Stance-taking and social status on an online bulletin board: A qualitative and quantitative approach

In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are divided into three hierarchically distinct social ranks based on status and activity on the board. I investigate whether members of a higher rank use epistemic and evidential stance verbs in a more authoritative manner than members of lower ranks using two methodological frameworks. In the qualitative part of the study, I adopt the dialogical discourse analysis to argue that epistemic and evidential stance is a dialogically constructed phenomenon that locally emerges between conversational co-participants. The quantitative part of the study employs the multifactorial usage-feature analysis, where two stance verbs think and seem are coded for a range of formal, semantic and extra-linguistic factors, which are believed to contribute to the differentiation of authoritative and tentative stance. The results show that bulletin board users of a higher rank exhibit a more authoritative and even aggressive use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs than users of lower ranks

Doctoral candidates' information practice through research writing : cases of East-Asian students in Australian universities

Information practices are pertinent to research writing, particularly in the writing of a literature review. This study examined East Asian doctoral (PhD) candidates’ information practices as a construct in writing literature reviews for social science theses in Australian universities. The outcomes of this research complement and extend the current documented strategies and regulations in information practices in both fields of Higher Degree Research education and Library and Information Science (LIS). Conceptualised in terms of Foucauldian (1972) “statements”, this study contributes to a reconceptualisation of information practices in research writing through the analysis of students’ literature reviews. Further, this research sheds light on research pedagogy for researchers who are committed to being educators more than supervisors. For doctoral students this thesis provides in part a picture of information practices in research writing. Information practices in literature reviews have largely been under-researched and/or overlooked in the fields of LIS and research education. Past studies in these two areas have contributed to developing research students’ information search abilities and writing abilities through various strategies (Carter, 2011a; Cotterall, 2011a; Kavuluru et al., 2012; Lee & Kamler, 2008; McCulloch et al., 2010; Olsson, 2010; Switzer & Lepkowski, 2007), while there is lack of combined investigation about information practices in research writing. Moreover, there are few studies investigating the statements (Foucault, 1972) per se in these two areas. Statement which is the core unit of discourse brings about the particular modalities of existence such as the information practices in research writing (Foucault, 1972). The investigation on statement can generate new insights into research writing by relating to information practices in both research education and LIS

Connecting the dots : playful interaction with scientific image data in repositories

Scientific practice is an activity that is data-intensive and widely supported by computerized systems, data repositories included. It is also an activity that is highly creative and, as such, can benefit from a moment of openness, playfulness and exploration. Motivated also by recent developments in the field of Human Computer Interaction regarding play and games, this work investigates playfulness as a desirable attribute of a scientist's interaction with scientific data in repositories. Focus is on data repositories of a specific domain of science, i.e. the life sciences, and of a particular type of data, i.e. image data. Having introduced a new but relevant attribute for interfaces to scientific image repositories, i.e. playfulness, the question we ask is the following: What could playfulness with scientific images amount to and how do we design for it? Via case studies and reviews, we flesh out particular elements of play for exploration and implement artefacts, i.e. interfaces and games, that exemplify instances of playful interaction with image research material in collections.LEI Universiteit LeidenComputer Systems, Imagery and Medi

Reorganize your blogs: Supporting blog re-visitation with natural language processing and visualization

Temporally-connected personal blogs contain voluminous textual content, presenting challenges in re-visiting and reflecting on experiences. Other data repositories have benefited from natural language processing (NLP) and interactive visualizations (VIS) to support exploration, but little is known about how these techniques could be used with blogs to present experiences and support multimodal interaction with blogs, particularly for authors. This paper presents the effect of reorganization—reorganizing the large blog set with NLP and presenting abstract topics with VIS—to support novel re-visitation experiences to blogs. The BlogCloud tool, a blog re-visitation tool that reorganizes blog paragraphs around user-searched keywords, implements reorganization and similarity-based content grouping. Through a public use session with bloggers who wrote about extended hikes, we observed the effect of NLP-based reorganization in delivering novel re-visitation experiences. Findings suggest that the re-presented topics provide new reflection materials and re-visitation paths, enabling interaction with symbolic items in memory

Exploring Gender Differences in Online Cancer Support Groups

Gender differences in depression and other psychiatric conditions have been widely documented in the general population (Nolen‐Hoeksema, 2006). Therefore, several studies have analyzed the differential gender‐based adaptation of a cancer diagnosis. However, there seem to be contradictory results. While some studies have found there to be no gender differences in terms of cancer‐related distress (Beresford et al., 2006; Deimling et al., 2006; Zabora et al., 2001; & Carlson et al., 2004; Matthews, 2003), other studies have found that females tend to display more anxiety and depressive symptoms (Mystakidou et al., 2005; Deimling et al., 2006). Interestingly, limited studies have reported men with higher levels of psychological distress when compared to women (Kaiser, Hartoonian, & Owen, 2009). In considering the effects of gender on cancer‐related distress, there are other factors that should be considered; for instance, is the cancer gender‐specific? (E.g. breast, ovarian, cervical, prostate, testicular), or is the cancer gender‐common? (E.g. lung, pancreatic, colon, etc.). While looking at distress rates within cancer types, it is important to consider the prognosis/ survival rate of different types of cancer. For example, perhaps women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a serious form of cancer, will report higher levels of distress in relation to men diagnosed with highly treatable prostate cancer. This observation may be attributed to survival rate as opposed to gender. Yet another factor to consider while examining gender differences in cancer‐related distress rates are cultural determinants (Mehnert, Shim, Koyama, Cho, Inoi, Paik, & Koch, 2006). Some cultures may find it less socially acceptable for men to admit to distress, which may in turn explain why females have been found to report higher levels of distress. For example, Wilson (1967) found that males are more willing to express certain types of emotions more than others. Women are more likely to express feelings of fear than men, and more likely to report fears that others may view as “silly” because it is not socially acceptable for men to do so (Wilson, 1967). Findings concerning gender differences in cancer‐related distress have largely varied based upon location and types of symptoms as well. For example, males have reported higher distress in the physical dimension of symptoms, but for females in the psychological dimension. However, females have reported higher distress in general (Herschbach, Book, Brandi, Keller, Lindena, Newohner, & Marten‐Mittag, 2008). Moreover, females treated in University clinics and rehabilitation clinics reported significantly higher distress than their male counterparts in the same setting, yet distress rates varied in different settings (Herschbach, Book, Brandi, Keller, Lindena, Newohner, & Marten‐Mittag, 2008). However, such results may be due to the complex confounding effects and stage of disease in these settings. Furthermore, across different cancer types, females have been found to be more distressed than males in each category. Highest distress rates were found in individuals with respiratory tract cancers for both males and females (Hershbach et al., 2008). Finally, when gender differences are found to exist in terms of cancer‐related distress, it is important to recognize that a cancer diagnosis may affect men and women uniquely and may trigger different coping methods. Therefore, intervention efforts may need to cater differently to men versus women. For example, research has demonstrated that females tend to experience more cancer‐related pain than men, speculated to be accounted for by females being undertreated for such pain (Im, Chee, Guevara, et al., 2007). Further, females have tended to display more emotion‐focused and social support seeking efforts compared to their male counterparts (Clarke, McCXarthy, Downie, Ashley, & Anderson, 2009)