The essence of a democratic process is the guarantee that citizens have free and easy access to public information. How can that be made possible and how can people learn to use that information critically? In earlier papers (Boef, et.al. 2008 and 2009), we discussed the relationship between public library, press and the free access to relevant information. In this paper, we concentrate on the role of journalistic media in making public information accessible for the citizen. Our starting point is the fact that the citizen, in shaping her or his position in relation to political and other societal issues needs fewer opinions of others, but more reliable information; verified and certified by professionals. That way, the citizen will become enabled to create and to ground his or her opinion. Based on that solid foundation, opinions and comments of others can be appreciated and rated. Finally, we will discuss the ongoing process of the disappearing of independent media and the negative effect on the democratic process, and hence the need for a new generation of Internet savvy civil journalists.
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Este artículo busca señales de discursos de odio aparecidos en comentarios sobre el procés y el independentismo catalán publicados en las noticias en prensa sobre Lionel Messi en Madrid y en Barcelona (Abc, La Vanguardia, Mundo Deportivo, Marca, El mundo y As) en el periodo 2019-2021. Partiendo de 2.639 noticias con Messi en el titular, se usaron métodos cuantitativos para identificar los hilos con comentarios políticos para estudiarlos después a través de análisis cualitativo del discurso. Los resultados reflejan que en Madrid se usan noticias y comentarios sobre Messi para hablar del procés y del independentismo, mientras que en Barcelona (tanto medios como comentaristas) no relacionan al jugador con la política. Dos periódicos de Barcelona (La Vanguardia, Mundo Deportivo) y dos de Madrid (Marca y El mundo) reúnen los 12 hilos con más comentarios políticos en ambas ciudades: 487, en total. Su análisis revela que la prensa deportiva concita opiniones más diversas que la generalista y, por tanto, recoge más conflicto y más presencia de discursos de odio por ideología política. Los primeros mensajes (1-25) en los hilos de comentarios aparecen un 77% de las veces como los más seguidos y, por lo tanto, los usuarios que escriben primero influyen más. Esta investigación concluye que los discursos de odio se detectan más en estructuras y argumentaciones que en palabras concretas, pero su existencia no tiene por qué ser negativa y puede derivar en un efecto búmeran contra el propio mensaje de odio si aparece derrotado en la dinámica de intervenciones.This paper examines hate speech traces within comments about the Catalan independentist procés embedded in news published about Lionel Messi in Madrid’s and Barcelona’s online newspapers (Abc, La Vanguardia, Mundo Deportivo, Marca, El mundo, As) during the period 2019-2021. Starting from 2,639 news with Messi in the title, quantitative techniques were applied to identify those with the highest volume of political terms, and their comments’ threads were later studied in depth by means of qualitative discourse analysis. The results show that in Madrid news and comments about Messi are leveraged to discuss the procés, while in Barcelona both press and commenters refrain from tying politics to the footballer. Two newspapers from Barcelona (La Vanguardia, Mundo Deportivo) and two from Madrid (Marca, El mundo) gather the 12 threads with the highest prevalence of political comments: 487 in total. Their analysis reveals that opinions in sports newspapers are more diverse than in the general press and, consequently, show more conflict and more hate messages linked to opposing political views. The few first (1-25) of the threads’ comments turn out to be the most followed 77% of the times, making the users who comment first become more influential than the latecomers. This research concludes that hate speech appears more in structures and argumentations than in specific words, but their presence isn’t necessarily negative and can create a boomerang effect against the hate message if this becomes defeated during the subsequent online dispute.
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In January 2008 the online photo-hosting site Flickr introduced a new section entitled The Commons. Its two key goals were to show the hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives to the general public and to give Flickr community members the opportunity to contribute and describe these photos in order to enrich these collections. Surprisingly enough, little empirical research has been done on the actual usage of The Commons by the institutes and Flickr members. In our research we harvested a rich data sample over a 14-week period: 196,822 photos with user-generated content of 1.3 million tags, almost 130,000 comments and more than 22,000 notes. In total, 165,401 members from 188 different countries actively “did something” with the photos. This presentation will analyze this large data sample. In addition to the quantitative findings, we will discuss the qualitative findings regarding the content analysis of tags and comments.
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Background: Peer review is at the heart of the scientific process. With the advent of digitisation, journals started to offer electronic articles or publishing online only. A new philosophy regarding the peer review process found its way into academia: the open peer review. Open peer review as practiced by BioMed Central (BMC) is a type of peer review where the names of authors and reviewers are disclosed and reviewer comments are published alongside the article. A number of articles have been published to assess peer reviews using quantitative research. However, no studies exist that used qualitative methods to analyse the content of reviewers’ comments. Methods: A focused mapping review and synthesis (FMRS) was undertaken of manuscripts reporting qualitative research submitted to BMC open access journals from 1 January – 31 March 2018. Free-text reviewer comments were extracted from peer review reports using a 77-item classification system organised according to three key dimensions that represented common themes and sub-themes. A two stage analysis process was employed. First, frequency counts were undertaken that allowed revealing patterns across themes/sub-themes. Second, thematic analysis was conducted on selected themes of the narrative portion of reviewer reports. Results: A total of 107 manuscripts submitted to nine open-access journals were included in the FMRS. The frequency analysis revealed that among the 30 most frequently employed themes “writing criteria” (dimension II) is the top ranking theme, followed by comments in relation to the “methods” (dimension I). Besides that, some results suggest an underlying quantitative mindset of reviewers. Results are compared and contrasted in relation to established reporting guidelines for qualitative research to inform reviewers and authors of frequent feedback offered to enhance the quality of manuscripts. Conclusions: This FMRS has highlighted some important issues that hold lessons for authors, reviewers and editors. We suggest modifying the current reporting guidelines by including a further item called “Degree of data transformation” to prompt authors and reviewers to make a judgment about the appropriateness of the degree of data transformation in relation to the chosen analysis method. Besides, we suggest that completion of a reporting checklist on submission becomes a requirement.
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Objective: The aim of this study was to obtain insight in specific elements influencing the use, non-use, satisfaction, and dissatisfaction of ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) and the presence of underexposed problems with respect to AFOs. Methods: A questionnaire was composed to obtain information from AFO users to investigate the variables associated with satisfaction and the relation between these variables. A specific feature of this study was the systematic analysis of the remarks made by the respondents about their AFO. Quantitative data analyses were used for analysing the satisfaction and qualitative analyses were used analysing the remarks of the respondents. A total of 211 users completed the questionnaire. Results: Our survey showed that 1 out of 15 AFOs were not used at all. About three quarters of the AFO users were satisfied and about one quarter was dissatisfied. Females and users living alone reported relatively high levels of dissatisfaction, especially in the field of dimensions, comfort, weight, safety and effectiveness. Dissatisfaction with respect to off-the-shelf AFOs for the item durability was higher than that for custom-made AFOs. In the delivery and maintenance process the items ‘maintenance’, ‘professionalism’ and ‘delivery follow-up’ were judged to be unsatisfactory. A large number of comments were made by the respondents to improve the device or process, mainly by the satisfied AFO users. These comments show that even satisfied users experience many problems and that a lot of problems of AFO users are ‘underexposed’. Conclusion: To improve user satisfaction, the user practice has to be identified as an important sub-process of the whole orthopaedic chain especially in the diagnosis and prescription, delivery tuning and maintenance, and evaluation phase.
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The adoption of social media (web 2.0) in the e-marketing strategy of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is not yet researched much. Research findings in bigger companies in the USA, Europe and the Netherlands suggest that the issue is high on the think list of marketers and entrepreneurs. But what are the drivers and barriers for small and medium enterprises to make, execute, and further develop their strategy on social media? This paper places the perceptions and actions of 10 SMEs in the Netherlands in the Stages of Growth for e-Business model (SOG-e model) which focuses on e-business maturity. Findings are that general expectations and customer wishes are important drivers and that, besides time and money, the fear of negative comments on the Internet are important barriers.
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This module for Involving Anthropology presents an account of one of the plenary debates held at the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) World Congress held at Manchester University, 5-10 August 2013. The module begins with a brief introduction to provide the context for the debate, which included two speakers for (Amita Baviskar and Don Nonini) and two speakers against (Helen Kopnina and Veronica Strang) the motion: ‘Justice for people must come before justice for the environment’. The introduction is followed by an edited transcript of John Gledhill’s welcome and introduction, the texts of the arguments made by each speaker for and against the motion (with the exception of Veronica Strang, whose presentation is being published elsewhere a summary of the comments and questions subsequently invited from the floor of the hall, and then a transcript of the responses of the presenters. https://doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2015.1102229 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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This paper is a discussion paper to support an Erasmus+ project with the name Common European Numeracy Framework (CENF) (for adults) which will start at the end of the year 2018. In the first months of 2019 the team with participants from The Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Ireland will be in the process of collecting European examples of numeracy practices and current numeracy frameworks. At the conference we will show the results of this collection to date and the initial outline of a tentative CENF. We intend to spark comments, suggestions and insights from the participants of TWG07 - Adults Mathematics Education - to enrich the collection and as feedback on the initial outline of the CENF. Another aim is to create a network of national or regional stakeholders which will support the development of a shared framework for numeracy goals and numeracy education for adults in the 21st century.
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In this paper, we report on interview data collected from 14 Deaf leaders across seven countries (Australia, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States) regarding their perspectives on signed language interpreters. Using a semi-structured survey questionnaire, seven interpreting researchers interviewed two Deaf leaders each in their home countries. Following transcription of the data, the researchers conducted a thematic analysis of the comments. Four shared themes emerged in the data, as follows: (a) variable level of confidence in interpreting direction, (b) criteria for selecting interpreters, (c) judging the competence of interpreters, and (d) strategies for working with interpreters. The results suggest that Deaf leaders share similar, but not identical, perspectives about working with interpreters, despite differing conditions that hold regarding how interpreting services are provided in their respective countries. When compared to prior studies of Deaf leaders’ perspectives of interpreters, these data indicate some positive trends in Deaf leaders’ experience with interpreters; however, results also point to a need for further work in creating an atmosphere of trust, enhancing interpreters’ language fluency, and developing mutual collaboration between Deaf leaders and signed language interpreters. De url van de uitgeversversie van het artikel is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/084.2017.18.1.5
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