Winged Gods and walking griffons: A plate with a depiction of Scythian Gods has been found in Middle Don

by Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences

Silverplate with a depiction of Scythian Gods and eagle head griffons.

Credit: Institute of Archaeology RAS

Expedition members of IA RAS have found a unique plate depicting winged Scythian gods surrounded by griffons during their excavations of the burial ground Devitsa V in Ostrogozhsky District of Voronezh region. This is the first case of such a finding in the Scythian barrows on Middle Don. No other items depictions of gods from the Scythian pantheon have been found in this area.

"The finding has made an important contribution to our concepts of Scythian beliefs. Firstly, a particular number of gods are depicted at once on one item. Secondly, it has never happened before that an item with depicted gods has been found so far from the north-east of the main Scythian centers," said the head of the Don expedition, Prof. Valeriy Gulyaev.

Burial ground Devitsa V—named after the neighboring village area—was found in 2000 by the Don archaeological expedition of IA RAS. The site is situated on the hill of the right bank of the river Devitsa and is a group of 19 mounds which are situated in two parallel chains stretched from west to east. However, the significant part of ancient barrows has already disappeared: the necropolis area belongs to an agricultural sector and is being actively plowed.

Since 2010 the site has been systematically studied by the specialists from the Don expedition of IA RAS. During the cemetery excavations, some great discoveries have already been made. In 2019 in barrow 9 a burial was found which held the remains of a woman-warrior and an old lady in ceremonial female headwear known as a calathus.

In a field season in 2021, the Don archaeological expedition continued studying the necropolis. Archaeologists started the excavation of mound 7 in the central part of the cemetery Devitsa V in the vicinity of barrow 9.

The main grave referred to the Scythian times and dated back to the 4th century BC was located almost under the center of one mound and was a wooden tomb of 7.5x5 meters. In ancient times it was covered with oak half beams which were held by the seventeen large oak pillars on the gravesides. This is the biggest grave among all found in Devitsa V necropolis.

The barrow had already been plundered in ancient times. The robbers laid a wide test pit and "cleaned" a central part of the burial including the skeleton. However, by the time of the plundering the roof of the tomb had already fallen and that is why in the mixture of soil and tree remnants on the gravesides some grave goods have been preserved. Found items completely match the main elements of the Scythian "triad." Equipment, harness, and "animal style" artifacts were found in a warrior's grave.

There was a skeleton of a man of 40-49 years old in the grave. Next to his head archaeologists found many small gold semi-sphere plates which were decorated the funeral bed. Along with the skeleton an iron knife and a horse rib (likely, the remains of the ceremonial food), a spearhead, and three javelin's heads were found. The scientists have been able to reconstruct the length of the weapon relying on that the counterweights of the lower part of the polearm that have been remained untouched. The spear was about 3.2 meters long, and the javelines' length was about 2.2 meters.

In the southeast corner of the grave were fragments of three horse harness items: horse-bits, girth buckles, iron browbands, as well as iron, bronze, and bone Scythian pendants. The archaeologists have also found six bronze plates in the shape of wolves with grin laws which were decorated with horse cheeks—two on each harness. Next to the horse harness was a cut jaw of a young bear which testifies, according to the scientists, to the bear cult at the Scythes of Middle Don. Apart from it a molded cup and a big, black-glazed vessel have been found in different parts of the tomb.

In the northeast part of the grave separate from other items and a few meters far from the skeleton a silver square plate nailed by many small silver nails to a wooden base was found. The length of the plate was 34.7 cm, with the width in the middle part 7.5 cm.

In the central part of the plate is a winged figure facing a Goddess of animal and human fertility. The Goddess is known as Argimpasa, Cybele. The upper part of her body is stripped, and there is headwear, likely a crown with horns, on her head. The Goddess is surrounded on both sides with the figures of winged eagle-headed griffons. Depictions of this type, where the traditions of Asia Minor and ancient Greek are mixed, are often found in excavations of the Scythian barrows of the Northern Sea region, the Dnieper forest-steppe region, and the Northern Caucasus.

The left side of the plate is formed by two square plates decorated with the depictions of syncretic creatures standing in a so-called heraldic pose (in front of each other, close to each other with their paws). From the right side, two round buckles are attached to the plate on each of which one anthropomorphic character with a crown on his head standing surrounded by two griffons is depicted. Who those characters are and which item was decorated by this plate remains an open issue.Swiss archaeologist discovers the earliest tomb of a Scythian prince

Provided by Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences 

Janitorial culture of abuse documented by Worker Institute

by Stephanie Olszewski, Cornell University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Experiences of workplace sexual assault and harassment are widespread in the janitorial industry, according to a new report by the ILR School's Worker Institute, with women janitors more likely than men to experience unwanted sexual behavior, to be targeted by supervisors and to switch jobs due to harassing behavior.

Released Nov. 9, the report documents experiences of workplace sexual harassment in the California janitorial industry, as well as the conditions that hinder reporting and impose silence.

"So many workers and particularly those in the low-wage economy face sharply unequal power relations at work, which makes conditions ripe for exploitation and abuse," said Zoe West, Worker Institute affiliate researcher, report co-author and Rhiza Collective co-founder.

"Sweeping Change: Building Survivor and Worker Leadership to Confront Sexual Harassment in the Janitorial Industry" also highlights an innovative response developed by SEIU-USWW, the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund and other organizations, examining a worker-and-survivor-led peer education model that has been institutionalized through statewide legislation. 

Participatory research for the report was conducted by the Worker Institute at Cornell that included surveys of more than 700 janitorial workers; focus groups with 35 workers; a survey of 36 janitors who are promotoras (peer educators) and compadres (male allies); and in-depth interviews with four worker leaders. 

Silence around the issue is often enforced by the behavior of supervisors, coworkers and other actors, the report found. These behaviors conspire to create an environment in which those targeted report working in fear and grappling with trauma alone.

The research points to the value of a peer-education model in confronting the problem of sexual violence within this context, by finding that building worker leadership and cultivating relationships of trust in confronting sexual harassment can help break silence around the issue and shift workplace practices and culture. The report also draws broader lessons for taking on the problem of workplace sexual harassment and violence in other contexts.

On Nov. 9, the Worker Institute hosted a virtual report launch event featuring a conversation with janitor peer educators leading change in their workplaces. Simultaneously translated in English and Spanish, the event included a discussion of the findings, potential policy and organizational solutions, and testimony from survivors.Co-worker interventions can moderate customer sexual harassment in service industry

More information: Report: ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/74351

Provided by Cornell University 

Study: Women structurally underrepresented in management research

by Radboud University

Women are structurally underrepresented in leading management and organization journals, a new study published today in Research Policy finds. Nora Lohmeyer(verwijst naar een andere website) of Radboud University and Carolin Auschra and Julia Bartosch of Freie Universität Berlin analyzed a dataset of 43,673 articles in fourteen top journals, and found that even in 2017, the most recent year of their study, on average only 30 percent were written by women. Furthermore, almost all topics within the field are dominated by men in publication, leading to a significant gender gap in publishing.

The number of articles authored by women is lagging behind the number of women currently working in the field, the authors claim. In the last decades, most leading journals struggled to pass the threshold of 30 percent of female authors and for some journals the percentage of female authors was even lower, barely hitting 20 percent. The low share of women in top journals cannot be explained by an overall low representation of women working in the field, with women making up a little over 40 percent, based on rough numbers.

Male islands

In the paper, the researchers also describe a dominance of "male islands," research topics on which predominantly men publish. In fact, the researchers could only find one topic on which women publish slightly more than men: gender and diversity. There is also a prevalence of "men's clubs": in 2017 about half the articles were authored by men (either in all male teams or by male single authors), while only 3.4 percent were authored by female single authors and 5.8 percent by all female teams.

Lohmeyer: "Publications are very important for academic careers. Promotions, grants, and benefits are often tied to the number of publications in top journals. If women publish less in these journals, as our study shows, they will have a harder time getting ahead in the field. And it can create vicious circles: researchers need top publications to get grants, but the likelihood for achieving top publications is much higher if you get a grant. Our study suggests that women might get caught in such circles more often than men."

Requirements for future diversity

Furthermore, current publications drive future diversity in the field. "Who publishes in top journals impacts the diversity of topics covered in the field and can limit scholarly plurality. If men and women tend to publish on different topics and women are underrepresented in top journals, these journals might miss out on relevant topics."

"Previous studies have shown that while women tend to publish less, they are not publishing research of lower quality. This suggests that journals need to undertake specific actions to ensure a more diverse range of authors," explains Bartosch. "The first step for these journals is to become aware of the underrepresentation of women. Based on our findings, editors can benchmark the gender-diversity of their journal against their peers and see how they do compared to others. To increase the number of women in their journals, they could plan special issues around specific themes where women publish more often, to encourage more female authors to come forward. In other fields, such as medicine, it has been suggested to check the proportion of included women during the review process for invited and commissioned articles. This might be a way forward for our field as well."

Discussion

Auschra: "This is a complicated, multifaceted process which is not easily solved. Our study suggests that despite an overall and steady increase in the number of women, a large part of the underlying structure of management and organization research is still male. Only by analyzing the roots of that structure and addressing the problem at those roots can the field grow and encompass a wider range of research, more accurately reflecting the field at large. We hope that our article triggers a vivid discussion about the representation of women in top journals that engages the whole community."Medical journal articles written by women are cited less than those written by men

Provided by Radboud University 

Study: COVID tech took a toll on work-from-home moms

by University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

It's no secret that being a work-from-home mom during the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic was a drag. And those tech tools—video meetings and texting—designed to make remote work easier? They just added to the stress and exacerbated the mental health toll on burnt out moms trying to hold everything together.

That's one major takeaway from a study published this week in the journal Communication Reports. Researchers surveyed 540 adults in May 2020 who had worked for up to 10 weeks remotely, and found that stress levels among women with children skyrocketed—likely because blurred work-life balance boundaries meant they took on the brunt of juggling homeschooling and household chores alongside professional duties.

The results also reveal that video chats and texts tended to stress out remote workers, regardless of parental status and other factors including age, race, and education. Why? Researchers hypothesize that the extra visual cues needed to get points across via a video screen and expectations of immediacy when replying to texts contributed to fatigue. For working mothers, these two communication methods were especially burdensome because they hindered the ability to multitask.

The findings raise questions about the future of remote work and ways to preserve employees' mental health, said lead researcher and UNLV communication studies professor Natalie Pennington.

"We did find stress levels progressively increased for women with more children, which really points to the juggling act—you're trying to keep track of multiple kids and the job," she said. "The answer to alleviating stress might be supporting the use of asynchronous communication, like email, compared to synchronous forms, like video chats and texting, to create the flexibility needed to better balance work and home. When real-time communication is needed, phone calls may be better suited to allow for multi-tasking."

The study was conducted in collaboration with Michigan State University associate professor Amanda Holmstrom and University of Kansas professor Jeff Hall.Call me, maybe? Study probes how people connected during the pandemic

More information: Natalie Pennington et al, The Toll of Technology while Working from Home during COVID-19, Communication Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1080/08934215.2021.1993947

Provided by University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

Our attitudes and emotions are affected by how the media describes migration

by Cajsa Malmström, University of Gothenburg

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

News that describes migration in a positive context, makes us become more positive about immigration and vice versa. This is stated by Nora Theorin in a new dissertation on media and migration at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg.

Media are often said to play a central role when it comes to shaping the perceptions people have of migration, but our knowledge is limited about HOW and WHEN they influence people, and why.

Nora Theorin has investigated what it looks like in six European countries to see if there are any common patterns and mechanisms; countries that differ greatly in their attitudes toward migration: Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Hungary.

Differences between traditional and alternative media

The survey in Sweden showed that traditional news media did not seem to have influenced users' attitudes toward migration to any great extent, despite the fact that it was carried out during 2014–2016, when an exceptionally large number of refugees (160,000) came to Sweden.

On the other hand, it emerged that the use of certain media—those with a pronounced political orientation—had a greater influence. Those who followed the alternative right-wing site Avpixlat (now Samhällsnytt) became more negative about immigration from countries outside the EU, while those who read the left-wing ETC became more positive.

"You need to be aware of this difference when talking about public opinion—and the influence of the media—in migration issues, especially since media with a clear political, especially immigration-critical, profile have increasingly established themselves as sources of information in many Western democracies," says Nora Theorin.

Emotions matter

To find out if it matters how the media portrays immigrants and immigration, she conducted an experiment in which 5,510 participants in the different countries got to take part of both positive and negative articles about immigrants—something that aroused different kinds of feelings.

The different angles (or frames) led to different reactions—those where immigrants appeared in a positive context reduced the readers' negative emotions, which in turn also led to more positive attitudes. At the same time, the positive emotions of those who read negative articles decreased, and they also had more negative attitudes toward immigration.

"Emotions seem to be an important mechanism and can function as so-called mediating variables or factors that explain why people are influenced by the media's representations of immigration," says Nora Theorin.

Media use and threats

Internationally, it also turned out that the media in different ways seem to trigger people's perceptions of immigration as a threat to the economy, security and culture, depending on where in the world the migrants come from.

Immigration from outside Europe was mainly associated with cultural threats, while the only perceived negative effect of European migration was on the economy.

"But the results differ so much between the countries that it is not possible to talk about any universal influence or common patterns," says Nora Theorin.

In general, the effect of the media was more limited than she expected, both in Sweden and internationally. Something Theorin believes may be due to the fact that many people, long before the study, had already established such strong views on migration that they are difficult to change.

Taking in refugees does not strongly influence xenophobia in East German communities

More information: Us Versus Them and the Role of the Media: hdl.handle.net/2077/69572

Provided by University of Gothenburg 

Refugees in the media: How the most commonly used images make viewers dehumanise them

by Manos Tsakiris, The Conversation

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

When the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011, the journeys of thousands of people fleeing their home country to cross the Mediterranean were widely documented in the media. But the public response was tepid until 2015, when a photograph of drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach was printed in media around the world. The photo prompted international responses, a change of EU policy on refugees, and a surge in donations to charities working with refugees.

Images shape our perceptions of the world and have the capacity to become political forces themselves. While more refugees risk their lives to cross the English Channel and the Mediterranean, not to mention the Belarus-Poland border, our research has found that the photos of these populations in the media affect how people view and respond to migration issues.

This phenomenon is described in social psychology as the "identifiable victim effect." People engage differently with words and images concerning the suffering of a single individual rather than that of large groups. We are willing to offer greater aid to a single victim under hardship than to a group of people with the same need. Increased charity donations are an example of this.

Yet in the mainstream media, images of identifiable victims are the exception rather than the norm. In the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, the majority of news images in western media depict refugees as anonymous, faceless masses. These may either render audiences numb to the subjects' hardship or simply fail to shift their attitudes or behaviors, as past research suggests.

Dehumanization

In set of recent studies, we showed media images of refugees to nearly 4,000 European citizens. We exposed them to images of either large groups, in which individuals are not identifiable, or small groups of identifiable refugees. We found that viewers dehumanized refugees more strongly when they were exposed to images of them in large groups.

We reached this conclusion by asking participants to tell us the extent to which they think that refugees are capable of experiencing certain emotions. We did this because an important dimension of dehumanization is considering others as being less capable of experiencing secondary emotions that typically distinguish humans from animals, such as tenderness, guilt and compassion (as opposed to primary emotions that are shared with animals such as fear, anger and joy).

We found that the participants who saw images of refugees in large groups attributed fewer secondary emotions to them. Interestingly, we did not observe this difference when participants saw images of large groups of survivors of natural disasters.

We also looked at another distinguishing feature of these images: whether the subjects were depicted crossing a body of water or traveling by land. One of the most striking aspects of the imagery of refugee journeys has been their crossing of the Mediterranean Sea—being rescued or having drowned.

Social scientists have speculated that the visual and linguistic portrayal of refugees using metaphors of water (waves, tides and floods) reinforces the stereotype of refugees as potentially threatening, uncontrollable agents.

In our study, the visual narrative of depicting large groups of refugees in the sea resulted in even greater dehumanization. This suggests that current visual representations of refugees emphasize a security issue rather than a humanitarian debate—refugees are depicted as "being a crisis" for host nations, rather than finding themselves "in a crisis."

Turning emotion to action

We found that not only do these differences in images affect our attitudes toward refugees, they also influence our behavior and action. We found that participants who had been exposed to images of large groups of refugees were also more likely to endorse anti-refugee petitions and less likely to endorse pro-refugee petitions.

We also tested whether exposure to these images affected people's support for political leaders. We found that viewing images of large groups was associated with increased support for more dominant and less trustworthy-looking political leaders.

Interestingly, in our research, it was not the emotions that viewers attributed to the people in the photographs that drove political effects. Instead, the driving factor seemed to be the specific emotions that the viewers themselves experienced (such as reduced pity) when looking at the images of large groups.

There are no neutral ways to visually depict human beings. Neither the medium of photography itself can afford such neutrality, nor the photographers, the publishers or the viewers themselves.

The decision of what photos to publish is often made by editors who are exposed daily to many images of human suffering. Our research shows that these decisions should consider both the likely emotions audiences will "see" in the images, but also the emotions they will "feel."Images are not always worth a thousand words

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study shows we can reduce people's bias against non-native speakers

by Royal Holloway, University of London

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, have published a new study in Cognitive Science that shows people are more likely to believe information given to them by a native speaker rather than those with a foreign accent, but that this bias can be reduced.

Whenever people process information, they evaluate it by relying not only on its content but also how easy it is to process. The new study carried out by academics from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway shows that it is harder to process foreign-accented speech. As a result, people believe information less when it's spoken in a foreign accent, but the study found that more exposure to foreign accents can reduce this bias by improving how individuals process the accent.

The results demonstrate how cognitive aspects of processing language can influence attitudes. In the study, participants listened to trivia statements by native and non-native speakers and rated how likely the statements were to be true.

Participants believed the statements less when they were provided by non-native speakers, but if they had been previously exposed to the foreign accent, they showed a smaller bias against the non-native speakers.

Dr. Shiri Lev-Ari from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, said: "Despite interactions between native and non-native speakers being very common in today's society, prior research has indicated that individuals have biases that can lead them to treat the speech of non-native speakers less favorably.

"The results from our study are interesting because they highlight that people can reduce the bias they have against non-native speakers by having more exposure to foreign accents. This suggests that diversity can reduce discrimination against non-native speakers."

"Exposing individuals to foreign accent increases their trust in what non-native speakers say," was carried out by Dr. Shiri Lev Ari from the Department of Psychology and Katarzyna Boduch-Grabka, formerly from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway.Recognizing foreign accents helps brains process accented speech

More information: Katarzyna Boduch‐Grabka et al, Exposing Individuals to Foreign Accent Increases their Trust in What Nonnative Speakers Say, Cognitive Science (2021). DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13064

Journal information: Cognitive Science 

Provided by Royal Holloway, University of London 

Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have struck England before it reached Constantinople, new study suggests

by University of Cambridge

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

'Plague sceptics' are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th– 8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries.

The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an 'inconsequential pandemic'. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was 'not unlike our flu outbreaks'.

In a new study, published in Past & Present, Cambridge historian Professor Peter Sarris argues that these studies ignored or downplayed new genetic findings, offered misleading statistical analysis and misrepresented the evidence provided by ancient texts.

Sarris says: "Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and 'plague scepticism' has had a lot of attention in recent years."

Sarris, a Fellow of Trinity College, is critical of the way that some studies have used search engines to calculate that only a small percentage of ancient literature discusses the plague and then crudely argue that this proves the disease was considered insignificant at the time.

Sarris says: "Witnessing the plague first-hand obliged the contemporary historian Procopius to break away from his vast military narrative to write a harrowing account of the arrival of the plague in Constantinople that would leave a deep impression on subsequent generations of Byzantine readers. That is far more telling than the number of plague-related words he wrote. Different authors, writing different types of text, concentrated on different themes, and their works must be read accordingly."

Sarris also refutes the suggestion that laws, coins and papyri provide little evidence that the plague had a significant impact on the early Byzantine state or society. He points to a major reduction in imperial law-making between the year 546, by which point the plague had taken hold, and the end of Justinian's reign in 565. But he also argues that the flurry of significant legislation that was made between 542 and 545 reveals a series of crisis-driven measures issued in the face of plague-induced depopulation, and to limit the damage inflicted by the plague on landowning institutions.

In March 542, in a law that Justinian described as having been written amid the 'encircling presence of death', which had 'spread to every region', the emperor attempted to prop up the banking sector of the imperial economy.

In another law of 544, the emperor attempted to impose price and wage controls, as workers tried to take advantage of labour shortages. Alluding to the plague, Justinian declared that the 'chastening which has been sent by God's goodness' should have made workers 'better people' but instead 'they have turned to avarice'.

That bubonic plague exacerbated the East Roman Empire's existing fiscal and administrative difficulties is also reflected in changes to coinage in this period, Sarris argues. A series of light-weight gold coins were issued, the first such reduction in the gold currency since its introduction in the 4th century and the weight of the heavy copper coinage of Constantinople was also reduced significantly around the same time as the emperor's emergency banking legislation.

Sarris says: "The significance of a historical pandemic should never be judged primarily on the basis of whether it leads to the 'collapse' of the societies concerned. Equally, the resilience of the East Roman state in the face of the plague does not signify that the challenge posed by the plague was not real."

"What is most striking about the governmental response to the Justinianic Plague in the Byzantine or Roman world is how rational and carefully targeted it was, despite the bewilderingly unfamiliar circumstances in which the authorities found themselves.

"We have a lot to learn from how our forebears responded to epidemic disease, and how pandemics impacted on social structures, the distribution of wealth, and modes of thought."

Bubonic plague in England

Until the early 2000s, the identification of the Justinianic Plague as 'bubonic' rested entirely upon ancient texts which described the appearance of buboes or swellings in the groins or armpits of victims. But then rapid advances in genomics enabled archaeologists and genetic scientists to discover traces of the ancient DNA of Yersinia pestis in Early Medieval skeletal remains. Such finds have been made in Germany, Spain, France and England.

In 2018, a study of DNA preserved in remains found in an early Anglo-Saxon burial site known as Edix Hill in Cambridgeshire revealed that many of the interred had died carrying the disease. Further analysis revealed that the strain of Y. pestis found was the earliest identified lineage of the bacterium involved in the 6th-century pandemic.

Sarris says: "We have tended to start with the literary sources, which describe the plague arriving at Pelusium in Egypt before spreading out from there, and then fitted the archaeological and genetic evidence into a framework and narrative based on those sources. That approach will no longer do. The arrival of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean around 541 and its initial arrival in England possibly somewhat earlier may have been the result of two separate but related routes, occurring some time apart."

The study suggests that the plague may have reached the Mediterranean via the Red Sea, and reached England perhaps via the Baltic and Scandanavia, and from there onto parts of the continent.

The study emphasises that despite being called the 'Justinianic Plague', it was "never a purely or even primarily Roman phenomenon" and as recent genetic discoveries have proven, it reached remote and rural sites such as Edix Hill, as well as heavily populated cities.

It is widely accepted that the lethal and virulent strain of bubonic plague from which the Justinianic Plague and later the Black Death would descend had emerged in Central Asia by the Bronze Age before evolving further there in antiquity.

Sarris suggests that it may be significant that the advent of both the Justinianic Plague and the Black Death were preceded by the expansion of nomadic empires across Eurasia: the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Mongols in the 13th.

Sarris says: "Increasing genetic evidence will lead in directions we can scarcely yet anticipate, and historians need to be able to respond positively and imaginatively, rather than with a defensive shrug."

New call to examine old narratives: Infectious disease modeling study casts doubt on the Justinianic Plague's impact

---

More information: Peter Sarris, New Approaches to the 'Plague of Justinian', Past & Present (2021). DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtab024

Provided by University of Cambridge 

Warnings may reduce hate speech on Twitter, new study finds

by New York University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Warning Twitter users about potential adverse consequences of their use of hate speech can decrease their subsequent posting of hateful language for a week, finds a new study by New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics.

"Debates over the effectiveness of social media account suspensions and bans on abusive users abound, but we know little about the impact of either warning a user of suspending an account or of outright suspensions in order to reduce hate speech," explains Mustafa Mikdat Yildirim, an NYU doctoral candidate and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal Perspectives on Politics. "Even though the impact of warnings is temporary, the research nonetheless provides a potential path forward for platforms seeking to reduce the use of hateful language by users."

In the aftermath of decisions by Twitter and other social media platforms to suspend large numbers of accounts, in particular those of former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many have asked about the effectiveness of measures aimed at curbing hate speech and other messages that may incite violence.

In the Perspectives on Politics paper, the researchers examined one approach—issuing warnings of possible suspensions resulting from the use of hate speech—to determine its efficacy in diminishing future use of this type of language.

To do so, the paper's authors designed a series of experiments aimed at instilling the possible consequences of the use of hate and related speech.

"To effectively convey a warning message to its target, the message needs to make the target aware of the consequences of their behavior and also make them believe that these consequences will be administered," they write.

In constructing their experiments, the authors focused on the followers of users whose accounts had been suspended for posting tweets that used hateful language in order to find a group of users for whom they could create credible warning messages. The researchers reasoned that the followers of those who had been suspended and who also used hateful language might consider themselves potential "suspension candidates" once they learned someone they followed had been suspended—and therefore be potentially willing to moderate their behavior following a warning.

To identify such candidates, the team downloaded more than 600,000 tweets on July 21, 2020 that were posted in the week prior and that contained at least one word from hateful language dictionaries used in previous research. During the period, Twitter was flooded by hateful tweets against both the Asian and Black communities due to the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

From this group of users of hateful language, the researchers obtained a sample of approximately 4,300 followers of users who had been suspended by Twitter during this period (i.e., "suspension candidates").

These followers were divided into six treatment groups and one control group. The researchers tweeted one of six possible warning messages to these users, all prefaced with this sentence: "The user [@account] you follow was suspended, and I suspect that this was because of hateful language." It was followed by different types of warnings, ranging from "If you continue to use hate speech, you might get suspended temporarily" to "If you continue to use hate speech, you might lose your posts, friends and followers, and not get your account back." The control group did not receive any messages.

Overall, the users who received these warning messages reduced the ratio of tweets containing hateful language by up to 10 percent a week later (there was no significant reduction among those in the control group). And, in cases in which the messaging to users was more politely phrased ("I understand that you have every right to express yourself but please keep in mind that using hate speech can get you suspended."), the decline reached 15 to 20 percent. (Based on previous scholarship, the authors concluded that respectful and polite language would be more likely to be seen as legitimate.) However, the impact of the warnings dissipated a month later.

The paper's other authors were Joshua A. Tucker and Jonathan Nagler, professors in NYU's Department of Politics, and Richard Bonneau, a professor in NYU's Department of Biology and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Tucker, Nagler, and Bonneau are co-directors of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics, where Yildirim conducts research as a Ph.D. candidate.Twitter tests Safety Mode to block internet trolls

Provided by New York University 

Employer surveillance during COVID has damaged trust

by University of St Andrews

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Increasing use of staff surveillance by employers during the COVID-19 pandemic endangers trust in the workplace, according to a major new report by the University of St Andrews.

The study, for the European Commission's Joint Research Council, also warns employers not to sacrifice ethics for the sake of efficiency as it can backfire leading to mental health issues, productivity decline and staff resignations.

Webcam photographs, recording keystrokes and movement trackers have all been increasingly used by employers as millions of workers were forced to work from home in 2020.

The demand for employee monitoring software increased by 108 percent in April 2020, according to the major review of research literature on workplace surveillance from the past four decades.

Author Professor Kirstie Ball, of the School of Management at the University of St Andrews, said: "There is a clear need for trust to be rebuilt in the workplace between staff and employers post-COVID.

"Where monitoring has a specific purpose such as health and safety, it can actually reassure staff. Or in development and training it can provide valuable feedback.

"However, it can also have negative impacts too. A heavy focus on monitoring the quantity of output can reduce work quality.

"Where there is no explicit purpose for the monitoring, and information is collected for its own sake, negative attitudes can result including: perceptions of decreased fairness and justice, decreased satisfaction, increased stress and a decline in trust."

Excessive monitoring, according to the report, can be considered by staff as demonstrating a lack of confidence or belief in employees. Low trust in the workplace can then cause a vicious cycle.

Professor Ball said: "Employers impose punitive surveillance which causes the behaviors it was put in place to prevent, as employees try to resist or avoid it. The social support provided by managers for monitored workers is crucial to avoid some of these negative outcomes."

The report also notes that there is a danger of low managerial support for monitored employees.

Professor Ball added: "There is a real need for more research on how data is used by employers and policy may need to change to reflect these new ways of working."

The study for the EC's Joint Research Council covers a wide range of aspects including the new ways in which employees are monitored, mental health risks and the consequences of monitoring for work culture, employment relations and trust.Why using technology to monitor employees at work can be counterproductive

More information: K. Ball, Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance in the Workplace, Publications Office of the European Union (2021). DOI: 10.2760/5137, publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ … ory/handle/JRC125716

Provided by University of St Andrews 

A pandemic of armchair experts: How we decide who and what to believe

by Daniel Read, The Conversation

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

We appear to live in an age of misinformation.

Certain broadcasters and social media celebrities openly promote fake facts or misrepresentations of science and data to their audience, many of whom do not seem to care whether they are right or wrong, as long as they are hearing what they want to hear.

The promotion of misinformation can be caused by an over-inflated belief in their own judgment and knowledge, or often, they simply relish the chance to proclaim their own contrarian or ideological views. Sometimes, it's just about self-interest.

Many of us have at least a few controversial beliefs. We might believe that the death penalty deters crime, or that raising the minimum wage decreases unemployment, or that raising business taxes will reduce innovation.

We might even believe that women are not as good at maths as men, or that the Earth is flat.

Some of these beliefs we will hold strongly.

But when we attempt to justify our beliefs, we often find the evidence pool is very shallow.

Researchers have identified a chronic illusion of explanatory depth, in that we overestimate our understanding of the world.

We can discover this by trying to justify our pet beliefs. To illustrate, when I interrogate myself about why I believe the death penalty is not a deterrent, I find there is not a lot there except for consensus beliefs among my peer group—some of whom I hope have looked into the evidence—some intuition, and vague memories of looking at some blog posts or newspaper articles. This is not a lot. But it is perhaps not surprising: we simply don't have time to be experts on everything.

Sometimes people are described as having fallen prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, or even as "having" Dunning-Kruger. Donald Trump was one such person.

The Dunning-Kruger effect, however, is a population-level effect, so no individual can "have" it. It primarily means that just because someone is confident doesn't mean they are right. In fact, there are individual differences in confidence, with some people being absurdly sure of themselves, and others quite diffident.

But the confidence of highly confident but wrong people comes not from their ignorance, but from the fact that they are inherently confident about everything. Some researchers have described it as arrogance.

If he knew more, would Trump have been less confident? I doubt it; Trump was (or is) simply full of bluster, and his confidence was simply unrelated to his knowledge.

What determines the beliefs we adopt when we have a choice?

Scientific evidence can help, but often we believe what we want to believe anyway.

These beliefs might be "chosen" through indoctrination. They might be the result of self-interest or strongly held ideology, such as wealthy people believing taxes rob people of initiative. Or they might be required to fit into a social group.

How do specific beliefs become linked to specific social groups? In some cases, the link is quite clearly defined.

Strongly religious people generally do not believe in evolution, and atheists are not creationists. Partisanship also produces dispositions to belief. The moral values of conservatives involve different issues—such as respect for authority—than those on the left, who put more weight on harm prevention. Liberals tend to be more drawn to seeking out change and novelty, both personally and politically, while conservatives, in contrast, have a stronger preference for things that are familiar, stable and predictable.

Often, simply knowing a belief is endorsed by a member of "their" side is enough to get people to support it.

Many current controversies have this flavor, such as whether COVID vaccines or masks should be required, or whether nuclear power is good for the environment. We look to our peers, and to the authorities and ideologies we respect, and follow their lead.

We are also more likely to follow those who are highly confident, even though confidence is a poor predictor of accuracy. And, of course, those we follow, being human just like us, are probably doing the same thing.

Armchair experts are just behaving normally

Let's return to those high-profile broadcasters, social media celebrities and armchair experts who have been wilfully spreading an avalanche of misinformation.

They are really no different from everyone else.

If it is natural to believe things based on little evidence, and to believe things because they fit with our social group and partisan preferences, it should not surprise us that some hold beliefs quite at variance with ours. Or that they apparently do so despite, as it appears to us, overwhelming contradictory evidence—from their perspective we are doing the same thing. We should not be surprised if a TV reporter or Twitter celebrity is just as likely as anyone else to believe things based on flimsy evidence.

As individuals, we may have fallen on the side of accepted scientific wisdom (where the bulk of the evidence and experts sit) during the pandemic, but there will probably be other situations where we too have beliefs that are based on our own misjudgements, ideologies or personal gain.

The American writer and political activist Upton Sinclair famously wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!".

Even a scientist, when hired directly by a pharmaceutical company to evaluate the efficacy of a new blockbuster drug, might be disposed to find evidence of the drug's effectiveness.

Conversely, there are probably reasons why a small—but prominent—number of scientists have taken a distinctly outlier stance regarding the pandemic, or other issues, such as climate change.

We need go no further than this to understand why there will be armchair experts proposing all possible positions, and when they gain attention and celebrity for doing so, they will stick with those positions.

To give up their position will be to lose all the attention, all the celebrity, and all their credibility. Imagine what would happen to Donald Trump if he were to come down on the side of poor refugees. Imagine what would happen to the radio hosts who have built up a larger following based on their unwavering libertarian views if they suddenly declared they had changed their minds about masks.

Once committed to a set of beliefs, the armchair expert is in it for the long run.

Social media use increases belief in COVID-19 misinformation

Provided by The Conversation