https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest
A protest, also called a remonstrance, remonstration or demonstration, is an expression of bearing witness on behalf of an express cause by words or actions with regard to particular events, policies or situations. They can be individual statements or mass demonstrations. Protestors usually organise their protests as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy or undertake direct action in an attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves. Initially protests are part of a systematic peaceful campaign to achieve a particular desired objective, they then often pressure or persuade their target and go beyond mere protect. This is known as civil resistance or non-violent resistance. Depending on your country’s laws, some forms of self-expression and protest are prohibited by government policy (which require a protest permit), restricted by economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social structures or media monopoly. Countries in political turmoil like Spain with the Catalan Independence Act, Turkey and Zimbabwe with the military coups. Militarisation of protest policing with include increased deployment of armoured vehicles and snipers against protesters. In democratic countries like Australia and USA, they would be counter protests who demonstrate their support for the person, policy, action etc. that is the subject of the original protest. This often lead to wild brawls and violent clashes between protestors on both sides. For instance, the counter-protests between Reclaim Australia activists and Left-Wing political activists regarding the issue of building mosques in rural Australian cities like Bendigo for Muslims to to able perform Islam faith ceremonies.
Throughout history we humans have protested about so many things and the earliest protests recorded were during the 16th century. When protests are not addressed, they may expand into civil resistance, dissent, activism, riots, insurgency, revolts and political and/or social revolution. Some notable historical protests include:
- Early 16th Century: Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe by Martin Luther in 1517 with publication of Ninety-Five Theses, continued by John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingil and other early Protestant Reformers until the end of the Thirty Years’ War with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
- 1765 - 1783: American Revolution in Northern America when the American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America.
- 5 May 1789 - 9 November 1799: French Revolution in France arguably caused by unpopular taxation schemes to restore France’s huge debt following the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolutionary War.
- May 4 1886: Haymarket Affair lead by the Anarchist Movement in Haymarket Square, Chicago when an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police resulting in the deaths of 7 police officers and at least 4 civilians following the workers’ strike for an 8-hour day. This is now known as May Day.
- November 1909 - March 1910: New York shirtwaist strike, Uprising of the 20,000 was a labour strike involving Jewish women working in New York shirtwaist factories led by Clara Lemlich and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, supported by the National Women’s Trade Union League of America (NWTUL).
- 1945, 1962-73: Vietnam War protests
- 1963: Civil Rights Movement featuring Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- 1968: Mexican Student Movement against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City
- June 28, 1969: Stonewall Riots protesting the treatment of homosexuals at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York City.
- February 22 - 25, 1986: People Power Revolution / Yellow Revolution, EDSA Revolution and Phillipine Revolution demonstrations and civil resistance in Manila against regime violence and electoral fraud following the assassination of Filipino senator Beningo “Ninoy” Aquino Junior. This lead to the resignation of President Ferdinand Marcos and his authoritarian regime and restoration of democracy.
- April 15 - June 4, 1989: Tiananmen Square protests, June 4th Incident, ’89 Democracy = Student-led demonstrations in Beijing, China caused by the death of Hu Yaobang, ongoing economic reform, inflation, political corruption, nepotism, career prospects, European Revolution and lack of democracy by the Communist Party.
- Late 1980s & Early 1990s: ACT-UP AIDS protests (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)
November 30 - December 1, 1999: Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference protesting activity against the World Trade Organisation
- September 2000: Anti-Globalisiation Protests in Prague, Czech Republic during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank summit, regarding economic problems faced by the 3rd world countries.
- July 18 - 22, 2001: Anti-globalisation protests in Genoa
- February 15, 2003: Iraq War (Anti-war) Protest featuring 6 - 11 million people in more than 600 different cities around the world regarding the invasion of Iraq by the United States government in 2002. According to the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records, the Iraq War protests were described as the largest protest event in human history.
- 8 December 1983 - 13 December 1993: Palestinian First Intifada = A Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza regarding the Israeli repression including beatings, shootings killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial.
- 1946 - Present: Anti-Nuclear Protests in response to Operation Crossroads
- 28 December 2000 - 8 February 2005: Palestinian Second Intifada = Another uprising against Israel involving intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence, most likely sparked when Ariel Sharon visited Temple Mount who Palestinians saw as highly provocative, hence threw stones at polices and in response were dispersed by tear gas and rubber bullets. The death toll included civilians, foreigners and combatants by suicide bombings and gunfire, tanks and air attacks.
- 12 March - 19 May 2010: Thai political protests by National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (Red Shirts) in Bangkok, Thailand against the Democrat Party-led government.
- 14 February 2011: Iranian protests on “The Day of Rage” by Green Movement of Iran following controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections against the Iranian government.
- 17 December 2010: Arab Spring protests (Arab Revolution) in North Africa and the Middle East especially in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution.
- 17 September 2011 - present: Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park, New York against social and economic inequality and lack of democracy around the world. By 9th October, Occupy protests took place in over 951 cities across 82 countries and 600 communities in the USA.
- 28 May 2013: Gezi Park protests involving over 7.5 million people in 90 locations around Turkey against an urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. This was caused by authoritarianism of Turkish Primte Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lack of public consultation, violation of democratic rights, media censorship and disinformation, use of excessive force by police, government policies connected to the Syrian Civil War, alcohol restrictions and centre-periphery dissonance.
- 30 June - 3 July 2013: Egyptian protests in response to Tamarod, a grassroots movement that launched a petition earlier that year calling for the government resign, claiming it obtained more than 22 million signatures. Reasons for Mohamed Morsi’s resignation included accusations of increasing authoritarianism and his push through an Islamist agenda disregarding the secular opposition or the rule of law.
- 21 November 2013 - 23 February 2014: Euromaiden protests in Maiden Mezalezhnosti, Ukraine (Independence Square) caused by the government’s decision to suspend the signing of an association agreement with the European Union (EU), but instead choose closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union.
- July 2013: Black Lives Matter activist movement originating in the African-American community campaigning against violence and systemic racism towards black people such as police killings of black people and racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system. This was sparked by the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin in February 2013.
- October 26, 2016-17: South Korean protests against President Park Geun-Hye following allegations of a political scandal calling for her resignation.
- 8 January - 23 January 2017: Pro-Jallikattu, Thai Puratchi protests across the Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring numerous leaderless apolitical youth groups protesting against the Supreme Court’s ban against Jallikuttu, a traditional Tamil bull taming sport normally held during Pongal which is a harvest festival in the state of Tamil Nadu, India conducted annually on the 2nd day of the Tamil month Thai.
- April 2016 - February 2017: Dakota Access Pipeline protests / grassroots movements in reaction to the approved construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States. This is caused by the protection of water, land and religious / spiritual sites sacred to Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
According to the Dynamics of Collective Action project and the Global Non-violent Action Database, protests can come in many forms. The repertoire of contention includes:
- Rally / Demonstration = Includes speeches, speakers, singing preaching, often verified by use of sound equipment through PA (Public Announcements), occasionally performed on stage. This involves worship services and briefings.
- March = Moving from 1 location to another
- Vigil = They can either have designations or no designations where “silent witness” and “meditation” are words e.g. Candlelight vigil, Hunger/Fasting vigil. They usually include banners, placards, or leaflets so that people passing by, despite silence from participants, can ascertain to what the vigil stands for.
- Picket = Involves holding up and carrying signs, placards or banners whist walking around in a circle. This refers to picket line and informational picketing.
- Civil Disobedience = Explicit protest involving crossing the barricades, sit-in of blacks where prohibited, use of “coloured” bathrooms, voter registration drives, and tying up phone lines.
- Ceremony = Celebrations or protests of status transitions ranging from birth, death dates of people, organisations or nations, seasons, to re-enlistment or commissioning of military personnel, to anniversaries. This refers to flower or wreath presentations that commemorate, dedicate or celebrate status transitions or anniversaries e.g. Chanukah, Easter, Martin Luther King Junior’s Birthday, Gallipoli / Anzac, Merchant Marine memorial service.
- Motorcade = A large group of vehicles travelling down a busy route at snail pace in order to deliberately cause traffic disruption. This tactic is most often used by those who had access to larger vehicles like trucks, tractors and buses. e.g. 2005 UK Protests against fuel prices, 2017 taxi protests against ride-sharing service Uber by blocking traffic to airports
- Information Distribution = Tabling / Petition Gathering, Lobbying, Letter-writing campaigns, Teach-ins
- Symbolic Display = Menorah, Creche Scene, Graffiti, Cross burnings, Signs, Standing Displays
- Attack = By instigating physical attacks by ethnic group victims, or collective groups (Not one-on-one assault, crime, rape). Boundary motivating attacks are referred to “other group’s identity” like gay-bashing, lynching. This includes verbal attacks and/or threats.
- Riot, Melee, Mob Violence = Involves a large-scale (more then 50) people protest that uses violence against particular persons, property, police or buildings either separately or in combination, which may last several hours.
- Strike, Slow Down / Calling in sick employee work = Regular air strikes through failure of negotiations, or ‘wildcat air strike’.
- Boycott = Organised refusal to buy or use a particular produce or service, causing rent strikes.
- Press Conference = Involves particular disclosure of information to “educate the public” or influence various decision-makers whilst being questioned by journalists and mass media. The person can be specifically named in the report.
- Organisation formation / Meeting announcement = Meeting or press conference to announce the formation of a new organisation
- Conflict, Attack / Clash, No Instigator = Includes any boundary conflict in which no instigator would be identified i.e. Black/White conflicts, Abortion / Anti-abortion conflicts.
Lawsuit = Legal manoeuvres by social movement organisations or groups
Thomas Ratliff and Lori Hall devised a typology of 6 broad activity categories of the protest activities described in the Dynamics of Collective Action Project:
(1) Literal, Symbolic, Aesthetic and Sensory = Artistic, Dramaturgical and Symbolic Display e.g. Street Theatre, Dancing etc. This includes the use of images, objects, graphic arts, musical performances and/or vocal, auditory exhibitions such as speechmaking, chanting etc. People may use tactical exchanges of information (petitions, leaflets, etc.) and destruction of objects of symbolic and/or political value. This form of protest is quite visible and diverse in terms of activity and its impact on society are often underestimated e.g. Police response, Media focus, Impact on potential allies etc.
(2) Solemnity and the Sacred = Includes vigils, prayers or rallies in the form of a religious service, candle lighting, cross carrying etc. all directly related to Durkeimian “sacred” or some form of religious or spiritual practice, belief or ideology. Events that focus on sacred activity rarely illicit a police response. Solemnity usually provides a distinct quietness or stillness, changing the energy, description, and interpretation of such events.
(3) Institutional and Conventional = All institutionalised activity highly depends on formal political processes and social institutions such as press conferences, lawsuits, lobbying etc. They are often conflated with non-confrontational and non-violent activities in research as the “other” or reference category. This is generally more acceptable because it operates, to some extent, within the system, however controversy still ensues.
(4) Movement in space = This includes marches or parades (processional activities) from 1 spatio-temporal location to another, with start or end locations occasionally chosen for symbolic reasons. Picket lines are often used in labour strikes but also by non-labour activists in contrast to processionals being the distance of movement.
(5) Civil Disobedience = Activities like withholding obligations, sit-ins, blockades, bannering, “camping”, etc. all constitute the tactical form which directly or technically break the law bringing most of the attention to themselves by researchers, media and authorities. This often conflates with violence and threats because of direct action and confrontational nature but should serve as a distinct category of action both in the context of strategic planning and in control of the activity.
(6) Collective Violence and Threats = Involves pushing, shoving, hitting, punching, damaging property, throwing objects, shouting verbal threats etc. This is usually committed by a relative few protestors out of the masses. According to US history this was lauded as the only solution to get the desired results but there is little empirical evidence to support violence actually succeeds in attaining specific goals.
Other forms of protests can be:
- Written evidence of political or economic power, or democratic justification e.g. Petitions & Letters
- Civil Disobedience Demonstrations:
e.g. Public nudity or Topfree (protesting indecency laws or as publicity stunt), Sit-ins, Raasta Roko (People blocking traffic by laying down on the road)
- As a residence:
e.g. Peace camp, Tent City
- Destructive:
e.g. Vandalism (smashing windowns or spraying graffiti), Riots, Self-Immolation, Suicide, Hunger Strike, Bombing
- Non-Destructive:
e.g. Silent Protests (featuring non-violent and silent protestors in attempt to avoid violent confrontation with military or police forces.
- Direct Action:
e.g. Civil Resistance, Non-violent Resistance, Occupation
- Against a Government:
e.g. Tax Resistance, Conscientious Objector, Flag Desecration
- Against a military shipment:
e.g. Port Militarisation Resistance
- By Government Employees:
e.g. Bully Pulpit, Judicial Activism
- Job Action (Industrial Action):
e.g. Strike Action, Walkout, Work-to-rule
- In Sports:
e.g. If one side chooses to play a game “under protest”, they would feel the rule aren’t being correctly applied, but the sporting event continues as usual.
- By Management:
e.g. Lockout
- By Tenants:
e.g. Rent Strike
- By Consumers:
e.g. Boycott, Consumer Court
- Information:
e.g. Letters (to the editor, writing campaigns), Teach-in, Zine, Soapboxing
- Civil Disobedience to Censorship:
e.g. Samizdat (Distributing censored materials), Protest Graffiti
- Literature, Art and Culture:
e.g. Culture Jamming
- Against Religious or ideological institutions:
e.g. Recusancy, Book burning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_versus_grievance
In a 2010 study conducted by Jacquelien van Stekenburg and Bert Klandermans in VU University, The Nederlands, there were attempts to answer the question regarding the reasons people preferring to sacrifice a wealthy, pleasant and carefree lifestyle to protest for a common cause. Many theories have been suggested by social scholars since the 1970s that argue about the effects of grievances on protest participation.
Firstly, “Greed Vs Grievance” Theory” refers to 2 baseline arguments put forward by scholars of armed conflict on the causes of civil war. Those scholars were Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler who proposed this theory in 2002. Greed refers to the argument that combatants in armed conflicts are motivated by desires to improve their situation, and perform an informal cost-benefit analysis in examining if the rewards of joining a rebellion are greater than not joining at all. Grievance refers to the argument that people rebel over issues of identity like ethnicity, religion, social class rather than over economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation
Relative Deprivation Theory refers to the lack of resources required to sustain a healthy diet, lifestyle, activities and amenities an individual or a group is accustomed to or are widely encouraged to or approved in the society to which they belong. Feelings of relative deprivation results from comparing your own situation with a standard such as your own past or a peer’s situation or a cognitive standard stuck as equity and justice. Protestors have experiences of illegitimate inequality, feelings of relative deprivation, injustice, moral indignation about a particular state of affairs or imposed grievance.
Social Identity Theory, formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 1980s, highlights the portion of an individual’s self-concept derived from their perceived membership in a social group. Social categorisation of individuals allows uninterrupted development of their feelings, thoughts and future actions as a potential group member. As individuals, we aim to obtain positive social identities that ensures not only our in-groups obtains more rewards than opposition out-groups, but also develop this sense of belonging and worthwhileness of living as a human being. For disadvantaged or low-status groups, however, there are permeable and impermeable group boundaries that shapes their perception of the possibilities to leave their current group and attain membership of a higher-status group. Their status positions have variable degrees of stability. Those who uphold stable positions would view protest as a possible method of promoting their group status despite their illegitimacy. On the other hand, those who believe their dominant group’s position is unstable will attempt to redefine characteristics of their own group perceived negatively by society and sugarcoat it e.g. Blacks are beautiful.
Appraisal Theory of Emotions refers to the continuous evaluation or appraisal of their well-being relative to their environment. Individuals quickly evaluate in their minds the influence a particular event has on their goals, the cause of the event, any possibility of control and power over the consequences of the event and whether those consequences are compatible with their personal values and societal norms. This could lead to 2 people developing contrasting appraisals and hence contrasting emotional responses. Outrage is often seen as the prototypical emotion amongst protestors whether you’ve heard or seen it live in action, or on television. In 2005, many advantaged Australians launched political action against government plans to redress disadvantaged Aborigines. It’s found that symbolic racism and relative deprivation evoke this group-based anger promoting their willingness for political action. Nonetheless, anger about in-group advantage and guilt may be a potent predictor of protest. It’s suggested anger motivates people to adopt a more challenging relationships with authorities than subordinate emotions such as shame, despair and fear. Depending on efficacy, group-based anger are observed in normative actions whereas efficacious people are like to protest (non-normative violent actions) as an act of contempt.
Social Embeddedness Theory defines a person’s decision to take part in a protest based on their grievances and feelings. Also known as “social capital”, social capital has 3 components: structural, relational and cognitive. Structural component describes the presence or absence of network ties between actors which defines who people can reach out to, encouraging cooperative behaviour, and thereby facilitating mobilisation and participation. Relational component refers to the personal relationships people have developed throughout their history of social interactions, mainly focusing on respect, trust and friendship. Cognitive component refers to the resources that provide shared representations, interpretations and systems of meaning, constitute its powerful form in the context of protest. It’s suggested the interaction of networks and participation in politics corresponds to the amount of political discussion occurring in social networks and the amount of political information that people have access to and gather. For instance, efficacious immigrants were more likely to protest provided their social embeddedness in their ethnic networks because these networks provide space and opportunity to discuss and learn about politics. This allows for creation and dissemination of political discourse critical of relevant authorities and bureaucrats, providing opposition a foundation and argument against these authorities.
Mobilisation refers to the reasons people participates in protests. Consensus mobilisation is when people join because of common interests or ideologies gives them a shared interpretation of who should act, why and how. These movements can be affected by framing, which bridges more individual social psychological concepts of grievances and emotions over more sociological concepts of meaning and interpretation. Action mobilisation is segregated into 4 separate steps: (1) Sympathy, (2) Feeling targeted, (3) Motivation, (4) Participation.
(2) Division of the sympathisers into those who have been the target of mobilisation attempts and those who have not been.
(3) Division of the remaining sympathisers into those who are motivated to participate in a specific activity and those who aren’t.
(4) Differentiation of motivated sympathisers into those who are willing to participate and those who aren’t.
Have you ever read a newspaper article, journal or editorial, watched a news bulletin, attended a political Q&A or witnessed a political campaign that has little to no bias at all? Most likely not. Bias occurs not only in politics and media but also within social circles, families, businesses, organisations, suburban and regional communities, public events, religious sessions, schools, sport (mainly commentary) and every national society. I personally try to be as unbiased and centralist as possible but it’s awfully difficult given the vast number of opinions, democratic views and heavily biased news and current affairs. Having a biased opinion whether left-wing or right-wing already weakens my argument and there would be ensuing criticisms for being cynical, out-of-touch, stupid or stubborn etc coming at my face. So why are humans biased? Is it inherited or is it learned or passed on by those around us? Is it ideal to be unbiased? Why are unbiased people heavily criticised by biased people?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias
By definition, a bias is a prejudice that favours for or against one thing, person, or group compared with other candidates, options or alternatives, often considered unfairly. Biases can be learned implicitly within cultural contexts such as social circles, suburban or regional communities and national societies. From a young age, everyone develops biases toward or against certain individuals, ethic groups, nations, religions, social class, political parties, theoretical paradigms, and ideologies within academic domains or species. Biases are often described as being one-sided, lacking a neutral point of view or not being open-minded. There are different types of biases including cognitive biases, statistical biases, conflicts of interest, prejudices and contextual biases.
However some cognitive biases may lead people to experience success in the right situations. In some cases cognitive biases may be crucial when making rapid decisions is more important than precise decisions such as ordering a Big Mac (which you don’t like eating) from McDonalds with a long queue behind you.
(A) Cognitive Bias = A repeating or basic misstep in thinking, assessing, recollecting or other collective processes. This includes patterns of deviation from standards in judgement where inferences are created in unreasonable fashion. This allows people to create their own subjective reality using their own perceptions, which may dictate their behaviour in response to their view of the world around them. This may lead to perceptual distortions, inaccurate judgments or illogical interpretations (irrationalities).
- Anchoring = A psychological heuristic describing the propensity to rely on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions. This is where an implicitly suggested reference (i.e. the Anchor) influences an individual to make certain adjustments to reach plausible conclusions.
e.g. Say you’re selling a car. The initial price offered for a particular used car set such as $40,000 will set the standard for the rest of the organisations. So you will lower the price of the car to make it more reasonable for customers even if it is still higher than what the car is actually is worth.
- Apophenia = Patternicity, Agenticity — A human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns with random data.
e.g. Gamblers think they recognise patterns in the numbers that appear in lotteries, card games, or roulette wheels. This is known as the “Gambler’s Fallacy”.
- Pareidolia = A visual or auditory form of apophenia.
e.g. Recognising faces from randomly placed objects when viewed from the right angle.
- Attribution Bias = When individuals assess or attempt to discover explanations behind their own and others’ behaviours. We often make attributions about the causes of our own or others’ behaviours but they don’t necessarily precisely reflect what really is the cause. This often leads to perceptual slips prompting biased understandings of our social world based on prior knowledge and and experience, where we should make objective perceptions.
e.g. We tend to assume others’ actions are the result of internal factors such as personality, whereas we assume our own actions arise because of the necessity of external circumstances.
- Confirmation Bias = The tendency to search for, interpret, favour and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses while paying disproportionately less attention to information that may contradict it. This bias is stronger when discussing emotionally charged issues and deeply entrenched beliefs such as same-sex marriage, homosexuality, political movements like marxism, fascism and neo-nazi extremism and a flat-earth hypothesis. Biased searches, interpretations, and memory may explain attitude polarisation, belief perseverance, the irrational primary effect and illusory correlations.
— Attitude Polarisation = When a disagreement becomes more extreme despite different parties are exposed to the same evidence.
— Belief Perseverance = When beliefs continue to persist after evidence proves their falsehood
— Irrational Primary Effect = Describes a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series
— Illusory Correlation = When people falsely perceive an association between 2 events
Confirmation biases can contribute to one’s overconfidence in their own personal beliefs and maintaining beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.
- Correspondence Bias = Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) = Tendency for people to over-emphasise personality-based explanations for behaviours observed in others. On the other hand, people tend to under-emphasise the role and power of situational influences on the same behaviour.
- Framing = Involves the social construction of social phenomena by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders. It influences how people organise, perceive and communicate about reality. This can be positive or negative depending on the target audience and the kind of information being presented. In politics, political advertisements would often present the facts in such a way that implicates a problem that is urgent in need of a solution such as renewable energy crisis, dual citizenship MPs in parliament, royal bank commissions, political donations, political corruption, global emissions crisis, ever-rising national debt crisis or road vs rail infrastructure projects. Members of political parties often attempt to frame issues in such a way to make their solutions favourable in regards to their own political leaning appear as the most appropriate course of action for the situation at hand. e.g. Victorian Liberals believe the solution to reducing road congestion is building the East-West Link and North East Link and grade-separating busy road intersections. In spite of the business case that shows the benefit-cost ratio contradicts this political framing and the projected cost would blowout had the project gone ahead with taxpayers paying road tolls whilst driving along major road arterials for many decades just to cover the cost blowout.
— Cultural Bias = A phenomenon describing the interpretation and and judgment by standards inherent to one’s own culture. The most notable cultural biases concerns cultural norms for colour, location of body parts, mate selection, concepts of justice, linguistic and logical validity, acceptability of evidence and taboos.
e.g. White supremacy, black movement (Bias against African-Americans since Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech spurred by cases of black men shot dead by white American policemen, Aborigines, Muslims, Asylum seekers from war-torn countries and impoverished countries like Syria, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt and Afghanistan.
- Halo Effect = When an observer’s overall impression of a person, organisation, brand or product influences their feelings about specific aspects of that entity’s character or properties. This is based on the saint’s halo, wherein positive sentiments in one area cause questionable or unknown characteristics to be seen positively. i.e. If an observer likes one aspect of anything, they will have a positive predisposition toward everything about it.
e.g. A person’s facial or bodily appearance
- Hindsight Bias = The inclination of viewing past events as predictable.
- Horn Effect = Inspired by the Devil’s Horn, it is described by psychologists as a Bias Blind Spot. It occurs when individuals believe certain negative traits have inter-connections. Generally speaking, it is the halo effect working in a negative fashion.
- Self-serving Bias = The tendency for cognitive or perceptual processes to be distorted by the individual’s need to maintain and enhance their self-esteem.
- Status Quo Bias = A type of emotional bias that preferences the current state of affairs. Any change from the current baseline (status quo) or reference point is perceived as a loss.
Conflicts of Interest (COI) = When a person or association has intersecting interests (financial, personal etc.) that could potentially corrupt. It is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest.
- Bribery = Giving money, goods or other forms of recompense to in order to influence the recipient’s behaviour
e.g. Money (tips), Goods, Rights in action, Property, Gifts, Emolument, Perks, Skimming, Return Favours, Discounts, Sweetheart deals, Kickbacks, Funding, Donations, Campaign contributions, Sponsorships, Stock options, Secret commissions, Promotions.
In some countries political campaign contributions in the form of money may be deemed a criminal act, while in the US they are legal provided they adhere to the election law.
- Favouritism = In-group Bias — A pattern of favouring members of one’s in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.
(a) Cronyism = Favouritism of long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications
(b) Nepotism = Favouritism granted to relatives in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, religion and other activities.
e.g. In 2017, President-elect Donald Trump appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner as his senior advisor and his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trum, as his official White House employee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism
- Funding Bias = The tendency of a scientific study to support the interests of the study’s financial sponsor.
- Lobbying = The attempt to influence choices made by administrators, like lawmakers or individuals from administrative agencies. Lobbyists may be among a legislator’s constituencies, whom may engage in lobbying as a business.
- Self-Regulation = The process whereby an organisation monitors its own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a 3rd party entity monitor and enforce those standards. Self-regulating any group such as a corporation or government bureaucracy can create a conflict of interest. Because in the short run, any organisation would eliminate the appearance of any unethical behaviour rather the behaviour itself when asked to do so.
- Regulatory Capture = A form of political corruption occurring when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. This occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with a minute individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether.
- Shilling = When someone shills. they deliberately give spectators the feeling that one is an energetic autonomous client of a vendor for whom one is working. Its effectiveness depends on crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase certain goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed).
e.g. Paid reviews like on the App Store, Yelp and Google Reviews that give the impression of being autonomous opinions.
- Negativity Bias = Negativity Effect — Despite an equal intensity, things of a more negative nature like unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful / traumatic events have a greater effect on a person’s psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things.
- Implicit Bias = Implicit Stereotype — An unconscious attribution of particular qualities to a member of a certain social group often influenced by personal experience, and are based on learned associations between various qualities and social categories, including race and gender, affecting individuals’ perceptions and behaviours without their intention or awareness. They are an aspect of implicit social cognition, the phenomenon that perceptions, attitudes and stereotypes operate without conscious intention.
e.g. All pitbulls are dangerous.
- Explicit Bias = Explicit Stereotypes — Results from intentional, conscious and manipulatable thoughts and beliefs, and are directed towards a certain group of people based on heir perceptions.
e.g. Adolescent girls like to play with dolls and makeup.
e.g. Sudanese people are dangerous and violent due to the sprig of gang violence involving mostly them.
- Statistical Bias = A property of a statistical technique or of its results whereby the expected value of the results differs from the true underlying quantitive parameter being estimated.
There are different types of statistical biases:
- Selection Bias = Berksonian Bias — When individuals are more likely to be selected for a study than others, hence biasing the sample.
e.g. Choosing predominately white-skinned participants than dark-skinned participants.
- Spectrum Bias = Arises from evaluating diagnostic tests on biased patient samples, leading to overestimates of the sensitivity and specificity of the test.
- Bias of an estimator = The difference between of an estimator’s expected value and the true value of the parameter being estimated.
- Omitted-Variable Bias = In estimates of parameters in regression analysis, the assumed specifications omits any independent variables that should be in the model.
Detection Bias = When a phenomenon is more likely to be observed for a particular set of study subjects.
e.g. Studies involving obesity and diabetes may mean doctors are more likely to assign obese patients than thinner patients, leading to an inflation in diabetes among obese patients because of skewed detection efforts.
- Analytical Bias = Arises due to evaluation of the results
- Exclusion Bias = Arises due to systemic exclusion of certain individuals from the study.
- Funding Bias = Leading to selection of outcomes, test samples, or test procedures favouring a study’s financial sponsor.
- Reporting Bias = Involves skews in the availability of data, which may lead to observations of a certain kind more likely to be reported.
- Attrition Bias = Arises due to loss of participants
e.g. Loss of participants to follow up during a study
Recall Bias = Arises due to differences in accuracy or completeness of participants recollections of past events
e.g. When a patient can’t recall how many cigarettes they smoked last week exactly, which may lead to over- or underestimation.
- Observer Bias = When the researcher subconsciously influences the experiment due to cognitive bias where their judgement may alter how an experiment is carried out or how results are recorded.
In statistical hypothesis testing, a test is said to be unbiased if for some α-level (between 0 - 1), the probability that the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected is less than or equal to the α-level for the entire parameter space defined by the null hypothesis. On the other hand, the probability of the null hypothesis is rejected is greater than or equal to the α-level for the entire parameter space defined by the alternative hypothesis (H1).
Contextual Biases:
- Academic Bias = Perceived bias of scholars that allow their beliefs to shape their research the the scientific community. In classrooms, there may be perceived bias rooted in issues of sexuality, race, class, and sex as much or more than in religion.
- Educational Bias = Real or perceived bias in the educational system. In school textbooks that target young people, there are claims that critical or damaging evidence or comments are selectively removed in an attempt to “whitewash” students.
e.g. Some Australian history textbooks contradict one another on whether Australia Day should be regarded as Invasion Day or the colonisation and discovery of New Holland by the British Colony’s First Fleet in 1788.
- Experimenter Bias = In scientific research, this occurs when experimenter expectancies regarding study results bias the the research outcome.
e.g. Conscious or unconscious influences on subject behaviour including creation of demand characteristics that may influence subjects and altered or selective recording of experimental results themselves.
Full text on Net Bias (FUTON) = A tendency of scholars to cite academic journals with open access in their own writing as compared with toll access publications. Open access applies to journals that make their full text available on the internet without charge. This allows more scholars to discover and access articles with their full text on the internet, which increases the authors’ likelihood of reading, quoting and citing these articles, hence increases the impact factor of open access journals relative to journals without open access.
- No Abstract Available Bias = A scholar’s tendency to cite journal articles that have an abstract available online more readily than articles that don’t.
- Inductive Bias = Within the field of machine learning, it’s when one seeks to develop algorithms that are able to learn to anticipate a particular output. To accomplish this outcome, learning algorithms are given training cases that show expected connections. Then the learner is tested with new examples. In this context, it is the set of assumptions that the learner uses to predict outputs given inputs that it hasn’t encountered yet. This may bias the leaner towards either the correct or incorrect solution, or partially either way.
e.g. Occam’s Razor assumes that the simplest and most consistent hypothesis is always the best.
— Coverage Bias = Visibility Bias — Actors or issues more or less visible in the news
— Gatekeeping Bias = Selectivity / Selection Bias — Some stories may be selected or deselected based on ideological grounds. Sometimes it’s referred to as agenda bias when stories focus on political actors and whether they are covered based on their preferred policy issues.
— Statement Bias = Tonality / Presentation Bias — Media coverage slants towards or against particular actors or issues.
— Advertising Bias = Stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers.
— Concision Bias = Tendency to report views that are summarised succinctly, crowding out more unconventional views that could take time to explain throughly.
— Corporate Bias = Some stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media.
— Mainstream Bias = Tendency to report what every other media outlet is reporting, avoiding stories that may offend their audience.
— Sensationalism = A bias in favour of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as train crashes, are more common than currently known common events, such as automobile crashes.
— Structural Bias = Actors or issues receive more or less favourable coverage as a result of newsworthiness and media routines, not as a result of ideological decisions e.g. Incumbency Bonus
— False Balance = Some issues are presented as even sided, despite disproportionate amounts of evidence supporting one side over the other
e.g. Opinion polls on which party will win the election.
Publication Bias = Tendency of researchers and journal editors for publish particular academic research articles to prefer some outcomes over others
e.g. When results show a significant finding, this may lead to a problematic bias in the published literature. This can propagate further as literature reviews of claims about support for a hypothesis will find themselves biased.
Reporting Bias = In epidemiology and empirical research, it’s defined as “selective revealing or suppression of information” of undesirable behaviour by subjects or researchers. It’s a tendency to under-report unexpected or undesirable experimental results, whilst over-report expected or desirable results that a global audience can trust. This can propagate by reinforcing the status quo and later experimenters will justify their own reporting bias by observing that previous experimenters reported different results.
Social Desirability Bias = A bias within social science research where survey respondents tend to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed positively by others. This will lead to over-reporting laudable behaviour, or under-reporting undesirable behaviour. It influences our interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences. This remains one of the major issues of self-reporting questionnaires that concern an individual's abilities, personalities, sexual behaviour and drug use.
- Prejudices = Pre-judgment, or forming opinions prior to becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. This is often to preconceived, unfavourable judgments toward people or a person because of gender, political opinion, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race / ethnicity, language, nationality, or other personal characteristics. Prejudices can also refer to unfounded beliefs, including any unreasonable attitudes resistant to rational influence.
- Classism = Class Discrimination — Discrimination on the basis of social class, including attitudes that benefits the upper class at the expense of the lower class, or vice versa.
- Lookism = Stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination on the basis of physical attractiveness, or more generally to people whose appearance matches cultural preferences. Many people make automatic judgments of others based on their physical appearance that may influence how they would respond to those particular people.
- Racism = Ideologies based on a desire to dominate or believe in inferiority of another race. This may force members of different races to be treated differently.
- Sexism = Discrimination based on a person’s sex or gender i.e. Male or Female. This links to stereotypes and gender roles especially regarding women and includes the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another.
e.g. Feminism
- Nationalism = A sentiment based on common cultural characteristics that binds a national population and produces a policy of national independence / separatism. This suggests a “shared identity” amongst a nation’s population minimising differences within the group, emphasising perceived boundaries between members and non-members. This leads to the assumption that members of a nation have more in common than they actually do, meaning they are “culturally unified”. This is in spite of injustices occurring within the nation based on differences like status and race.
- Sexual Discrimination = Discrimination against a person or group on the basis of their sexual orientation or sexual behaviour. It refers to a predisposition towards heterosexual people, who are biased against lesbian gay, bisexual and asexual people. Sexual prejudice is a negative attitude toward someone because of their sexual orientation. This is not to be confused with homophobia, which encompasses various negative attitudes and feelings towards homosexuality or people who identify or perceive themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobia
e.g. Homophobia, Heterosexism
- Religious Discrimination = Different treatment of a person or group due to different religious beliefs. Specifically, when adherents of different religions (denominations) are treated unequally, either before the law or in institutional settings such as employment and housing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_discrimination
e.g. Christianity, Buddhism, Muslim, Judaism
- Linguistic Discrimination = When individuals or groups may be treated unfairly based solely on their use of language. This may include the individuals’ native language or characteristics of the person’s speech, such as accent, size of vocabulary (complex or varied words), and syntax. This also involves a person’s ability or inability to use one language instead of another.
- Neurological Discrimination = This describes the attribution of a low social status to those who don’t conform to neurotypical expectations of personality and behaviour. This can manifest through assumption of ‘disability’ status to those who are high functioning enough to exist outside of diagnostic criteria. But they don’t feel like or want to conform their behaviour to conventional patterns.
e.g. High-functioning Autism — Direct cognitive benefits appear to come at the expense of social intelligence. It also extend to other high-functioning individuals carrying pathological conditions like ADHD, Bipolar Spectrum Disorders. In that case, there are suggestions that these perceived socially disadvantageous cognitive traits directly correlates with advantageous cognitive traits in other aspects like creativity and divergent thinking. However these strengths are often systematically overlooked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism
- Multiculturalism = In sociology, it refers to the end state of either a natural or artificial process and occurs on either a large national scale or a smaller scale within a nation’s communities. For instance, on a smaller scale French Canada and English Canada is an amalgamation of 2 or more different cultures after a jurisdiction is created or expanded. On a larger scale, developed countries like UK, Australia and USA impose either legal or illegal immigration to and from different jurisdictions around the the world.
In political philosophy, different ideologies and policies vary in terms of advocacy of equal respect to the various cultures in a society, promotion of maintenance of cultural diversity and how people of various ethic and religious backgrounds are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group to which they belong. Multicultural has been seen to promote the maintenance of distinct cultures which is described as a “salad bowl” and “cultural mosaic”.
- Bigotry
- Cultural Bias = A phenomenon of making judgments and interpretations by standards inherent to one’s own culture. It occurs when people of a culture make assumptions about conventions, like language, notion, proof and evidence. They are then accused of making these assumptions for laws of logic or nature. Numerous biases exist concerns cultural norms for colour, mate selection, concepts of justice, linguistic and logical validity, acceptability of evidence and taboos.
The fact of the matter is human society revolves around employment in order to survive. Doesn’t that make us free-ranged slaves controlled by people of wealth who utilise the monetary system and energy sector to control and protect their selfish interests? Our monetary system is also manipulated by the same people using stock markets and banking practices which I can’t even comprehend myself. This may be all by design in order to keep the wealth in the hands of a chosen few, mostly banking elites, mining and business tycoons, political leaders and royal bloodlines. These people also control all aspects of our lives from education, health, media, and food. With so much control over our lifestyles, it’s no wonder a majority of us feel confused over the state of problems society is experiencing on a daily basis. I feel our media exists to control the mass way of thinking to align with popular and, even, the most ridiculous government policies, We may be led to believe that we have freedom of speech, a democracy, a free press, but this is far from the actual truth. It’s quite obvious political and social movements from both sides of politics, socialist, progressive, liberal / conservative like the Same-Sex Marriage Movement, CMFEU, Reclaim Australia, ABCC, RBTU, Workers Union and CFA Firefighters Union receive either little or no media attention. Even if it successfully receives attention, it is always portrayed in a negative manner like whenever their operations have a serious issue they blame it on the government rather themselves. I’m not sure if downgrading the government’s credibility and stable reputation would bring any improvement to their dilemmas. I’m not sure if they’re aware the current government has no control nor played any role in the lead up to their crisis. I can’t see this blame game ever see an agreement between all relevant parties. There are no winners arising this disagreement and uproar about sensitive issues. Only overactive wingers with nothing to do but protest in the city streets disrupting normality to city movements like their life depended on it. The biggest newspaper companies owned by media giant Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp like Herald Sun, The Australian and The Sun publish newspaper front page headlines filled with emotionally stigmatising words like “conspiracy”, “terrorism”, “extremism”, “scoundrels”, “corruption”, “scandal”, “incompetence” etc. These hard-hitting terms are repeated so consistently that it aims to embed these terms into the human subconscious memory, it is tempting to initially have negative thoughts of the people we vote in favour of. If you repeat anything adequately through sensationalised journalism, more and more people will start believing it. It is an obvious form of brainwashing used widely by all politicians and the media through scare campaigns, negative headlines, biased advertisements and constant physical presence in marginal electorates just to pinch a few extra votes just to win an election and gain political power to forward their own fiendish policies.
These tactics are also imposed on subjects deemed unfit for the government’s policy agenda. 1000s of years ago, the “Divide and Conquer” strategy used by ancient human empires is also used by the media using the power of language to polarise people’s opinions and raise suspicious of each other. Professional journalists, media reporters and newspaper editors are brilliant at doing this. We may be forced inwards to the point of not even knowing our neighbour’s names. This is may explain why there is lack of harmony, peace, understanding and unity amongst every community and society. Since the first ever international passenger flight, immigration of foreigners who are either escaping the horrors of their war-torn countries or their impoverished communities in search of a stable and safer life has become a major issue for every developed country. The media scapegoat immigrants to divide opinion and match the conspiracy theories set within the minds of the majority. This strategy draws attention from the actual truth and focuses on the scapegoat causing a uproar believing eliminating the scapegoat will solve the problem when in actual fact it will not. This is just scratching the surface and the same patterns of media manipulation can be seen in all areas.
Here is my Utopia. Every human on Earth is born equal and is entitled to a long life. Every human should have a right to live and enjoy life to the fullest whilst surviving to be the fittest. Everyone should have a basic minimum wage but adequate to make a living. This minimum wage should cover all costs of life including food, water, housing, clothing and energy. No one should be forced to work. Work should be on a volunteer basis. Why can’t all the money currently in circulation be divided equally each and every human around the world? You may argue that nothing will be accomplished, nothing will be constructed and nothing will be maintained. Everyone will lazy couch potatoes given the opportunity every day, right? Well, not really. Natural animal instinct takes over and our subconscious motivates us to search for food, shelter and water in order to keep our own cells alive for a long period. This would cure the boredom and we would replicate the lives of our ancestors many years ago.
If you removed all media, monetary, and central control, what would human society be like? If we take inspiration from the animal kingdom, we would naturally shift to a community-based structure. We would converse with our fellow neighbours to survive and naturally befriend them in order to build trust with them and a family environment will blossom. Health would be stable, crime will be low as everyone’s needs would be met. With time to live life and care for others, we would have time to volunteer skills to our community. Bartering could come into consideration. e.g. I will fix your fence if you fix my pipes. For those who haven’t gained experience and essential skills to survive or may be disabled from a congenital condition or serious injury, people would still volunteer to assist them providing care and support. Humans are kind, loving and helpful by nature because we want to protect our own species from endangerment or worse, extinction. If you see someone fall down a flight of stairs, you would instinctively help them up and ensure they’re uninjured and unscathed. However there are others who let their selfishness and arrogance get the better of them and they show unwillingness to help anyone whom they don’t relate to.
