable dress, a means of asserting feminine identity in a patriarchal society. The study reveals budgetary earmarking as a social process, which is reflective and constitutive of gendered asymmetries of power in the home.     

Is More Targeting Consistent with Less Spending?

Economists often advise governments to target their spending better when cuts are called for. This paper asks whether that advice is consistent with a political-economy constraint that limits the welfare losses to the non-poor from spending cuts. A simple theoretical model shows that the answer is unclear on a priori grounds, and so will depend on the specifics of program design and financing. A case study for a World Bank-supported social program in Argentina illustrates how cuts can come with worse targeting performance; the allocation to the poor falls faster than that to the non-poor. Some lessons are drawn for how the poor might be better protected from cuts.     

La medición del desempeño social empresarial a través de las redes sociales

Corporate social performance (CSP) has been studied extensively by management scholars, yet most approaches to its measurement continue to be ambiguous, controversial and difficult to research. In this paper, we propose measuring CSP via the construct of stakeholder satisfaction through social media. Using organizational justice theory, we argue that the satisfaction of stakeholder expectations can be understood partly through the perception of unjust corporate behavior, which is then expressed by stakeholders through social media. The explosion of social networking and microblogging has made it possible for people to express opinions with respect to the economic, social, and environmental events for all sorts of firms. We test these ideas using event study methods with a sample of 5,440 observations from ten firms. We find preliminary evidence of the sensitivity of social media to these events.     

Getting the Smaller Picture: Small‐Area Analysis of Public Expenditure Incidence and Deprivation in Three English Cities

This paper examines public expenditure incidence at small‐area level in cities. The motivations for such research are briefly reviewed. The article reports on an attempt at measuring public expenditure across the majority of programmes down to the level of Census wards and the actual results obtained for three urban local authorities in England. The relationship between spending, income and deprivation is examined overall and for particular spending programmes, using a number of approaches including regression‐based expenditure models. The conclusions suggest that spending is indeed targetted on poorer areas but raise questions about both the strength of this relationship and how best to measure deprivation and the need to spend.     

ESG activities and firm cash flow

I measure the influence of ESG activities on Free Cash flow to the Firm and Free Cash Flow to Equity. I find that ESG activities primarily benefit the cash flows to creditors of firms in developed markets. The ESG effect predominantly comes from the excess spending of the firm on communicating how it integrates the economic (financial), social and environmental dimensions into its day-to-day decision-making processes. For developed market firms, the additional factor of excess spending on conditions for the workforce plays a role in boosting Free Cash Flow to the Firm.     

美国财政社会保障支出公平性分析及启示

本文以2000-2011年美国财政社会保障支出数据为基础,采用基尼系数、集中指数等分析工具对美国各州政府间财政社会保障支出的公平性、美国联邦和州政府间财政社会保障支出的合理性等问题进行了分析,最终得出了美国财政社会保障支出总体公平性较高的结论。在此基础上,对我国社会保障制度发展提出了扩大中央财政在财政社会保障支出中所占比重、合理划分各级政府的社会保障财权和事权、规范转移支付形式等建议。     

社交网络营销在中国(英文)

随着网络越来越深入中国人的日常生活中,社交网络的崛起,正改变着公司的营销策略与方式。进入Web2.0时代,传统的网络营销手段,诸如搜索引擎竞价排名,门户网站广告等方式所起到的营销效果已经大不如前。随着Facebook、twitter等国外的社交网络媒体在网络营销上的优势日益体现,以及社交网络媒体在中国的蓬勃发展,越来越多的中国企业,看到了SNS营销的潜力,意识到了利用了SNS网站进行营销的重要性。SNS在中国起步较晚,近几年却发展迅速,对于中国企业,如何利用SNS达到期望营销效果,已经成为重要的话题。本文希望,通过参考国内外成功的SNS营销案例,借助菲利普·科特勒的市场营销模型,为中国企业的SNS营销方式提供参考。     

我国社会保障支出与金融结构变迁关系的实证研究

本文利用中国1992-2011年间的时间序列和协整分析方法,实证考察了我国社会保障支出对金融结构变迁的影响效果。结果显示社会保障支出显著地影响金融结构的变迁,不断增加的社会保障支出能够显著地提升股票、债券、保险等非货币资产在金融机构总资产中的占比;社会保障支出是引起股票资产占比、债券资产占比、保险资产占比的格兰杰原因,反之,股票资产占比、债券资产占比、保险资产占比不是引起社会保障支出变动的格兰杰原因。     

Accounting and the construction of the retired person

This paper seeks to describe the constitutive role played by accounting in the social safety net for the elderly, and its effects on the individual preparing for retirement. The paper documents the effects of accounting on life-long behaviours, through the objectivization of the individual as a worker, saver, and pensioner. It shows how accounting has, by capturing measures of individual earnings, by enlisting the individual in the preparation of tax returns, and by reflecting back to the individual various accumulations of lifetime savings, attempted to transform that individual not just into a saver who can continue to consume long after ceasing to produce, but into an investor whose interests are aligned with the financial markets. The focus of the paper is the Canadian retirement income system. Starting with an early attempt at retirement income protection, the 1908 government annuities program, the paper develops a genealogy of Canada’s present comprehensive retirement income system. By examining the succession and accumulation of retirement income programs introduced since 1908, the study shows how accounting has functioned as a dividing practice, separating citizens into categories wherein they can be subjected to particular programs. The paper suggests that the accounting technologies used in constructing the Canadian system have fallen short as tools for governing retirement and retirement savings, largely due to their inadequacy as technologies of the self. The paper is of particular relevance to accounting scholars because the aging population in many countries is putting tremendous pressure on retirement income programs. The paper helps us to understanding the role of accounting in shaping political policy on the aged and in preparing citizens for old age.