Enhancing FunGramKB: Further Verbs of Feeling in English

The present dissertation aims at analyzing some linguistic aspects related to the lexical, semantic and syntactic behaviour of a number of verbs of FEELING in English whose lexical, grammatical and idiosyncratic properties have been entered into the FunGramKB Editor in application of study of the theoretical assumptions propounded by the Lexical-Constructional Model. Analysis and subsequent input of data have been assessed against the background of some of the 20th-century trends in linguistics which find their expression in the first decade of this century, and the role of semantics in a world in which increasing priority is given to probabilistic, machine-learned output in lexicographic work. From this stance, the generic features contained in the FunGramKB meaning postulates and thematic frames as outlined in the Lexical-Constructional Model bring hope for a more faithful rendering of the semantic relationships established within human expression, while making provisions for a semanticist‟s contribution to refinement and storage of both thorough and extensive knowledge

Detecting frames in news headlines and its application to analyzing news framing trends surrounding U.S. gun violence

Different news articles about the same topic often offer a variety of perspectives: an article written about gun violence might emphasize gun control, while another might promote 2nd Amendment rights, and yet a third might focus on mental health issues. In communication research, these different perspectives are known as “frames”, which, when used in news media will influence the opinion of their readers in multiple ways. In this paper, we present a method for effectively detecting frames in news headlines. Our training and performance evaluation is based on a new dataset of news headlines related to the issue of gun violence in the United States. This Gun Violence Frame Corpus (GVFC) was curated and annotated by journalism and communication experts. Our proposed approach sets a new state-of-the-art performance for multiclass news frame detection, significantly outperforming a recent baseline by 35.9% absolute difference in accuracy. We apply our frame detection approach in a large scale study of 88k news headlines about the coverage of gun violence in the U.S. between 2016 and 2018.Published versio

Trends in American Newspaper Coverage of Autism

The public\u27s understanding of disabilities is cultivated via several media resources, including news media. Disability scholars often cite negative representations of disabilities in mass media, yet analyses of newspaper journalists\u27 coverage of autism remain scarce. The present study explores the frames, stereotypes, stigmatizing cues, and individuals cited in news coverage of autism through a content analysis of The New York Times and USA Today coverage of autism from 2013-2016. The findings revealed that episodic frames are consistently utilized to discuss autism. References to abnormal social tendencies and coupling autism with adverse circumstances were the most common stereotypes in newspaper coverage. The study’s results show that the presence of stigmatizing cues increased over time, with label references representing the most common stigmatizing cue. Episodic coverage was more stigmatizing than thematic news coverage. Medical professional and journalist sources were most present in news coverage. Theoretical and practical applications for media and disability scholars are discussed

Linguistics and LIS: A Research Agenda

Linguistics and Library and Information Science (LIS) are both interdisciplinary fields that draws from areas such as languages, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, computer science, anthropology, education, and management. The theories and methods of linguistic research can have significant explanatory power for LIS. This article presents a research agenda for LIS that proposes the use of linguistic analysis methods, including discourse analysis, typology, and genre theory

Smartphone chronic gaming consumption and positive coping practice

Purpose: Chronic consumption practice has been greatly accelerated by mobile, interactive and smartphone gaming technology devices. This study explores how chronic consumption of smartphone gaming produces positive coping practice. Design/methodology/approach: Underpinned by cognitive framing theory, empirical insights from eleven focus groups (n=62) reveal how smartphone gaming enhances positive coping amongst gamers and non-gamers. Findings: The findings reveal how the chronic consumption of games allows technology to act with privileged agency that resolves tensions between individuals and collectives. Consumption narratives of smartphone games, even when play is limited, lead to the identification of three cognitive frames through which positive coping processes operate: (a) the market generated frame, (b) the social being frame, and (c) the citizen frame. Research limitations/implications: This paper adds to previous research by providing an understanding of positive coping practice in the smartphone chronic gaming consumption. Originality/value: In smartphone chronic gaming consumption, cognitive frames enable positive coping by fostering appraisal capacities in which individuals confront, hegemony, culture and alterity-morality concerns

Understanding “influence”: An exploratory study of academics’ process of knowledge construction through iterative and interactive information seeking

The motivation for this study is to better understand the searching and sensemaking processes undertaken to solve exploratory tasks for which people lack pre-existing frames. To investigate people’s strategies for that type of task, we focused on “influence” tasks because, although they appear to be unfamiliar, they arise in much academic discourse, at least tacitly. This qualitative study reports the process undertaken by academics of different levels of seniority to complete exploratory search tasks that involved identifying influential members of their academic community and “rising stars, ” and to identify similar roles in an unfamiliar academic community. 11 think-aloud sessions followed by semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the role of specific and general domain expertise in the process of information seeking and knowledge construction. Academics defined and completed the task through an iterative and interactive process of seeking and sensemaking, during which they constructed an understanding of their communities and determined qualities of “being influential”. Elements of the Data/Frame Theory of Sensemaking (Klein et al., 2007) were used as sensitising theoretical constructs. The study shows that both external and internal knowledge resources are essential to define a starting point or frame, make and support decisions, and experience satisfaction. Ill-defined or non-existent initial frames may cause unsubstantial or arbitrary decisions, and feelings of uncertainty and lack of confidence

No gender differences in egocentric and allocentric environmental transformation after compensating for male advantage by manipulating familiarity

The present study has two-fold aims: to investigate whether gender differences persist even when more time is given to acquire spatial information; to assess the gender effect when the retrieval phase requires recalling the pathway from the same or a different reference perspective (egocentric or allocentric). Specifically, we analyse the performance of men and women while learning a path from a map or by observing an experimenter in a real environment. We then asked them to reproduce the learned path using the same reference system (map learning vs. map retrieval or real environment learning vs. real environment retrieval) or using a different reference system (map learning vs. real environment retrieval or vice versa). The results showed that gender differences were not present in the retrieval phase when women have the necessary time to acquire spatial information. Moreover, using the egocentric coordinates (both in the learning and retrieval phase) proved easier than the other conditions, whereas learning through allocentric coordinates and then retrieving the environmental information using egocentric coordinates proved to be the most difficult. Results showed that by manipulating familiarity, gender differences disappear, or are attenuated in all conditions