Content-Based Video Retrieval in Historical Collections of the German Broadcasting Archive

The German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) maintains the cultural heritage of radio and television broadcasts of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The uniqueness and importance of the video material stimulates a large scientific interest in the video content. In this paper, we present an automatic video analysis and retrieval system for searching in historical collections of GDR television recordings. It consists of video analysis algorithms for shot boundary detection, concept classification, person recognition, text recognition and similarity search. The performance of the system is evaluated from a technical and an archival perspective on 2,500 hours of GDR television recordings.Comment: TPDL 2016, Hannover, Germany. Final version is available at Springer via DO

Deep Multimodal Speaker Naming

Automatic speaker naming is the problem of localizing as well as identifying each speaking character in a TV/movie/live show video. This is a challenging problem mainly attributes to its multimodal nature, namely face cue alone is insufficient to achieve good performance. Previous multimodal approaches to this problem usually process the data of different modalities individually and merge them using handcrafted heuristics. Such approaches work well for simple scenes, but fail to achieve high performance for speakers with large appearance variations. In this paper, we propose a novel convolutional neural networks (CNN) based learning framework to automatically learn the fusion function of both face and audio cues. We show that without using face tracking, facial landmark localization or subtitle/transcript, our system with robust multimodal feature extraction is able to achieve state-of-the-art speaker naming performance evaluated on two diverse TV series. The dataset and implementation of our algorithm are publicly available online

User-interface issues for browsing digital video

In this paper we examine a suite of systems for content-based indexing and browsing of digital video and we identify a superset of features and functions which are provided by these systems. From our classification of these we have identified that common to all is the fact of being predominantly technology-based, with little attention paid to actual user requirements. As part of our work we are developing an application for content-based browsing of digital video which will incorporate the most desirable but achievable of the functions of other systems. This will be achieved via a series of continuously refined demonstrator systems from Spring 1999 onwards which will be subjected to analysis of performance in terms of user

From Evolution to Revolution: Exploring the Technological Advances in Mass Communication.

This paper traces the evolution of mass communication technologies from their earliest times to the current epoch. It begins with the earliest primitive writing technologies of papyrus to the development of advanced printing press before focusing on electronic communication. The technologies of electronic communication are found to have evolved from the early telegraphy with radio, and subsequently television, developing from this technology. While satellite technology became another important landmark in the development of modern mass communication, computer and the Internet brought the ultimate revolution introducing hitherto undreamt-about possibilities in mass communication. The writer concluded that mass communication, throughout its history, has remained technologically driven, lending some credence to the postulation of the technological determinism theory that human communication is continuously determined and shape by technology – “the medium is the message.” Keywords: Evolution to revolution, Mass communication technologies, Electronic communication

Falling for fake news: investigating the consumption of news via social media

In the so called ‘post-truth’ era, characterized by a loss of public trust in various institutions, and the rise of ‘fake news’ disseminated via the internet and social media, individuals may face uncertainty about the veracity of information available, whether it be satire or malicious hoax. We investigate attitudes to news delivered by social media, and subsequent verification strategies applied, or not applied, by individuals. A survey reveals that two thirds of respondents regularly consumed news via Facebook, and that one third had at some point come across fake news that they initially believed to be true. An analysis task involving news presented via Facebook reveals a diverse range of judgement forming strategies, with participants relying on personal judgements as to plausibility and scepticism around sources and journalistic style. This reflects a shift away from traditional methods of accessing the news, and highlights the difficulties in combating the spread of fake news

Manipulation as breach of arguer responsibility in \u27Welcome to Obamaville\u27

Argumentation should encourage autonomous decision-making. Rick Santorum’s political campaign ad Welcome to Obamaville violates this requirement by deploying a flood of subliminal images. Santorum’s ad involves a fallacy by virtue of clear intent to manipulate. Arguers are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their action. Santorum acts in bad faith even if subliminal messages are in fact ineffective and he is wrong about the consequences foreseen