Supporting Story Synthesis: Bridging the Gap between Visual Analytics and Storytelling

Visual analytics usually deals with complex data and uses sophisticated algorithmic, visual, and interactive techniques. Findings of the analysis often need to be communicated to an audience that lacks visual analytics expertise. This requires analysis outcomes to be presented in simpler ways than that are typically used in visual analytics systems. However, not only analytical visualizations may be too complex for target audience but also the information that needs to be presented. Hence, there exists a gap on the path from obtaining analysis findings to communicating them, which involves two aspects: information and display complexity. We propose a general framework where data analysis and result presentation are linked by story synthesis, in which the analyst creates and organizes story contents. Differently, from the previous research, where analytic findings are represented by stored display states, we treat findings as data constructs. In story synthesis, findings are selected, assembled, and arranged in views using meaningful layouts that take into account the structure of information and inherent properties of its components. We propose a workflow for applying the proposed framework in designing visual analytics systems and demonstrate the generality of the approach by applying it to two domains, social media, and movement analysis

Diasporic and Local Mainstream Media as a Tool for Intercultural Integration? The Case of Latin American Communities in Italy

In Italy, communication research on the impact of media on immigrants’ integration dynamics has up until now privileged the sphere of national mainstream media. This paper takes into consideration the role of diasporic media as complimentary to perspective, by exploring the disposition of the two media fields towards the promotion of intercultural dialogue. In an attempt to assess whether there is in fact an intercultural media integration process occurring in both mainstream and Latin-America diasporic media players in Italy, this paper focuses on gathering evidence from the media pertaining to the society in general and from those created by and for immigrant communities. This evaluation aims to establish the degree to which majority and minorities take an interest in each other as well as the story telling they deploy or one another. Interculturalism and intercultural media integration are the main theoretical frameworks used to understand how intercultural dialogue is operationalized at the media level. Preliminary findings suggest a local mainstream media scene out of step with the de facto multicultural society, whereas only in some cases do Latin-American diasporic media demonstrate integrative potential capable of” bridging the gap” with the host society rather than merely fulfilling its ingroup “bonding” role

Hierarchically Structured Reinforcement Learning for Topically Coherent Visual Story Generation

We propose a hierarchically structured reinforcement learning approach to address the challenges of planning for generating coherent multi-sentence stories for the visual storytelling task. Within our framework, the task of generating a story given a sequence of images is divided across a two-level hierarchical decoder. The high-level decoder constructs a plan by generating a semantic concept (i.e., topic) for each image in sequence. The low-level decoder generates a sentence for each image using a semantic compositional network, which effectively grounds the sentence generation conditioned on the topic. The two decoders are jointly trained end-to-end using reinforcement learning. We evaluate our model on the visual storytelling (VIST) dataset. Empirical results from both automatic and human evaluations demonstrate that the proposed hierarchically structured reinforced training achieves significantly better performance compared to a strong flat deep reinforcement learning baseline.Comment: Accepted to AAAI 201

Making the Communication of CCS more "human"

CCS communication has proven a tough challenge, particularly for the difficulty in raising interest for the technology, which is still unknown to the majority of the population, and for the complexity of conveying information about its potential for reducing emissions. In this paper we present a research based effort for bringing CCS nearer to people, through visual material developed taking into account emotional needs related to the technology. The production of a short introductory film on CCS is illustrated and its testing with a sample of 700 high school students

Estudios acerca del establecimiento de conexiones entre enunciados hablados: ¿qué pueden contribuir a la promoción de la construcción de una representación coherente del discurso por parte de los estudiantes?

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of how the establishment of discourse connections among spoken statements has been studied by approaches to discourse analysis and psycholinguistic studies, in order to highlight what variables appear to be important for understanding how comprehension of spoken discourse can be facilitated. The consideration of discourse analysis approaches allows us to think about the role of the establishment of discourse connections among speech acts in the classroom, the uses of contextualization cues by bilingual students, the identification of social and cultural notions in teachers’ discourse, and the interactional effects of teachers’ interventions. Preliminary psycholinguistic studies contribute to our understanding of the role of establishing causal connections and integrating adjacent statements through the presence of discourse markers in the comprehension of spoken discourse by college students. The results of these approaches and studies provide insight into students’ comprehension of classroom discourse, and hold the potential for implications for instruction.El propósito de este artículo es realizar un recorrido a través de enfoques de análisis del discurso y estudios de psicolingüística que han investigado el establecimiento de conexiones entre enunciados hablados, a fin de destacar las variables que parecen ser centrales para facilitar la comprensión. La consideración de los enfoques del análisis del discurso nos permitirán pensar acerca del rol del establecimiento de conexiones entre actos del lenguaje en el aula, las funciones de las claves de contextualización, la identificación de las nociones sociales y culturales en el discurso de los profesores, los efectos de las intervenciones de los profesores en la interacción con los estudiantes. Los estudios preliminares de psicolingüística contribuirán a nuestra comprensión del rol del establecimiento de conexiones causales e integración de enunciados adyacentes a través de marcadores del discurso por parte de estudiantes universitarios. La consideración de estos enfoques y estudios nos ayudarán a pensar acerca de las contribuciones que sus propuestas y métodos pueden hacer al enriquecimiento de nuestro entendimiento de cómo los estudiantes comprenden el discurso producido durante las clases.Fil: Yomha Cevasco, Jazmin. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Broek, Paul van den. Leiden University; Países Bajo

Multimedia search without visual analysis: the value of linguistic and contextual information

This paper addresses the focus of this special issue by analyzing the potential contribution of linguistic content and other non-image aspects to the processing of audiovisual data. It summarizes the various ways in which linguistic content analysis contributes to enhancing the semantic annotation of multimedia content, and, as a consequence, to improving the effectiveness of conceptual media access tools. A number of techniques are presented, including the time-alignment of textual resources, audio and speech processing, content reduction and reasoning tools, and the exploitation of surface features

Cybersecurity in the Classroom: Bridging the Gap Between Computer Access and Online Safety

According to ISACA, there will be a global shortage of 2 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide by 2019. Additionally, according to Experian Data Breach Resolution, as much as 80% of all network breaches can be traced to employee negligence. These problems will not solve themselves, and they likewise won’t improve without drastic action. An effort needs to be made to help direct interested and qualified individuals to the field of cybersecurity to move toward closing this gap. Moreover, steps need to be made to better inform the public of general safety measures while online, including the safeguarding of sensitive information. A large issue with solving the problems at hand is that there seems to be no comprehensive curriculum for cybersecurity education to teach these basic principles. In my paper, I review and compare several after- and in-school programs that attempt to address this problem. I’ve also interviewed teachers from Montgomery County Public Schools, a relatively ethnically diverse school district outside of Washington, D.C. These issues need to be addressed, and while private organizations and local schools are attempting to tackle the problem, wider action may need to be taken at a national level to come to a resolution

Cybersecurity in the Classroom: Bridging the Gap Between Computer Access and Online Safety

According to ISACA, there will be a global shortage of 2 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide by 2019. Additionally, according to Experian Data Breach Resolution, as much as 80% of all network breaches can be traced to employee negligence. These problems will not solve themselves, and they likewise won’t improve without drastic action. An effort needs to be made to help direct interested and qualified individuals to the field of cybersecurity to move toward closing this gap. Moreover, steps need to be made to better inform the public of general safety measures while online, including the safeguarding of sensitive information. A large issue with solving the problems at hand is that there seems to be no comprehensive curriculum for cybersecurity education to teach these basic principles. In my paper, I review and compare several after- and in-school programs that attempt to address this problem. I’ve also interviewed teachers from Montgomery County Public Schools, a relatively ethnically diverse school district outside of Washington, D.C. These issues need to be addressed, and while private organizations and local schools are attempting to tackle the problem, wider action may need to be taken at a national level to come to a resolution

Designing and Delivering a Curriculum for Data Science Education across Europe

Data is currently being produced at an incredible rate globally, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of available data continues to increase, so does the demand for professionals who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. This paper presents the European Data Science Academy (EDSA), an initiative for bridging the data science skills gap across Europe and training a new generation of world-leading data scientists. The EDSA project has established a rigorous process and a set of best practices for the production and delivery of curricula for data science. Additionally, the project’s efforts are dedicated to linking the demand for data science skills with the supply of learning resources that offer these skills

NP2020: Issues and Answers from the Next Generation

A report of a three-day conference on nonprofit leadership, held in Grand Rapids, MI in July 2007, identified that there is a leadership deficit, mentoring is needed for emerging leaders, structural challenges create barriers to nonprofit careers, and Generation X and Y believe the nonprofit sector needs more diversity. Funder support for infrastructure and operating costs, and communication to facilitate the generational leadership transition were identified as key to mitigating the leadership deficit