75 research outputs found

    (Un)filial daughters and digital feminisms in China: The stories of awakening, resisting, and finding comrades

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    This thesis sets out to understand Chinese feminist struggles in a so-called digital era by looking at the experiences and practices of an emerging generation of digital feminists that came into light in Chinese feminist movements. Conceptually and methodologically, this research took inspirations from an interdisciplinary body of literature including feminist theory, sociology, media and cultural studies, girlhood studies and gender studies. Inspired by online ethnography and feminist participatory methodologies, it combined an online tracking of feminist events on Weibo with semi-structured interviews and social media diary study with 21 Chinese girls and young women. This thesis explores the embedded and embodied experiences of these participants as they discover and learn about feminism, resist and challenge gender and sexual inequalities, and try to build connections with like-minded people within and beyond the digital sphere. By charting feminist responses and resistance to familial discourses and norms around girlhood and young femininity, I show the emergence of feminist subjectivities of (un)filial daughters that arises from but also comes to reconfigure gender and sexuality within a neoliberal and postsocialist context of patriarchal familism in China. I build upon the concepts of networked counterpublics and networked affects to explore how these (un)filial daughters are networked to carve out spaces for feminist discussion in social media. Employing an affective-discursive analysis, I also tune into how networked feminist resistance and alliances are formed not merely on the basis of how women and feminists talk about these issues but also how they feel

    Group-Level Frameworks for Data Ethics, Privacy, Safety and Security in Digital Environments

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    In today\u27s digital age, the widespread collection, utilization, and sharing of personal data are challenging our conventional beliefs about privacy and information security. This thesis will explore the boundaries of conventional privacy and security frameworks and investigate new methods to handle online privacy by integrating groups. Additionally, we will examine approaches to monitoring the types of information gathered on individuals to tackle transparency concerns in the data broker and data processor sector. We aim to challenge traditional notions of privacy and security to encourage innovative strategies for safeguarding them in our interconnected, dispersed digital environment. This thesis uses a multi-disciplinary approach to complex systems, drawing from various fields such as data ethics, legal theory, and philosophy. Our methods include complex systems modeling, network analysis, data science, and statistics. As a first step, we investigate the limits of individual consent frameworks in online social media platforms. We develop new security settings, called distributed consent, that can be used in an online social network or coordinated across online platforms. We then model the levels of observability of individuals on the platform(s) to measure the effectiveness of the new security settings against surveillance from third parties. Distributed consent can help to protect individuals online from surveillance, but it requires a high coordination cost on the part of the individual. Users must also decide whether to protect their privacy from third parties and network neighbors by disclosing security settings or taking on the burden of coordinating security on single and multiple platforms. However, the coordination burden may be more appropriate for systems-level regulation. We then explore how groups of individuals can work together to protect themselves from the harms of misinformation on online social networks. Social media users are not equally susceptible to all types of misinformation. Further, diverse groups of social media communities can help protect one another from misinformation by correcting each other\u27s blind spots. We highlight the importance of group diversity in network dynamics and explore how natural diversity within groups can provide protection rather than relying on new technologies such as distributed consent settings. Finally, we investigate methods to interrogate what types of personal data are collected by third parties and measure the risks and harms associated with aggregating personal data. We introduce methods that provide transparency into how modern data collection practices pose risks to data subjects online. We hope that the collection of these results provides a humble step toward revealing gaps in privacy and security frameworks and promoting new solutions for the digital age

    Learning Disabilities

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    Learning disabilities are a heterogeneous group of disorders characterized by failure to acquire, retrieve, and use information competently. These disorders have a multifactorial aetiology and are most common and severe in children, especially when comorbid with other chronic health conditions. This book provides current and comprehensive information about learning disorders, including information on neurobiology, assessment, clinical features, and treatment. Chapters cover such topics as historical research and hypotheses of learning disorders, neuropsychological assessment and counselling, characteristics of specific disorders such as autism and ADHD, evidence-based treatment strategies and assistive technologies, and much more

    Teacher Experiences with Multiple One-to-One Technology Integration Models: A Phenomenography

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    The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the beliefs and perceptions of teachers who have experience with both the BYOT and school-issued 1:1 technology integration models. The eight informants in this study all had middle and/or high school experience teaching with both models. The data came from semi-structured interviews with each informant and five documents related to 1:1 technology integration from four districts. Analysis results showed a preference for the 1:1 school-issued model due to concerns with technical support, equity, student behavior, technology monitoring, and pedagogical change. COVID reinforced teacher preference. Neither model was conclusively preferred in the areas of student engagement and professional development. Recommendations for future research included a comparative study of the impact of each model on student outcomes and comparative study of the models’ applications in specific content areas

    To φαινόμενο «crowdfunding» : βασικές αρχές, κίνητρα και παράγοντες συμμετοχής των δωρητών σε χρηματοδοτική εκστρατεία

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    H χρηματοδότηση από το κοινό (crowdfunding), μία νέα μέθοδος συλλογής κεφαλαίων, μέσω ανοιχτής διαδικτυακής πρόσκλησης, δίνει τη δυνατότητα σε καινοτόμες ιδέες και επιχειρηματικά εγχειρήματα να γίνουν πραγματικότητα, συμπορευόμενη με τους παραδοσιακούς τρόπους χρηματοδότησης. Η παρούσα έρευνα μελετά τις βασικές έννοιες και τον τρόπο λειτουργίας του crowdfunding και στη συνέχεια τα κίνητρα και τους παράγοντες καθορισμού συμμετοχής των δωρητών σε μια χρηματοδοτική εκστρατεία. Τα ζητήματα αυτά προσεγγιστήκαν στο πρώτο μέρος βιβλιογραφικά με την εξέταση διαφόρων κυρίως ξενόγλωσσων άρθρων, μελετών και ερευνών. Στη συνέχεια, στο δεύτερο μέρος χρησιμοποιήθηκε ποσοτική μέθοδος με τη διανομή ερωτηματολογίου σε δείγμα 131 ατόμων. Για την ανάλυση των δεδομένων χρησιμοποιήθηκε το στατιστικό πρόγραμμα IBM SPSS έκδοση 26. Διαπιστώθηκε ότι ο ελληνικός λαός δεν είναι εξοικειωμένος με το φαινόμενο και τα κίνητρα που πρωτοστατούν είναι της φιλανθρωπίας και του προσωπικού ενδιαφέροντος για την εκστρατεία, με κάποιες αξιοσημείωτες διαφορές ανάμεσα στα δύο φύλα. Επίσης, οι περισσότεροι θεωρούν ως τον πιο σημαντικό παράγοντα για να συμμετάσχουν σε μία εκστρατεία, την αλληλεπίδραση του δημιουργού με τους δωρητές εντός της ιστοσελίδας crowdfunding προκειμένου να ενημερώνονται για την εξέλιξή της. Συμπερασματικά, η ελλιπής ενημέρωση των Ελλήνων για το νέο μοντέλο εναλλακτικής χρηματοδότησης τούς έχει καταστήσει δύσπιστους και σε περίπτωση χρηματοδότησης μιας εκστρατείας είναι φανερή η ανάγκη τους να ενημερώνονται για το αν ο προκαθορισμένος οικονομικός στόχος έχει επιτευχθεί κι αν τελικά θα υλοποιηθεί το εγχείρημα του δημιουργού. Γενικότερα, το γεγονός ότι υπάρχει μία θετική στάση για την εξέλιξή του ως μοντέλο εναλλακτικής συλλογικής χρηματοδότησης, είναι σίγουρα ενθαρρυντικό.Crowdfunding, a new method of fundraising, through open online invitation, enables innovative ideas and business ventures to become reality, neglecting the traditional ways of financing. The aim of this study is first to examine how crowdfunding works and then to focus on the donor’s motivations and determinants of participating in a campaign. These topics were approached in the first part bibliographically by examining various scientific articles, studies and researches. Then, in the second part, a quantitative method was used, using a questionnaire to a sample of 131 people. IBM SPSS in version 26 was used for the statistical analysis. It was found that Greeks are not familiar with the phenomenon and the main motives of participating in a campaign are of charity and of personal interest, with notable differences among genders. Also, most of the people consider the creator's interaction with donors within the crowdfunding website to be the most important factor in participating in a campaign, in order to be informed about its success. In conclusion, the lack of information among Greeks about the new model of alternative funding has made them skeptical. According to the projects they choose to support financially, it is obvious that they want to be informed if the predetermined financial goal has been achieved and after the end of the funding period, if the creator's project will eventually be implemented. Overall, the fact that there is a positive attitude among the participants towards its development as a model of alternative collective financing, is certainly encouraging

    Using VGI and Social Media Data to Understand Urban Green Space: A Narrative Literature Review

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    Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) and social media can provide information about real-time perceptions, attitudes and behaviours in urban green space (UGS). This paper reviews the use of VGI and social media data in research examining UGS. The current state of the art is described through the analysis of 177 papers to (1) summarise the characteristics and usage of data from different platforms, (2) provide an overview of the research topics using such data sources, and (3) characterise the research approaches based on data pre-processing, data quality assessment and improvement, data analysis and modelling. A number of important limitations and priorities for future research are identified. The limitations include issues of data acquisition and representativeness, data quality, as well as differences across social media platforms in different study areas such as urban and rural areas. The research priorities include a focus on investigating factors related to physical activities in UGS areas, urban park use and accessibility, the use of data from multiple sources and, where appropriate, making more effective use of personal information. In addition, analysis approaches can be extended to examine the network suggested by social media posts that are shared, re-posted or reacted to and by being combined with textual, image and geographical data to extract more representative information for UGS analysis

    Tracking the Temporal-Evolution of Supernova Bubbles in Numerical Simulations

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    The study of low-dimensional, noisy manifolds embedded in a higher dimensional space has been extremely useful in many applications, from the chemical analysis of multi-phase flows to simulations of galactic mergers. Building a probabilistic model of the manifolds has helped in describing their essential properties and how they vary in space. However, when the manifold is evolving through time, a joint spatio-temporal modelling is needed, in order to fully comprehend its nature. We propose a first-order Markovian process that propagates the spatial probabilistic model of a manifold at fixed time, to its adjacent temporal stages. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using a particle simulation of an interacting dwarf galaxy to describe the evolution of a cavity generated by a Supernov
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