Blog Style Classification: Refining Affective Blogs

In the constantly growing blogosphere with no restrictions on form or topic, a number of writing styles and genres have emerged. Recognition and classification of these styles has become significant for information processing with an aim to improve blog search or sentiment mining. One of the main issues in this field is detection of informative and affective articles. However, such differentiation does not suffice today. In this paper we extend the differentiation and suggest a fine-grained set of subcategories for affective articles. We propose and evaluate a classification method employing novel lexical, morphological, lightweight syntactic and structural features of written text. The results show that our method outperforms the existing approaches

Rationales and functions of disliked music: An in-depth interview study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: With a few exceptions, musical taste has been researched via likes or preferences of certain types of music. The present study focuses on disliked music and takes a broad approach to cover explanatory strategies related to personal dislikes. METHODS: In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 participants in five age groups. Interviewees were asked to prepare a list of their disliked music, and for each item they were asked about the reasons for the dislike. To ensure that the complexity and range of the participants’ dislikes and rationales were captured in the analysis, a structuring content analysis as a mostly theory-driven approach was combined with inductive category creation out of the interview data. RESULTS: The most often mentioned type of dislike was musical style, followed by artist and genre. Five main reference points were identified for describing musical dislikes: the music itself, lyrics, performance, artist, and the people who listen to it. The identified rationales for disliked music were assigned to three larger categories: object-related reasons, such as music-compositional aspects, aesthetic dichotomies or lyrics; subject-related reasons, such as emotional or bodily effects, or discrepancies with the self-image; social reasons, which refer to one’s social environment and the taste judgments common to it (in-group) or to other groups of which the participants do not feel part of (out-group). Apart from the rationales for disliked music, the participants described specific reactions when they are confronted with their disliked music, such as emotional, physical, and social reactions. CONCLUSIONS: While musical dislikes have already been shown to fulfill important social functions, the current study extends the rationales to music-related and self-related reasons. Musical dislikes fulfill similar functions to liked music, such as preservation of a good mood, identity expression and construction, strengthening of group cohesion as well as social distinction

Keeping it Country while Dancing with the Elite

The published work is protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/This article examines programme and audience development at the "Norwegian Country Meeting" after this festival achieved status as a Norwegian hub festival for country music in 2012. Building on ethnographic data, this article focuses on the effects cultural policies and authoritative criteria for aesthetic quality have had on a popular musical event. The results show how cultural policy may be operationalized based on the dominating preferences of the cultural elite. In this context 'musical gentrification' (Dyndahl et al. 2014), a structural phenomenon in which low culture is absorbed into the legitimate culture with inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes, becomes a central theoretical concept. The significance of the study is reflected in its descriptions of how cultural practices and policies relate to wider systems of power and socio-aesthetic inequality.publishedVersio

Communicating an arts foundation’s values: sights, sounds and social media

Purpose This paper tests and refines the long-established signal transmission model of the communication process by examining the ways in which a newly-formed nonprofit arts foundation communicated its professed values to its stakeholders. Methodological approach The study uses a mixed method case study approach. Interviews with key informants and observations of the foundation’s webpages enabled the identification of the professed values of the arts foundation. Next, a questionnaire survey established whether these values had been successfully decoded by stakeholders and identified the channels via which the values-related signals had been received. Findings The transmission model was found to be relevant as a model. However, to improve its fit within a nonprofit arts context, a modification to the model is suggested which highlights the importance of multi-sensory channels, the importance of context, and the increasingly important role of the stakeholder. Research limitations This study is a small-scale case study, although its mixed methods help to ensure validity. Practical implications The findings will help nonprofit arts organisations to decide on how to best communicate their values to their stakeholders. Social implications A determination by an organisation to uphold an uplifting range of values, such as those which were found to be transmitted by Folkstock, impacts upon society by the potential contribution to a better quality of life. Originality /value Literature which provides in-depth examination of the communication of values within a nonprofit arts context via a range of channels, including traditional, online and multi-sensory, is sparse. The opportunity to study a newly-formed nonprofit arts organisation is also rare. The results of this study provide valuable evidence that even in today’s social media-rich world, people, sounds, sights and material objects in physical space still have a vital role to play in the communication of values

Concerto for Laptop Ensemble and Orchestra: The Ship of Theseus and Problems of Performance for Electronics With Orchestra: Taxonomy and Nomenclature

This dissertation is an examination of the problems faced when staging a work for electronics and orchestra. Part I is an original composition and model for the exploration of those problems. Part II is a monograph reviewing those problems and concentrating on issues of taxonomy and nomenclature. Part I is a concerto for laptop ensemble and orchestra titled The Ship of Theseus. It is named after a philosophical paradox. If every component of an object (i.e. the boards of a ship) is replaced with newer parts, at what point does the original cease to exist? Likewise, if the music performed by an instrument or ensemble is sampled and played back on stage, is it still an orchestra, or is it a recording? The role of the soloists is also explored throughout the work. Similarly to the dialogue of a Classical concerto, at times the soloist enhances the orchestra; at other times it clashes. Part II is an exploration of the etymology and nomenclature of electroacoustic music. In chapter 1, I explore broad problems and concerns specific to electronics and orchestra. In chapter 2, I break down the etymologies of both the orchestra and electroacoustic music, focusing on general issues surrounding the latter specifically. A new taxonomy for electroacoustic music is presented. In chapter 3, I investigate the nomenclature of three well-known terms: live electronic, real time, and interactive. Each of these terms is problematic and often misused; as a result the new term transformational is introduced and defined. This term should not be associated with the general idea of a musical transformation (although such an idea is not unwarranted), but with the flow of musical information in and out of a system. It is my hope that with the introduction of a new classification based on musical information, I will not merely pad the decades-long discourse on nomenclature of electroacoustic music, but rather provide a starting point for composers and technicians to reconcile technology with the music itself. The terms presented in this dissertation should not be considered definitive, but rather the inception of a new dialogue

Infotainment as a hybrid of information and entertainment: a conceptual analysis

Purpose To elaborate the nature of infotainment as a mediating concept between information and entertainment by analysing how the concept of infotainment is approached in diverse domains such as communication research. Design/methodology/approach Conceptual analysis was conducted by focussing on 41 key studies on the topic. First, it was examined how researchers have approached the relationships between informational and entertaining elements of infotainment. Thereafter, attention was directed to the ways in which people make use of infotainment. The conceptual analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the characterizations of the above issues. Findings Early studies characterized infotainment in terms of soft news which is distinct from hard news offering factual information. Later investigations offer a more nuanced picture by approaching infotainment as phenomenon with diverse dimensions depicting the topics, focus and presentation style. Studies on the use of infotainment offer contradictory evidence of the extent to which infotaining programmes can increase people's interest in social, political and health issues, for example. Research limitations/implications As the study concentrates on the analysis of an individual concept, that is, infotainment, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the ways in which informational and entertaining phenomena are related as a whole. Originality/value By elaborating the conceptual nature of infotainment, the study contributes to information behaviour research by refining the picture of the relationships between information and entertainment.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Reuniting word and deed : negotiation for real peacemaking and authentic classroom writing

The issue at stake in this dissertation is the relationship between word and deed. The problem it addresses is the way in which categories of discourse undermine that relationship. It argues that discourse taxonomies divide word from deed because they categorize persuasion and deliberation as characteristics of some uses of language but not others. This splitting of word and deed Informs and 1s informed by other divisions—between writer and reader, meaning and consequence, form and content, text and context. As a result, it silences the second part of each of these hierarchies—reader, consequence, content, and context. These divisions, this dissertation illustrates, represent an inaccurate and destructive theory and practice of language. The first chapter discusses differences in a theory of rhetoric as all language use and of rhetoric as one use of language. It argues in favor of Kenneth Burke's dialogical philosophy of language as symbolic action and against dlchotomous theories of rhetoric as a singular category of discourse. The second chapter analyzes the contemporary theory of one category in particular—epideictic—as evidence of the erroneous and debilitating effects of the dichotomy of deliberative/epideictic created by discursive categories

Music as living heritage

What is cultural heritage, and why has it received so much public interest in recent years? Almost three decades after the World Organization UNESCO defined and established international recognition of Cultural and Natural Heritage sites and devised ways of protecting them, a completely new approach to cultural heritage emerged with the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. This global agreement for the maintenance, protection and dissemination of cultural manifestations and achievements that are not tangible objects or immobile monuments, like previous items classified as World Heritage, was a remarkable milestone of international cultural politics. This new understanding of cultural heritage owes much to representatives from Asian, African, and Latin American countries. In fact, just a few years after the promulgation of the 2003 Convention, the world cultural heritage map had already lost much of its European predominance. Asian countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and India very soon showed up with lists of manifestations of their centenary (in some cases even millenary) national cultural heritages

Sociosemiotics of the Mexican narcoculture: between subcultures, mass culture, and the semiosphere

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4751312*es