Cognitive map

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map

Information mapping
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See also
Design rationale Diagrammatic reasoning Entity–relationship model Geovisualization List of concept- and mind-mapping software Olog Ontology Problem structuring methods Semantic Web Treemapping Wicked problem

A cognitive map is a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment. The concept was introduced by Edward Tolman in 1948. He tried to explain the behavior of rats that appeared to learn the spatial layout of a maze, and subsequently the concept was applied to other animals, including humans. The term was later generalized by some researchers, especially in the field of operations research, to refer to a kind of semantic network representing an individual's personal knowledge or schemas.

Overview

Cognitive maps have been studied in various fields, such as psychology, education, archaeology, planning, geography, cartography, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, management and history. Because of the broad use and study of cognitive maps, it has become a colloquialism for just about any mental representation or model. As a consequence, these mental models are often referred to, variously, as cognitive maps, mental maps, scripts, schemata, and frame of reference.

Cognitive maps are a function of the working brain that humans and animals use to move in a new environment. They help us recognizing places, computing directions, distances and critical-thinking on shortcuts and supporting us in wayfinding in an environment.

Cognitive maps serve the construction and accumulation of spatial knowledge, allowing the "mind's eye" to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load, enhance recall and learning of information. This type of spatial thinking can also be used as a metaphor for non-spatial tasks, where people performing non-spatial tasks involving memory and imaging use spatial knowledge to aid in processing the task. They include information about the spatial relations that objects have among each other in an environment and they help us in orienting and moving in a setting and in space.

They are internal representation, they are not a fixed image, instead they are a schema, dynamic and flexible, with a degree of personal level. A spatial map needs to be acquired according to a frame of reference. Because of it is independent from the observer’s point of view, it is based on an allocentric reference system, with an object-to-object relation. It codes configurational information, using a world-centred coding system.

The neural correlates of a cognitive map have been speculated to be the place cell system in the hippocampus and the recently discovered grid cells in the entorhinal cortex.

History

The idea of a cognitive map was first developed by Edward C. Tolman. Tolman, one of the early cognitive psychologists, introduced this idea when doing an experiment involving rats and mazes. In Tolman's experiment, a rat was placed in a cross shaped maze and allowed to explore it. After this initial exploration, the rat was placed at one arm of the cross and food was placed at the next arm to the immediate right. The rat was conditioned to this layout and learned to turn right at the intersection in order to get to the food. When placed at different arms of the cross maze however, the rat still went in the correct direction to obtain the food because of the initial cognitive map it had created of the maze. Rather than just deciding to turn right at the intersection no matter what, the rat was able to determine the correct way to the food no matter where in the maze it was placed.

Unfortunately, further research was slowed due to the behaviorist point of view prevalent in the field of psychology at the time. In later years, O'Keefe and Nadel attributed Tolman’s research to the hippocampus, stating that it was the key to the rat's mental representation of its surroundings. This observation furthered research in this area and consequently much of hippocampus activity is explained through cognitive map making.

As time went on, the cognitive map was researched in other prospective fields that found it useful, therefore leading to broader and differentiating definitions and applications. A very prominent researcher, Colin Eden, has specifically mentioned his application of cognitive mapping simply as any representation of thinking models.

Mental map distinction

A cognitive map is a spatial representation of the outside world that is kept within the mind, until an actual manifestation (usually, a drawing) of this perceived knowledge is generated, a mental map. Cognitive mapping is the implicit, mental mapping the explicit part of the same process. In most cases, a cognitive map exists independently of a mental map, an article covering just cognitive maps would remain limited to theoretical considerations.

Mental mapping is typically associated with landmarks, locations, and geography when demonstrated. Creating mental maps depends on the individual and their perceptions whether they are influenced by media, real-life, or other sources. Because of their factual storage mental maps can be useful when giving directions and navigating. As stated previously this distinction is hard to identify when posed with almost identical definitions, nevertheless there is a distinction.

In some uses, mental map refers to a practice done by urban theorists by having city dwellers draw a map, from memory, of their city or the place they live. This allows the theorist to get a sense of which parts of the city or dwelling are more substantial or imaginable. This, in turn, lends itself to a decisive idea of how well urban planning has been conducted.

Acquisition of the cognitive maps

The cognitive map is generated from a number of sources, both from the visual system and elsewhere. Much of the cognitive map is created through self-generated movement cues. Inputs from senses like vision, proprioception, olfaction, and hearing are all used to deduce a person's location within their environment as they move through it. This allows for path integration, the creation of a vector that represents one's position and direction within one's environment, specifically in comparison to an earlier reference point. This resulting vector can be passed along to the hippocampal place cells where it is interpreted to provide more information about the environment and one's location within the context of the cognitive map.

Directional cues and positional landmarks are also used to create the cognitive map. Within directional cues, both explicit cues, like markings on a compass, as well as gradients, like shading or magnetic fields, are used as inputs to create the cognitive map. Directional cues can be used both statically, when a person does not move within his environment while interpreting it, and dynamically, when movement through a gradient is used to provide information about the nature of the surrounding environment. Positional landmarks provide information about the environment by comparing the relative position of specific objects, whereas directional cues give information about the shape of the environment itself. These landmarks are processed by the hippocampus together to provide a graph of the environment through relative locations.

Alex Siegel and Sheldon White (1975) proposed a model of acquisition of spatial knowledge based on different levels. The first stage of the process is said to be limited to the landmarks available in a new environment. Then, as a second stage, information about the routes that connect landmarks will be encoded, at the beginning in a non-metric representation form and consequently they will be expanded with metric properties, such as distances, durations and angular deviations. In the third and final step, the observer will be able to use a survey representation of the surroundings, using an allocentric point of view. 

All in all, the acquisition of cognitive maps is a gradual construction. This kind of knowledge is multimodal in nature and it is build up by different pieces of information coming from different sources that are integrated step by step.

Neurological basis

Cognitive mapping is believed to largely be a function of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is connected to the rest of the brain in such a way that it is ideal for integrating both spatial and nonspatial information. Connections from the postrhinal cortex and the medial entorhinal cortex provide spatial information to the hippocampus. Connections from the perirhinal cortex and lateral entorhinal cortex provide nonspatial information. The integration of this information in the hippocampus makes the hippocampus a practical location for cognitive mapping, which necessarily involves combining information about an object's location and its other features.

O'Keefe and Nadel were the first to outline a relationship between the hippocampus and cognitive mapping. Many additional studies have shown additional evidence that supports this conclusion. Specifically, pyramidal cells (place cells, boundary cells, and grid cells) have been implicated as the neuronal basis for cognitive maps within the hippocampal system.

Numerous studies by O'Keefe have implicated the involvement of place cells. Individual place cells within the hippocampus correspond to separate locations in the environment with the sum of all cells contributing to a single map of an entire environment. The strength of the connections between the cells represents the distances between them in the actual environment. The same cells can be used for constructing several environments, though individual cells' relationships to each other may differ on a map by map basis. The possible involvement of place cells in cognitive mapping has been seen in a number of mammalian species, including rats and macaque monkeys. Additionally, in a study of rats by Manns and Eichenbaum, pyramidal cells from within the hippocampus were also involved in representing object location and object identity, indicating their involvement in the creation of cognitive maps. However, there has been some dispute as to whether such studies of mammalian species indicate the presence of a cognitive map and not another, simpler method of determining one's environment.

While not located in the hippocampus, grid cells from within the medial entorhinal cortex have also been implicated in the process of path integration, actually playing the role of the path integrator while place cells display the output of the information gained through path integration. The results of path integration are then later used by the hippocampus to generate the cognitive map. The cognitive map likely exists on a circuit involving much more than just the hippocampus, even if it is primarily based there. Other than the medial entorhinal cortex, the presubiculum and parietal cortex have also been implicated in the generation of cognitive maps.

Parallel map theory

There has been some evidence for the idea that the cognitive map is represented in the hippocampus by two separate maps. The first is the bearing map, which represents the environment through self-movement cues and gradient cues. The use of these vector-based cues creates a rough, 2D map of the environment. The second map would be the sketch map that works off of positional cues. The second map integrates specific objects, or landmarks, and their relative locations to create a 2D map of the environment. The cognitive map is thus obtained by the integration of these two separate maps. This leads to an understanding that it is not just one map but three that help us create this mental process. It should be clear that parallel map theory is still growing. The sketch map has foundation in previous neurobiological processes and explanations while the bearing map has very little research to support its evidence.

Cognitive maps in animals

According to O’Keefe and Nadel (1978), not only humans require spatial abilities. Non-humans animals need them as well to find food, shelters, and others animals whether it is mates or predators. To do so, some animals establish relationships between landmarks, allowing them to make spatial inferences and detect positions. 

The first experiments on rats in a maze, conducted by Tolman, Ritchie, and Kalish (1946), showed that rats can form mental maps of spatial locations with a good comprehension of them. But these experiments, led again later by other researchers (for example by Eichenbaum, Stewart, & Morris, 1990 and by Singer et al. 2006) have not concluded with such clear results. Some authors tried to bring to light the way rats can take shortcuts. The results have demonstrated that in most cases, rats fail to use a shortcut when reaching for food unless they receive a preexposure to this shortcut route. In that case, rats use that route significantly faster and more often than those who were not preexposed. Moreover, they have difficulties making a spatial inference such as taking a novel shortcut route. 

In 1987, Chapuis and Varlet led an experiment on dogs to determine if they were able to infer shortcuts. The conclusion confirmed their hypothesis. Indeed the results demonstrated that the dogs were able to go from starting point to point A with food and then go directly to point B without returning to the starting point. But for Andrew T.D. Bennett (1996) it can simply mean that the dogs have seen some landmarks near point B such as trees or buildings and headed towards them because they associated them with the food. Later, in 1998, Cheng and Spetch did an experiment on gerbils. When looking for the hidden food (goal), gerbils were using the relationship between the goal and one landmark at a time. Instead of deducing that the food was equidistant from two landmarks, gerbils were searching it by its position from two independent landmarks. This means that even though animals use landmarks to locate positions, they do it in a certain way. 

Another experiment, including pigeons this time, showed that they also use landmarks to locate positions. The task was for the pigeons to find hidden food in an arena. A part of the testing was to make sure that they were not using their smell to locate food. These results show and confirm other evidence of links present in those animals between one or multiple landmark(s) and hidden food (Cheng and Spetch, 1998, 2001 ; Spetch and Mondloch, 1993 ; Spetch et al., 1996, 1997). 

Criticism

In a review, Andrew T.D. Bennett noted two principal definitions for the “cognitive map” term. The first one, according to Tolman, O’Keefe, and Nadel, implies the capacity to create novel short-cutting thanks to vigorous memorization of the landmarks. The second one, according to Gallistel, considers a cognitive map as “any representation of space held by an animal”.  This lack of a proper definition is also shared by Thinus-Blanc (1996) who stated that the definition is not enough clear. Therefore, this makes further experiments difficult to conclude. 

However, Bennett argued that there is no clear evidence for cognitive maps in non-human animals (i.e. cognitive map according to Tolman's definition). This argument is based on analyses of studies where it has been found that simpler explanations can account for experimental results. Bennett highlights three simpler alternatives that cannot be ruled out in tests of cognitive maps in non-human animals "These alternatives are (1) that the apparently novel short-cut is not truly novel; (2) that path integration is being used; and (3) that familiar landmarks are being recognised from a new angle, followed by movement towards them."  This point of view is also shared by Grieves and Dudchenko (2013) that showed with their experiment on rats (briefly presented above) that these animals are not capable of making spatial inferences using cognitive maps. 

Afrocentric education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrocentric_education

Afrocentric education is a pedagogical system designed to empower peoples of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.

Like educational leaders of other cultures, proponents assert that what educates one group of people does not necessarily educate and empower another group, so they assert educational priorities distinctly for the Africans in a given context.

Philosophy

Afrocentric education has, as one of its tenets, the decolonization of the African mind. The central objective in decolonizing the African mind is to overthrow the authority that alien traditions may exercise.

Education

Education was understood to be a process of harnessing the inner potential, and thus it is imperative to equip the youth with an awareness of their identity.{{Citation needed|date=March 2022}} The term "miseducation" was coined by Carter G. woodson to describe the process of systematically depriving African Americans of their knowledge of self. Woodson believed that miseducation was the root of the problems of the masses of the African-American community and that if the masses of the African-American community were given the correct knowledge and education from the beginning, they would not be in the situation that they find themselves in today. Woodson argues in his book The Mis-Education of the Negro that African Americans often valorize European culture to the detriment of their own culture.

History

This has been an active area of Afrocentrism for many decades.

19th and early 20th century

Edward Wilmot Blyden, an American-Liberian educator and diplomat active in the pan-Africa movement, perceived a change in perception taking place among Europeans towards Africans in his 1908 book African Life and Customs, which originated as a series of articles in the Sierra Leone Weekly News. In it, he proposed that Africans were beginning to be seen simply as different and not as inferior, in part because of the work of English writers such as Mary Kingsley and Lady Lugard, who traveled and studied in Africa. Such an enlightened view was fundamental to refute prevailing ideas among Western peoples about African cultures and Africans.

Blyden used that standpoint to show how the traditional social, industrial, and economic life of Africans untouched by "either European or Asiatic influence", was different and complete in itself, with its own organic wholeness. In a letter responding to Blyden's original series of articles, Fante journalist and politician J. E. Casely Hayford commented, "It is easy to see the men and women who walked the banks of the Nile" passing him on the streets of Kumasi. Hayford suggested building a university to preserve African identity and instincts. In that university, the history chair would teach

Universal history, with particular reference to the part Ethiopia has played in the affairs of the world. I would lay stress upon the fact that while Ramses II was dedicating temples to 'the God of gods, and secondly to his own glory,' the God of the Hebrews had not yet appeared unto Moses in the burning bush; that Africa was the cradle of the world's systems and philosophies, and the nursing mother of its religions. In short, that Africa has nothing to be ashamed of in its place among the nations of the earth. I would make it possible for this seat of learning to be the means of revising erroneous current ideas regarding the African; of raising him in self-respect; and of making him an efficient co-worker in the uplifting of man to nobler effort.

The exchange of ideas between Blyden and Hayford embodied the fundamental concepts of Afrocentrism.

In the United States, during the early 20th century and the Harlem Renaissance, many writers and historians gathered in major cities, where they began to work on documenting achievements of Africans throughout history, in United States and Western life. They began to set up institutions to support scholarly work in African-American history and literature, such as the American Negro Academy (now the Black Academy of Letters and Arts), founded in Washington, DC, in 1874. Some men were self-taught; others rose through the academic system. Creative writers and artists claimed space for African-American perspectives.

Leaders included bibliophile Arthur Schomburg, who devoted his life to collecting literature, art, slave narratives, and other artifacts of the African diaspora. In 1911, along with John Edward Bruce, he founded the Negro Society for Historical Research in Yonkers, New York. The value of Schomburg's personal collection was recognized, and it was purchased by the New York Public Library in 1926 with the aid of a Carnegie Corporation grant. It became the basis of what is now called the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in Harlem, New York. Schomburg used the money from the sale of his collection for more travel and acquisition of materials.

Hubert Henry Harrison used his intellectual gifts in street lectures and political activism, influencing early generations of Black Socialists and Black Nationalists. Dr. Carter G. Woodson co-founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (as it is now called) in 1915, as well as The Journal of Negro History, so that scholars of black history could be supported and find venues for their work.

Among their topics, editors of publications such as NAACP's The Crisis and Journal of Negro History sought to include articles that countered the prevailing view that Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed little of value to human history that was not the result of incursions by Europeans and Arabs. Historians began to theorize that Ancient Egyptian civilization was the culmination of events arising from the origin of the human race in Africa. They investigated the history of Africa from that perspective.

In March 1925, Schomburg published an essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past" in an issue of the Survey Graphic devoted to Harlem's intellectual life. The article had widespread distribution and influence, as he detailed the achievements of people of African descent. Alain Locke included the essay in his collection The New Negro.

Afrocentrists claimed The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) by Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian, as one of their foundational texts. Woodson critiqued education of African Americans as "mis-education" because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the white. For these early Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-abnegation. In the words of The Crisis editor W. E. B. Du Bois, the world left African Americans with a "double consciousness," and a sense of "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

In his early years, W. E. B. Du Bois, researched West African cultures and attempted to construct a pan-Africanist value system based on West African traditions. In the 1950s Du Bois envisioned and received funding from Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to produce an Encyclopedia Africana to chronicle the history and cultures of Africa. Du Bois died before being able to complete his work. Some aspects of Du Bois's approach are evident in work by Cheikh Anta Diop in the 1950s and 1960s.

Du Bois inspired a number of authors, including Drusilla Dunjee Houston. After reading his work The Negro (1915), Houston embarked upon writing her Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (1926). The book was a compilation of evidence related to the historic origins of Cush and Ethiopia, and assessed their influences on Greece.

1960s and 1970s

The 1960s and 1970s were times of social and political ferment. In the U.S. were born new forms of Black Nationalism, Black Power and the Black Arts Movements, all began to be driven, to a degree, driven to some degree by an identification with "Mother Africa." Afrocentric scholars and Black youth also challenged Eurocentric ideas in academia.

The work of Cheikh Anta Diop became very influential. In the following decades, histories related to Africa and the diaspora gradually incorporated a more African perspective. Since that time, Afrocentrists have increasingly seen African peoples as the makers and shapers of their own histories.

You have all heard of the African Personality; of African democracy, of the African way to socialism, of negritude, and so on. They are all props we have fashioned at different times to help us get on our feet again. Once we are up we shan't need any of them any more. But for the moment it is in the nature of things that we may need to counter racism with what Jean-Paul Sartre has called an anti-racist racism, to announce not just that we are as good as the next man but that we are much better.
—Chinua Achebe, 1965

In this context, ethnocentric Afrocentrism was not intended to be essential or permanent, but was a consciously fashioned strategy of resistance to the Eurocentrism of the time. Afrocentric scholars adopted two approaches: a deconstructive rebuttal of what they called "the whole archive of European ideological racism" and a reconstructive act of writing new self-constructed histories.

At a 1974 UNESCO symposium in Cairo titled "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Script", Cheikh Anta Diop brought together scholars of Egypt from around the world.

Key texts from this period include:

• The Destruction of Black Civilization (1971) by Chancellor Williams
• The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974) by Cheikh Anta Diop
• They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (1976) by Ivan Van Sertima

Some Afrocentric writers focused on study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, to emphasize African history separate from European or Arab influence. Primary among them was Chancellor Williams, whose book The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. set out to determine a "purely African body of principles, value systems (and) philosophy of life".

1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s and 1990s, Afrocentrism increasingly became seen as a tool for addressing social ills and a means of grounding community efforts toward self-determination and political and economic empowerment.

In his (1992) article "Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism", US anthropologist Linus A. Hoskins wrote:

The vital necessity for African people to use the weapons of education and history to extricate themselves from this psychological dependency complex/syndrome as a necessary precondition for liberation. [...] If African peoples (the global majority) were to become Afrocentric (Afrocentrized), ... that would spell the ineluctable end of European global power and dominance. This is indeed the fear of Europeans. ... Afrocentrism is a state of mind, a particular subconscious mind-set that is rooted in the ancestral heritage and communal value system.

American educator Jawanza Kunjufu made the case that hip hop culture, rather than being creative expression of the culture, was the root of many social ills. For some Afrocentrists, the contemporary problems of the ghetto stemmed not from race and class inequality, but rather from a failure to inculcate Black youth with Afrocentric values.

In the West and elsewhere, the European, in the midst of other peoples, has often propounded an exclusive view of reality; the exclusivity of this view creates a fundamental human crisis. In some cases, it has created cultures arrayed against each other or even against themselves. Afrocentricity’s response certainly is not to impose its own particularity as a universal, as Eurocentricity has often done. But hearing the voice of African American culture with all of its attendant parts is one way of creating a more sane society and one model for a more humane world. –Asante, M. K. (1988)

In 1997, US cultural historian Nathan Glazer described Afrocentricity as a form of multiculturalism. He wrote that its influence ranged from sensible proposals about inclusion of more African material in school curricula to what he called senseless claims about African primacy in all major technological achievements. Glazer argued that Afrocentricity had become more important due to the failure of mainstream society to assimilate all African Americans. Anger and frustration at their continuing separation gave black Americans the impetus to reject traditions that excluded them.

2000s

Today, Afrocentricity takes many forms, including striving for a more multicultural and balanced approach to the study of history and sociology. Afrocentrists contend that race still exists as a social and political construct. They argue that for centuries in academia, Eurocentric ideas about history were dominant: ideas such as blacks having no civilizations, no written languages, no cultures, and no histories of any note before coming into contact with Europeans. Further, according to the views of some Afrocentrists, European history has commonly received more attention within the academic community than the history of sub-Saharan African cultures or those of the many Pacific Island peoples. Afrocentrists contend it is important to divorce the historical record from past racism. Molefi Kete Asante's book Afrocentricity (1988) argues that African-Americans should look to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans." Some Afrocentrists believe that the burden of Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the cultural wars debate. By doing so, Afrocentricity can support all forms of multiculturalism.

Afrocentrists argue that Afrocentricity is important for people of all ethnicities who want to understand African history and the African diaspora. For example, the Afrocentric method can be used to research African indigenous culture. Queeneth Mkabela writes in 2005 that the Afrocentric perspective provides new insights for understanding African indigenous culture, in a multicultural context. According to Mkabela and others, the Afrocentric method is a necessary part of complete scholarship and without it, the picture is incomplete, less accurate, and less objective.

Studies of African and African-diaspora cultures have shifted understanding and created a more positive acceptance of influence by African religious, linguistic and other traditions, both among scholars and the general public. For example, religious movements such as Vodou are now less likely to be characterized as "mere superstition", but understood in terms of links to African traditions.

In recent years Africana Studies or Africology departments at many major universities have grown out of the Afrocentric "Black Studies" departments formed in the 1970s. Rather than focusing on black topics in the African diaspora (often exclusively African American topics), these reformed departments aim to expand the field to encompass all of the African diaspora. They also seek to better align themselves with other University departments and find continuity and compromise between the radical Afrocentricity of the past decades and the multicultural scholarship found in many fields today.

African Centered Leadership-Fellowship (ACL-F) 2000

Dr. Uhuru Hotep, co-director of the Kwame Ture Leadership Institute, established an ethnocentric approach to leadership specifically based on the four principles of restoration of sovereignty, Sankofa, Maat restoration, and Johari Sita installation.

Restoration of sovereignty is a concept that surrounds cultural, political and economic entities of society. Sovereignty is synyonmous with self-determination. In the tradition of a self-sufficient creation of communities, seshemet (leadership) was developed to restore the Moroon tradition of kilombo construction.

Sankofa is a leadership technique of Ghana that emphasizes living in the present to learn from the past. This concept requires its followers to learn about the contributions of their ancestral leaders and to continue with their struggles. It mandates that African centered leaders reconnect with their ancestors.

Maat restoration is a collaboration of the central themes of truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, reciprocity and propriety. which is based on the teachings of ancient Kemet. This concept is characterized by the restoring of public confidence and the promotion of psychological and fiscal prosperity among the leaders and their followers.

Johari Sita is a multifaceted Afrocentric approach to leadership-followership development. It can best be described as the processes, procedures and practices of ACL-F. This model of leadership is the foundation for nationwide workshops called "Preparing African Youth for 21st Century Leadership and Service."

The internal loci of control for Africa centered leaders and followers are contrary to the political and financial dependency of followers of external loci of control of many mainstream middle class Black American leadership practices.

List of schools

Public schools

• African-Centered College Preparatory Academy (Kansas City, Missouri)
• Columbus Africentric Early College (Columbus, Ohio)

Public charter schools

• Betty Shabazz International Charter School (Chicago, Illinois)
• Imhotep Institute Charter High School (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Hostile media effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect

The hostile media effect, originally deemed the hostile media phenomenon and sometimes called hostile media perception, is a perceptual theory of mass communication that refers to the tendency for individuals with a strong preexisting attitude on an issue to perceive media coverage as biased against their side and in favor of their antagonists' point of view. Partisans from opposite sides of an issue will tend to find the same coverage to be biased against them. The phenomenon was first proposed and studied experimentally by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper.

Studies

In 1982, the second major study of this phenomenon was undertaken; pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli students at Stanford University were shown the same news filmstrips pertaining to the then-recent Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese militia fighters abetted by the Israeli army in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. On a number of objective measures, both sides found that these identical news clips were slanted in favor of the other side. Pro-Israeli students reported seeing more anti-Israel references and fewer favorable references to Israel in the news report and pro-Palestinian students reported seeing more anti-Palestinian references, and so on. Both sides said a neutral observer would have a more negative view of their side from viewing the clips, and that the media would have excused the other side where it blamed their side.

Subsequent studies have found hostile media effects related to other political conflicts, such as strife in Bosnia, immigration in the U.S. and in U.S. presidential elections, as well as in other areas, such as media coverage of the South Korean National Security Act, the 1997 United Parcel Service Teamsters strike, genetically modified food, and sports.

The effect was originally dubbed "hostile media phenomenon" by Vallone et al, and is occasionally referred to as "hostile media perception," since it seems to precipitate the effects of media. In a 2015 meta-analysis of the subject, Perloff said "hostile media effect" is the most often used term:

The most common term is "hostile media effect," perhaps because scholars appreciate that the "effect" term cuts to the heart of the mass communication research enterprise and captures the theoretically intriguing aspect of the hostile media phenomenon.

The effect appears to be something of a disconfirmation bias, or "a contrast bias – a deviation of judgment in which a partisan individual perceives or evaluates media content to be further away, in terms of valence, from his or her own point of view." In other words, the intention of the reporter or the story is irrelevant – those "partisans" who consume the content find the content that is hostile to their point of view on their own.

An oft-cited forerunner to Vallone et al.'s study was conducted by Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril in 1954. Princeton and Dartmouth students were shown a filmstrip of a controversial Princeton-Dartmouth football game. Asked to count the number of infractions committed by both sides, students at both universities "saw" many more infractions committed by the opposing side, in addition to making different generalizations about the game. Hastorf and Cantril concluded that "there is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its own right which people merely 'observe.' ... For the 'thing' simply is not the same for different people whether the 'thing' is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism, or spinach."

Explanations

Cognitive

Three cognitive mechanisms for explaining the hostile media effect have been suggested:

• Selective recall refers to memory and retrieval. In instances of the hostile media effect, partisans should tend to remember more of the disconfirming portions of a message than the parts that support their position, in a variation of the negativity effect. Vallone and his colleagues observed selective recall differing along partisan lines even on simple, objective criteria such as the number of references to a given subject. However, numerous studies have documented the hostile media effect even when selective recall is positive rather than negative.
• Selective perception refers to the process by which individuals perceive what they want to in media messages while ignoring opposing viewpoints. In instances of the hostile media effect, partisans have a heightened tendency to interpret aspects of a message as unfavorable – or hostile – as opposed to categorizations by non-partisans. In other words, selective perception is a form of bias because we interpret information in a way that is congruent with our existing values and beliefs.
• The different standards explanation or motivated reasoning refers to the validity of arguments. This is confirmation bias taken to the next level. It leads people to confirm what they already believe, while ignoring contrary data. But it also drives people to develop elaborate rationalizations to justify holding beliefs that logic and evidence have shown to be wrong. Motivated reasoning responds defensively to contrary evidence, actively discrediting such evidence or its source without logical or evidentiary justification. It seems to be assumed by social scientists that motivated reasoning is driven by a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance. It suggests that reason partisans are so prone to see an unbiased message in a hostile light is because of the strength of the favorable argument they have built in their minds over time. Rather than seeing confirmation bias as an opposite force of hostile media effect, the different standards explanation sees it as a contributing force. As Vallone et al. noted in the seminal study:

Partisans who have consistently processed facts and arguments in light of their preconceptions and prejudices [...] are bound to believe that the preponderance of reliable, pertinent evidence favors their viewpoint. Accordingly, to the extent that the small sample of evidence and argument featured in a media presentation seems unrepresentative of this larger "population" of information, perceivers will charge bias in the presentation and will be likely to infer hostility and bias on the part of those responsible for it.

It is important to note that these criteria allow for specific measures beyond subjective generalizations about the media coverage as a whole, such as what might be expressed as "I thought that the news has been generally biased against this side of the issue." The research suggests the hostile media effect is not just a difference of opinion but a difference of perception (selective perception).

Source factors

Characteristics of the message source may also influence the hostile media effect. A source perceived to be friendly to the partisan (usually because of agreeable ideology or geographic proximity to the group) is less likely to invoke the hostile media effect than a source that is disagreeable or geographically detached. In numerous studies, Albert C. Gunther and his associates have suggested that the ability of mass media to reach a large audience is what triggers the hostile media effect. Consistently, they found that a message appearing to originate from a newspaper was perceived as hostile by partisans, while an identical message appearing in a student essay was perceived as unbiased, or even favorable toward the partisan cause.

The phenomenon also exists for personalities on television – partisans in a study were found to perceive significantly less bias in a host they perceive as like-minded.

Consistent with a hostile media effect, issue partisans perceived less bias in opinionated news hosts whose viewpoints cohered with their own than did non-partisans and especially partisans on the opposing side of the issue. In most cases, these partisan differences were as big as—if not bigger than—the differences seen in response to non-opinionated news, indicating that even blatant deviations from journalistic norms do not quell partisan selectivity in news perceptions, at least when it comes to perceived bias in the host of opinionated programs.

While partisans can agree on the bias of a particular source, the reasons for that bias appears to account for the difference; that is, consumers on both sides of an issue may see bias in a particular story, but are more likely to attribute that story to a host they perceive as hostile to their own particular cause.

Partisanship

All of these explanatory mechanisms are influenced by partisanship. From the first studies, the hostile media effect has required an audience of partisans, with stronger beliefs correlating with stronger manifestations of the effect. Increasing devotion to a particular side of an issue leads to increasing levels of biased information processing, whether out of protection of personal values or a strong sense of group affiliation.

Relative hostile media effect

Early hostile media effect studies measured perceptions of a media message designed to be unbiased. As ideologically diversified news outlets became more commonplace, later experiments began to use messages that were less objective. They found that while partisans on both sides of an issue recognized the bias, the group the message opposed perceived a greater degree of bias than the group the message supported. This variation is referred to as the relative hostile media effect, and has been demonstrated in media coverage of the use of primates for lab testing. Gunther et al. said, "the relative hostile media effect occurs when individuals with different attitudes toward the issue exhibit significantly different evaluations of the same media content.”

In fact, as Glass et al. noted in a 2000 study, "partisans tend to see objectively biased articles as 'even-handed' if the bias impugns the opposition group." The study measured the responses of pro-choice and pro-life voters, finding that "people with more extreme views on abortion sometimes evaluate biased news articles as being fair, but only when the opposing side is being gored."

The effect appears to exist more among conservatives than liberals, according to multiple studies. When randomly assigned either a clip from Comedy Central's The Daily Show (liberal), or a similar program from Fox News (conservative), conservatives perceived significantly more bias in the program than liberal subjects. It is entirely possible that the "relative hostile media effect," in this case, is a function of preconceived biases related to the program itself, rather than the content. In a 1998 study, Dalton et al., found that newspaper readers were best able to detect the partisan stands of their newspapers when the newspaper sent a clear and unambiguous political signal; otherwise, individual partisanship predominated in judgments. Unsurprisingly, studies related to media content that is strictly opinionated – that is, media content that is not intended to be unbiased – have shown that partisans are quite capable of identifying bias in those conditions.

Media literacy

Studies have been conducted to determine whether media literacy – competency in analyzing and evaluating messages from mass media – might affect a media consumer's HME, thus far to limited results. In a 2014 study, participants watched a Media Literacy PSA prior to watching manipulated television programs, then asked to rate their perceptions of the relative hostility of the media afterwards. The effects were strong in some areas but less so in others. "Given that the digital media environment allows individuals to select their own media content – and people tend to choose what they find more credible – in some cases a news media literacy message may spur further selection into agreeable political enclaves, now seen as even more credible, and contribute to rising political polarization" (26). Besides media literacy messages, empathy was introduced to news messages to see whether the emotion can reduce HME. People were found to perceive higher levels of media favorability toward their personal position, but not a reduction in media hostility toward the opposing side.

Moderators

Reach

Gunther and Schmitt attempted to discern why in some cases research subjects faulted ambiguous, contradictory information, and supported it in other cases. One conclusion they suggested was the reach of the publication – that is, the hostile media effect is likely to emerge when participants are estimating the effects on others of mass media with a large reach, but biased assimilation would occur when the participants are judging media with lower reach (in this case, a research report that presumably reaches only people in a particular field).

Involvement

Hansen and Kim found that involvement is positively correlated with hostile media effect; that is, the effect increases as individuals become more involved with the issue. The study also found a significant effect that emerged with those who have low involvement. Other studies have found high correlations of the effect in value-relevant involvement and in affective involvement.

Social identity

Social identity theory suggests that media coverage of an ego-involving issue will activate group identity and increase the salience of the issue among members of a group that champions a particular political or social cause. This in turn triggers self-categorization processes, as ingroup members differentiate themselves from their counterparts in the outgroup, seeking to elevate their self-esteem by viewing the ingroup as superior to the disliked outgroup on core dimensions. When exposed to controversial media coverage that contains unfavorable depictions of the ingroup, group members, concerned about the perceived inaccuracy of the portrayals and convinced that the portrayals undermine the group's legitimacy in the larger society, cope by derogating media coverage, viewing it as hostilely biased. In this way, they reduce the symbolic threat and restore valued social self-esteem.

A related potential moderator is the outgroup membership of the message source. Reid found that more politically extreme Democratic students perceived less bias when a polemical assault on their group was attributed to a Democratic (ingroup) organization, but detected more bias when the attack was ascribed to a pro-Republican outgroup.

Mediators

Perloff identified four factors as the reasons those individuals with strong attitudes towards a particular issue, as well as high involvement, might perceive hostile media bias: selective recall, which causes partisans to focus more on contradictory information; selective categorization, in which partisans categorize more content as unfair to their position than fair; different standards, in which partisans classify more of the content that reflects positively on their position as accurate, and information that reflects negatively as inaccurate; and prior beliefs about media bias, in which partisans judge media content unfairly based on a generalized negative set of beliefs about the media in general.

Hostile media online

Research around HME in the digital age is still in relative infancy. Partisan users of online media have abilities to interact with the mass media in a way they have never before. Some may attribute the effects of hostile media in the future to issue-specific social media messages, for example. Relative effects may be higher, however, in the digital media future:

Partisans on both sides could easily agree that a series of posts is biased in one ideological direction, but those whose political ox is being gored should be more likely to presume bias and hostile intent. More generally, anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals perceive that social media messages have strong effects, frequently perceiving that negative communications will have deleterious influences on online third persons.

Indeed, news audiences were found to perceive malicious intent based on their personal political stance, contributing to hostile perceptions with Facebook news messages.

Consequences

Persuasive press inference

Gunther and Chia invoked the concept of persuasive press inference in a 2001 study, in which individuals form impressions of the direction or slant of news coverage, extrapolate that news in general resembles the news stories they personally viewed, assume that high-reach news influences the public, and therefore presume that public opinion corresponds with the perceived directionality of news. Therefore, those partisans who begin with the belief in a hostile media will conclude that public opinion is opposed to their particular cause. Research for this hypothesis has produced mixed results.

It is not clear if the hostile media effect translates into real-world effects. Some research has explored the ways in which individuals take action to "'correct' perceived 'wrongs'" created by a perceived hostile media depiction of the individuals' group. This research has suggested that these individuals effectively feel disenfranchised, and may react by "defying the dominant public opinion climate, even engaging in undemocratic actions, and other times adopting a more passive approach, withdrawing from functional political or social activities."

Motivated fake news perception

Tsang has revealed that the hostile media perception can be applied to a fake news context. Partisans from opposing sides were found to perceive the exact same news message to be fake to significantly varying degrees.

Sectarian violence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian_violence

 

Sectarian battle between Sunnis and Twelver Shias at the Battle of Chaldiran (Ottoman and Safavad wars)

Sectarian violence and/or sectarian strife is a form of communal violence which is inspired by sectarianism, that is, discrimination, hatred or prejudice between different sects of a particular mode of an ideology or different sects of a religion within a nation/community. Religious segregation often plays a role in sectarian violence.

Concept

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute:

Traditionally, sectarian violence implies a symmetrical confrontation between two or more non-state actors representing different population groups.

Sectarian violence differs from the concept of race riot. It may involve the dynamics of social polarization, the balkanization of a geographic area along the lines of self-identifying groups, and protracted social conflict.

Some of the possible enabling environments for sectarian violence include power struggles, political climate, social climate, cultural climate, and economic landscape.

• Economic conflict: capitalist versus collectivist
• Political conflict: communist versus nationalist
• Interreligious conflict: Christians and/or Catholics versus Jews
  Muslim versus Christian
  Muslim versus Buddhist
• Christian conflict: Catholic versus Protestant
• Islamic conflict: Shia versus Sunni

Among Buddhists

In Japan

In the Japanese Middle Ages, different Buddhist sects had private armies that frequently clashed. See Buddhism and violence and warrior monks.

Among Christians

Main article: Sectarian violence among Christians

Catholic-Eastern Orthodox

See also: Fourth Crusade

Although the First Crusade was initially launched in response to an appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos for help in repelling the invading Seljuq Turks from Anatolia, one of the lasting legacies of the Crusades was to "further separate the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity from each other."

European wars of religion

Main article: European wars of religion

See also: Hussite Wars

 

The Battle of the White Mountain in Bohemia (1620)—one of the decisive battles of the Thirty Years War

Following the onset of the Protestant Reformation, a series of wars were waged in Europe starting circa 1524 and continuing intermittently until 1648. Although sometimes unconnected, all of these wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period, and the conflict and rivalry that it produced. According to Miroslav Volf, the European wars of religion were a major factor behind the "emergence of secularizing modernity".

In the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre followers of the Roman Catholic Church killed up to 30,000 Huguenots (French Protestants) in mob violence. The massacres were carried out on the national day celebrating Bartholomew the Apostle. Pope Gregory XIII sent the leader of the massacres a Golden Rose, and said that the massacres "gave him more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican". The killings have been called "the worst of the century's religious massacres", and led to the start of the fourth war of the French Wars of Religion.

Northern Ireland

Further information: The Troubles and Politics of Northern Ireland

 

A modern Protestant mural in Belfast celebrating Oliver Cromwell and his activities

Since the 16th century there has been sectarian conflict of varying intensity between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. This religious sectarianism is connected to a degree with nationalism. Northern Ireland has seen inter-communal conflict for more than four centuries and there are records of religious ministers or clerics, the agents for absentee landlords, aspiring politicians, and members of the landed gentry stirring up and capitalizing on sectarian hatred and violence back as far as the late 18th century.

William E.H. Lecky, an Irish historian, wrote in 1892 that, "If the characteristic mark of a healthy Christianity be to unite its members by a bond of fraternity and love, then there is no country where Christianity has more completely failed than Ireland".

Steve Bruce, a sociologist, wrote;

The Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict. Economic and social considerations are also crucial, but it was the fact that the competing populations in Ireland adhered and still adhere to competing religious traditions which has given the conflict its enduring and intractable quality. Reviewers agreed "Of course the Northern Ireland conflict is at heart religious".

John Hickey wrote;

Politics in the North is not politics exploiting religion. That is far too simple an explanation: it is one which trips readily off the tongue of commentators who are used to a cultural style in which the politically pragmatic is the normal way of conducting affairs and all other considerations are put to its use. In the case of Northern Ireland the relationship is much more complex. It is more a question of religion inspiring politics than of politics making use of religion. It is a situation more akin to the first half of seventeenth century England than to the last quarter of twentieth‑century Britain.

The period from 1969 to 1998 is known as "The Troubles", a period of frequent violence and tense relations between Northern Ireland's communities. About one in eight females and one in five males in Northern Ireland identified themselves as belonging to no religion. However, people of no religion and non-Christian faiths are still considered as belonging to one of the two "sects" along with churchgoers. People of no religion are less likely to support the main, constitution-oriented main political parties, or more likely to support a more neutral political party such as the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.

About two-thirds of people with no religion tend to think of themselves as neither unionist or nationalist, although a much higher percentage of those with no religion tend to think of themselves as unionist than nationalist.

For people who describe themselves as Protestant or Roman Catholic, a small majority of them appear to favour one of the two main political parties on either side: the Democratic Unionist Party or the Ulster Unionist Party for Protestants; and Sinn Féin or the Social Democratic and Labour Party for Roman Catholics. In each case, the percentage in the Northern Irish Life & Times Survey in 2015 was 57%. Roman Catholics are more likely to reject the label British (59%) than Protestants are to reject the label Irish (48%).

Protestants are more likely to consider the British identity as the 'best' single way to describe themselves, at 67%, with Roman Catholics close behind at 63% who consider the best single way to describe themselves as Irish. There is an equal level of support for the more neutral Northern Irish identity, with 25% of people from each religion likely to choose that label as the best description. Over a third of people with no religion prefer to be described as Northern Irish.

There are organizations dedicated to the reduction of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The Corrymeela Community (in Ballycastle, County Antrim), operates a retreat centre on the northern coast of Northern Ireland to bring Catholics and Protestants together to discuss their differences and similarities. The Ulster Project works with teenagers from Northern Ireland and the United States to provide safe, non-denominational environments to discuss sectarianism in Northern Ireland. These organizations are attempting to bridge the gap of historical prejudice between the two religious communities.

Although state schools in Northern Ireland are non-denominational, most Catholic parents still send their children to specifically Catholic schools or Irish-language medium schools, thus ensuring that state school students are almost wholly Protestant. There are some integrated schools and the Society of Friends (Quakers) have long been an advocate of co-education in terms of religion, operating the Friends' School in Lisburn (first established in 1774).

Yugoslav wars

Main article: Yugoslav Wars

Howard Goeringer criticizes both the "Catholic Pope and the Orthodox Patriarch" for failing to condemn the "deliberate massacre of men, women and children in the name of 'ethnic cleansing' as incompatible with Jesus' life and teaching."

Rwandan genocide

Main article: Rwandan Genocide

Further information: Religion in Rwanda

The majority of Rwandans, and Tutsis in particular, are Catholic, so shared religion did not prevent genocide. Miroslav Volf cites a Roman Catholic bishop from Rwanda as saying, "The best cathechists, those who filled our churches on Sundays, were the first to go with machetes in their hands". Ian Linden asserts that "there is absolutely no doubt that significant numbers of prominent Christians were involved in sometimes slaughtering their own church leaders." According to Volf, "what is particularly disturbing about the complicity of the church is that Rwanda is without doubt one of Africa’s most evangelized nations. Eight out of ten of its people claimed to be Christians."

When the Roman Catholic missionaries came to Rwanda in the late 1880s, they contributed to the "Hamitic" theory of race origins, which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race. The Church has been considered to have played a significant role in fomenting racial divisions between Hutu and Tutsi, in part because they found more willing converts among the majority Hutu. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) report on the genocide states,

In the colonial era, under German and then Belgian rule, Roman Catholic missionaries, inspired by the overtly racist theories of 19th century Europe, concocted a destructive ideology of ethnic cleavage and racial ranking that attributed superior qualities to the country's Tutsi minority, since the missionaries ran the colonial-era schools, these pernicious values were systematically transmitted to several generations of Rwandans...

The Roman Catholic Church argues that those who took part in the genocide did so without the sanction of the Church. Although the genocide was ethnically motivated and religious factors were not prominent, Human Rights Watch reported that a number of religious authorities in Rwanda, particularly Roman Catholic, failed to condemn the genocide publicly at the time.

Some Christian leaders have been convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for their roles in the genocide. These include Rwandan Roman Catholic priests and nuns as well as a Seventh-day Adventist Church pastor.

Scotland

See also: Sectarianism in Glasgow

Scotland, which is very close to Northern Ireland, suffers from a spill-over of sectarianism, largely owing to the Troubles in Northern Ireland as many people, particularly in the West of Scotland, have links to Northern Ireland by genealogy or immigration.

Scotland's two largest and best supported football clubs—Glasgow Rangers, which, for many generations, has largely been identified with Protestants and unionism, and Glasgow Celtic, which, since its founding in the late 19th century, has been identified with Roman Catholics and Irish nationalism or republicanism—both subscribe, with varying degrees of success, to government initiatives and charities like the Nil by Mouth campaign are working in this area.

Celtic previously sent letters to every season ticket holder reminding supporters that no form of sectarianism is welcome at Celtic Park. Rangers' anti-sectarian policy is called Follow With Pride.

Among Muslims

Main article: Sectarian violence among Muslims

See also: Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict

Sectarian violence between the two major sects of Islam, Shia and Sunni, has occurred in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Lebanon etc. This violent conflict has roots in the political turmoil arising out of differences over the succession to Muhammad. Abu Bakr, a companion of Muhammad, was nominated by Umar and elected as the first Sunni Rightly Guided Caliph. However another group felt that Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, had been designated by Muhammad and is considered by Shia as the first Imam.

According to Sunnis, Abu Bakr was followed by Umar as caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, then by Uthman ibn Affan and finally by Ali. Ali's right to rule was challenged by Muawiyah bin Abu Sufian, governor of Syria, who believed that Ali should have acted faster against the murderers of Uthman. The situation deteriorated further when many of those responsible for the death of Uthman rallied behind Ali. However, later on, both the parties agreed to have some one as a judge between them. This led to the separation of an extremist group known as Kharijites from Ali's army, which pronounced the judgement belonged to God alone. A member of this group later assassinated Ali. By breaching, Hasan-Muawiyah Treaty, Muawiyah appointed his son Yazid as his successor. The credentials and rule of Yazid were challenged by Ali's son Hussein ibn Ali (and grandson of Muhammad). A battle at Karbala in Iraq led to the martyrdom of Hussein and dozens of others from Ahl al-Bayt (the members of the family of Muhammad).

This tragic incident created deep fissures in the Muslim society. The conflict that had started at a political plane intervened with the dogma and belief systems. Those who consider Ali to be the true heir to the Muhammad are known as "Shia" referring to Shian-e-Ali. The other Muslims are known as "Sunni" meaning "followers of the Traditions of The Prophet".

In Iraq

Main articles: Iraqi Civil War (2006–2009) and Sectarian violence in Iraq

In February 2006, a full-scale civil war erupted in Iraq, when violence between the two Muslim rival sects erupted. It has left tens of thousands to hundred thousands of people dead and dozens of mosques and homes destroyed.

In Pakistan

Main article: Sectarian violence in Pakistan

In Pakistan sectarianism exhibited its first organized nature in early 1980 when two rival organizations were established: Tehrik-e-Jafaria (TFJ) (Organization of the Jafri (Shia) Law) represented Shia communities, and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) (Guardian of the Companions of the Prophet) representing Sunnis. The first major incident of this sectarian violence was killing of the Arif Hussain Hussaini, founding leader of TFJ in 1986.

In retaliation Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, founder of the (SSP) was murdered. Since then internecine bloody vendetta has ensued. The focus of this violence has been Kurram, Hangu, Dera Ismail Khan, Bahawalpur, Jhang, Quetta,Gigit- Baltistan and Karachi.

The transformation of the sectarian conflict to a violent civil war in Pakistan coincided^{[citation needed]} with the establishment of the Islamic republic in Iran and promotion of the Sunni religion and its incorporation in the state institutions by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, regime in Pakistan.

The Iranian Revolution was led by Shia clerics, and it influenced Shia communities all over the world. In Pakistan Tehrik-e-Jafaria was established with the demands of enforcing the Sharia Law. This demand was viewed as detrimental by the Sunni religious leaders. In response SSP was established by the Sunni extremist clerics. Many of these clerics had a background in the sectarian strife against the Ahmadis (a heterodox sect considered non-Muslim by majority of the Muslims)

In Somalia

Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a is a Somali paramilitary group consisting of Sufis and moderates opposed to the radical Islamist group Al-Shabaab. They are fighting in order to prevent Wahhabism from being imposed on Somalia and to protect the country's Sunni-Sufi traditions and generally moderate religious views.

In Syria

Main article: Sectarianism and minorities in the Syrian Civil War

The Syrian civil war gradually shifted towards a more sectarian nature. Pro-Assad militant groups are largely Shia, while anti-Assad militant groups are Sunni.

In Yemen

Main articles: Shia insurgency in Yemen and Yemeni Civil War (2015–present)

In Yemen, there have been many clashes between Sunnis and Shia Houthis. According to The Washington Post, "In today’s Middle East, activated sectarianism affects the political cost of alliances, making them easier between co-religionists. That helps explain why Sunni-majority states are lining up against Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah over Yemen."