The existence of democratic systems of government threatens the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes. Democracy presents unique opportunities and vulnerabilities, including public debate and free expression, which nefarious actors can exploit by spreading false information. Disinformation can propagate rapidly across social networks and further authoritarian efforts to weaken democracy. This research discusses how Russia and China leverage online disinformation across contexts and exploit democracies’ vulnerabilities to further their goals. We create an analytical framework to map authoritarian influence efforts against democracies: (i) through longer term, ambient disinformation, (ii) during transitions of political power, and (iii) during social and cultural divides. We apply this framework to case studies involving Western democracies and neighboring states of strategic importance. We argue that both China and Russia aim to undermine faith in democratic processes; however, they bring different histories, priorities, and strategies while also learning from each other and leveraging evolving technologies. A primary difference between the countries’ disinformation against democracies is their approach. Russia builds on its longstanding history of propaganda for a more direct, manipulation-driven approach, and China invested heavily in technological innovation more recently for a permeating censorship-driven approach. Acknowledging it is impossible to know disinformation’s full scope and impact given the current information landscape, the growing international ambition and disinformation efforts leveraged by authoritarian regimes are credible threats to democracy globally. For democracies to stay healthy and competitive, their policies and safeguards must champion the free flow of trustworthy information. Resilience against foreign online disinformation is vital to achieving fewer societal divides and a flourishing information environment for democracies during peaceful – and vulnerable – times.

This chapter explores the significant impact of the digital age on the realm of literature, focusing specifically on Hebrew poetry as a distinctive case study. This focus is driven by the declining status of literature within Israeli culture and the dynamic state of its reviving literary landscape. The study is structured in two phases: the first delves into practices and phenomena, while the second aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the field’s logic and values by examining different participants and levels. The chapter claims that the necessity of the second phase arises from the current state of the field, where the adaptation of media has become so ingrained that it conceals its influence on literary themes, forms, and language. The chapter addresses this gap using the theoretical framework of mediatization, which explores long-term changes associated with media evolution.

In this chapter, we focus on the meso- and micro-levels of social organisation, below the macro-levels discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. We first discuss social network theory, including crucial concepts such as ties, density and multiplexity, and explain the relationship with innovation diffusion and norm enforcement. We then explore to what extent social network theory can be applied to historical situations, distinguishing between functional and emotional ties. Examples and case studies of historical network studies are taken from English and Afrikaans. The chapter also discusses related models such as coalitions and communities, in particular, communities of practice, text communities and discourse communities. The final part of the chapter addresses individual variation and style shifting on the basis of examples from English and German data.

This chapter is devoted to understanding how the main ideas in graph theory and combinatorics optimization can assist insight-driven problem solving, and thereby, create public impact. The reader sees how such ideas have laid the foundation for apps such as Google Maps and how they are being used to improve our understanding of social networks, design transportation networks, create efficiency schedules for sports events, enhance cryptosystems, and improve the efficiency of supply chains. The reader also learns how analytics scientists have been able to learn from the amazing ability of nature in problem solving (swarm intelligence) and use this to develop effective insight-driven problem solving approaches that can yield powerful insights in addressing complex societal problems.

English historical sociolinguistics traces the transition of a ‘small’ language into a ‘big’ one. Old English was a small language in terms of its regional coverage and number of speakers, whereas Present-day English is a comprehensively documented world language with hundreds of millions of first-language speakers. Its 1500-year history involves gradually developing social structures of different timescales, but it was also affected by abrupt changes brought about by forces such as invasions and pandemics. Sociolinguistics highlights the agency of language users in shaping and changing their language and, consequently, the society they live in. Written records on individual language use are sparse from the earliest periods but multiply as people from different walks of life become literate and pass on data on their linguistic practices. With time, increasing efforts are, however, also expended on regulating usage with the aim of language standardisation.

Palmyra is usually studied for one of three reasons, either its role in the long-distance trade between Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, its distinctive cultural identity as visible in the epigraphic and material record from the city or its rise as an independent regional power in the Near East in the third quarter of the third century AD. While Palmyra was indeed a special place, with a private sorte, or destiny of its own, as Pliny famously expressed it (HN 5.88), the city’s ability to maintain its distinctiveness arguably rested on deep entanglements with her local and regional surroundings. This chapter addresses how the city engaged with its neighbours and its Roman imperial overlords. Actions, events and policies attested in the epigraphic record from the city and from the Palmyrene diaspora in the Roman Empire are discussed in light of theoretical insights from archaeology, sociology and economics. It is argued that Palmyra’s remarkable success built on the city’s ability to connect with the range of social networks that constituted the Roman Empire.

This chapter explores the concept of networks, discussing their relationship to intergroup relations, system stability, and system change. It reviews emerging research that connects group processes with social network analysis, particularly in the context of attitudes and ideological polarisation. Concepts such as nodes and edges are discussed in relation to how systems can be represented, and theories of influence and change. Drawing from the literature on system stability, we discuss the concepts of homeostatic mechanisms (mechanisms that seek to preserve stability) and resilience (the preservation of systems in the face of disruptions), and link these to the literatures in Part 1 on identities, groups, social influence, and collective actions.

This study expands theoretical research on negotiated culture by testing basic assumptions in the context of a German–Japanese joint venture. Data collected by semi-structured interviews are analyzed using textual analysis software to uncover key issues that became catalysts for negotiation. Results include a model of cultural negotiation linking organizational events with issue domains as points of departure for negotiations. Results show that aggregate models of cultural difference are useful only to the extent that they serve as latent conceptual anchors guiding individuals’ cultural responses to events. The study shows that structural/contextual influences together with individuals’ culturally determined sensemaking with regard to specific organizational events are more useful determinants of negotiated outcomes. Authors conclude that, while it is unlikely that we can predict organizational culture formation in complex cultural organizations, we can understand the process of cultural negotiation and as a result be better prepared to monitor and manage in culturally diverse settings.

Chapter 7 tests the four mechanisms of socialization derived from the qualitative data formally with original survey data from Cameroon. The analysis shows that, first, people raised in partisan households are much more likely to adopt partisan identities later in life than people raised in apolitical households. Second, party militants are more politically influential in their social networks than regular partisans or nonpartisans. Third, the partisan homogeneity of contemporary social networks is highly predictive of individual partisanship. Finally, because of the nature of politics in electoral autocracies, opposition partisans face higher levels of cross-partisan influence than ruling party partisans.

Chapter 6 continues to explore the qualitative data presented in Chapter 5 by presenting the full social networks of the twelve research subjects, and therefore contemporary process of socialization. The social networks produce three key observations. First, party brokers or activists play an outsized role on the socialization process within social networks. Second, for partisans of all stripes, their larger social networks tended to be much more politically heterogenous than their smaller “inner circles.” Finally, the twelve networks suggest that ruling party partisans are more politically insulated than are opposition partisans.