Méthodes pour l'évaluation et la prédiction de la Qualité d'expérience, la préférence et l'inconfort visuel dans les applications multimédia. Focus sur la TV 3D stéréoscopique

Multimedia technology is aiming to improve people's viewing experience, seeking for better immersiveness and naturalness. The development of HDTV, 3DTV, and Ultra HDTV are recent illustrative examples of this trend. The Quality of Experience (QoE) in multimedia encompass multiple perceptual dimensions. For instance, in 3DTV, three primary dimensions have been identified in literature: image quality, depth quality and visual comfort. In this thesis, focusing on the 3DTV, two basic questions about QoE are studied. One is "how to subjectively assess QoE taking care of its multidimensional aspect?". The other is dedicated to one particular dimension, i.e., "what would induce visual discomfort and how to predict it?". In the first part, the challenges of the subjective assessment on QoE are introduced, and a possible solution called "Paired Comparison" is analyzed. To overcome drawbacks of Paired Comparison method, a new formalism based on a set of optimized paired comparison designs is proposed and evaluated by different subjective experiments. The test results verified efficiency and robustness of this new formalism. An application is the described focusing on the evaluation of the influence factor on 3D QoE. In the second part, the influence of 3D motion on visual discomfort is studied. An objective visual discomfort model is proposed. The model showed high correlation with the subjective data obtained through various experimental conditions. Finally, a physiological study on the relationship between visual discomfort and eye blinking rate is presented.La technologie multimédia vise à améliorer l'expérience visuelle des spectateurs, notamment sur le plan de l'immersion. Les développements récents de la TV HD, TV 3D, et TV Ultra HD s'inscrivent dans cette logique. La qualité d'expérience (QoE) multimédia implique plusieurs dimensions perceptuelles. Dans le cas particulier de la TV 3D stéréoscopique, trois dimensions primaires ont été identifiées dans la littérature: qualité d'image, qualité de la profondeur et confort visuel. Dans cette thèse, deux questions fondamentales sur la QoE sont étudiés. L'une a pour objet "comment évaluer subjectivement le caractère multidimensionnel de la QoE". L'autre s'intéresse à une dimension particuliére de QoE, "la mesure de l'inconfort et sa prédiction?". Dans la première partie, les difficultés de l'évaluation subjective de la QoE sont introduites, les mérites de méthodes de type "Comparaison par paire" (Paired Comparison en anglais) sont analysés. Compte tenu des inconvénients de la méthode de Comparaison par paires, un nouveau formalisme basé sur un ensemble de comparaisons par paires optimisées, est proposé. Celui-ci est évalué au travers de différentes expériences subjectives. Les résultats des tests confirment l'efficacité et la robustesse de ce formalisme. Un exemple d'application dans le cas de l'étude de l'évaluation des facteurs influençant la QoE est ensuite présenté. Dans la seconde partie, l'influence du mouvement tri-dimensionnel (3D) sur l'inconfort visuel est étudié. Un modèle objectif de l'inconfort visuel est proposé. Pour évaluer ce modèle, une expérience subjective de comparaison par paires a été conduite. Ce modèle de prédiction conduit à des corrélations élevées avec les données subjectives. Enfin, une étude sur des mesures physiologiques tentant de relier inconfort visuel et fréquence de clignements des yeux présentée

Guidelines for a participatory urban cycling dashboard: A case study for Münster, Germany

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesUrban cycling as a sustainable mobility system gets increasing attention in practical and academic urban transportation planning. At the same time, many cities are willing to foster their transparency and openness of urban data by utilizing urban dashboards. In conjunction, it lacks digital tools such as an urban cycling dashboard that have the potential of collecting cycling-related data, assessing it, and finally communicating its information with data visualizations. However, intended users are rarely integrated already at the earliest conceptualization stage of such an urban dashboard, which often results in low usability and utility. Simultaneously, there is a lack of integrating cyclists and their experiences into the quality assessments of urban cycling. To address these practical and research problems, this work aims in conceptualizing a user-centered and participatory urban cycling dashboard. Therefore, we conduct a user survey with cyclists/citizens, and decision makers from our case study in Münster, Germany, and apply findings from literature and dashboard reviews. The results show the users’ preference for an informational focus on cycling infrastructure but also their motivation of exchanging information on cycling experiences and future projects. Generally, the feedback for integrating the local users at earliest stage is positive. Such a user-centric conceptualization is a first systematic step of developing a participatory urban cycling dashboard that should support the understanding of a complex urban cycling system as well as fostering more participation and transparency in urban cycling planning

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Mutual dependency-based modeling of relevance in co-occurrence data

In the analysis of large data sets it is increasingly important to distinguish the relevant information from the irrelevant. This thesis outlines how to find what is relevant in so-called co-occurrence data, where there are two or more representations for each data sample. The modeling task sets the limits to what we are interested in, and in its part defines the relevance. In this work, the problem of finding what is relevant in data is formalized via dependence, that is, the variation that is found in both (or all) co-occurring data sets was deemed to be more relevant than variation that is present in only one (or some) of the data sets. In other words, relevance is defined through dependencies between the data sets. The method development contributions of this thesis are related to latent topic models and methods of dependency exploration. The dependency-seeking models were extended to nonparametric models, and computational algorithms were developed for the models. The methods are applicable to mutual dependency modeling and co-occurrence data in general, without restriction to the applications presented in the publications of this work. The application areas of the publications included modeling of user interest, relevance prediction of text based on eye movements, analysis of brain imaging with fMRI and modeling of gene regulation in bioinformatics. Additionally, frameworks for different application areas were suggested. Until recently it has been a prevalent convention to assume the data to be normally distributed when modeling dependencies between different data sets. Here, a distribution-free nonparametric extension of Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) was suggested, together with a computationally more efficient semi-parametric variant. Furthermore, an alternative view to CCA was derived which allows a new kind of interpretation of the results and using CCA in feature selection that regards dependency as the criterion of relevance. Traditionally, latent topic models are one-way clustering models, that is, one of the variables is clustered by the latent variable. We proposed a latent topic model that generalizes in two ways and showed that when only a small amount of data has been gathered, two-way generalization becomes necessary. In the field of brain imaging, natural stimuli in fMRI studies imitate real-life situations and challenge the analysis methods used. A novel two-step framework was proposed for analyzing brain imaging measurements from fMRI. This framework seems promising for the analysis of brain signal data measured under natural stimulation, once such measurements are more widely available

Politics and Prejudice

RésuméCette thèse s’intéresse à l’impact du genre, de l’âge et de l’ethnicité des chef·fes de partis au Canada sur la réception de leur candidature par les électeur·rices. La perception sociale est intrinsèquement relationnelle et met autant en scène l’identité du/de la candidat·e que de l’électeur·rice. Par conséquent, cette thèse s’attarde à la fois au profil sociodémographique des chef·fes de partis et des électeur·ices qui sont appelé·es à les évaluer. Ce faisant, elle contribue aux champs des études électorales et de la psychologie politique.Trois méthodes complémentaires sont employées. La première partie de la thèse s’appuie sur une analyse quantitative de données électorales fédérales (1988-2015) ainsi que dans trois provinces canadiennes (Québec (2012-2014), Alberta (2012) et Colombie Britannique (2013)). Elle s’intéresse à l’évaluation des chef·fes de partis ainsi qu’aux intentions de vote en fonction du profil sociodémographique des leaders politiques et des électeur·rices en ancrant fermement l’analyse dans le contexte social et politique canadien. Pour finir, un dernier chapitre présentant une analyse quantitative de démocraties occidentales (l’Allemagne (2017), la Nouvelle-Zélande (2017), la France (2017) et les États-Unis (2016)) permet de mettre les conclusionstirées au sujet du Canada en perspective. La seconde partie de cette thèse présente deux expériences, l’une réalisée en laboratoire à l’Université Laval et l’autre en ligne. Basées surdes élections fictives mettant en scène des candidat·es varié·es en termes de genre, d’âge etd’ethnicité, ces expériences s’attardent à la teneur de la relation causale entre l’apparencede candidats et le comportement politique des électeur·rices. La dernière partie de la thèse consiste, quant à elle, en l’analyse de données qualitatives recueillies lors de six groupes de discussion ayant eu lieu entre 2018 et 2019 à l’Université Laval. Trois d’entre eux ont été réalisés avec des personnes ayant participé à l’expérience en laboratoire, et trois autres suites à un appel de volontaires. L’étude de ces discussions met en lumière le mécanisme causal à l’étude en identifiant la teneur des stéréotypes politiques basés sur le genre, l’âge et l’ethnicité au Québec ainsi que la façon dont des stéréotypes sont employés, réprimés, pensés et remis en question par l’électorat. En particulier, cette section de la thèse s’attarde à la possibilité d’inférence de valeurs et d’idées politiques en fonction du profil et de l’apparence d’un·e candidat·e. La principale conclusion de cet ouvrage est le caractère conditionnel, mais bien réel, des comportements politiques pouvant être qualifiés d’affinitaires (liés a l’appui politique de candidat·es partageant des caractéristiques sociodémographiques avec des électeur·ices) au Canada et basés sur l’apparence des candidat·es politique. En d’autres mots, les électeurs sont bel et bien au courant des narratifs sociaux entourant la présence de personnes issues de groupes historiquement marginalisés dans l’arène politique, et ils emploient et questionnent les notions préconçues liées à certains groupes sociaux à différents degrés. Bien que les stéréotypes associés à l’"outsider" politique s’avère parfois nettement divergents du profil du politicien dittypique, cette déviation face à la norme politique n’est pas systématiquement sanctionnée.Dépendant du profil de l’électeur, des idéologies qu’il porte et de l’offre politique en place àun moment donné, cette marginalité peut être activement recherchée, car associée à la per-formance de "la politique autrement" ou encore à une meilleure représentation politique d’ungroupe social auquel l’électeur peut s’identifier. Un survol de l’état de la question dans d’autresdémocraties occidentales soulève cependant la question des règles du jeu politique. Il révèleque ces comportements politiques au Canada en contexte électoral ressemblent davantage auxphénomènes observés lors d’élections présidentielles que lorsqu’il est question d’autres régimesparlementaires s’appuyant quant à eu sur un mode de scrutin proportionnel mixte.This thesis examines the impact of the gender, age, and ethnicity of party leaders in Canada on the way these candidates are received by electors. Social perception is intrinsically relational and puts as much emphasis on the identity of the candidate as the voter. Consequently, this thesis focuses on both the socio-demographic profile of party leaders and the electors who are called upon to evaluate them. In doing so, she contributes to the fields of electoral studies and political psychology. To do this, three complementary research methods are employed. The first part of the thesis is based on a quantitative analysis of federal electoral data (1988-2015) as well as three Canadian provinces (Quebec (2012-2014), Alberta (2012) and British Columbia (2013)). It looks at the evaluation of party leaders and votes intentions according to the socio-demographic profile of political leaders and voters. The analysis is firmly anchored in the Canadian social and political context. However, a last chapter presenting a quantitative analysis of Western democracies (Germany (2017), New Zealand (2017), France (2017) and the United States (2016)) provides a different perspective on the conclusions drawn in about Canada. The second part of thist hesis presents two experiments, one done in a laboratory at Université Laval and the other online. Based on fictitious elections featuring diverse candidates in terms of gender, age and ethnicity, these experiments focus on the content of the causal relationship between the appearance of candidates and voters’ political behaviour. The last part of the thesis consists in the analysis of qualitative data collected during six discussion groups held between 2018 and 2019 at Université Laval. Three of them were done with people who had participated in the lab experiment, and three others after a call for volunteers. The analysis of these discussions highlights the causal mechanism under study by identifying the content of political stereotypes based on gender, age, and ethnicity in Quebec as well as the way stereotypes are used, repressed, thought out, and questioned by the electorate. In particular, this section of the thesis focuses on the possibility of inferring values and political ideas based on the appearance of a candidate. The main conclusion of this work is the conditional, but very real, occurrence of political be-haviours that can be described as affinity-based (linked to the political support of candidates sharing socio-demographic characteristics with electors) in Canada. In other words, voters are well aware of the social narratives surrounding the presence of people from historically marginalized groups in the political arena, and they use and question preconceived notions related to these groups to different degrees. Although a particular set of characteristics maybe associated with the political "outsider", this deviation from the political norm is not systematically sanctioned. Depending on the profile of voters, the ideologies they carry and the political offer in place at a given moment, this marginality can be actively sought, because associated with the performance of "politics differently" or the better political representation of a social group to which the elector can identify. An overview of the state of affairs in other Western democracies, however, raises the question of the rules of the political game. It reveals that these political behaviours in Canada are more similar to the phenomena observed in pres-idential elections than when we look at other parliamentary systems using mixed proportional voting

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Book

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Boo

The Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DGO2022) Intelligent Technologies, Governments and Citizens June 15-17, 2022

The 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research theme is “Intelligent Technologies, Governments and Citizens”. Data and computational algorithms make systems smarter, but should result in smarter government and citizens. Intelligence and smartness affect all kinds of public values - such as fairness, inclusion, equity, transparency, privacy, security, trust, etc., and is not well-understood. These technologies provide immense opportunities and should be used in the light of public values. Society and technology co-evolve and we are looking for new ways to balance between them. Specifically, the conference aims to advance research and practice in this field. The keynotes, presentations, posters and workshops show that the conference theme is very well-chosen and more actual than ever. The challenges posed by new technology have underscored the need to grasp the potential. Digital government brings into focus the realization of public values to improve our society at all levels of government. The conference again shows the importance of the digital government society, which brings together scholars in this field. Dg.o 2022 is fully online and enables to connect to scholars and practitioners around the globe and facilitate global conversations and exchanges via the use of digital technologies. This conference is primarily a live conference for full engagement, keynotes, presentations of research papers, workshops, panels and posters and provides engaging exchange throughout the entire duration of the conference