Genres of Spam

Spam is currently the dominant form of communications on the internet, accounting for most e-mail traffic. Spam is a marketing device, it is also an expensive and time-consuming nuisance for industrires as well as a major vehicle for serious internet crimes. While considerable research has focused on the technical aspects of spam, how it works and how it can be blocked, our research aims to better understand why it works. We explore how genre theory can contribute to our understanding of ‘spam’. Our study consists of two parts. The first examined the content, form and specific features and considered the manifest relationship to existing genres of communication. The second part of the study focused on a detailed analysis of 111 Nigerian letters, a particularly noxious form of spam. Genre is generally considered useful because it makes communications more recognizable and understandable to recipients, helping readers process information. Our study suggests that spam is not a single genre but adaptations of many recognizable print genres. With spam, genre operates at several levels and is often used to mask rather than reveal intent. The paper concludes that spam exploits genre by conforming to known forms while at the same time breaching those norms

Aplicação da teoria dos géneros em contexto empresarial

Tese de mestrado em Informática, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2012A dissertação apresenta um estudo sobre a aplicação da teoria dos géneros em contexto empresarial. A vantagem competitiva das empresas, no contexto económico-social dos dias de hoje, baseia-se no capital humano e no conhecimento que os seus funcionários possuem. A comunicação organizacional torna-se um fator essencial, por si só, para contribuir na melhoria da comunicação entre equipas, mas também para induzir ou apoiar outras mudanças na empresa. É neste contexto que se irá realizar um estudo, à luz da teoria dos géneros, com a observação, recolha e análise de dados de uma pequena empresa de Serviços de Contabilidade de Lisboa. O objectivo desta dissertação é realizar um estudo, utilizando os conceitos de género de comunicação, género de email e género reunião, e a partir dos resultados obtidos, em consecutivas análises, conclusões e observações, desenvolver um projecto que sirva de plataforma para uma futura construção e implementação uma aplicação empresarial. Esta deverá minorar, em alguns casos, ultrapassar as dificuldades quotidianas, possibilitando o desenvolvimento e crescimento organizacional.This dissertation presents a study on the application of gender theory in the business context. The competitive advantage of companies in the social-economic context of today is based on human capital and the knowledge that their employees possesses. The organizational communication becomes an essential factor in itself, contributing to the improvement of communication between teams, but also to induce or support other changes in the company. It is in this context that we will conduct a study, using the theory of gender’s, with the observation, collection and analysis of data from a small company of Accounting Services in Lisbon. The aim of this thesis is to conduct a study using the concepts of gender communication, mail and meeting, and from the results obtained in the analyzes built a sketch of a project that could serve as a platform for a future construction and implementing of an enterprise application. This should ease, and in some cases exceed the daily difficulties, enabling the development and organizational growth

Towards a knowledge sharing framework based on student questions : the case for a dynamic FAQ environment

Includes bibliographical references.This study investigates the impact of anonymous computer mediated interaction on question-driven knowledge acquisition among students. A growing concern for educational institutions in general and educators in particular has been to augment what students are formally taught and what they informally learn from one another. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students consult one another informally. However, informal consultations suffer from three limitations: a) they are limited to clusters of friends; b) shared information is not retained; c) educators have no access to informal knowledge. My argument is that knowledge shared informally among students is a potential knowledge resource for both students and educators. As a student resource, it allows students to reconstruct their own understanding as they share their knowledge with each other. As an educators' resource, it serves as a diagnostic tool about students' knowledge levels hence identifying areas of misunderstanding or misconceptions

Evaluation de la qualité des résultats de la collaboration électronique

In the actual area of resource and skills decentralization, the use of technologies has become increasingly common under the name of electronic collaboration or eCollaboration. In spite of its interest, the involvement of technologies in the collaboration process has not solved all its problems. The research works on eCollaboration evaluation are focused on the detection, explanation and resolution of these problems.In the literature, we noted that evaluation works accord a special and unjustified attention to technological component of eCollaboration scenarios at the expense of their human component. This finding has motivated our thesis, aiming to propose a generic evaluation approach of eCollaboration scenarios that considers technological and human eCollaboration components. Given the delicacy of eCollaboration environments and to attain the objective of this work, our contribution follows a three step based process. The first step consists in a scenario based analysis that allowed, after carrying out several abstractions, to suggest a conceptual eCollaboration model, a scheme of the implemented interactions and a classification of eCollaboration scenarios. The second step is focused on the development of an eCollaboration simulator based on results of the previous step. This work allowed us to identify a generic criterion for eCollaboration success by generating different instances of eCollaboration scenarios progressing in varied conditions and observing different types of anomalies occuring on them. The third step was interested in the proposition of a generic evaluation approach based on the success criterion previously detected and composed by two levels : the first is interested in anomaly detection and the second is focused on the explanation of it, using a human reliability analysis method which considers that any detected anomaly is due to inappropriate progress conditions including both technological and human causes.A l'ère actuelle de la décentralisation des ressources et des compétences, le recours aux technologies est devenu de plus en plus fréquent donnant naissance à la collaboration électronique désignée aussi par eCollaboration. Malgré tous les avantages qu'elle apporte, l'implication des technologies dans le processus de la collaboration est loin de résoudre tous ses problèmes. Les travaux de recherche tournant autour de l'évaluation de l'eCollaboration se focalisent sur la détection, l'explication et la résolution de ces problèmes. Dans la littérature, nous avons noté que les travaux d'évaluation accordent un intérêt particulier et non justifié à la composante technologique de l'eCollaboration aux dépens de sa composante humaine. Cette constatation a motivé notre travail de thèse qui a pour objectif de proposer une approche générique d'évaluation des scénarios d'eCollaboration qui prend en compte leurs composantes technologiques et humaines. Face à la délicatesse du contexte de l'eCollaboration et afin d'atteindre l'objectif fixé, notre contribution a suivi une démarche constituée de trois étapes. La première étape a consisté en une analyse basée sur les scénarios qui, suite à l'élaboration de plusieurs abstractions, nous a permis de proposer un modèle conceptuel de l'eCollaboration, un schéma des interactions mises en œuvre et une classification des scénarios d'eCollaboration. La deuxième étape s'est intéressée au développement d'un simulateur de scénarios d'eCollaboration en se basant sur les résultats produits par l'étape précédente. Ce travail nous a permis d'identifier un critère générique de succès de l'eCollaboration à travers la génération de différentes instances de scénarios d'eCollaboration se déroulant dans des conditions variées et l'observation de différents types d'anomalies qui y apparaissent. La troisième étape a porté sur la proposition d'une approche générique d'évaluation basée sur le critère de succès dégagé précédemment et composée de deux niveaux : le premier consiste en une détection des anomalies et le deuxième se focalise sur l'explication de celles-ci en se basant sur une méthode d'analyse de la fiabilité humaine qui considère que toute anomalie détectée est provoquée par une inadéquation des conditions de déroulement qui englobent des causes aussi bien technologiques que humaines

Vom Menschen. Handbuch Historische Anthropologie

Wenn im Kontext dieses Buches von historischer Anthropologie die Rede ist, dann geschieht dies auf dem Hintergrund der in Deutschland entwickelten philosophischen Anthropologie, der in der angelsächsischen Tradition stehenden Kulturanthropologie und der von der französischen Geschichtswissenschaft initiierten Mentalitätsgeschichte. Auf dieser Basis zielt historische Anthropologie darauf, menschliche Lebens-, Ausdrucks- und Darstellungsformen zu beschreiben, Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen herauszuarbeiten, Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede in Einstellungen und Deutungen, Imaginationen und Handlungen zu analysieren und so ihre Vielfalt und Komplexität zu erforschen. Sie untersucht Fremdes und Vertrautes in bekannten und in fremden Kulturen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Historische Anthropologie dient als Bezeichnung für vielfältige transdisziplinäre Bemühungen nach dem Ende der Verbindlichkeit einer abstrakten anthropologischen Norm, weiterhin Phänomene des Menschlichen zu erforschen. (DIPF/Orig.

From Genre Analysis to the Design of Meetingware

Genre analysis is an approach to study organizational structures, focusing on communication patterns, which can be applied to the specific context of meetings. This research investigates the impact of genre analysis on the design of meetingware. The paper describes how genre analysis was used to develop meetingware for several organizations and meeting genres. The paper covers the whole design process, from genre elicitation to validation. The obtained results indicate that genre analysis impacts meetingware design in five major dimensions: organizational integration, situated nature, meeting lifecycle view, focus on communication patterns, and preservation of the meeting context