281,637 research outputs found
Community detection in civil society online networks: Theoretical guide and empirical assessment
Community detection is a fundamental challenge in the analysis of online networks. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding how to accomplish this task in a manner that acknowledges domain-specific, substantive social theory. We develop a typology of what social phenomena communities of hyperlinked actors may signifyâtopical similarities, ideological associations, strategic alliances, and potential user trafficâand offer recommendations for community detection grounded in these concepts. Testing procedures on a hyperlink network of the food safety movement, we demonstrate that the handling of tie directions and weights as well as algorithm choice influence which communities are ultimately detected in such a network
Sustainable Palm Oil Supply Chains : Complexity, Custody and Contention
Paper delivered at the 21st Logistics Research Network annual conference 2016, 7th-9th September 2016, Hull. Abstract Purpose: The sustainability of oil palm cultivation is highly contentious. Demand for the product is strong, albeit with the market being largely divided between the bulk sale of oil to Asian markets and premium certified sustainable palm products to Europe. These disparate end-user markets place different production demands on upstream suppliers. This paper will explore the complex and contentious nature of sustainability in the context of the palm oil supply chain. Specifically, this study considers the economic, ethical and environmental aspects emerging from efforts to create sustainable palm oil supply chains with a view to developing supply chain âregulation without governmentâ as a possible solution. Research Approach: Case-based research involved empirical observation of upstream actors, document analysis and consequent theory testing through semi-structured interviews with growers, mills, refiners, certifiers of sustainable palm oil, NGOs, retailers and leading European manufacturers of palm oil containing products. Findings and Originality: Different interpretations of sustainability have created conflict at the point of production with what are perceived to be Western values regularly conflicting with the perceived needs of palm oil producing countries. Traceable supply chain custodies created by large downstream manufacturers may isolate smallholders and reduce their ability to be incorporated into some certification schemes. Though downstream actors can pay a significant value-chain premium for certified products, due to a wider lack of global demand for certified palm oil, sustainable products are ending up in other supply chains with no premium being paid to growers. Research Impact: The presented study is relatively unique in palm oil research for its empirical grounding, bringing together the first-hand insight, thoughts and perceptions of stakeholders throughout the supply chain. Additionally, this paper contributes to the reactive-proactive continuum theory for sustainable supply chain practices by discussing how key stakeholders influence behaviour. Practical Impact: Insights from this research will help raise awareness of the supply chain dynamics of the palm oil industry, the challenges faced by upstream buyers and how well-meaning efforts to support socio-economic development, from various stakeholders, potentially harms efforts to drive sustainable production of oil palm. Alternative routes for developing sustainable supply chains should be initiated from within the supply chains rather than solely through external activism. The implications of this are far-reaching as the consumer base for palm oil continues to grow globally
Testing the securitization paradigm of the so-called Copenhagen school in the case study of europe migrant crisis in 2015
Migration is an international phenomenon and contentious concept. Although people have been moving by political, economic and cultural motivations since the beginning of the human history; particularly recently, migration fuels traditional fears over national and societal security. Because, migration, a normal or typical political issue can be altered to a security threat by repetitive and successful speech acts. This fact has often been referred to as âthe securitization of migrationâ, which means the presentation of migration as a security threat. In this regard, the arrival of more than one million refugees to the EU in 2015 -Migrant (Refugee) Crisis- constitutes an important milestone. The starting point of this study is to depict âHow the securitization process of the âMigrant Crisisâ was operatedâ. It will be in charge of defining not only the key-concepts, such as âsecuritization moveâ and âsecuritizationâ, but also of what are the success criteria are. According to this study, securitizing actors and their speech acts have opened the way for the success of securitization by providing the perfect ground for altering the question of Migrants into a survival issue. To analyze the characteristics and the implications of securitizing the migration issue within the EU, this article primarily engages with the theoretical approach developed by the so-called Copenhagen School, which outlines how issues become threats those need to be handled by extra-ordinary measures.La migraciĂłn es un fenĂłmeno internacional y un concepto polĂ©mico. Aunque las personas se han trasladado por motivos polĂticos, econĂłmicos o culturales a lo largo de los siglos; la migraciĂłn alimenta en la actualidad antiguos temores sobre seguridad nacional y social. Dado que la migraciĂłn, un problema polĂtico normal, puede transformarse en amenaza de seguridad por cĂłmo se habla de Ă©l -actos de habla-.Este hecho se ha denominado a menudo como "la seguritizaciĂłn de la migraciĂłn"; es decir, el considerar la migraciĂłn como una amenaza existencial. En este sentido, la llegada de mĂĄs de un millĂłn de refugiados a la UE en 2015, la crisis de los inmigrantes (refugiados), constituye un hito importante. El punto de partida de este estudio es describir "CĂłmo se llevĂł a cabo el proceso de seguritizaciĂłn de la 'Crisis Migratoria'". Se tratarĂĄ de definir no solo conceptos claves, como "seguritizaciĂłn" y "acto de habla", sino tambiĂ©n cuĂĄles son los criterios que contribuyen a construir con Ă©xito dicha seguritizaciĂłn. SegĂșn el presente estudio, actores securitizadores y sus actos de habla han abierto el camino para su triunfo, al proporcionar el terreno perfecto para transformar la cuestiĂłn de los migrantes en una cuestiĂłn de supervivencia. Para analizar las caracterĂsticas y las implicaciones de la seguritizaciĂłn de la cuestiĂłn migratoria dentro de la UE, este trabajo aborda principalmente el enfoque teĂłrico desarrollado por la llamada Escuela de Copenhague, que describe cĂłmo los problemas se convierten en amenazas que deben manejarse con medidas extraordinarias
Examining emerging ICT's adoption in SMEs from a dynamic process approach
Purpose â This paper aims to advance information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption
research and practice by examining and understanding the emerging ICT adoption in small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) from a dynamic process perspective using actor-network theory (ANT).
Design/methodology/approach â This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate how
services SMEs are constantly engaging in ICT adoption for improving business performance.
Two rounds of interviews were conducted with 26 interviewees. Data collected from the unstructured
and semi-structured interviews were analysed to understand the dynamic adoption process, actors
involved and their interactions.
Findings â The findings reveal the recursive and dynamic nature of the emerging ICT adoption
process and the constant interactions and negotiations of various actors. Underpinned by the key
concepts of ANTand validated by the empirical data, a framework is developed to depict the stages of
dynamic process of emerging ICT adoption, the actors involved and the associated key activities.
Research limitations/implications â Qualitative research is interpretive in nature and the size of
the sample used is limited. These limitations require caution for the generalization of the findings.
The framework can be further validated across a wider population using mixed methods combining
qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Practical implications â Emerging ICT adoption has moved from a simple adoptersâ participation
process to involving various actors that constantly interact and influence the process. SMEs manager
can be influenced by and influence the technology advancement. As a result, SMEs need constantly
interact with various human and non-human actors to keep up with the new ICT development and
benefit from the emerging opportunities.
Originality/value â The research focuses on the emerging ICT adoption in SMEs from the dynamic
process perspective using ANT. It advances ICT adoption research and practice by developing
a framework to depict the dynamic and interactive nature of ICT adoption process, and the actors
involved and their interactions in the adoption process.
Keywords Adoption, Technology adoption, Actor-network theory,
Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
Paper type Research pape
Towards sound refactoring in erlang
Erlang is an actor-based programming
language used extensively for building concurrent, reactive
systems that are highly available and suff er minimum
downtime. Such systems are often mission critical, making
system correctness vital. Refactoring is code restructuring
that improves the code but does not change
behaviour. While using automated refactoring tools is
less error-prone than performing refactorings manually,
automated refactoring tools still cannot guarantee that
the refactoring is correct, i.e., program behaviour is preserved.
This leads to lack of trust in automated refactoring
tools. We rst survey solutions to this problem
proposed in the literature. Erlang refactoring tools as
commonly use approximation techniques which do not
guarantee behaviour while some other works propose the
use of formal methodologies. In this work we aim to
develop a formal methodology for refactoring Erlang
code. We study behavioural preorders, with a special focus
on the testing preorder as it seems most suited to
our purpose.peer-reviewe
The power of A/B testing under interference
In this paper, we address the fundamental statistical question: how can you
assess the power of an A/B test when the units in the study are exposed to
interference? This question is germane to many scientific and industrial
practitioners that rely on A/B testing in environments where control over
interference is limited. We begin by proving that interference has a measurable
effect on its sensitivity, or power. We quantify the power of an A/B test of
equality of means as a function of the number of exposed individuals under any
interference mechanism. We further derive a central limit theorem for the
number of exposed individuals under a simple Bernoulli switching interference
mechanism. Based on these results, we develop a strategy to estimate the power
of an A/B test when actors experience interference according to an observed
network model. We demonstrate how to leverage this theory to estimate the power
of an A/B test on units sharing any network relationship, and highlight the
utility of our method on two applications - a Facebook friendship network as
well as a large Twitter follower network. These results yield, for the first
time, the capacity to understand how to design an A/B test to detect, with a
specified confidence, a fixed measurable treatment effect when the A/B test is
conducted under interference driven by networks.Comment: 14 page
Not all the bots are created equal:the Ordering Turing Test for the labelling of bots in MMORPGs
This article contributes to the research on bots in Social Media. It takes as its starting point an emerging perspective which proposes that we should abandon the investigation of the Turing Test and the functional aspects of bots in favor of studying the authentic and cooperative relationship between humans and bots. Contrary to this view, this article argues that Turing Tests are one of the ways in which authentic relationships between humans and bots take place. To understand this, this article introduces the concept of Ordering Turing Tests: these are sort of Turing Tests proposed by social actors for purposes of achieving social order when bots produce deviant behavior. An Ordering Turing Test is method for labeling deviance, whereby social actors can use this test to tell apart rule-abiding humans and rule-breaking bots. Using examples from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, this article illustrates how Ordering Turing Tests are proposed and justified by players and service providers. Data for the research comes from scientific literature on Machine Learning proposed for the identification of bots and from game forums and other player produced paratexts from the case study of the game Runescape
Bargaining Theory, Civil War Outcomes, and War Recurrence: Assessing the Results of Empirical Tests of the Theory
Once ended, a significant number of civil wars recur. One influential empirical international relations theory on which scholars have drawn in an effort to provide an explanation for this phenomenon is the bargaining model of war. Devised initially for the study of interstate war, the theory posits that bargaining problems may prevent belligerents from reaching a deal that enables them to avoid a costly war. Bargaining problems also have been identified as contributing to the recurrence of armed intrastate conflict. Working within the framework of bargaining theory, a number of scholars have claimed that the most effective way to inhibit a return to civil war is to end the conflict via military victory as such an outcome is thought to help solve key bargaining problems. However, a growing number of empirical tests cast doubt on this proposition. An analysis of the results of these tests as well as new scholarship on civil war termination highlight some of the limitations inherent in employing a theory devised for the study of interstate war to analyze questions related to civil wars
Action theory in Habermas and educational practices
In this paper I explore the potential for viewing education as an âunrestricted communication communityâ (Habermas 1990: 88), using categorisations from Habermas of different kinds of action as analytical tools for examining educational practices. For the paper, I pursue two main themes: 1) how the concept of communicative action in relation to the three forms of knowledge-constitutive interest (Habermas 1987) can be operationalised in educational discourse 2) how the distinguishing of communicative action and discourse ethics from other forms of action may be used to understand the interaction taking place in educational contexts to develop evaluative tools for examining teaching practices. The potential of this framework for encouraging critical reflection on teaching, on critical incidents in teaching, peer observation, or tutor observation of novice practitioners is also discussed in relation to the forms of reflexivity that Habermas identifies as necessary conditions of human freedom (1996). Taken together, these different constructs form a powerful framework for critically examining the truth and validity claims both explicitly made and implied in educational practices from the perspectives of the individual as well as the professional community to which the individual belongs. It is accepted that a rational, communicative action aimed at reaching consensus does not necessarily dominate either the school or the higher education institutionâs normal mode of discourse. Thus, the paper also differentiates other forms of action, incorporating these into the overall critical framework
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