CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Citizen identity through the encounter: a kaleidoscopic view of Athenians’ encounters with migrants in a city of compounded crises

This thesis investigates the construction of citizen identity through difference, not commonality. Specifically, it examines citizens’ embodied and mediated encounters with noncitizen migrants in the spatio-temporality of compounded crises. It does so by zooming in on a multicultural Athenian neighbourhood undergoing many changes: most apparently, economic due to the post-2008 financial crisis, and demographic due to arrivals of new migrants post-2015, the so-called ‘migration crisis’. Within this spatio-temporality of perceived or experienced crises, the study examines how citizens construct a sense of Self through the Other, more particularly through their encounters with noncitizens on streets and screens. Aiming to contribute to the literature on media and identity, I draw on an interdisciplinary framework that cross-fertilises theories and methods from media and communications, sociology and urban studies. The study’s multi-method approach combines 30 in-depth interviews with Greek citizens with offline and online participant observation. The empirical chapters investigate citizens’ self-making through the Other in three distinct ways. The first empirical chapter (Chapter 4) focuses on crisis reflexivity: it thus shows how the constitution of crisis, both in temporal and in discursive terms, shapes meanings of the Self and the Other. The predominance of imaginings of identity through and during crisis becomes more apparent when citizens have few or no embodied encounters with migrants and largely depend on the media to learn about migration. The second empirical chapter (Chapter 5) examines culturalist reflexivity: it demonstrates how citizens’ co-occupation of local spaces with migrants opens up space to consider what unites or divides citizens and noncitizens. However, when such encounters remain ephemeral, pre-existing conceptions of the citizen Self dominate. Core references here are hegemonic systems of knowledge, including the media, which bind meanings of identity within narratives of cultural distinctiveness. The third empirical chapter (Chapter 6) discusses convivial reflexivity: it moves beyond the ephemerality of the encounter, and instead examines the consequences of sustained encounters that include more systematic engagement between citizens and noncitizens. In many of these cases, reflexive negotiations of the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ become more common. Theoretically, the contribution of the thesis is twofold: firstly, it reveals that the process of citizen identity-making through embodied and mediated encounters is shaped through a tripartite process of embodiment, mediation and affect; secondly, it foregrounds crisis as a context of citizen identity construction and explores how identities are configured and reconfigured when certainties about the (citizen) self have been destabilised because of the interaction of perceived and experienced crises

Intellectual property law and e-commerce in Sri-Lanka: towards a jurisprudence based on constitution, Roman-Dutch law and Buddhist principle

PhDModem developments in technology, connnerce and the cultural industries pose problems for intellectual property in Sri Lanka, as everywhere. Case law may be used for judicial guidance but there are comparatively few reported cases from the Sri Lankan courts. By examining Sri Lanka's juridical history and Constitution, together with constitutionally recognised Buddhist principles, it is possible to suggest further sources of guidance for judges. Using the proposed framework, it may be possible for the judges to apply existing law to new situations and avoid the need for constant legislative change in an attempt to keep up with developments and comply with Sri Lanka's international obligations. The extent to which such guidance may be useful is explored by looking at specific issues, which have caused difficulty in other jurisdictions. It is hoped that the proposed techniques could be used to build up a body of Sri Lankan jurisprudence. Ms may prove more stable and effective than incremental legislation. 'Status juris - 'Mis study (unless otherwise stated) based on material available as at 0 1.12.2004 and the law in force on that date