Building a Bridge from Qualitative Analysis to a Simulation of the Arab Spring Protests

This paper builds a ‘bridge’ between a qualitative analysis and the design of an agent-based simulation by applying the CSNE framework, which distinguishes between context, scope and narrative elements. Qualitative data were constructed from ethnographic interviews on the Arab Spring in Egypt and Morocco. To identify narrative elements, the data were analysed by coding procedures from grounded theory and a computational analysis. Through a series of conversations and structured questions, the scope and context, which were largely implicit in the data, were specified, and a simulation was produced in a process akin to ‘rapid prototyping’. The aim was to produce the design for a simulation that included the key elements and behaviours identified from the qualitative data and as few other elements as possible. This paper describes this process, the CSNE framework, as well as the simulation that resulted. The lessons learned for such an exercise are reported

Emotional testing on Facebook’s user experience

This study aims at understanding how a user's emotions fluctuate when undertaking certain tasks on a social media platform such as Facebook or other software products which may have emotional effects on its user. Speci cally, we explored the difference in the usability aspect of Facebook concerning frequent and new Facebook users. The study involves a qualitative study on eighteen participants, nine of whom were Facebook users and nine non-Facebook users who had never used Facebook before participating in this study. During the testing procedure, users were asked to complete several tasks on Facebook, while the electrophysiological activity of their brain was recorded using an EEG (electroencephalogram) acquisition system. Certainly, this study can be applied to any software product, before its release, to improve its user interface by acquiring insight into how user-friendly it is for new users when compared to frequent users. Additionally, a correlation in user friendliness between new users and frequent users is investigated. Furthermore, the study will help us discern which parts of the brain had the most signi cant difference between groups and discuss the motives behind an individual's emotional state, concerning user experience. Based on the analysis of the power spectrum of the characteristic brain waves, this research establishes that there is a substantial statistical difference between new and frequent Facebook users. Also, it resulted that there is a signi cant difference between the central, temporal and occipital lobes of new and frequent users. These results will assist developers in creating optimal and user-friendly software products.peer-reviewe

Everyday sentiment among unionists and nationalists in a Northern Irish town

Unionists and nationalists remain polarized in their political choices, increasingly so since Brexit. Does this signal increasing and dangerous division? Or have the decades of peace and agreed institutions changed the tenor of discussion in Northern Ireland? In this article, we examine the ways community relations, political division and contention are discussed by focusing on the expression of everyday sentiment among unionists and nationalists in a mixed Northern Irish town. Theoretically, it has been argued that positive sentiment raises hopes for compromise and leaves room for discussion, while negative sentiment closes off deliberation and compromise. Based on interviews, we first conduct a sentiment analysis that identifies positive versus negative sentiment expressed by the respondents, focusing on themes addressing Irish unity, unionism, Brexit, as well as personal and community life. The analysis shows that, on average, interviewees talk more positively than negatively about each theme. We then conduct a qualitative discourse analysis to investigate how positive and negative sentiment are expressed by unionist and nationalist respondents. We find that respondents name and elaborate on the political issues in contention while lowering the emotional valence of discussion. This suggests much more room for deliberation and compromise than is usually assumed.Reconciliation Fun

Belief ascription, metaphor, and intensional identification

This paper discusses the extension of ViewGen, an algorithm derived for belief ascription, to the areas of speech acts, intensional object representation and metaphor. ViewGen represents the beliefs of agents as explicit, partitioned proposition-sets known as environments. Environments are convenient, even essential, for addressing important pragmatic issues of rea-soning. The paper concentrates on showing that the transfer of information in metaphors, intensional object representation, and ordinary, non-metaphorical belief ascription can all be seen as different manifestations of a single environment-amalgamation process. The paper also briefly discusses the addition of a heuristic-based relevance-determination procedure to ViewGen, and justifies the partitioning approach to belief ascription. 1

School Resource Allocation in Texas Public Schools: Study of High-Poverty, High Performing Schools and High-Poverty, Low Performing Schools

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between resource allocation practices in specific categorical functions and student performance in reading and math. This study utilized quantitative research methods to study the effects of spending and performance over four years of analysis. Quantitative data was acquired utilizing information from the Texas Education Agency. The data was collected from 81 campuses and represented over 1,500 students. The study's outcomes reported that little or no correlation could be found between inputs (dollars spent in three categories) and outputs (student results in reading and math). However, subgroup analysis revealed that students from non- low socioeconomic (SES) households started out higher than their low SES counterparts, and low SES students performed worse over time in both reading and math. Math results decreased more dramatically than reading indicating a need for school-level training in data analysis to ensure that limited dollars are spent appropriately. The study recommends that principals and school administrators be especially knowledgeable in critical data analysis skills. The study further recommends that state policy-makers invest more heavily in early math instruction. In addition, the current study found that student achievement, in low-SES students, especially in mathematics is very alarming. Low SES students are starting out behind the non low-SES counterparts and perform progressively worse over time. State policy makers must address these concerns