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The social visuality of distant suffering

Content governance on social networking sites: Battling disinformation and upholding values

Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have millions of users logging in every day, using these platforms for commu­ nication, entertainment, and news consumption. These platforms adopt rules that determine how users communicate and thereby limit and shape public discourse.2 Platforms need to deal with large amounts of data generated every day. For example, as of October 2021, 4.55 billion social media users were ac­ tive on an average number of 6.7 platforms used each month per internet user.3 As a result, platforms were compelled to develop governance models and content moderation systems to deal with harmful and undesirable content, including disinformation. In this study: • ‘Content governance’ is defined as a set of processes, procedures, and systems that determine how a given platform plans, publishes, moder­ ates, and curates content. • ‘Content moderation’ is the organised practice of a social media plat­ form of pre-screening, removing, or labelling undesirable content to reduce the damage that inappropriate content can cause.

Material immaterial: social housing in the Netherlands

Purpose - Housing associations make too small a contribution to society, the government has to step in too frequently because of maladministration, and the associations’ executives are often unaware of the far-reaching impact of their decisions. These are the conclusions of new academic research conducted by Jan Veuger of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). In his dissertation, he asserts that in numerous cases there is no correlation between social and financial objectives. The Dutch House of Representatives debated the results of the report Ver van huis from the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on Housing Associations in early December 2014. Design/methodology/approach -After extensive exploration of the literature and PhD studies on the period from 2005-2009, the research design inspired based on the grounded theory, which has a certain bias as a result of the extensive literature study. In the line of thinking of the grounded theory, interviews with directors more or less contracted uninhibited according to a narrative method. Afterwards these interviews, independent of the researcher, thematic and labeled by a single Delphi method be submitted to an expert group which created a storyline. The results of this Delphi method have been submitted to a peer group of directors. Then these conclusions in a survey presented to 60 selected directors and the subsequent conclusions. There has thus been more than a triangulation of research than just interviews, Delphi method and survey. Hypotheses are thereby omitted because of the difficulty of fitting in within the chosen research design inspired by grounded theory. Findings -Why thisqualitative thesis 'Control of housing associations in consistency with social values'? To understand and to discover patterns about the how and why of the functioning of corporations in society as they do now. This qualitative study is about the search for ideas, backgrounds, motives, resistors and motives and is therefore suitable for the following question: witch contradictions are there in the social values that underlie housing associations that affect the way the are governed? The overall summary conclusions to answer the central question is: Directors, at the highest level thinking about how to deal with values ensure they drive on their own, monitor, know the consequences and take responsibility. Research limitations/implications - At his request Stef Blok, Minister for Housing and Kingdom Relations, has received the thesis Material Immaterial (Veuger 2014) on December 4, 2014. On December 11, 2014, the Minister decided to change its proposed policy through the establishment of an inspection model in which the financial and social objectives of the corporations are tested and assured, with the Minister as the final responsible. The parliament has unanimously agreed. Originality/value - My contribution to science is also showing patterns of Board behavior, whether or not in conjunction with societal and financial values of housing associations. This has not been previously investigated or established. This contribution complements include studies on culture of housing associations (Dreimuller 2008 and Sinke 2014) or only driver behavior (Heemskerk 2013) or history of housing corporations (Beekers 2012) or about the behavior of housing associations (Koolma 2009)

Social fingerprints

Coase, externalities, property rights and the legal system

In this paper we investigate the possible consequences of different institutional settings (in casu the legal system) on externalities and their effect on the efficient allocation of externalities. We investigate whether the restriction of marginally low transaction costs can be relaxed if the legal system is efficient. In this context we define an efficient legal system as a system of rules such that the Coase theorem can be applied in the presence of non-marginally low transaction costs without loosing its efficiency properties. The basic idea is that a legal system should be such that a potential plaintiff has no incentive to enforce the law by going to court. To analyze the consequences of different law systems, we split the paper into two parts. In the first part we start by summarizing the model of Schweizer (1988) on the Coase theorem as a kind of reference point. The advantage of Schweizer’s (1988) model is that his interpretation is seen as clear and thorough. Therefore, this model will be used to highlight the important properties of the Coase’s theorem.

Valuing the client or the property?

This thesis provides an examination of judgement autonomy of Dutch commercial real estate valuers in relation to client orientation. The valuation of commercial real estate such as offices or retail properties requires in-depth analysis due to its uniqueness by location, building type and usage details. Essentially, a register-valuer is qualified and instructed to assess a property value to one’s best cognitive effort and inform others of this outcome by means of a valuation report. In the Netherlands, concerns over independence risks and client-related judgement risks of valuers have been raised by regulative authorities as the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) and the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). A significant part of these concerns followed the 2008 financial crisis, which appeared to be at least partially driven by unreliable and incomparable valuations of Dutch commercial real estate (AFM, 2014; DNB, 2012; 2015). Among other things, these concerns led to the instigation of the Nederlands Register Vastgoed Taxateurs (NRVT) in 2015. NRVT is a new Dutch central register of valuation practitioners set up in order to improve self-regulation, quality control and compliance of valuation practitioners. Currently, the chamber for commercial real estate valuation holds about 2,000 commercial valuation registrations (NRVT, 2020). The introduction of NRVT, and other measures taken, reflect an instrumental view towards enhancing professionalism of Dutch valuers. This view is based on a systematic orientation to professional conduct in which good practice is primarily objectively determined (Van Ewijk, 2019). However, Wassink and Bakker (2016) point out that individuals make personal choices in order to deal with work complexity. Insight into and reflection on individual choices is part of what is referred to as normative aspects of professionalisation: what norms prevail in individual judgement and decision-making and why (Van Ewijk, 2019). In this regard, insight into judgement reasoning of valuation practitioners may contribute to normative levels of professional development of valuers. The need for such is expressed through community concerns over how individual judgement autonomy may become subdued due to instrumental-driven developments taking place in the sector. The combination of authoritative concerns over professional quality in the Netherlands and lack of (scientific) insight on how client influence affects judgement in valuation practice poses a problem: How may practitioners address client-related judgement bias risks and improve valuation accuracy from this viewpoint, if little is known on how such risks may occur in daily practice? The seemingly scarce scientific insights available in this regard in the Netherlands may also prevent educational programs to adequately address valuer independence and objectivity risks in relevant training programs. In order to address this knowledge gap, the present PhD research examines the following research problem: 169 Summary “How does client orientation affect professional judgement autonomy of commercial real estate valuers in the Netherlands?” The term ‘client orientation’ should be broadly interpreted and may refer to valuers’ perception, understanding and meaning given to alleged, actual or anticipated client-related aspects. Information on such client aspects is not required for the performance of valuation instructions. It should also be noted that this research examines the context of how client orientation may affect valuer judgement reasoning patterns during work practice, yet not its effect in terms of decision on final value opinion.