text:
Infodemiology and Infoveillance (970) Medicine 2.0: Social Media, Open, Participatory, Collaborative Medicine (1228) Online Dating, Sexual Health Behavior (119) Infoveillance, Infodemiology, Digital Disease Surveillance, Infodemic Management (788) Mass Media/Social Media Communication and Campaigns (395) Violence including Domestic Violence/Abuse (72) Sex education, sex behavior and pregnancy/STD prevention for Adolescents (86)
Published on 3.9.2019 in Vol 21 , No 9 (2019) :September
Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/13837, first published February 26, 2019 .
The #MeToo Movement in the United States: Text Analysis of Early Twitter Conversations
Sepideh Modrek 1, 2 ; Bozhidar Chakalov 2
Sepideh Modrek1,2, PhD ;
Bozhidar Chakalov2, MA
1Health Equity Institute, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States
2Economics Department, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States
Sepideh Modrek, PhD
Health Equity Institute
1600 Hollaway Avenue HSS 386
Email: smodrek@sfsu.edu
Background: The #MeToo movement sparked an international debate on the sexual harassment, abuse, and assault and has taken many directions since its inception in October of 2017. Much of the early conversation took place on public social media sites such as Twitter, where the hashtag movement began.
Objective: The aim of this study is to document, characterize, and quantify early public discourse and conversation of the #MeToo movement from Twitter data in the United States. We focus on posts with public first-person revelations of sexual assault/abuse and early life experiences of such events.
Methods: We purchased full tweets and associated metadata from the Twitter Premium application programming interface between October 14 and 21, 2017 (ie, the first week of the movement). We examined the content of novel English language tweets with the phrase "MeToo" from within the United States (N=11,935). We used machine learning methods, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, and support vector machine models to summarize and classify the content of individual tweets with revelations of sexual assault and abuse and early life experiences of sexual assault and abuse.
Results: We found that the most predictive words created a vivid archetype of the revelations of sexual assault and abuse. We then estimated that in the first week of the movement, 11% of novel English language tweets with the words "MeToo" revealed details about the poster's experience of sexual assault or abuse and 5.8% revealed early life experiences of such events. We examined the demographic composition of posters of sexual assault and abuse and found that white women aged 25-50 years were overrepresented in terms of their representation on Twitter. Furthermore, we found that the mass sharing of personal experiences of sexual assault and abuse had a large reach, where 6 to 34 million Twitter users may have seen such first-person revelations from someone they followed in the first week of the movement.
Conclusions: These data illustrate that revelations shared went beyond acknowledgement of having experienced sexual harassment and often included vivid and traumatic descriptions of early life experiences of assault and abuse. These findings and methods underscore the value of content analysis, supported by novel machine learning methods, to improve our understanding of how widespread the revelations were, which likely amplified the spread and saliency of the #MeToo movement.
social media; sexual abuse; sexual assault; machine learning; infodemiology; infoveillance
Public discourse on sensitive topics, ranging from sexual violence to health (mis)behaviors, increasingly occurs on social networking platforms such as Twitter [1-3]. Public health officials and social scientists alike are turning to Twitter to better understand who participates in these conversations, what new information may be gleaned, and the reach of online messages. In health fields, studies of the content of social media posts have a variety of aims, including producing new data to support surveillance efforts, predicting onset of a variety of conditions, and targeting interventions [4]. Detailed content analyses of posts, above and beyond search frequencies and hashtag analysis, have examined health issues such as influenza, allergies, and a variety of mental health conditions (depression, postpartum depression, eating disorders, etc) [5-10]. Likewise, social scientists have conducted detailed content and network analysis of social media posts to understand salient topics in particular networks (Black Twitter and online Feminism) and the reach of salient topics [11-14].
The recent explosion in the public discourse on sexual violence is an interesting case to consider. Sexual violence, including sexual harassment, abuse, and assault, is highly pervasive and has long-term behavioral and mental health sequelae [15]. In the US, one in three women experience unwanted sexual contact in their lifetime [16]. Although hashtag movements such as #BeenRapedNeverReported had traction and encouraged public disclosures of personal experiences of rape [12], these initial movements were relatively small. The public discourse on sexual violence changed substantially on October 15, 2017, when actress Alyssa Milano called her followers to post "MeToo" if they had ever experienced unwanted or inappropriate sexual contact [5].
Ms Milano's tweet immediately went viral, with 1,595,453 tweets posted in the first week, and ignited a movement where victims of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment felt empowered to divulge as much, or as little, information as they wanted about their personal experiences. The phrase "MeToo" was coined by Tarana Burke, a civil rights activist, as a way to raise awareness and provide support for survivors of sexual violence. Ms Milano's use of this phrase in her tweet, as opposed to other more explicit hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported, allowed posters to retain some privacy about the details of the event and still participate. This led to millions of users joining the conversation and subsequent normalizing of the revelations. Meanwhile, the wide use of the generic #MeToo encouraged an outpour of detailed revelations. Because of the massive size of the #MeToo movement, many who may not have experienced sexual violence were confronted with the knowledge that members of their network had.
In this study, we aim to describe the public disclosures of sexual violence within the first week of the #MeToo movement. Here, we document the content, quantify the scale, and present the demographic characteristics of Twitter users who disclose incidents of sexual assault/abuse in the early conversation on Twitter for the #MeToo movement. We use simple machine learning tools to create the archetype of tweets, which often included detailed accounts of sexual assault and abuse and early life experience of such events among women from all walks of life. Next, we categorize the content of individual-level tweets to estimate the proportion of all #MeToo tweets with such revelations in the first week of the movement. Furthermore, we use our categorization to detail the demographic characteristics of posters with revealed events and the reach of the revealed events on the Twitter platform generally.
The data for this project are tweets, short messages of 140 characters or less, sent from a Twitter user (Twitter handle) to their network of followers. Twitter data are considered existing data in the public domain and therefore exempt from human subject review.
We applied for and were granted access to the Twitter Premium application programming interface (API) platform, which allows users to purchase and query all nondeleted public tweets since the first tweet posted in 2006. We purchased both the counts and full tweets from historical Twitter data between October 14 and 21, 2017 (ie, the first week of the movement). Unlike other social media movements that took several months to take hold, the #MeToo movement had the greatest activity in the first week (Figure 1), which is one reason we limited our data collection to this period. For our analysis, we concentrated only on novel, or user generated, English language tweets with "MeToo" in the text. Novel tweets exclude replies to other's tweets, retweets without comments, and links to other sites or images. This was chosen to capture posts that were tied to the specific user and that would be available to all of one's followers. We further limit the tweets to those with geotagged information, placing the tweet in the United States (N=12,337; this count is subject to some variability, as it depends on the day of the query and only includes nondeleted tweets).
Figure 1 shows the daily counts of novel English Language tweets starting from one day prior to the creation of each hashtag on Twitter (July 13, 2013, for BlackLivesMatter and October 14, 2017, for MeToo). The counts derived from the Twitter Premium API vary by the date of query. These counts were extracted on August 14, 2018.
The analytic sample for our content analyses comprised the full text and associated metadata for 97% of novel English language US-based tweets in the study period (N=11,935). Figure 2 presents a flowchart of the filtering process on the sample of tweets captured and analyzed (see Multimedia Appendix 1 for details of the selection process).
Figure 1. Comparison of relative time patterns of novel English tweets including MeToo and BlackLivesMatter. MeToo counts are on the left axis, and BlackLivesMatter counts are on the right axis. BLM: BlackLivesMatter.
Figure 2. Data flow chart. LASSO: least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; SVM: support vector machine.
We first present evidence that the sample of novel English #MeToo tweets in the United States, which we selected for analysis, was comparable in terms of time trends to all novel English #MeToo tweets. We graphed the number of #MeToo tweets per hour starting on October 14, to show the time trends comparing all #MeToo tweets, novel English #MeToo tweets, and US-based geotagged novel English language #MeToo tweets. We also report quantitative measures of correlation on the number of tweets in each of these categories by hour (the Pearson correlation and coefficient of determination).
Annotation Process
Before analyzing the data, both authors reviewed approximately 2000 tweets from the first week of the movement. Based on this initial review, we chose to focus the analysis on first-person revelations of sexual assault and abuse and childhood experience of sexual assault and abuse. The tweets reviewed revealed several categories of comments with #MeToo hashtags. They included (1) tweets with #MeToo that were support statements (ie, "How many women not in the spotlight have #MeToo #Notaceleb #StillAStar. Proud of them! As Bosch says- 'everybody counts or nobody counts'"), (2) statements with ambiguous revelations of events (ie, "MeToo" alone and "Kept it buried down for many years and didn't even really realize how it impacted me."), (3) statements with detailed revelations of events (ie, "I was sexually assaulted by a family member when I was 8 the trauma [sic] it causes never ends, remember that before you ruin someone's life"), and (4) others (ie, either negative comments, unrelated content, or riding off the hashtag; "Not watched any games this weekend @NFL @nflcommish @nflnetwork #metoo didnt buy nfl merchandise this year Got refund for #NFLSundayTicket").
Based on this initial review, we chose to focus on the second and third categories and created an annotation rubric to categorize first-person revelations. For ambiguous statements (ie, category 2) where it was clear an event occurred, such as a revelation with an alleged assailant's name or a situation but little details on the actual actions, we decided that this recollection likely reflects enduring trauma and should be categorized as a revealed abuse or assault. If the ambiguous events were experienced in childhood, it would be classified as an early life experience of abuse or assault ("I was a child too scared to speak. Till this day, it still haunts me"). If the statement was too ambiguous, did not make references to childhood, or provided little detail, we did not classify it as a case of abuse (ie, "Sometimes the stories we don't share are the ones that affect us and continue to scare us the most" and "Tried to tweet about my #metoo moment and deleted it bc it still feels like my fault. The voices you aren't hearing in this are deafening"). For the third category—the clearest case—based on the purported event, we categorized the revelations as abuse or assault and early life experience based on the details provided. Figure 3 provides a schematic of our annotation process.
We randomly selected a subset of 650 tweets from the novel English US-based #MeToo tweets as the training set for the analysis. Based on our rubric, both authors classified the 650 randomly selected tweets. Each tweet was categorized along two main dimensions: if the tweet revealed details of an experience of sexual assault and abuse and if the details suggest that the event happened in early life. All other types of tweets (support, too ambiguous, or other) were categorized as not revealing an incident of abuse or assault. We used an approximate age cut off of 22 years (or references to college or earlier schooling) to distinguish and delineate early life experience. This was chosen to capture college experience under the category of early life. All other tweets were categorized as "other." The concordance between the two authors' categorizations was 94% for sexual abuse and assault and 98% for childhood experience. Most disagreements on the abuse/assault categorization were on cases with ambiguous revelations, which could be argued either way. Most disagreements on childhood experience were in cases where the revealed event was placed in the past. Many cases point to an event in the distant past, but it was hard to ascertain the age of the poster at the time of the revealed event, because we did not have the current age of the poster. Given these minor differences in interpretation, we decided to use one author's (BC) categorization in the training set. To assess our model performance, we used the other author's (SM) classification in the test set for calculating positive and negative predictive values.
Tweets were categorized along two dimensions: if they disclose an experience of sexual assault and abuse (red in Figure 3) and if the details suggest that the event happened in early life (orange in Figure 3). All other tweets were categorized as "other." Multimedia Appendix 2 provides examples of the categorizations performed by the authors, which were guided by the categorizations in the "Rape Culture Pyramid" graphic version 1 created by Ranger Cervix and Jaime Chandra in mid-2016 [17].
Figure 3. Classification flow chart.
Prediction Methods
To provide exemplars of the disclosed tweets, we used simple supervised machine learning methods— least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression models—on the training sample to find most predictive words for classification along both dimensions [18]. This allows us to present the most predictive words, which serve as an archetype of the tweets with such revelations.
LASSO regressions are a common tool for economists who are using text as data and performing simple computational linguistic analyses [19]. The LASSO, a penalized linear model with L1 penalization, serves as a shrinkage method to help perform feature/word selection to identify the most predictive words from a list of candidate words in a supervised learning environment. These methods are recommended because they are intuitive and interpretable. LASSO regression was chosen over ridge regression, another penalized linear models with L2 penalization, because it is more efficient for variable selection. Furthermore, LASSO was chosen over elastic net regression, which is sometimes preferred when there is substantial correlation between features/words, because we found limited correlation in the words in the training set data.
After removing stop words, we had 11,931 unique words in our training set from 650 tweets. We stemmed each word, examined the list for misspelling, and considered words (and stubs) that appear in at least five tweets to limit the sparsity of our sample, leading to 1186 unique words. From these words, the authors selected 109 words related to sexual abuse and assault. This filtering limited the sparsity of the data further. We then used LASSO regressions on a matrix of 650 tweets coded for sexual assault/abuse (or coded for early life experience) and 109 words, each of which was treated as a binary flag if it appeared in each tweet. For example, if the tweet included the word "Rape" or "Raped" in it, then the variable "Rape" was coded as 1.
The LASSO model minimizes an objective function , which is a constrained ordinary least squares model (OLS), to find the words with the strongest predictive power on tweets coded as having a revelation of sexual assault or abuse.
Equation 1: , where is the L1 Norm of the estimated β coefficients; this is the sum of the absolute value of all the β coefficients, and is the sum of squared deviation of the predicted outcome relative to the actual outcome for each observation. This algorithm is the same as an OLS with an added penalization for large estimated β coefficients. The form of the penalization with an L1 Norm drives the magnitude of many β coefficients to zero. This essentially makes the algorithm identify and select features/words that are most predictive [18].
The LASSO models were implemented in the statistical software R ([computer program] Version 3.5.0. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing; 2018) using the "glmnet" package. The results of the LASSO model are validated with ten-fold cross-validation. The cross-validation allows us to pick the model with the λ value having the lowest mean squared error or model variance. From this selected model, we obtained a list of the 35 most predictive words for tweets with revelations of sexual assault/abuse words and 34 most predictive words for tweets with revelations of early life experience of sexual assault/abuse words. These word lists were then categorized by the authors.
We then used the same training sample of tweets to train the support vector machine (SVM) models to classify the remaining sample of tweets (N=11,285) along the same two dimensions—experience of sexual assault/abuse and early life experience of sexual assault/abuse [18,20].
An SVM is a discriminative classifier that is used on training data to define a separating hyperplane in multidimensional space and then uses this hyperplane to categorize new data. In the training set, data points that are closer to a potential defining hyperplane (ie, support vectors) are given more weight. The goal of the underlying algorithm is to maximize the margin between the support vector data points and the separating hyperplane using a cost function [18].
In our case, we have a matrix of 11,931 unique words (dimensions) and 650 labeled outcome data. From this information, the algorithm defines a separating hyperplane. Based on this hyperplane, the remaining 11,285 tweets are categorized. To perform the SVM model operations, the package "RTextTools" was used in R software.
We assessed the quality of the SVM model's classification with four test sets, two for each classification category, to estimate positive and negative predictive values. To calculate the positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV), we sampled 50 tweets four times as test sets. The first two samples were used to assess PPV and NPV for the model predictions of sexual assault and abuse. The second two samples were used to assess PPV and NPV for the model predictions of early life experience of sexual assault and abuse. Given that BC's classification was used in the training set, we used SM's classification on the test set to assess the model.
For each sample of the first two samples, one author (SM) assessed the content of the tweet for a revelation of an experience of sexual assault and abuse. We treated the human-assessed content as the gold standard and calculated the proportion of the time that the SVM algorithm's classification was the same as the human classification. PPV was calculated as the number of true positives (agreement between human and algorithm) divided by the number of positive cases found by the SVM algorithm. NPV was calculated as the number of true negatives divided by the number of negative cases found by the SVM algorithm. We repeat the process and manually categorize the content of the last two samples for revelations of early life experience of sexual assault or abuse to calculate PPV and NPV
Based on these classifications, we used a previously vetted commercial service, Demographics Pro [21,22], to infer the demographic characteristics of the individuals who revealed an incident of abuse/assault and childhood experience (Multimedia Appendix 1 for description of their algorithm) . We then empirically derived estimates of the 25%-75% range of the number of followers from each poster who revealed an event. This allows us to conduct a crude calculation to capture a lower bound on the reach of the tweets with revelations of sexual assault/abuse in the first week of the movement. This estimate represents the number of potential Twitter users who would have been exposed to revelations of sexual assault/abuse posted by someone they follow.
Figure 4 shows the time trends of #MeToo tweets, illustrating how the movement grew. We presented hourly counts of tweets from October 14, 2017, 00:00 GMT, the day before the movement began. We also compared all #MeToo tweets, the novel English #MeToo tweets, and the novel geotagged English #MeToo tweets—the main sample used in this study—to show that they follow a similar overall time trend in the first week. The Pearson correlation between the counts of hourly #MeToo tweets and novel geotagged English #MeToo tweets was 0.96, and the coefficient of determination was 0.92. The counts derived from the Premium API in Figure 4 vary by the date of query. These counts were extracted on June 12, 2018.
Author BC's classification of the 650 randomly selected tweets in the training set revealed that approximately 19% of these tweets included a first-person revelation of sexual assault/abuse. BC's classification was used in supervised machine learning methods with LASSO regressions to identify the most predictive words. Textbox 1 summarizes and organizes the most predictive words related to revelations of sexual abuse/assault. The most predictive words are organized into descriptions of time, persons, actions, body parts, and words indicating state and other. For example, the predictive actions verbs include "Rape," "Grope," "Grab," and "Shout" among others. Other highly predictive words relate to an intoxicated state ("Drunk" or "Drug"). Many predictive words placed the revealed event in the past, particularly in early life ("Age," "College," "First Time," and "Years Old").
Figure 4. Hourly counts of "MeToo" tweets. Top: Hourly counts of "MeToo" tweets by category (overall, novel English, and geotagged novel English). Bottom: Hourly counts of all novel English language tweets with the phrase "MeToo" and hourly counts of all novel English language geotagged tweets in the United States.
Words contained in Tweets that consistently predict a revelation of sexual abuse or assault (most predictive words categorized).
Time/age
Hasnumber (Hasnumber is an overall indicator of whether there is a number in the text.)
Rapist
Grope
Frat (This term can indicate a location, time/age, or an implied level of intoxication. The term frat can indicate a time (college is when most people go to frats), a place such as a frat house, and a level of intoxication because frats are often where alcohol is served.)
Textbox 1. Words contained in Tweets that consistently predict a revelation of sexual abuse or assault (most predictive words categorized).
Of the 650 randomly selected tweets in the training set, the authors categorized 5% of the tweets as having indicated an early experience of sexual assault/abuse. Textbox 2 summarizes and organizes the most predictive words related to early experience of sexual abuse or assault. Although many of the predictive terms are the same, the list of persons, or possible assailants, listed for those who had an early life experience include terms like "Neighbor" and "Step-Father." In addition, the states of being "Asleep" and "Afraid" are highly predictive. Together, these predictive words provide a picture of the types of tweets posted during the early phase of the movement. Note that predictive words are different from a word cloud that captures the frequency of a word. For example, "MeToo" was in every one of the tweets we examined but was not, and could not be, predictive of a disclosure of sexual assault/abuse, given our method. The word "Grope," on the other hand, was not in every tweet and was a predictive word in tweets with revelations of assault/abuse.
Next, we use the SVM algorithm on the same 650 classified tweets in the training set. Of the remaining 11,285 tweets, the SVM algorithm categorized 1287 tweets (11.4%) as having a revelation of sexual assault/abuse and 657 tweets (5.8%) as having a revelation of early sexual assault/abuse (Multimedia Appendix 3). To assess the validity of the SVM classification, we calculate both the PPV and NPV in comparison with human categorized test sets. The SVM classification for sexual assault/abuse had a PPV of 87%, meaning that there is 87% concordance between the algorithm and our manual assessment of the tweets with revelation of sexual assault/abuse. The NPV was 83%, suggesting that the algorithm may have slightly underreported the number of tweets with revelations of sexual assault/abuse in comparison to the authors' assessment. For early life experience classification, the PPV is 79% and the NPV is 95%. There was a slightly lower concordance between the algorithm and the authors' assessment of tweets identified as revealing an early life experience of sexual assault/abuse, but the false negative rate was quite low. Together, these assessments of the algorithm suggest that our algorithm performed well and would be highly congruent with the human-generated classifications.
In Table 1, we present the percentage of daily tweets with revelations of sexual assault/abuse and early life experience of sexual assault/abuse based on the SVM classification. In the first 2 days of the movement (October 15-17), 11%-13% of tweets revealed an experience of sexual abuse or assault and over half of the tweets revealed that the experience of sexual assault/abuse occurred in early life. As the movement carried forward, the revelations of sexual assault/abuse decreased to about 6% of MeToo tweets in the last day of the first week, but the relative proportion with early life experience of these events increased to over 80%, suggesting that more traumatic events were being shared.
Based on the SVM classification, we then used the Demographics Pro prediction service to understand and compare the demographics of posters of sexual assault/abuse during the early #MeToo movement. We present these demographics in Table 2. Based on the results of the SVM model, we identified 1168 unique posters/Twitter handles that revealed an incident of sexual assault/abuse and 612 unique posters that revealed an early life experience of sexual assault/abuse. We shared these Twitter handles with Demographics Pro, who then gave us aggregated predictions on the distribution of the demographic characteristics of these posters. We found that 90% of these Twitter users who posted about their experience of sexual assault/abuse were women. This is congruent with national estimates that 90% of sexual assault victims are women [23]. We also found that white women were overrepresented in the early conversation in our Twitter data with regard to their population in the United States, their proportion as Twitter users, and national estimates of those who report experiencing sexual assault (data not shown). The age distribution also shows that older users of Twitter, aged 25-50 years, disproportionately revealed events.
Finally, from the SVM classification, we used the provided metadata on the number of followers of posters who revealed sexual assault/abuse in the first week of the #MeToo movement to better understand the reach of such revelations. Based on posters' follower count, we took the 25%-75% range of followers from users with such experiences and calculated a lower bound range on the number of Twitter user who may have seen a first-person revelation. This simplistic calculation provided a range of 5,955,342 to 34,251,628 Twitter users for the reach, which we believe is a substantial lower bound (Multimedia Appendix 3).
We believe the reported reach is an underestimate, because we did not include replies or retweets and our algorithm has a higher false negative rate. We did not examine the network of people who reveal events, which could be highly overlapping and would mean that many users would have seen multiple tweets with revelations. Furthermore, the distribution of followers who posted about sexual assault does not seem to vary substantially from the distribution of followers for Twitter users overall (Multimedia Appendix 4). Finally, we only captured posts on Twitter. Many were also posting #MeToo posts on other social media platforms such as Facebook.
Words contained in Tweets that consistently predict a revelation of an early experience of sexual abuse or assault (most predictive words categorized).
Textbox 2. Words contained in Tweets that consistently predict a revelation of an early experience of sexual abuse or assault (most predictive words categorized).
Table 1. Counts and percent of #MeToo tweets with disclosures of sexual abuse/assault and early experience tweets by date.
Date Total, na Abuse/assault, n (%) Early experience, n (%)
10/15/17 371 43 (11.59) 25 (6.74)
10/16/17 5987 817 (13.65) 420 (7.02)
10/18/17 1155 113 (9.78) 54 (4.68)
10/19/17 676 57 (8.43) 21 (3.11)
aNumber of geotagged novel English language tweets in United States.
Table 2. Demographic characteristics of abuse/assault and early life experience samples among unique Twitter users.
Characteristic US census, %a Twitter overall, %b Abuse/assault sample (N=1168), %b,c Early experience sample (N=612), %b,c
Male 49.2 45.8 10.6 9.2
Female 50.8 54.2 89.4 90.8
≤19 25.4 25.02 15.2 13.1
20-24 6.70 45.33 25.5 24.1
25-29 7.10 16.10 20 20
30-34 6.70 7.16 17.8 22
35-39 6.60 2.40 8.1 7.3
40-49 12.5 3.25 9.7 9
50-59 13.3 0.49 2.6 3.7
≥60 21.7 0.25 1 0.8
White/Caucasian 60.7 78.7 90.7 89.8
Hispanic 18.1 7.6 6.2 6.1
African American 13.4 13.1 2.6 3.3
Asian 5.8 0.6 0.4 0.8
Native American/Pacific Islander 1.5 —d — —
aAge distribution based on 2017 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates (July 1, 2017).
bProportions provided by Demographics Pro on October 18, 2018.
cBased on our classification in the analytical sample of geotagged novel English language tweets in the United States.
dNot available.
We conduct the first quantitative text analysis of the content of the early conversation in the #MeToo movement on Twitter, which was the largest hashtag movement on Twitter in 2017 [24] and the largest public discourse on sexual violence. We use machine learning to provide exemplars of disclosures during the first week of the movement. The most predictive words create an archetype of the content of tweets with the revelation of sexual assault/abuse. They include words that we would expect like "grope" and "rape" as well as states like "drunk," "asleep," and "afraid." Based on our models, 11% of novel tweets in the first week of the movement publicly revealed an experience of sexual assault/abuse and 6% revealed an early life experience of sexual assault/abuse. The initial women sharing were predominately white women aged 25-50 years. Tweets from older posters suggest that these experiences were lodged into these women's memories and were not inconsequential passing events. Notably, African Americans were underrepresented relative to their Twitter presence in this early conversation. Moreover, given the connectivity possible on Twitter, we estimate that between 6 and 34 million Twitter users may have been exposed to at least one such detailed revelation.
There are key limitations to this study that should be noted. First, based on financial considerations, we could not extract all novel English language posts during the first week of the #MeToo movement. Instead, we chose to focus on those geotagged within the United States. This restriction made the purchase of almost all the tweets that fit this category possible. To examine the representativeness of these tweets, we examined time patterns relative to all #MeToo posts and novel English language #MeToo posts (Figure 3). This analysis suggests that the timing of novel English language geotagged tweets was not different from novel English language tweets. However, if users who allow Twitter to geotag tweets systematically revealed sexual assault/abuse events at a different rate than those who do not allow Twitter to geotag their tweets, then our estimates may be inaccurate. However, we noted that users would have likely enabled geotagging on Twitter at some time prior to their MeToo tweet. Thus, allowing geotagging is not necessarily related to the MeToo tweet. Second, we include only English tweets on the topic of #MeToo even though there were similar movements in different languages (such as #YoTambien or #BalanceTonPorc), and we did note examine tweets outside the United States. For example UK-based or Canada-based English language #MeToo tweets were not included in our data. Again, there could be systematic differences that would affect our estimates, and thus, we acknowledge that our estimates reflect the conversation in the United States. Third, while we examined the time dynamics of many related or counter hashtag movements happening the same week, such as #HimThough, #Ibelieveyou, #Ihearyou, #Iwillnot, and #howIwillchange, we did not include these in our analyses because these hashtags were in response to the #MeToo posts. The content of tweets with these other hashtags were less likely to have revelations of sexual assault/abuse, but rather just voice support. Future analyses could examine who voiced support rather than who revealed events. Fourth, we did not conduct network analysis examining common retweets, which would have had much greater reach. Our focus was on novel revelations that were rarely retweeted relative to support statements, which were often retweeted. Fifth, we only examined the first week of the movement. This was a deliberate choice because the movement went in many directions afterward, with calls to stop posting traumatic events because they triggered women [25] or demands that men post instead of women having to post and relive their trauma. Finally, many tweets were ambiguous, revealing that something happened but without enough detail to determine if there was abuse or assault. Nonetheless, we used a consistent method based on our reading of thousands of tweets. The NPV and PPV of the trained machine learning estimates were good, based on our annotation. However, a different pair of annotators may have had slightly different estimates.
Despite the noted limitations, our results highlight the magnitude of the mass sharing of personal experiences of sexual assault/abuse, filled with narratives of early life experience, which enabled the spread of the #MeToo movement and had a broad reach across Twitter. Further, these tweets and the archetypes presented here provide rich details to augment existing statistics captured traditionally from survey data and small in-depth studies of sexual assault and abuse survivors. The archetype provides a picture of what the public saw. The candid and revealing statements reminded followers and the public alike of the magnitude sexual violence and how it is often first experienced in early life and hidden. Therefore, the descriptive narratives could be used in public health survey development to assess whether there has been a change or a deeper public understanding of the prevalence, early life experience, and enduring trauma of sexual assault and abuse.
The summary of the content of tweets presented in this study highlights the initial conversation and demographics of participants in the conversation in the early stages of the #MeToo movement. Although our results present a snapshot of the public discourse on sexual violence and the initial participants, future work could examine the content and directions of the national conversation, which has since taken many directions and varies by populations.
Details of the selection process.
PDF File (Adobe PDF File), 61KB
All versus novel tweets: example table.
PDF File (Adobe PDF File), 284KB
Estimates of number, proportion, and reach of MeToo tweets from Oct 14 to 21, 2017.
PDF File (Adobe PDF File), 9KB
Comparison of Twitter followers for abuse/assault and early experience sample against all twitter users.
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API: application programming interface
LASSO: least absolute shrinkage and selection operator
NPV: negative predictive value
OLS: ordinary least squares model
PPV: positive predictive value
SVM: support vector machine
Edited by G Eysenbach; submitted 26.02.19; peer-reviewed by A Daughton, A Benis; comments to author 28.03.19; revised version received 28.06.19; accepted 07.07.19; published 03.09.19
©Sepideh Modrek, Bozhidar Chakalov. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 03.09.2019.
Modrek S, Chakalov B


text:
Graduates 2019-20
Infection Prevention Measures
73rd Congregation (2013)
The Honourable WONG Yan-lung
Doctor of Laws
An advocate of the rule of law, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once said, "It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens." His insistence that no man, not even a ruler, is above the law gave rise to the concept of the law having inherent authority. Since the handover in 1997, the rule of law has become a cornerstone of Hong Kong's political system, and one of its core social values. The Secretary for Justice, as the chief legal advisor of the Chief Executive and the Hong Kong government, assumes the responsibility of criminal prosecution, and is committed to protecting public interests and human rights. He is the embodiment of Hong Kong's rule of law, a role model for the city's legal professionals. This individual shoulders great responsibility, and must be both courageous enough to tackle challenges and capable of contributing to the social good. He must have outstanding legal qualifications and sincere affection for the people of Hong Kong.
Mr Wong Yan-lung is a native of Chaozhou, Guangdong Province. The eldest son in the family, he was born in October 1963 to Mr Wong Kam-lit, a hawker of ice-cream and soft drinks in Wan Chai. As an honest man who refused to gamble or borrow money, Mr Wong Senior led an austere life and used his meagre earnings to support his family. Though they were poor, they were happy, and the children's education was not neglected. As the eldest son, Mr Wong understood his father's hopes and expectations and worked hard at school to meet them. When school was out, he helped his father peddle in the street without complaint.
Hardworking and intelligent, Mr Wong excelled at his studies. He entered the famed Queen's College with outstanding examination results. Mr Wong was a high achiever, earning scholarships year after year and being chosen as the school's head prefect. He performed particularly well in the subjects of arts. With his quick wit and eloquence, Mr Wong was also a frequent and renowned participant in the school's debate competitions. Though young, he harboured lofty ambitions. One of his articles published in a Queen's College journal reflected his discontent and regret over the public's lack of sense of belonging in the wake of the handover. To help improve the lot of the lower class and protect people as a whole, Mr Wong selected the arts stream for his high school studies, paving the way to his study of law in university. Queen's College was at the time known for its science subjects, which most top students selected, and thus his choice was a concern for the school. Nevertheless, Mr Wong stood firm in his decision, in spite of the advice of the principal. He scored 7 A's in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, 3 A's and 1 B in the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination, qualifying for a Prince Phillip Scholarship to the school of law at Magdalene College in the University of Cambridge. At this, one of the world's most prestigious universities, studying beside outstanding students from around the world, he had to put in extra effort. Mr Wong persevered with only his memory of what he heard in lectures and diligent library study, graduating from Cambridge with a BA in Law and an MA in Law with flying colours. He was called to the Bar in England and in Hong Kong both in 1987, and in 2002, at the young age of 38, he was appointed Senior Counsel. He was elected a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 2007, and was conferred an Honorary Fellowship by Magdalene College in 2009. His successes in both the academic and professional fields have been truly remarkable.
A renowned Confucian quote says, "A noble man enlightens people and shapes customs by first educating the people." Through education, the saying explains, an individual can better contribute to society by educating others and serving as a moral example. When he completed his studies in England, Mr Wong's vision of serving society by standing for the people and impartially upholding the law led him to return to Hong Kong and became a pupil to Mr Andrew Li Kwok-nang, who later became the city's Chief Justice. Mr Wong sat as a Deputy High Court Judge of the Court of First Instance, and served as the Chairman of the Special Committee on Legal Education of the Hong Kong Bar Association. On 17 October 2005, former Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie resigned, and Mr Wong was approached by the government to succeed her. Modest as always, Mr Wong gave the offer serious consideration and finally accepted on the grounds that the position will allow him to uphold the rule of law and maintain social justice. He became the youngest person in Hong Kong's history to take on this post. The news was well received by the public, the media thoroughly covered the story of his rise through hard work, dubbing it 'the story of Hong Kong'.
Following the Reunification in 1997, Hong Kong has operated under the principle of "One
Country, Two Systems", a policy of high autonomy based on the Basic Law. However, under Article 158 (Paragraph 1) of the Basic Law, the power of interpretation of the Basic Law is vested in the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (SCNPC).
On 15 May 2008, FG Hemisphere Associates LLC brought an action in the Hong Kong courts against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo) in an effort to enforce arbitration awards regarding a debt owed by the government of the Congo. Hong Kong's Courts of First Instance granted the plaintiff the relief sought against the Congo. On 7 July 2008, the Congolese government requested the court to reserve the ruling, arguing that the Congo had immunity as a state and the Hong Kong courts had no jurisdiction over a sovereign country. There were heated debates between the plaintiff and defendant on whether absolute immunity applied under Hong Kong's common law system after the handover. It was a see-saw battle and the result would have significant impact. If it was not handled properly, it might weaken people's confidence in the rule of law of Hong Kong. Mr Wong was cautious in handling the case as Intervener. On the one hand, he had to respect the independence of Hong Kong's judiciary, but on the other, the issue involved sovereignty matters. The case thus posed a tough challenge as to how the new constitutional order under the Basic Law should be observed. On 8 June 2011, the Court of Final Appeal handed down the provisional ruling, a 3-2 decision in favour of the defendant. It said, "Subject to the Standing Committee's interpretation of the provisions concerned, we make the following Orders, namely:…That it be declared and a Declaration granted that the HKSAR courts have no jurisdiction over the 1st defendant in the present proceedings." In accordance with the Basic Law, the ruling was subsequently submitted to the SCNPC. On 26 August 2011, the SCNPC reaffirmed the ruling of the Court of Final Appeal in its statement of interpretation. It was a win-win result for all sides: the handling and the development of the case demonstrated respect for the principle of judicial independence for Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal while also reaffirming the SCNPC's status to interpret the Basic Law. Moreover, the case had reinforced the understanding and trust between the authorities of the Mainland and the judiciary of Hong Kong. On the day that the Court of Final Appeal announced the ruling, nothing changed in the city - not the landscapes of Victoria Harbour. Certainly not the low-key style of Mr Wong, who took no credit for the decision.
During his tenure as Hong Kong's Secretary for Justice, Mr Wong dedicated himself to strengthening ties with overseas bodies providing legal services. He convinced the Hague Conference on Private International Law to set up its Asia Pacific Regional Office in Hong Kong, a move hailed as an endorsement of Hong Kong's position in legal service. Mr Wong also led a team of representatives from various professions to promote the versatile functions of mediation and arbitration, and initiated the enactment of the new Mediation Ordinance, successfully elevating the city's international status as a dispute resolution centre.
An accomplished member of society's elite but born among its poor, Mr Wong did not fail to give back to the underprivileged. In 1991, he joined the Christian Concern for the Homeless Association, a charitable group founded by Christians, happily visiting the homeless, chatting with them and even helping them shave. In 1996, he wed fellow Cambridge graduate, Esther Chan, and the couple donated all of their wedding gift money - hundreds of thousands of dollars - to the Christian Concern for the Homeless Association, in an illustration of their generosity and goodwill. Mr Wong also contributed significantly to tackling drug problems among young people, even leading a high-level task force on youth drug abuse and helping to establish relevant policies in the prevention of juvenile drug abuse. He has also expressed his concern about the problems facing young people from lowincome families, and encourages them to make a determined effort to strive and excel in adversity, as he did.
Today, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, we should be proud of Mr Wong, who was born in the same month and year of the University. From humble beginnings, Mr Wong achieved success through hard work and dedication. He was not afraid to shoulder responsibilities and make contributions. In his seven-year tenure as Secretary for Justice, he contributed significantly to the implementation of the Basic Law and protection of rule of law in the city. His success story sets an example and has an inspiring, far-reaching effect for all Hong Kong people, particularly for the poor and for hardworking students. Mr Vice-Chancellor, I have the great honour of presenting to you The Honourable Wong Yan-lung for the award of the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
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What are the inner makings of Egypt's democracy movement? (Part 1 of 2) - Daily News Egypt
Opinion What are the inner makings of Egypt's democracy movement? (Part 1 of 2)
What are the inner makings of Egypt's democracy movement? (Part 1 of 2)
In order to answer this question regarding the future of Egypt's democracy movement, we must first stop and look at the parties that make up its internal structure. This will require that we analyse in detail each party within the movement, in order to evaluate their performance and measure their strength in comparison to other …
Farid Zahran September 24, 2013 1 Comment
In order to answer this question regarding the future of Egypt's democracy movement, we must first stop and look at the parties that make up its internal structure. This will require that we analyse in detail each party within the movement, in order to evaluate their performance and measure their strength in comparison to other parties. In short, we will be forced to give our opinions and estimations regarding each party, despite the fact that doing so may inspire anger and outrage amongst the parties themselves, who may view such opinions as belittling their role, influence and strength within the political spectrum. Such parties may also claim that in the process of providing such opinions we are classifying and labeling them in a way that is inaccurate according to their core beliefs. However monitoring and analysing this movement is necessary and urgent in order to paint an accurate picture of its future, its role within Egypt's political spectrum in addition to its relationships with other parties and factions. Most important perhaps in this regard, is the relationship of internal factions within the movement, and the potential for such relationships to cause various parties to merge. At the very least, can such relationships lead to the creation of a single, unified front, assembled under one leadership? Or will the relationship between parties be limited to mere casual electoral alliances? Or, will these parties simply disperse, with any hope for a broader alliance eventually dissolving? Answering these questions will require monitoring the parties that make up Egypt's democracy movement, in addition to identifying their political orientation and capabilities.
We must first point out that the democracy movement was composed of three main trends following the outbreak of the 25 January Revolution: the leftist movement, the Nasserist faction, and lastly the country's liberal parties. The first group consisted primarily of the Nationalist Progressive Unionist Party, in addition to a number of other underground leftist groups, among them a number of prominent revolutionary socialists. The second group meanwhile consisted primarily of the Dignity and Arab Democratic Nasserist parties, along with other clandestine organisations led by Nasserist figures from the 1970s. The most prominent parties within the third group were the Wafd and the Democratic Front parties. After the 25 January Revolution however, a number of new parties began to crop up onto the political scene, including the Constitution Party, Egyptian Social Democratic Party and Justice Party, all of whom came together to represent the social democratic movement. This was a new movement, whose goals and convictions had never before been so clearly defined and with such force. Of the other parties that emerged after the 25 January Revolution was the Free Egyptians Party, a liberal organisation, in addition to the Socialist Popular Alliance, and the Socialist Party of Egypt, both hailing from the leftist camp (although the latter was unable to obtain proper authorisation to register as an official party). Many revolutionary socialists after the outbreak of the revolution sought to continue their activities without registering as official parties. The Dignity and Arab Democratic Nasserist parties remained the strongest within the Nasserist camp, eventually being joined by the National Conciliation and People's Nasserist Conference parties.
Within the leftist camp, there also existed the National Progressive Unionist party, which, according to the opinion of most observers, lost much of its credibility and influence during Mubarak's reign, the result of accusations launched which alleged that the party had remained loyal to the regime. This alleged loyalty spawned from the belief held by party members that the primary political conflict raging in Egypt was between that of the country's revolutionary forces and the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organisations. This took precedence in their minds over the second, lesser of the two conflicts, which was that between the country's revolutionary forces and Egypt's power structure. Based on this analysis the party possessed no qualms in allying with Egypt's power structure, or at the very least failing to oppose it. This led many analysts and observers to claim that the party had become somewhat of an appendage to the regime, having entered into deals with authorities to secure a specified number of seats in local and parliamentary elections. Many members of the National Progressive Unionist party eventually defected from within its ranks, and, with individuals from other organisations, helped create the Socialist Popular Alliance. The Socialist Popular Alliance is largely considered the most attractive and influential of the leftist parties, perhaps due to its success in incorporating youth organisations who helped launch the 25 January Revolution, in addition to the charisma and performance of its Chairman, Abd al-Ghafar Shakr, in addition to a number of other leaders who trace their roots back to the 1970s. Since then, revolutionary socialists, despite their small number, have maintained a prominent place within the leftist movement, partly because of the influence they wield amongst rank and file members, but also due to their organisational skills. The Alliance was also very successful in attracting members from other political parties, such as the Socialist Party of Egypt, who in turn became weaker as a result. The ability of the Alliance to attract a wide range of organisations and personalities to within its ranks served simultaneously as a gift and a curse, as the wide variety of experiences held by its members made it more seasoned as a political organisation, however also made it increasingly subject to ideological division and in turn political paralysis.
Within the social leftist framework there exists a competition and struggle between all parties to become the official representative of the country's peasants, laborers and working classes. Such parties encounter problems however due to the fact that most of their members come from the country's middle class intelligentsia. The leftist movement has achieved some small successes in that it has been able to successfully ally itself with Egypt's labor movement, however unfortunately they have been unable to do the same with the country's peasantry.
The Nasserist camp suffers from the fact that the National Conciliation Party and the Popular Nasserist Conference possess small memberships and have not been able to obtain the proper authorisation required to register as official parties. Meanwhile the oldest and most respected of the parties, the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party, has become prey to internal divisions, a fact which has significantly weakened its stance within the Egyptian political spectrum. The Dignity Party had previously been considered an important political player, particularly in helping to breathe life back into the country's Nasserist student movements in the 1970s. However in recent years the party has lost much of its appeal for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which being the rise of internal conflicts between many of its founding members. Other reasons include its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood during the previous Parliamentary elections, in addition to the rise of Hamdin Sabahi as a Presidential candidate, whose candidacy ended up hurting the party more than it benefitted from it, contrary to the expectations of its members. Why was this? Much of the party's initial popularity can be attributed back to the personality of Sabahi himself. However as his popularity increased both before and during the Presidential elections, Sabahi came to view the party as a burden to his popularity, and so sought to put distance between himself and the organisation.
The Nasserists could increase their power if they can manage to unite their disparate factions, and build a single unified platform with Hamdin Sabahi at its head. Obtaining the support of Abd al-Hakim Abd al-Nasser, son of the late President Gamal Abd al-Nasser, would also help in this regard. Regardless of Nasser's qualifications or abilities as a politician, bringing him into the fold would increase the Nasserists credibility and strenghten their cause, which in turn would help to unite their ranks even further. Only in this way can the Nasserists exist once again as a prominent movement within Egypt's political spectrum.
Nasserists enjoy the most widespread influence and support among the low and mid-ranking levels of Egypt's state bureaucracy, in addition to within labor movements and amongst public sector employees, particularly from within the country's worker unions. They are similar to the propagators of the strong, hegemonic state theory, in that they both seek to rely on state bureaucracy as their primary source of strength.
Topics: 25 January 30 june Daily News Egypt DNE Egypt Farid Zahran politics
https://dailyfeed.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/09/24/what-are-the-inner-makings-of-egypts-democracy-movement-part-1-of-2/
September 24, 2013 Breaking News


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THE CITIZEN BUREAU | 9 JANUARY, 2020
Why India Does Not Need The CAA-NPR-NRIC
Open Letter by former civil servants
Concerned Citizens, a group of retired civil servants have written an open letter to citizens on the controversy over the Citizenship Amendment Act, the National Register of Indian Citizens and the National Population Register, straightening the facts.They point out that while the government now seeks to delink the three, they considered it their duty as former civil servants to "inform you that the three issues are linked, acquaint you with the facts regarding the NPR, NRIC and the CAA and emphasise why these measures need to be resolutely opposed."
The letter states:
1. There is no need for the NPR and NRIC
Both the NPR and NRIC exercises flow out of the amendments in 2003 to the Citizenship Act, 1955 ("1955 Act") and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 ("2003 Rules") framed by the then NDA government in 2003. The NPR has nothing to do with the Census of India, which is conducted every ten years and is next due in 2021. While the Census collects information about all residents of India without listing their names, the NPR is a list of names of all those who have lived in India for over six months, regardless of their nationality. A Population Register will contain the list of persons usually residing within a specified local area (village/town/ward/demarcated area).
The NRIC will effectively be a subset of the Population Registers for the entire country. The 2003 Rules provide for verification of the details in the Population Register by the Local Registrar (normally a taluka or town functionary) who will separate out cases of doubtful citizenship and conduct further enquiries. After carrying out enquiries in respect of residents whose citizenship status is suspect, the Local Registrar will prepare a draft Local Register of Indian Citizens, which would exclude those not able to establish, through documentary proof, their claim to be citizens of India.
It is at this stage that the experience of the citizens of Assam can cause apprehensions in the minds of those who are required to establish their citizenship, whether or not they profess any religion. The NPR 2020, unlike the NPR 2010, asks not only for the names of the parents of the resident, but also seeks to also record their dates and places of birth. A person who is not able to furnish these details for his/her parents or, for that matter, for himself/herself, could well be classified a "doubtful citizen".
The 2003 amendments to the 1955 Act (vide Sections 3 (b), 3 (c) and 14A) and the consequent introduction of the 2003 Rules seem to indicate an undue obsession about illegal migrants, without any factual basis. We fail to understand the need for a nationwide identification of "illegal migrants", which is what the NRIC in effect amounts to, when census statistics over the past seven decades do not show any major demographic shifts, except in certain pockets in some areas of North-Eastern and Eastern India adjoining our neighbouring countries.
We are apprehensive that the vast powers to include or exclude a person from the Local Register of Indian Citizens that is going to be vested in the bureaucracy at a fairly junior level has the scope to be employed in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner, subject to local pressures and to meet specific political objectives, not to mention the unbridled scope for large-scale corruption. Added to this is the provision for objections to the draft Local Register from any person.
The Assam NRC exercise has thrown up the dangers of such a large-scale exercise: lakhs of citizens have been made to spend their life's savings running from pillar to post to establish their citizenship credentials. Worrying reports are already coming in of people in different parts of India rushing in panic to obtain the necessary birth documents. The problem is magnified in a country where the maintenance of birth records is poor, coupled with highly inefficient birth registration systems. Errors of inclusion and exclusion have been a feature of all large-scale surveys in India, the Below Poverty Line survey and the Socio-Economic Caste Census being prime examples. The recently completed NRC exercise in Assam has been equally error-ridden and has led to major discontent. Indeed the State Government itself, with the BJP in power, has rejected its own NRC data, an extremely ludicrous scenario.
The provisions of the CAA, coupled with rather aggressive statements over the past few years from the highest levels of this government, rightly cause deep unease in India's Muslim community, which has already faced discrimination and attacks on issues ranging from allegations of love jihad to cattle smuggling and beef consumption. That the Muslim community has had to face the brunt of police action in recent days only in those states where the local police is controlled by the party in power at the centre only adds credence to the widespread feeling that the NPR-NRIC exercise could be used for selective targeting of specific communities and individuals.
Added to the inconvenience that the NPR would put the common person through is the unnecessary expenditure on the NPR exercise, when data which is now to be gathered is already available through the Aadhaar system: these include name, address, date of birth, father/husband's name and gender. Most Indian citizens are already covered by Aadhaar. The purpose of gathering a lot of the additional data (over and above the Aadhaar details) is unclear and will only give rise to the reasonable apprehension that the bona fide citizen could be enmeshed in an interminable, costly bureaucratic exercise if his/her citizenship status comes under doubt.
Our group of former civil servants, with many years of service in the public sphere, is firmly of the view that both the NPR and the NRIC are unnecessary and wasteful exercises, which will cause hardship to the public at large and will also entail public expenditure that is better spent on schemes benefiting the poor and disadvantaged sections of society. They also constitute an invasion of the citizens' right to privacy, since a lot of information, including Aadhaar, mobile numbers and voter IDs will be listed in a document, with scope for misuse.
2. Why authorise widespread setting up of Foreigners' Tribunals and detention camps?:
The Foreigners (Tribunals) Amendment Order, 2019 (issued on 30 May 2019) has unnecessarily stoked fears that Foreigners' Tribunals can now be set up on the orders of any District Magistrate in India and is the precursor to a widespread exercise to identify "illegal migrants". While the central government may contend that there is no such intention, it was surely impolitic, given the prevailing atmosphere in Assam and elsewhere, to issue such blanket orders delegating powers for constituting Foreigners' Tribunals.
The experience with Foreigners' Tribunals in Assam has been, to put it bluntly, traumatic for those at the receiving end. After running the gamut of gathering documents and answering objections to their citizenship claims, "doubtful citizens" have also had to contend with these Tribunals, the composition and functioning of which were highly discretionary and arbitrary. Consequently, a number of citizens lost their lives in the quest for affirming citizenship or have had to suffer the indignity of incarceration in detention camps.
There have also been media reports, not denied by the Government of India, that orders for setting up detention camps have been given to all state governments. We are frankly bemused by the Prime Minister's recent statement that no such camps are in existence, when reports have documented the construction of such camps in states as far apart as Goalpara in Assam and Nelamangala in Karnataka and the intention to construct a detention centre in Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra.
The Government of India has not come out with any statistics to show that the "illegal migrants" problem in India is so severe that it requires the large-scale construction of detention camps all over the country.
3. The constitutional and moral untenability of the CAA:
We have our grave reservations about the constitutional validity of the CAA provisions, which we also consider to be morally indefensible. We would like to emphasise that a statute that consciously excludes the Muslim religion from its purview is bound to give rise to apprehensions in what is a very large segment of India's population. A formulation that focused on those suffering persecution (religious, political, social) in any country in the world would not only have calmed local apprehensions but would also have been appreciated by the international community.
In its current formulation, the CAA does not even mention the word "persecuted", probably because using this word in the context of Afghanistan and Bangladesh would have marred India's relations with these countries. Given that the Government of India has powers to grant citizenship after a migrant has completed eleven years in India, it would be instructive to know whether the Government of India has cleared all pending cases of "illegal migrants" till end-2008.
Since the discretion to grant citizenship and to exempt individuals/groups from the purview of the Passport Act, 1920 and the Foreigners Act, 1946 lies entirely with the Government of India, this discretion could have been exercised on a case by case basis by the Government of India without any need to go through the exercise of the CAA and mentioning specific communities from specific countries.
What has given rise to grave apprehensions about the intentions of the Government of India has been the rash of statements by Ministers of the Government of India in recent times, linking the NRIC and the CAA. The Prime Minister's statement at a public meeting in Delhi on 22 December that the CAA and the NRIC are not linked contradicts the averments of his Home Minister on repeated occasions in various fora.
In such a welter of conflicting and confusing utterances, it is hardly surprising that the ordinary citizen is left bewildered and is overcome by unknown fears, more so when government has not entered into any dialogue on this issue. At a time when the economic situation in the country warrants the closest attention of the government, India can ill afford a situation where the citizenry and the government enter into confrontation on the roads. Nor is it desirable to have a situation where the majority of State Governments are not inclined to implement the NPR/NRIC, leading to an impasse in centre-state relations, so crucial in a federal set up like India. Above all, we see a situation developing where India is in danger of losing international goodwill and alienating its immediate neighbours, with adverse consequences for the security set-up in the sub-continent. India also stands to lose its position as a moral beacon guiding many other countries on the path to liberal democracy.
We, therefore, urge our fellow citizens to insist, as we do, that the Government of India pay heed to the voice of the citizens of India and take the following steps at the earliest:
Repeal Sections 14A and 18 (2) (ia) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, pertaining to the issue of national identity cards and its procedures and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 in its entirety.
Withdraw the Foreigners (Tribunals) Amendment Order, 2019 and withdraw all instructions for construction of detention camps.
Repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
Signed: CONSTITUTIONAL CONDUCT GROUP
Cover Photograph: 24 hour protests in Bengaluru


PoppaFunkBand plays New Orleans Funk, Jazz, R&B, Rock, and Reggae. Created to pay tribute to such artists as Prince, The Neville Brothers, and Dumpstafunk, and featuring songs influenced by Estelle, and Susan Tedeschi, among others, PFB aims to get your toes tapping and body moving! PFB plays crowd favorites and some obscure gems from the 70's, 80's, and 90's, along with Funk, R&B and Soul of today, mixed with original arrangements and compositions. Since 2011, PFB is honored to continue to have residencies at some of the finest Music Clubs in New York City. Chris "CC Thane" on guitar and vocals is a veteran of the New York City music scene. He has been a performer on the same bill as Damian Marley. He has also performed with NYC Reggae legend Ossie Dellimore. Robin on vocals is an amazing talent who "brings it" at every show! The regular lineup is rounded out by Sean on drums and Corrado on bass. We are looking forward to seeing you at our next show. Come out and see musicians doing what they love to do!


text: Q: How to execute python script in android application with Embed python interpreter ? I need to create a app for to execute python script. This is basically a learnning application for python beginners. Student can write python code and then they run the python file it should show the result. Basically this app provide python lessons for students, according to the lesson i need to provide testing environment for them. So how can i do this ?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


iGraft Global hair services – transplant & hair restoration centers are located at upmarket locations in metro cities in India. Our centers have integrated hair with state of the art equipment, that righteously makes it stand apart from the crowd and thus are known across the globe to have the best hair transplant & hair restoration centers in India.
Major reasons for hair loss or specifically, baldness are genetics, stress, poor quality of air and drinking water, pollution, etc. In extreme cases, hair loss is also caused by specific types of cancers, a thyroid condition, medications and anabolic steroid. Most men who suffer from genetic hair loss can trace the roots back to their immediate family members.
Most men who suffer from hair loss, a hormone is known as DHT or Di-Hydro-testosterone attaches itself to the hair roots in a destructive manner. It stops the hair roots from receiving nourishment through the supply of blood flow, oxygen and platelets. It is important to consult a hair clinic when hair loss is in its early stages as DHT deposited at roots can be cleaned in a non-surgical manner. On the contrary, in late stages, only surgical methods are effective at treating baldness.
Hair Transplant is a surgical method of extracting hair from a healthy region of the scalp and implanting them in the area which is displaying bald patches. It is important to note here that people usually face baldness on top of their scalp and not on sides and on the back. This happens as the hair on the back of the scalp and sides are DHT resistant and hence are used for hair growth. In surgeries where transplanting more than 6000 hair grafts is necessary, surgeons also use body hair to replace the balding area of the scalp.
If you want to ensure quality hair follicles and minimum wastage of hair follicles, it would be useful to consider a Direct Follicle Implant (DFI). In this treatment, hair strands extracted are immediately implanted onto the scalp. As hair strands are not exposed to the physical environment, they do not risk infection, bacteria exposure and other risks. Studies have proven that DFI treatment increases the success rate of hair transplants by improving the quality of grafts available to surgeons. To know about this treatment in detail, click here.
The air of Delhi is filled with the authority of a splendid capital. The wide roads, the prominence of red sirens, the unshakable and confident spirit of Delhites can only be found in a deserving capital. Much like the entrepreneurial spirit found in other fields in Delhi, hair clinic area is not an exception to this rule. There are many competitive hair clinics in Delhi. But, we are proud to say that we are the only one who offers the DFI treatment exclusively in Delhi. So, if you roaming the streets of the Defence colony for a hair transplant in Delhi, do visit our VIP studio.
Hair transplant costs in Delhi range between 40 Rupees to a 100 Rupees per graft. However, hair transplant costs do vary quite a bit depending on each case. There are some rules of thumb that one can follow to understand their individual costs. These include knowing the required number of grafts, your desired procedure, the capacity of your donor area and your desired density. Feeling confused? Give us a call at 1-800-3000-6342 to know the exact cost of your hair transplant in Delhi.


text:
GAIL reports 69 per cent plunge in fourth quarter net profit at Rs 260 crore
The company provided for an impairment loss of Rs 783 crore out of carrying value of investment of Rs 974 crore.Sanjeev Choudhary | ET Bureau | May 23, 2017, 08:26 IST
New Delhi: State-run GAIL's fourth quarter profit dropped 69 per cent to Rs 260 crore on impairment of investment in Ratnagiri Power plant.
The company provided for an impairment loss of Rs 783 crore out of carrying value of investment of Rs 974 crore in the joint venture entity of Ratnagiri Power plant.
The sales for the Jan-March quarter rose to Rs 13,643 crore from Rs 11,738 crore in the year ago period.
During the quarter, the company registered growth in physical performance in all segments as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year with petrochemicals sales up 59 per cent, natural gas marketing & transmission volumes up 11 per cent and 6 per cent respectively and LPG transmission volumes up 22 per cent.
Tags : Oil & Gas, GAIL, Natural gas, financial results, New Delhi, et now, Business


text:
Duchon János, Joannes Duchon (Mosóc, 1596. június 21. – Besztercebánya, 1637. november) evangélikus lelkész, költő.

Élete

Duchon János kvacsai lelkész fia volt. Wittenbergben tanult 1622. május 13-ától; 1627-ben besztercebányai tanító és lelkész lett.

Munkái

Synopsis naturalis scientiae. Vittebergae, 1624.

Két epigrammája van Scharffius (Joann.) Metaphisicajában (1625.) és saját kezűleg beírva egy másik könyvbe.

Források

További információk

 Mészáros András: A felső-magyarországi iskolai filozófia lexikona. [Pozsony], Kalligram, 2003.
 Új magyar irodalmi lexikon. Főszerk. Péter László. Bp., Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994.

Magyar evangélikus lelkészek
Magyar költők
1596-ban született személyek
1637-ben elhunyt személyek

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


(ORLANDO) -- Medical students from across the country solicited their fellow students as well as residents and physicians at the AMA House of Delegates meeting to donate to the UTMB Medical Student Recovery Fund.
"I'm sure you all remember back to your student days and how hard it can be because we don't have any financial cushion to fall back on," Baylor College of Medicine student Meredith Williams told the delegates.
The moneys collected for the fund will go directly to students at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), whose textbooks, computers, supplies, and personal belongs were lost, destoryed, or damaged by the flood waters of Hurricane Ike.
UTMB is the oldest medical school west of the Mississippi and home to more than 1,000 medical students. The institution trains about 20 percent of Texas' new physicians.
You can contribute to the fund via the Texas Medical Association Foundation's secure Web site.


text:
ZOOMS IS BANKING ON FRESH FUEL OFFER
NOVELDA SOMMERS Daily PressDaily Press
Competition has driven the chain to look for ways to offer cheaper gas, such as developing its own brand.
Fresh gasoline delivered daily.
The promise appeared on Zooms Inc. gas pumps recently after the Hampton-based convenience store chain stopped selling Citgo gas and started working on its own brand of fuel.
True, gas has a longer shelf-life than, say, bread, but David Allen, CEO and owner of Zooms, which has 14 stores, hopes to convince customers his new store-brand of gas is as reliable as the much better-known brand he used to sell.
His goal is to save customers money. The so-called unbranded gas he now buys from the Giant refinery in Yorktown, which does not have its own retail outlets or marketing campaigns to help support it, is cheaper, Allen said.
That will allow him to shave a little off the prices he charges customers, he said, although he declined to say how much he would be able to lower costs.
"Price and location and convenience and customer service are key," he said. "But price sells fuel."
The Citgo gas he used to buy was delivered by truck from terminals in Chesapeake and Richmond, where it is piped in from refineries in other states. He figures that gives him an edge in the freshness department.
"Everybody knows fresh fuel is better," he said.
Joe DiNapoli, a spokesman for Giant, doesn't think there's much difference between gas fresh from the refinery and gas from the pipeline, at least when it comes to performance.
But it's still a selling point, he said, when a station can tout locally made gas. The local refinery employs about 200 people who work at pumping out 2.6 million gallons of fuel per day to be sold at a number of fuel outlets, possibly for a few pennies less than better-marketed competitors.
"We have no retail, we have no identification, and that's the freedom for David Allen," DiNapoli said.
Gas stations face increasing pressure to compete with grocery stores and discount chains, which increasingly offer cheaper gas, said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, an Alexandria-based trade group.
As a result, a growing number of chain convenience stores are cutting ties with branded gasoline to go their own way, he said. Fewer than half of all chains offer unbranded gas -- which the chains sell under their own names -- but Lenard said he expects that percentage to grow.
A station that sells branded gas usually has an agreement with a particular petroleum company, such as Citgo, to sell that company's products. In exchange, the gas station might get some marketing help, Lenard said.
If the station has a strong enough identity of its own, it might as well buy cheaper gas and rely on its own reputation and marketing efforts, he said.
Wawa and Sheetz have done so successfully.
"Branded gas may cost a couple of cents more," he said. "Whether you pass that on to your customers is your choice. There can be some cost savings to going unbranded."
Chains that successfully market unbranded gasoline usually have developed brand-loyalty on their own, said Jim Fisher, founder and CEO of IMST Corp., a Houston-based retail location analysis firm. Commonly, these chains offer fresh foods and a number of large, clean stores.
"The major point is not that it's refined locally," Fisher said. "It's that the consumers have confidence in the Zooms brand, which in that market, they do. That's the critical element."
Customer loyalty to a particular chain will only go so far, Lenard said. Pinched between higher prices for just about everything and stagnant wages, consumers are looking for bargains.
"We've seen the impact of places like Wal-Mart turning customers into price vultures," he said. "It has diminished in some customers' eyes the importance of the brand." *


Students will identify the scientific names of given pictures of animals using a dichotomous key. Materials Needed: 2 pages of animal pictures (attached)- Display them on …... ©2015 CIBT Dichotomous Key Lab – Student Section Page 4 But sometimes, instead of using 'classification trees' like the one on the last page, scientists use lists to convey the same information.
Using the dichotomous key, classify an organism that has small or no wings, shorter rear legs, not a horned head and small eyes.
©2015 CIBT Dichotomous Key Lab – Student Section Page 4 But sometimes, instead of using 'classification trees' like the one on the last page, scientists use lists to convey the same information.


text:
You are here: Home > Things to Do > Belfast Music Exhibition and Tour
Belfast Music Exhibition and Tour
Visit Belfast Welcome Centre, 8 - 9 Donegall Square North, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 5GJ
Explore Belfast's proud musical heritage with a dedicated exhibition and guided bus tour.
Did you know that rock superstars Led Zeppelin gave their classic Stairway to Heaven its first live performance at the Ulster Hall in Belfast in 1971?
Or that a cancelled concert in the same city by The Clash in 1977 provoked a riot which inspired Stiff Little Fingers to write the anthem 'Alternative Ulster'?
Facts like these and much more besides are available to music fans and tourists at the Belfast Music Exhibition in the city's Oh Yeah Music Centre on Gordon Street.
From Van Morrison's Astral Weeks to the recording of The Undertones' Teenage Kicks and, most recently, the rise to international fame of rock band Snow Patrol, Belfast and the surrounding area has a musical history to be proud of and this is celebrated in the exhibition.
The exhibition consists of four elements including a series of storyboards plotting the history of Northern Ireland music from folk to Snow Patrol and audio visual displays showing the likes of Them, The Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers and Ruby Murray.
A 'Legends' series of wall displays will hail the great achievers in Northern Ireland music while exhibition cases will showcase some unique rock and roll memorabilia, including the Fender guitar that Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol used to write 'Run' and 'Chasing Cars', a sequined jacket that Henry McCullough wore on tour with Paul McCartney and Wings, and a vintage street sign of Cyprus Avenue, made famous in a Van Morrison song.
Enjoy a guided bus tour through the heart of a great rock and roll city, which starts off at the bished Ulster Hall and includes Van Morrison's childhood home and the site of the old Wizard Studios where the legendary 'Teenage Kicks' was recorded for just £200. The tour finishes with a visit to the Belfast Music Exhibition. Please phone the Visit Belfast Welcome Centre on (028) 9024 6609 for upcoming tour dates.
Exhibition is Free, Music Tour is £8.00 with £6.00 concession
* Exhibition is open from Monday to Friday 12:00 -15:00 and Saturday 12:00 - 17:00
Founded in 1788, Linen Hall Library is a truly unique institution. As the oldest library…
Belfast City Hall
Completed in 1906, Belfast City Hall is a magnificent Baroque Revival 'wedding cake'…
Catalyst Arts Gallery
Catalyst Arts Gallery is an Arists Gallery Space.
PLACE is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the making of great…
QSS Bedford Street
Queen Street Studios (QSS) are an artist lead non profit organisation based in Belfast…
Royal Ulster Rifles Museum
The museum tells the story of the Royal Ulster Rifles from 1793 to 1968. From the raising…
Thomas Andrews, who attended this delightful church with his wife Helen, must have loved…
Presbyterian Historical Society
History of Presbyterianism in Ireland and its congregations, including congregational,…
Belfast Exposed
Born from engagement with the community, Belfast Exposed houses contemporary photography…
The longest established resource in Northern Ireland for artists wanting to work in the…
Albert Memorial Clock
Designed by the architect William J Barre, the figure of Prince Albert was sculpted by…
Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum
The Northern Ireland War Memorial is a 'must see' for anybody with an interest in…
Ulster Historical Foundation
The Ulster Historical Foundation, est. 1956, is a not-for-profit educational charity.…
Belfast Cathedral - The Cathedral Church of St. Anne
Belfast Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral Church of St. Anne, has stood for over 100…
The Belfast Barge
Belfast's first floating visitor attraction, moored on the River Lagan, just minutes from…
St Patrick's Church Belfast
The Gothic Revival St Patrick's was designed by Timonthy Hevey and Mortimer Thomspon and…


The recently released Free Encyclopedia of Interactive Design, Usability and User Experience [interaction-design.org] has been developed under the manifesto of "Democratization of Knowledge", as it aims for people from all the far corners of the world to get free access to world-class educational materials. It also deliberately takes the opposite approach of Wikipedia or other crowd-sourcing initiatives, as all entries are written by leading figures who either invented or contributed significantly to a particular topic.
The website contains various topics that relate to data visualization. For instance, one can enjoy an elaborate introduction on visual representation by Alan Blackwell (with additional commentaries by some renowned professors like Ben Shneiderman, Clive Richards and Brad A. Myers), or more specifically dive into the topic of Data Visualization for Human Perception by Stephen Few (including a blog shortlist on which I will refrain commenting).
Be sure to check out the other topics that have been covered in a chapter, and might well be interesting to you.
Throughout the year I've showcased my favourite website designs findings in the Line25 Sites of the Week roundups. This special end of year post showcases the best of the best, pulling together the awesomest designs from all the 2010 Sites of the Weeks into one showcase of super cool sites.


@GoldenIslesFan. It would be a good game.
COLQUITT will beat BUFORDS brains out!!!!!
The "woodchoppers" are making "stew" out of Brunswick tonight.
Thanks. Even having a tough time getting anything locally here.
@bhsfan: Bowdon 27, Spencer 0 - not sure what quarter.
@ray: We haven't hear from Morgan County tonight, not even a 1Q score.
Anything on the Bowdon-Spencer game?
BTW, Warner Robins has a 10th grade QB named Conner Shaw. Now where have I heard THAT name before?
morgan county / madison . ga.
Walnut Grove opts not to have the running clock in the second half. With 3:04 left in the third, its Monroe Area 68, Walnut Grove 0.
Tift has a good QB, "Tebow-type"
I think it's still Tift 14-10.
@smhsfan: At least you're still beating Fayette County.


Crisis is now brewing at one of the nation's port operation complex, the West Africa Container Terminal (WACT), managed by APM in Onne, Rivers State following the wrongful termination of the appointment of the Nigerian security manager by the Pakistani management of the facility led by Mr. Aamir Khalil Mirza.
It was gathered that the management of the company had allegedly laid off some Managers that worked with the previous administration, a move which was resisted by the Security Manager, Mr. Fubara Awanta.
Following the termination of his appointment without due process, Awanta had petitioned the federal government, the security agencies, the Nigeria Ports Authority and the NIMASA complaining of wrongful termination of appointment and alleging malpractices at the complex.
According to the Petition which was signed by Awanta, the operation of the WACT has been characterized by illegalities, malpractices and work place violence which eventually ended with the wrongful termination of staff employment without recourse to due Process and due diligence.
In the petition addressed to the Managing Director of NPA, Ajia Adiza Bala Usman, Awanta, stated that "I was duly employed as security manager at WACT managed by APM Terminals on 10th August 2009.
He said no sooner had Khalil took over, he began the systematic sacking of Senior management staff that had worked harmoniously with the former Managing Director, Mr. Martins Jacob.
Subsequently, "On 3rd December 2018. I came to work only to find out that my finger print could not access the turnstile to enable me enter into the administrative section of West Africa Container Terminal, Onne.
In addition I have always had good performances as reflected in my appraisals score card from 2009 till 2018. I have not written or sign any letter of resignation neither did i receive and sign any original copy letter terminating my employment with no explanation from the Management of WACT Managed by APM Terminals, even though Aamir has directed the circulation of rejionders that I'm not in the employment of WACT thereby displaying Anti-Labour Practice.
Furthermore Aamir is still boasting that he will sack the remaining Managers that worked with the previous administration.
Awanta said that he does not deserve what happened to him given what he had done for the terminal.
"With my core competencies in national security, conflict resolution, maritime security, port security, intelligence analysis, investigation, business continuity I set up the security architecture that was not in existence in 2009 at WACT.
"This security strategy is still be utilized in the facility currently with a lot of positive achievement ranging from nil sanction from the designated authority from PICOMSS to NIMASA, the receipt of yearly statement of compliance from 2009 till 2018.
"Furthermore the CSR Strategy that I initiated in 2009 has brought about an enduring peace and business continuity with the host communities.
"May I reiterate that I have always had good performance as reflected in my appraisals score card from 2009 till 2018, and have never had any verbal warning, any form of reprimand, gross misconduct from 2009 till 2018.
"Also I have not written or sign any letter of resignation neither did I receive or sign any original copy letter terminating my employment, even though Aamir has directed the circulation of rejoinders that I'm not in the employment of WACT displaying anti-labour practice.
Aamir is known to exhibit act of racism.
He said that Aamir has displayed this act of racism with Onne Port Stakeholders ranging from the Port Manager NPA Onne Port that has complained severally of his unpleasant attitude in meeting forum.
"Also the flat and cargo union executives have complained bitterly of his unfriendly disposition with them. Severally they have threatened to embark on strike action but I had to intervene to prevent untoward development in the terminal that can have a severe impact on the business.
"Furthermore he has had a running battle with Onne community the major host community to the business unit. He will not take professional advisory on CSR strategy despite knowing that the Niger Delta is a complex working environment.
"Based on his racist deposition, he has been on the point with the community which has never been recorded with previous MD's of the terminal. This behaviour is injurious to the business and has affect business continuity.
"In addition his public relations with Customs is regrettable in Onne Port. Personally I have complained about Aamir unprofessional attitude, act of bullying against me to a rep of the security consulting firm (Control Risk) of APM Terminals on 20th October 2018 when the individual came to WACT Onne for a security review.
"I told him that in Feb 2016, Aamir unilaterally refused me to participate in a Hostile Environment Awareness Training in London, despite payment of course fee by APM Terminals corporate headquarters. This course had over 30 security managers from the APM Terminals group that partook in the training.
"In addition, In august 2018 ECOWAS sent an invitation for me as a certified Port Facility Security Officer to participate in a security seminar. He refused me to participate, instead he said he will send someone from the finance department to attend and the person will give me feedback.
He said that the APM Terminals did not carry out due diligence on Aamir because this trait was exhibited by him in his last place of work, Maersk Line Lagos/ Port Harcourt where staff were celebrating when his contract elapsed.
All efforts to get the both the WACT Managed by APM Terminals and Mr. Aamir Khalil's comments proved abortive.
*West Africa Container Terminal, Onne, Rivers State.