Echoes of Populism and Terrorism in Libya’s Online News Reporting

This article focuses on news reporting in Libya, assessing both official and citizen journalism. Special attention is paid to online resources, primarily spontaneous posts written in Arabic. Social media shows the emergence of citizen journalism together with so-called User-generated Content. Both have proved capable of creating legitimacy. Political inclinations, including Islamic ideology and its religious claims, are presented, supported, or criticized by ordinary citizens who post their comments and opinions on the web. Official press and news agencies have their social media profiles as well, sharing the same online space with nonprofessionals. Monitoring and analysis of reporting show that there is no relevant difference in journalistic models; nor do concerns between professionals and nonprofessionals vary. Libya appears today to be a mosaic of different interests: one that is interconnected and in conflict at the same time. These interests are vying to establish new supremacies in the country. Journalism in its various typologies faces pressure from the abovementioned interests, so it is negatively affected by rhetoric in both reporting and commentary. These preliminary arguments lead us to the core topics of populism – for which a definition is suggested – and reporting about terrorism in Libya. Against this background, we analyze news flows, sources, and other issues. I conclude with a brief review of the main issues, the characteristics of the Arabic narrative discourse, and the emerging Arabic lexico

Assisting and advising the sentencing decision process : the pursuit of 'quality' in pre-sentence reports

Pre-sentence reports are an increasingly prevalent feature of the sentencing process. Yet, although judges have been surveyed about their general views, we know relatively little about how such reports are read and interpreted by judges considering sentence in specific cases, and, in particular, how these judicial interpretations compare with the intentions of the writers of those same reports. This article summarizes some of the main findings of a four-year qualitative study in Scotland examining: how reports are constructed by report writers; what the writers aim to convey to the sentencing judge; and how those same reports are then interpreted and used in deciding sentence. Policy development has been predicated on the view that higher-quality reports will help to 'sell' community penalties to the principal consumers of such reports (judges). This research suggests that, in the daily use and interpretation of reports, this quality-led policy agenda is defeated by a discourse of judicial 'ownership' of sentencing

The challenge of enterprise/innovation: a case study of a modern university

In the prevailing economic and political climate for Higher Education a greater emphasis has been placed on diversifying the funding base. The present study was undertaken between 2012 and 2014 and addressed the implementation of an approach to the transformation of one academic school in a medium-sized modern university in Wales to a more engaged enterprise culture. A multimethod investigation included a bi-lingual (English and Welsh) online survey of academic staff and yielded a 71% response rate (n = 45). The findings informed a series of in-depth interviews (n = 24) with a representative sample of those involved in enterprise work (support staff, managers, senior managers), and those who were not. The results provided the platform for the ‘S4E model’ for effective engagement with enterprise: (1) Strategic significance for Enterprise, (2) Support for Enterprise, (3) Synergy for Enterprise, and (4) Success for Enterprise. The outcomes of the research and the recommendations from it have potential to inform practice in other academic schools within the university and, in a wider context, within other Schools of Education regionally, nationally and internationally. Its original empirical exploration of enterprise within education studies is a significant contribution to that body of knowledge

Discounting Credibility: Doubting the Stories of Women Survivors of Sexual Harassment

For decades, federal and state laws have prohibited sexual harassment on the job; despite this fact, extraordinarily high rates of gender-based workplace harassment still permeate virtually every sector of the American workforce. Public awareness of the seriousness and scope of the problem increased astronomically in the wake of the #MeToo movement, as women began to publicly share countless stories of harassment and abuse. In 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace published an important study analyzing a wide range of factors contributing to this phenomenon. But the study devotes only limited attention to a factor that goes straight to the heart of the problem: our reflexive inclination to discount the credibility of women, especially when those women are recounting experiences of abuse perpetrated by more powerful men. We will not succeed in ending gender-based workplace discrimination until we can understand and resist this tendency and begin to appropriately credit survivors’ stories. How does gender-based credibility discounting operate? First, those charged with responding to workplace harassment--managers, supervisors, union representatives, human resource officers, and judges—improperly discount as implausible women’s stories of harassment, due to a failure to understand either the psychological trauma caused by abusive treatment or the practical realities that constrain women’s options in its aftermath. Second, gatekeepers unjustly discount women’s personal trustworthiness, based on their demeanor (as affected by the trauma they often have suffered); on negative cultural stereotypes about women’s motives for seeking redress for harms; and on our deep-rooted cultural belief that women as a group are inherently less than fully trustworthy. The impact of such unjust and discriminatory treatment of women survivors of workplace harassment is exacerbated by the larger “credibility economy”—the credibility discounts imposed on many women-victims can only be fully understood in the context of the credibility inflations afforded to many male harassers. Moreover, discounting women’s credibility results in a particular and virulent set of harms, which can be measured as both an additional psychic injury to survivors, and as an institutional betrayal that echoes the harm initially inflicted by harassers themselves. It is time—long past time--to adopt practical, concrete reforms to combat the widespread, automatic tendency to discount women and the stories they tell. We must embark on a path toward allowing women who share their experiences of male abuses of workplace power to trust the responsiveness of their employers, judges, and our larger society

The impact of reviews on consumers’ consideration towards electric vehicles (EV)

The development of the Internet and technology led to increasingly more digital consumers, who are tired of being marketed to. Thus, many companies started adopting reviews as part of their marketing strategy to reach the target audience in social media. This trend is also present in the market of electric vehicle (EV). This dissertation was developed with the aim of understanding how EV consumers perceive social media online posts as endorsers of EV as a mobility product, through the lens of the Source Credibility Model. These objectives were addressed using a quantitative research method that adopted an experiment between subjects, comparing firm-created reviews (firmcreated content) with user-created reviews (user-generated content) . Previous literature was reviewed, and an online questionnaire was conducted, with 243 obtained valid answers. Moreover, the willingness to consider and willingness to buy an EV were considered as a variable in the analysis, being proposed because of trustworthiness communicated by the type of review. The results of this dissertation found that the difference between User-Generated Content and car brand reviews (firm-created content) is not statistically significant in the moment of influencing decision of considering or buying an EV as a mobility product. It was observed that there is a valid positive influence relationship of trustworthiness on the relationship between the types of review and the consideration of buying an EV. Lastly, with this model and this research, it was confirmed that there is a positive influence of the trustworthiness on willingness to buy and consideration to buy.A emergência da Internet e o desenvolvimento da tecnologia levou a um número crescente de consumidores digitais, cansados de serem comercializados. Assim, muitas empresas começaram a adotar o marketing de publicação em linha para chegar às pessoas nas redes sociais. Esta nova abordagem do marketing é também utilizada como uma ferramenta no marketing social para promover a mudança de comportamento, especialmente quanto ao processo de decisão de aquisição de um novo veículo elétrico (VE). Esta dissertação foi desenvolvida com o objetivo de compreender como os consumidores de VE veem os anúncios online nas redes sociais como endossantes de VE como um produto de mobilidade, partindo do Modelos de Credibilidade na Fonte. Estes objectivos foram abordados utilizando um método de investigação quantitativa que adoptou uma experiência entre sujeitos, comparando conteúdo criado por empresas, com conteúdo criado por utilizadores online. A literatura anterior foi revista e foi conduzido um questionário online, com 243 respostas bem-sucedidas. Além disso, a vontade de considerar foi incluída como uma variável na análise com influência direta na fiabilidade, dificilmente abordada na literatura. Os resultados constataram que a diferença entre o Conteúdo Gerado pelo Utilizador e o conteúdo de marcas de automóveis não é estatisticamente significativa, no momento de influenciar a decisão de considerar um VE como um produto de mobilidade. Observou-se que existe uma relação de influência positiva válida de confiança na relação entre os tipos de revisão e a consideração da compra. Finalmente, foi confirmado que existe uma influência positiva da fiablilidade na vontade de comprar

Compounding Impact: Mission Investing by U.S. Foundations

This recently published report provides the first comprehensive analysis of mission investing by U.S. foundations. The study, funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, analyzes the mission investment activity of 92 U.S. foundations, which have made a combined total of $2.3 billion of mission investments. Mission investing is a more specific type of social investing, and represents the use of financial investments as tools to achieve a foundation's mission. Through interviews with foundations and extensive data collection, FSG assembled a rich picture of current and historical mission investment activity stretching back almost 40 years. The study found that the number of foundations engaged in mission investing has doubled in recent years, and the amount of funds committed annually has tripled. Although most mission investments are still low-interest loans, foundations are increasingly using equity and other investments that generate market-rate returns. Surprisingly, most of the growth has been driven by smaller foundations with assets under$200 million

A NOTE ON THE EXISTENCE OF STARTING POINT BIAS IN ITERATIVE BIDDING GAMES

This note further illuminates the strength and direction of starting point bias in iterative bidding procedures. Conflicting recent findings concerning the starting point bias phenomenon are first briefly overviewed. The hypothesis that starting values influence valuations obtained in iterative bidding games is then tested in an experimental setting using widely disparate starting values ranging from $1 to$8,000. Statistically significant differences in mean final bidding outcomes were consistently detected in games using different starting values. This evidence, combined with test results reported elsewhere, strongly suggests that starting point value selection can have subtle but significant effects on observed final bids.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Gradient Boosting in Motor Insurance Claim Frequency Modelling

Modelling claim frequency and claim severity are topics of great interest in property-casualty insurance for supporting underwriting, ratemaking, and reserving actuarial decisions. This paper investigates the predictive performance of Gradient Boosting with Decision Trees as base learners to model the claim frequency in motor insurance using a private cross-country large insurance dataset. The Gradient Boosting algorithm combines many weak base learners to tackle conceptual uncertainty in empirical research. The findings show that the Gradient Boosting model is superior to the standard Generalised Linear Model in the sense that it provides closer predictions in the claim frequency model. The finding also shows that Gradient Boosting can capture the nonlinear relation between the claim counts and feature variables and their complex interactions being, thus, a valuable tool for feature engineering and the development of a data-driven approach to risk management