March 16, 2017

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

CTRL SHIFT

CTRL SHIFT makes a case for design under contemporary computation. The abstractions of reading, writing, metaphors, mythology, code, cryptography, interfaces, and other such symbolic languages are leveraged as tools for understanding. Alternative modes of knowledge become access points through which users can subvert the control structures of software. By challenging the singular expertise of programmers, the work presented within advocates for the examination of internalized beliefs, the redistribution of networked power, and the collective sabotage of computational authority

Towards a hybrid city: Rethinking aarhus through an institute for (X)

In a time when urban planning faces challenges such as degradation of the abandoned built environment, challenges in finding permanent solutions for some social problems, or the lack of involvement from citizens, a project that allows experimentation to its community and presents itself as functional and well-received by the broader citizen society can be considered at least a creative and innovative contribution. This thesis analyses the case of Institute for (X) under an anthropological perspective. Comprising the surrounding area of Godsbanen in Aarhus, Denmark, the case study area was an empty allotment before it was transformed into a culture production centre, hosting over 40 projects and circa 200-300 connected people - from musicians to designers, to Vikings, to actors and to hands-on environmentalists. The plan for this area includes apartments for students, the new location for Aarhus Arkitektskolen, and a continuously growing cultural and artistic programme for all inhabitants and visitors. This case study methodology was based on ethnographic fieldwork in order to allow an in-depth coalescence between the researcher and the field, and to analyse how the diverse elements of this place combine and interrelate to influence its ongoing transformation; to analyse what social context has enabled this project to prosper; to understand what real impacts are being perceived in the city; and to deepen the discussion of the idea that seemingly ephemeral projects can plant the seed of permanent change in mind- sets. Through an Actor-Network Theory framework, this research intends to discuss how a temporary urban project affords the learning of resilience mechanisms through a creative environment; and simultaneously, to debate the idea of a Hybrid City within the context of new urban scenarios

Microcelebrity Practices: A Cross-Platform Study Through a Richness Framework

Social media have introduced a contemporary shift from broadcast to participatory media, which has brought about major changes to the celebrity management model. It is now common for celebrities to bypass traditional mass media and take control over their promotional discourse through the practice of microcelebrity. The theory of microcelebrity explains how people turn their public persona into media content with the goal of gaining and maintaining audiences who are regarded as an aggregated fan base. To accomplish this, the theory suggests that people employ a set of online self-presentation techniques that typically consist of three core practices: identity constructions, fan interactions and promoting visibility beyond the existing fan base. Studies on single platforms (e.g., Twitter), however, show that not all celebrities necessarily engage in all core practices to the same degree. Importantly, celebrities are increasingly using multiple social media platforms simultaneously to expand their audience, while overcoming the limitations of a particular platform. This points to a gap in the literature and calls for a cross-platform study. This dissertation employed a mixed-methods research design to reveal how social media platforms i.e., Twitter and Instagram, helped celebrities grow and maintain their audience. The first phase of the study relied on a richness scoring framework that quantified social media activities using affordance richness, a measure of the ability of a post to deliver the information necessary in affording a celebrity to perform an action by using social media artifacts. The analyses addressed several research questions regarding social media uses by different groups of celebrities and how the audience responded to different microcelebrity strategies. The findings informed the design of the follow-up interviews with audience members. Understanding expectations and behaviors of fans is relevant not only as a means to enhance the practice’s outcome and sustain promotional activity, but also as a contribution to our understandings about contemporary celebrity-fans relationships mediated by social media. Three findings are highlighted. First, I found that celebrities used the two platforms differently, and that different groups of celebrities emphasized different core practices. This finding was well explained by the interviews suggesting that the audiences had different expectations from different groups of celebrities. Second, microcelebrity strategies played an important role in an audience’s engagement decisions. The finding was supported by the interviews indicating that audience preferences were based on some core practices. Lastly, while their strategies had no effect on follow and unfollow decisions, the consistency of the practices had significant effects on the decisions. This study makes contributions to the theory of Microcelebrity and offers practical contributions by providing broad insights from both practitioners’ and audiences’ perspectives. This is essential given that microcelebrity is a learned practice rather than an inborn trait

Failure factors of technological driven start-ups: datris solutions case study

Dissertação de mestrado em International BusinessThis internship report reflects the status and evolution of the technological driven start-up, Datris Solutions, which is a start-up focused on exploring opportunities in the open data and membership management applications sectors. Datris was created in 2015 and presently, in 2018 has yet to release a finished product that can be used to generate revenue. Continuous issues afflict the development of the start-up’s team and products which resulted in the slow progress and evolution of the two. In an attempt to pump fresh ideas and motivation into the current start-up’s team members, additional personal was hired, in this case a marketing research intern to assist the team in every marketing related effort with special focus for marketing research. This created the adequate scenery for an internship in the area of International Business since it allowed a look into the development and evolution of a young technological driven startup in a foreign country. The knowledge gained during the regular theoretical modules of the International Business masters classes provided the necessary tools to assess an international business/start-up health and the insight to provide advice on what would be the best suggestions to increase the start-up’s productivity, development and how to develop an accurate market research. With that in mind, this internship report will focus on assessing the current factors that are inhibiting the development and growth potential of technological driven start-ups. By identifying, analysing and comparing them to the literature research findings regarding failure factors that inhibit technological start-up development, we hope to contribute to the current literature. In addition, we will suggest an action plan to reduce the influence of these negative factors to ensure a better survivability rate for the start-up for the years to come.Este relatório de estágio reflete o status e a evolução da start-up tecnologicamente orientada, Datris Solutions, que é uma start-up focada na exploração de oportunidades nos setores de aplicativos abertos de gerenciamento de dados e de membros. A Datris foi criada em 2015 e atualmente, em 2018, ainda não lançou um produto acabado que pode ser usado para gerar receita. Problemas contínuos afligem o desenvolvimento da equipa e dos produtos da startup, que resultaram no lento progresso e evolução dos dois. Na tentativa de impulsionar novas ideias e motivação para os atuais membros da equipa da start-up, foi contratado um membro adicional, neste caso um estagiário de marketing para auxiliar a equipa em todos os esforços relacionados ao marketing com foco especial para pesquisa de marketing. Isso criou o cenário adequado para um estágio na área de Negócios Internacionais, uma vez que permitiu analisar o desenvolvimento e a evolução de uma jovem startup tecnológica num país estrangeiro. Os conhecimentos adquiridos durante os módulos teóricos regulares das aulas de Mestrado em Negócios Internacionais forneceram as ferramentas necessárias para avaliar a saúde de uma empresa internacional / start-up e a visão para fornecer conselhos sobre quais seriam as melhores sugestões para aumentar a produtividade, desenvolvimento e desenvolvimento. e como desenvolver uma pesquisa de mercado precisa. Com isso em mente, este relatório de estágio será concentrado na avaliação dos fatores atuais que estão limitando o desenvolvimento e o potencial de crescimento de startups tecnologicamente orientadas. Ao identificá-los, analisá-los e compará-los com os o que nos diz a pesquisa bibliográfica sobre a falta de start-up tecnológico, esperamos contribuir para a literatura atual. Além disso, sugeriremos um plano de ação para reduzir a influência dos fatores negativos para garantir uma melhor taxa de sobrevivência para o início dos próximos anos

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a “behind the scenes” look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on “doing issues with data,” “assembling data,” “working with data,” “experiencing data,” “investigating data, platforms and algorithms,” “organizing data journalism,” “learning data journalism together” and “situating data journalism.

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a “behind the scenes” look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on “doing issues with data,” “assembling data,” “working with data,” “experiencing data,” “investigating data, platforms and algorithms,” “organizing data journalism,” “learning data journalism together” and “situating data journalism.

No size fits all - Exploring Entrepreneurship Measurement using Big Data, rare Events and Ecosystems

Entrepreneurship is one major factor influencing the world we live in. At that, the relationship between entrepreneurship and this world is an interdependent one and entrepreneurial activity in any given territory is an inherently economic geographical process. As a highly multidisciplinary research field, entrepreneurship has been analysed for decades, yet as the world progresses, the entrepreneurial phenomena evolve as well. Sophisticated research needs outstanding data. Plenty manifestations of entrepreneurship are not or not sufficiently covered by such data. There is a need to explore new methods and approaches for data on entrepreneurship to tackle unsolved issues and address newly developing phenomena. Some entrepreneurial events are so rare it is difficult to get quantitative data on them, making them dominated by qualitative case studies. Moreover, other areas in entrepreneurship are so complex, that reliable comparable data need a broad and coordinated approach. This thesis addresses these issues as such, that it contributes to a more complete empirical data body, and it expands the understanding how bespoke methodology leads to phenomenon specific empirical data and ultimately to place based policies and is thus overall advancing entrepreneurship research

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Cannabidiol tweet miner: a framework for identifying misinformation In CBD tweets.

As regulations surrounding cannabis continue to develop, the demand for cannabis-based products is on the rise. Despite not producing the psychoactive effects commonly associated with THC, products containing cannabidiol (CBD) have gained immense popularity in recent years as a potential treatment option for a range of conditions, particularly those associated with pain or sleep disorders. However, due to current federal policies, these products have yet to undergo comprehensive safety and efficacy testing. Fortunately, utilizing advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques, data harvested from social networks have been employed to investigate various social trends within healthcare, such as disease tracking and drug surveillance. By leveraging Twitter data, NLP can offer invaluable insights into public perceptions around CBD, as well as the marketing tactics employed by those marketing such loosely-regulated substances to the general public. Given the lack of comprehensive clinical CBD testing, the various health claims made by CBD sellers regarding their products are highly dubious and potentially perilous, as is evident from the ongoing COVID-19 misinformation. It is therefore critically important to efficiently identify unsupportable claims to guide public health policy and action. To this end, we present our proposed framework, the Cannabidiol Tweet Miner (CBD-TM), which utilizes advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including text mining and sentiment analysis, to analyze the similarities and differences between commercial and personal tweets that mention CBD. CBD-TM enables us to identify conditions typically associated with commercial CBD advertising, or conditions not associated with positive sentiment, that are also absent from personal conversations. Through our technical contributions, including NLP, text mining, and sentiment analysis, we can effectively uncover areas where the public may be misled by CBD sellers. Since the rise in popularity of CBD, advertisements making bold claims about its benefits have become increasingly prevalent. The COVID-19 pandemic created a new opportunity for sellers to promote and sell products that purportedly treat and/or prevent the virus, with CBD being one of them. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued multiple warnings to CBD sellers, this type of misinformation still persists. In response, we have extended the CBD-TM framework with an additional layer of tweet classification designed to identify tweets that make potentially misleading claims about CBD\u27s efficacy in treating and/or preventing COVID-19. Our approach harnesses modern NLP algorithms, utilizing a transformer-based language model to establish the semantic relationship between statements extracted from the FDA\u27s website that contain false information and tweets conveying similar false claims. Our technical contributions build upon the impressive performance of deep language models in various natural language processing and understanding tasks. Specifically, we employ transfer learning via pre-trained deep language models, enabling us to achieve improved misinformation identification in tweets, even with relatively small training sets. Furthermore, this extension of CBD-TM can be easily adapted to detect other forms of misinformation. Through our innovative use of NLP techniques and algorithms, we can more effectively identify and combat false and potentially harmful claims related to CBD and COVID-19, as well as other forms of misinformation. As the conversations surrounding CBD on Twitter evolve over time, concept drift can occur, leading to changes in the topics being discussed. We observed significant changes within the CBD Twitter data stream with the emergence of COVID-19, introducing a new medical condition associated with CBD that would not have been discussed in conversations prior to the pandemic. These shifts in conversation introduce concept drift into CBD-TM, which has the potential to negatively impact our tweet classification models. Therefore, it is crucial to identify when such concept drift occurs to maintain the accuracy of our models. To this end, we propose an innovative approach for identifying potential changes within social network streams, allowing us to determine how and when these conversations evolve over time. Our approach leverages a BERT-based topic model, which can effectively capture how conversations related to CBD change over time. By incorporating advanced NLP techniques and algorithms, we are able to better understand the changes in topic that occur within the CBD Twitter data stream, allowing us to more effectively manage concept drift in CBD-TM. Our technical contributions enable us to maintain the accuracy and effectiveness of our tweet classification models, ensuring that we can continue to identify and address potentially harmful misinformation related to CBD