IN3 Working Paper Series

Viquipèdia i ciencia: conflicte o benefici mutu?

Eduard Aibar Puentes — 2015-04-21

Wikipedia is currently the sixth most visited website in the Internet. What is not so well known is that, among other things, it has also become the main channel for the public communication of science. This paper presents two research projects that attempt to explore the interactions between science and academia, on the one hand, and Wikipedia, on the other, as a paradigm of the so-called peer production. The first project, already completed, examines the perceptions and practices of university faculty members on Wikipedia. The second, still ongoing, analyzes the science & technology content in Wikipedia in order to see how the non-expert character of its editors shapes the way science and technology issues are presented and treated in its articles.

Gender inequality in job quality. What has happened in Spain during the recession?

Pilar Ficapal-Cusí — 2015-08-27

Through a representative sample of 5,381 (3,079 men and 2,302 women) and 4,925 (2,719 men and 2,206 women) employees in 2008 and 2010, and a using two-stage structural equation model, this article empirically analyses the multi-dimensional determinants (direct effects) of gender-related job quality in Spain. The research revealed four main results. First, despite the economic crisis, job quality in Spain had improved over the analysis period. Second, the improvement in job quality during the crisis was more favourable to men than it was to women. Third, the gender differences in the explanation of job quality during the crisis increased considerably in favour of men. Fourth, this increase in gender difference in job quality in favour of men is explained by a worsening of 4 of the 5 explanatory dimensions thereof: intrinsic job quality; work organisation and workplace relationships; working conditions, work intensity and health and safety at work; and extrinsic rewards. Only inequality in the work-life balance dimension remained stable from 2008 to 2010. In terms of employment and gender equality public policy our research results suggest two important conclusions. In the first place, the importance of paying much greater attention to working environment and social relation dimensions in gender-related employment public policies. Second, gender equality public policy should also address new problems associated with the accelerated changes at work. In particular, the different job quality problems between highly skilled and less skilled working men and women, the link between gender gap and occupations, and the need to consider the different institutional regimes and organised labour to overcome gender-related job inequalities.

Psychosocial work factors and older workers’ health in Europe

Daniel Blanche — 2016-01-14

Using data from 15 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), I explore associations between several psychosocial work factors and self-perceived health among older workers (50 to 65 years old) (n=12,728). Drawing from the effort-reward imbalance and low control models, I hypothesise that (a) effort and reward factors are more relevant predictors of poor health reports than low control factors in Europe, and (b) that these associations are stronger in the less work-protective contexts of Eastern Europe and Mediterranean countries and weaker among the more protective Scandinavian and Continental Western Europe contexts. After several logistic regression analyses, results showed that reward factors were the most relevant predictors in three out of four regions; and that Scandinavian and Continental Western Europe countries yield the strongest work stress-poor health association. These findings highlight the importance of promoting tailor-made labour and health policies that enable older workers remain longer in the labour market in view of the increasing ageing of the population.

Measuring economic order in the knowledge economy: A cross-country analysis

Jesus Matos-Vila — 2015-07-23

The advent of the knowledge economy has transformed the behavior of economic agents and the nature of transactions. In particular, the increase of knowledge based transactions not associated with monetary flows is weakening the significance of traditional measures of economic dynamics like gross domestic product (GDP) or national income (NI). The objective of the working paper is to improve the measurement of new economic dynamics introducing a model that measures and explains Economic Order in the knowledge economy driven by the agents of Governance, Wealth, Conflict and Mutuality. Income, a component of the Wealth agent, is an independent variable of the model. Its maximization is not an objective within the analyzed economic framework. Therefore, income and production growth are not primary goals, but instead they make a complementary contribution to Order. Besides, Welfare is not built exclusively on the optimal distribution of income, and sourced on individual utility and preferences, but on the economic order of the system. The Transaction is the vehicle that constitutes the minimal unit facilitating or preventing exchange within and among the economic agents. An empirical analysis is performed over a cross-sectional sample of quantitative and qualitative data of 142 countries of the world economy in the period 2010-2011. A Logit regression is constructed where the dependent variable explaining Order is an index denominated Disentropy. Lower income inequality (Gini) does not mean a higher level of Order. As an economy achieves more economic order Wealth becomes a less relevant agent. Human development (HDI) is positively correlated with economic order. The Disentropy linear function is normalized to obtain a Cobb-Douglas analogous function. This function is twice differentiable and its hessian is lower than zero evidencing a concave behavior of the Disentropy variable. Hence Order presents decreasing outputs to scale across the considered sample of countries. A ranking of world top ordered economies is listed probably having the following common features among them: knowledge intensive, international focus, small population, homogeneous culture, self-identity, solid institutions and mainly democratic.

Organising flexible working spaces through techno-social networks: The case of door systems in hackerspaces

Peter "Maxigas" Dunajcsik — 2015-09-08

This paper should be interesting for any scholar who is curious about the role of innovation in configuring the relationship between society, organisations and ICT infrastructures. I expand a case study of a material artefact through its use to the description of an organisation which is contextualised in the wider structural transformations of capitalism. Therefore the methodological challenge is to study instances of social innovation in a way which can find material-organic connections between the micro-level ethnographic analysis and the macro-level sociological data. I ask “How participation in hacker clubs is organised in response to changing social conditions, through conventions and technologies?” Following the question, the three units of analysis to address are the changing conditions in society as a whole, the hacker clubs as organisations in the middle range, and finally the case study of techno-social means through which participation is organised. The empirically based theory of the network society stands in for the “changing social conditions”, while “hacker clubs” are studied through the North European hackerspaces scene, and “organisation through conventions and technologies” is investigated through a case study of the door systems they employ. In the conclusion, hackerspaces appear as sites where privileged urban flexible labourers (ICT workers) organise themselves using technology and culture, according to the principles of the project order and the network organisation, amidst a contemporary capitalism which seeks to separate them in space and time. Such findings are contrasted with historical changes in regimes of work discipline and capital accumulation.

#YoSoy132: ¿Un nuevo paradigma en la política mexicana?

Arnau Monterde Mateo — 2015-10-01

#YoSoy132 became the most talked about development in the final stretch of the last Mexican election. The election, held on July 1 2012, resulted in the victory of Enrique Peña Nieto, reinstating, after a twelve-year hiatus, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had previously ruled the country from 1929 to 2000. Throughout the campaign, polls indicated that Peña had a comfortable lead ahead of his adversaries. The emergence of the #YoSoy132 movement changed this panorama. The movement called out for opposition against Peña and had considerable impact on the electoral process and its results, as well as in the dynamics and politics of information diffusion and media. This paper argues that the #YoSoy132 phenomenon does not fit into the traditional definition of social movements. Through the analysis of close to a million tweets, this paper presents a multidisciplinary approach to #YoSoy132. First we situate the phenomenon in the history of social movements in Mexico. We will analyze how members of the movement interpret history and how they view themselves in history. Second, we will analyze how political parties used the Internet in their campaigns, and in what ways #YoSoy132 fits into this framework. Third, taking some notes from the social network analysis and complexity theories, we analyze the behavior and communication dynamics from monitoring the hashtag #YoSoy132 on Twitter, and we see the relationship of this movement with the media and its uses as a network, opening interdisciplinary views to analyze the social movements in the twenty-first century

An argument for the discrete processes of a gentle geography: London's East End soundscape

karla berrens — 2016-01-26

My research is on the relationship between the urban soundscape and the making of place. I have based it in London’s East End for its stark sonorous contrasts.

In this article I will make an argument for a gentle geography of the urban, where the tacit comes at the forefront, our experience of the sensuous dialogues of the city guiding our making of place. I will use an example from my research to illustrate the ways in which the tacit urban relates to our making of place, notably by examining the process of listening participatively, hence placing ourselves in amongst what we are listening to. Thus, opening the doors to a reflection on the ways in which the senses shape our conception and making of place and the city. Then I will conclude by drawing on my experiences as a sensuously disabled researcher in order to further the reflection on the importance of sensing the soundscape and the discrete processes of making place that researching through the senses can help unveil.