With the leverage of digital reproducibility, historical messages of hate are finding new recipients with breathtaking speed and scope. The rapid growth in popularity of right-wing extremist groups in response to transnational economic crises underscores the importance of examining in detail the language and political mobilization strategies of the New Right. In Europe, for example, populist right-wing activists organized around an anti-immigration agenda are becoming more vocal, providing pushback against the increase in migration flows from North Africa and Eastern Europe and countering support for integration with a categorical rejection of multiculturalism. In the United States, anti-immigration sentiment provides a rallying point for political and personal agendas that connect the rhetoric of borders with national, racial, and security issues. Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right in Europe and the United States is an effort to examine and understand these issues, informed by the conviction that an interdisciplinary and transnational approach can allow productive comparison of far-right propaganda strategies in Europe and the United States. With a special emphasis on performing ideology in the far-right music scene, on violent anti-immigrant stances, and on the far rights skillful creation and manipulation of virtual communities, the contributions foreground the cultural shibboleths that are exchanged among far-right supporters on the Internet, which serve to generate a sense of group belonging and the illusion of power far greater that the known numbers of neo-Nazis in any one country might suggest. Moreover, with attention to transatlantic right-wing movements and their use of particularly digital media, the essays in this volume put pressure on the similarities among the various national agents, while accommodating differences in the virtual and sometimes violent identities created and nurtured online.

In this work we propose a centrality measure for networks, which we refer to as Laplacian centrality, that provides a general framework for the centrality of a vertex based on the idea that the importance (or centrality) of a vertex is related to the ability of the network to respond to the deactivation or removal of that vertex from the network. In particular, the Laplacian centrality of a vertex is defined as the relative drop of Laplacian energy caused by the deactivation of this vertex. The Laplacian energy of network G with n vertices is defined as , where  is the eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of G. Other dynamics based measures such as that of Masuda and Kori and PageRank compute the importance of a node by analyzing the way paths pass through a node while our measure captures this information as well as the way these paths are “redistributed” when the node is deleted. The validity and robustness of this new measure are illustrated on two different terrorist social network data sets and 84 networks in James Moody’s Add Health in school friendship nomination data, and is compared with other standard centrality measures.

Although there has been increasing recognition that morality policy in Western democracies is a distinctive field of study, many analyses are relatively narrow in issues and jurisdictions. This contribution examines broad empirical patterns for five morality policy issues across 18 West European democracies since World War II. The issues analysed are abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology (ART, including stem cell research) and same-sex marriage. Which of two prominent institutional theories of morality policy, policy type and two worlds, help explain morality policy processes? The results indicate that morality policy processes do differ from the usual ones of parliamentary government, and that important differences are captured by the religious/secular division of party systems, depending on which countries are considered for each category.

The complex network of relationships between countries provides an abundance of data from which intelligence analysts must synthesize useful interpretations that effectively inform foreign policy and security decision making. In this work, a network of foreign policy event interactions is developed and then used to describe the state of the international system by estimating the behavioral distances from all relevant actors to the US. Using a graph theoretic approach, we develop a tool for estimating behavioral distances through direct network links when behavior is present, and indirect network paths when direct behavior is unobserved. The international system is examined in temporal aggregations of 60 and 30 days prior to and following the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both periods see distancing from the US as the wars approach, and a partial return to the prior state by 60 days after the initiation of conflict. The overall position of the US and the response of other nations towards the US indicates that the systemic leadership role of the US is diminished in behavioral relationships with a moderate number of actors.

Using surveys collected from 10 major metropolitan cities across the world, this article examines the factors that affect the extent to which people feel connected to others who live in their neighborhood and feel proud and satisfied with life in their cities. The cities included in the analysis are: New York, London, Paris, Stockholm, Toronto, Milan, Berlin, Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo. We find that certain aspects of the built environment, the conditions of the public sphere, and the extent of positive social networks in the city are critically important for understanding residents’ connections to each other and to their cities. Our findings provide insights for policy makers and planners concerned with making cities viable and livable.

Extremist political movements have proliferated on the web in recent years due to the advent of minimal publication costs coupled with near universal access, resulting in what appears to be an abundance of groups that hover on the fringe of many socially divisive issues. Whether white-supremacist, neo- Nazi, anti-abortion, black separatist, radical Christian, animal rights, or violent environmentalists, all have found a home (and voice) on the Web. These groups form social networks whose ties are predicated primarily on shared political goals. Little is known about these groups, their interconnections, their animosities, and most importantly, their growth and development and studies such as the Dark Web Project, while considering domestic extremists, have focused primarily on international terrorist groups. Yet here in the US, there has been a complex social dynamic unfolding as well. While left-wing radicalism declined throughout the 80s and 90s, right wing hate groups began to flourish. Today, the web offers a place for any brand of extremism, but little is understood about their current growth and development. While there is much to gain from in-depth studies of the content provided by these sites, there is also a surprising amount of information contained in their online network structure as manifested in links between and among these web sites. Our research follows the idea that much can be known about you by the company you keep. In this paper, we propose an approach to measure the intrinsic relationships (i.e., similarities) of a set of extremist web pages. In this model, the web presence of a group is thought of as a node in a social network and the links between these pages are the ties between groups. This approach takes the bi-directional hyperlink structure of web pages and, based on similarity scores, applies an effective multi-membership clustering algorithm known as the quasi clique merger method to cluster these web pages using a derived hierarchical tree. The experimental results show that this new similarity measurement and hierarchical clustering algorithm gives an improvement over traditional link based clustering methods.

advent of methods and tools for network analysis has brought about a paradigm in the way we examine data concerning terrorists, terrorist organizations and violent non ‐ state actors in general. Relational data such as individual contacts, group membership, transactions, telephone calls, and web site links all provide information about social structure for the study of terrorism, political extremism, and violence. indeed, the examination of terrorist networks has emerged as a prominent field of study in recent years 2004; 2008; and Christensen,

Investigations of the 'guns vs. butter' trade-off models of military spending have yielded surprisingly inauspicious results in spite of the intuitively appealing nature of the hypothesis that the more we spend on defense the less we can spend on social welfare, etc. This paper examines the standard specification of the tradeoff model and demonstrates that the lack of empirical success of this hypothesis has been largely a problem of model specification. The first part of the paper offers both mathematical proof and empirical confirmation of the nature of this misspecification. The balance of the argument then outlines how proper specification clarifies the appropriate means to describe tradeoffs. In particular, the mathematical model developed demonstrates that the classic model, as generally specified, is by definition a stochastic/variable parameter relationship. This analysis produces significant insight into the nature of patterns in budgetary decisions, and, it is believed solidly grounds the question of spending tradeoffs in the overall patterns of shifting budgetary priorities. The existence of budgetary tradeoffs with defense is categorically identified and empirically confirmed across many sectors of the budget. And, as it turns out, a dollar more for defense does indeed mean a dollar less for social or other programs, unless you go and borrow a dollar.

We compared the accuracy of ST segment/heart rate (ST/HR) index with that of standard criteria (≥0.1 mV horizontal/downsloping ST depression 80 ms after the J point) in 121 patients who had undergone angiography (49 with ≥1 lesion with ≥50% stenosis) and 50 clinically normal subjects. All exercise tests used the Cornell protocol and computer measurements of maximal ST depression 80 ms after the J point. Thresholds with equal specificity to standard criteria were determined for ST/HR index using each of the 2 normal groups (those who were normal by angiography and those who were clinically normal). In using only patients who underwent angiography, we found that the ST/HR index had a sensitivity that was not significantly greater than that of standard criteria (standard criteria 51%, ST/HR index 59%; p = 0.21). However, the receiver-operating characteristic curve area increased from 64 ± 4 to 68 ± 4 (p < 0.02). When clinically normal subjects were used instead of patients without angiographic disease, there was a clearly discernible improvement in sensitivity of ST/HR index over standard criteria (standard criteria 51%, ST/HR index 69%; p < 0.05). The associated curve areas were 69 ± 4 and 79 ± 3 (p < 0.001). Therefore, accuracy of the ST/HR index was marginally better than standard criteria only in patients who underwent angiography. When clinically normal subjects were used, the accuracy of the ST/HR index was definitely better than standard criteria. We conclude that the demonstration of improved accuracy of the ST/HR index depends on the population being tested.

For a (now formerly) anonymous reviewer of the previous article, International Peace Project in the Middle East: The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field, the manuscript presents somewhat of a dilemma. On the one hand, the claimed theoretical basis for the activity described, and the results purported in the analysis, are anathema to one who considers himself a strong advocate of the application of scientific method in the social sciences. On the other hand, both the level of exposition and the application of statistical methods for hypothesis testing are commensurate with this reviewer's standards for scientific research. The disturbing aspect of this piece is not that it is in print, but that it got there via the very mechanism that, one would suppose, should have screened it out-an anonymous peer review and editorial process that evaluates manuscripts based upon unarticulated but widely accepted professional standards for scientific research. There are, I feel, a number of lessons in this. Some of these lessons are but reminders of the basic elements of philosophy of science one encounters in graduate school but pays little heed to in the everyday practice of research. Others are more practical matters suggesting caution concerning our willingness to accept results reported in more conventional literature. A brief look at the implications of this article for research will, in the eyes of this reviewer, be instructive. What I find of value in this piece has little, if anything, to do with the substance of the article. For this reviewer, the primary lesson learned is that if a piece this unconventional can be supported with measurement and method, then there is perhaps a notable volume of research of a