School of Social Sciences (ETDs)

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Browsing School of Social Sciences (ETDs) by Author "Alence, Rod"

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    Exploring Personality Structure in South Africa: A Text Mining Approach
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-03-15) Gama, Beauty; Alence, Rod; Laher, Sumaya
    Physical expression, behavioural attributes and social relations of an individual can often be studied through personality traits. This has made personality research a relevant aspect of gaining a deeper understanding of people in various contexts, for clinical reasons as well as social relatability. Trait theory has been fundamental in utilizing statistical methods such as factor analysis to construct the personality models that currently exist. The Five Factor Model (FFM) is amongst the most widely accepted of these trait theory models. Personality assessment instruments are developed as operationalisations of these models. These include the Goldberg Adjective Checklist, the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI), and the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI). Recently, naturally occurring data like social media statuses or Facebook Posts are being considered as data examining personality structure. This study aims to explore personality structure data obtained from South African literary texts and text mining techniques. Various techniques of text mining such as parts of speech tagging, and unsupervised and supervised LDA topic modelling were applied to 60 South African literary texts. While topic modelling showed limitations when used in an unsupervised manner, when guided by thematic clusters it presented comprehensible trait classifications that fit with the clusters as defined by the FFM. The instances where there was no fit corresponded with the literature which demonstrates poor fit for those constructs in African constructs. The results also showed that there is a difference in the expression of personality traits between men and women with the differences concurring with those found in the broader literature on gender differences across personality. While the text corpus for this study was small, there is evidence to suggest that text mining techniques could be used to assist in research on personality structure. Text mining is an approach that requires further research as it can be useful in dealing with large data that is naturally occurring to provide a better contextual exploration of personality.
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    Studying Political Discourse at COP Using Text Mining
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Meletakos, Christina; Eyita-Okon, Ekeminiabasi; Alence, Rod
    Climate change has become one of the most pressing issues of our time and it is increasingly important for nations to come together and address the crisis. Every year since 1995, countries from around the world congregate at COP (Conference of the Parties) in the attempt to find consensus on how to tackle the problem. This dissertation studies the political speeches given by country representatives at the conference. 552 transcripts were used to perform multiple analyses. A sentiment study showed that the majority of speeches were overwhelmingly positive, and that the language used by delegates showed that they wanted to come across as being trustworthy and knowledgeable. Wordscores illustrated that prior to 2016, speeches were more alike. At the onset of US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was pulling out of the Paris Agreement, most countries turned away from the US’ positioning. While a narrative of marketization was prevalent, it was the nationalist discourse used by the president that deterred countries. Lastly a regression model was run which showed that GDP, population, and region played an important part in how a country positioned itself on the world stage.
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    Sustaining the Unsustainable? Political Accountability and Development in sub-Saharan Africa’s Resource Economies
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Ndlovu, Xichavo Alecia; Alence, Rod
    Sub-Saharan Africa’s development challenge is to ‘sustain the unsustainable’–using non-renewable resources to initiate long-term development processes that outlive the short-term proceeds of resource extraction. Literature has highlighted how differences in political institutions help determine whether natural resources help or hinder development. However, there is disagreement on which political institutions account for the variations in development outcomes. This study clarifies whether political regimes, electoral competitiveness, and party institutionalisation matter for inclusive and sustainable development using a sample of all sub-Saharan African countries for which data is available from 1990 to 2018. Specifically, do democracies perform better or worse on average than non-democracies? Do electorally competitive democracies perform better or worse than dominant-party (but still multiparty) democracies? Do more institutionalised party systems perform better or worse than less institutionalised party systems? In general, how, if at all, do different political accountability mechanisms affect inclusive and sustainable development? The study uses ‘nested’ analysis, which combines cross-national statistical analysis and case studies of four resource-rich democracies in Africa: Ghana, Zambia, Namibia, and Mozambique. The cross-national analysis shows that party institutionalisation is the only political predictor for social inclusiveness, and all political variables do not improve or worsen economic sustainability. On the other hand, resource rents are negatively associated with social inclusiveness but do not predict economic sustainability. Meanwhile, the non-rent sectors contribute positively to both dimensions of development, highlighting the potential significance of income levels in explaining the cross-national development patterns in Africa. Evidence in the case studies shows that electorally competitive democracies outperform dominant party democracies on social inclusiveness. The risk of being removed from office incentivises incumbents to provide public goods and increase social welfare. However, the impact of political accountability mechanisms on economic sustainability is ambiguous and may depend on sectoral institutions, policies and actors. The study contributes to (and bridges) two groups of literature, one investigating the economic consequences of politics and institutions and another accounting for the resource curse. It also considers both the inclusivity and sustainability aspects of development and highlights contextual factors from case studies, often overlooked in cross-national analyses.
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    The Role of Natural Disasters in Shaping Individual Perceptions of Climate Change in Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11-13) Van Niekerk, Courtney; Alence, Rod
    This paper explores the relationship between individual perceptions of climate change and natural disasters in African states. This paper uses both qualitative and quantitative research methodology to explore 33 African states by observing the climate change perceptions as well as climate risk experienced by individuals through natural disasters. By using subnational Afrobarometer survey data and corresponding subnational natural disaster data, this paper finds individuals who have experienced natural disasters are less likely to express concerns for climate change.