Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of our everyday lives – from the political to the economic to the social. Using a multimodal discourse analysis approach, this dynamic collection examines various discourses, modes and media in circulation during the early stages of the pandemic, and how these have impacted our daily lives in terms of the various meanings they express. Examples include how national and international news organisations communicate important information about the virus and the crisis, the public’s reactions to such communications, the resultant (counter-)discourses as manifested in social media posts and memes, as well as the impact social distancing policies and mobility restrictions have had on people’s communication and interaction practices. The book offers a synoptic view of how the pandemic was communicated, represented and (re-)contextualised across different spheres, and ultimately hopes to help account for the significant changes we are continuing to witness in our everyday lives as the pandemic unfolds. This volume will appeal primarily to scholars in the field of (multimodal) discourse analysis. It will also be of interest to researchers and graduate students in other fields whose work focuses on the use of multimodal artefacts for communication and meaning making

Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of our everyday lives – from the political to the economic to the social. Using a multimodal discourse analysis approach, this dynamic collection examines various discourses, modes and media in circulation during the early stages of the pandemic, and how these have impacted our daily lives in terms of the various meanings they express. Examples include how national and international news organisations communicate important information about the virus and the crisis, the public’s reactions to such communications, the resultant (counter-)discourses as manifested in social media posts and memes, as well as the impact social distancing policies and mobility restrictions have had on people’s communication and interaction practices. The book offers a synoptic view of how the pandemic was communicated, represented and (re-)contextualised across different spheres, and ultimately hopes to help account for the significant changes we are continuing to witness in our everyday lives as the pandemic unfolds. This volume will appeal primarily to scholars in the field of (multimodal) discourse analysis. It will also be of interest to researchers and graduate students in other fields whose work focuses on the use of multimodal artefacts for communication and meaning making

Understanding uncertainty and bias to improve causal inference in health intervention research

Most research on health interventions aims to find evidence to support better causal inferences about those interventions. However, for decades, a majority of this research has been criticised for inadequate control of bias and overconfident conclusions that do not reflect the uncertainty. Yet, despite the need for improvement, clear signs of progress have not appeared, suggesting the need for new ideas on ways to reduce bias and improve the quality of research. With the aim of understanding why bias has been difficult to reduce, we first explore the concepts of causal inference, bias and uncertainty as they relate to health intervention research. We propose a useful definition of ‘a causal inference’ as: ‘a conclusion that the evidence available supports either the existence, or the non-existence, of a causal effect’. We used this definition in a methodological review that compared the statistical methods used in health intervention cohort studies with the strength of causal language expressed in each study’s conclusions. Studies that used simple instead of multivariable methods, or did not conduct a sensitivity analysis, were more likely to contain overconfident conclusions and potentially mislead readers. The review also examined how the strength of causal language can be judged, including an attempt to create an automatic rating algorithm that we ultimately deemed cannot succeed. This review also found that a third of the articles (94/288) used a propensity score method, highlighting the popularity of a method developed specifically for causal inference. On the other hand, 11% of the articles did not adjust for any confounders, relying on methods such as t-tests and chi-squared tests. This suggests that many researchers still lack an understanding of how likely it is that confounding affects their results. Drawing on knowledge from statistics, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology, and all areas of health research, the central importance of how people think and make decisions is examined in relation to bias in research. This reveals the many hard-wired cognitive biases that, aside from confirmation bias, are mostly unknown to statisticians and researchers in health. This is partly because they mostly occur without conscious awareness, yet everyone is susceptible. But while the existence of biases such as overconfidence bias, anchoring, and failure to account for the base rate have been raised in the health research literature, we examine biases that have not been raised in health, or we discuss them from a different perspective. This includes a tendency of people to accept the first explanation that comes to mind (called take-the-first heuristic); how we tend to believe that other people are more susceptible to cognitive biases than we are (bias blind spot); a tendency to seek arguments that defend our beliefs, rather than seeking the objective truth (myside bias); a bias for causal explanations (various names including the causality heuristic); and our desire to avoid cognitive effort (many names including the ‘law of least mental effort’). This knowledge and understanding also suggest methods that might counter these biases and improve the quality of research. This includes any technique that encourages the consideration of alternative explanations of the results. We provide novel arguments for a number of methods that might help, such as the deliberate listing of alternative explanations, but also some novel ideas including a form of adversarial collaboration. Another method that encourages the researcher to consider alternative explanations is causal diagrams. However, we introduce them in a way that differs from the more formal presentation that is currently the norm, avoiding most of the terminology to focus instead on their use as an intuitive framework, helping the researcher to understand the biases that may lead to different conclusions. We also present a case study where we analysed the data for a pragmatic randomised controlled trial of a telemonitoring service. Considerable missing data hampered the forming of conclusions; however, this enabled an exploration of methods to better understand, reduce and communicate the uncertainty that remained after the analysis. Methods used included multiple imputation, causal diagrams, a listing of alternative explanations, and the parametric g-formula to handle bias from time-dependent confounding. Finally, we suggest strategies, resources and tools that may overcome some of the barriers to better control of bias and improvements in causal inference, based on the knowledge and ideas presented in this thesis. This includes a proposed online searchable causal diagram database, to make causal diagrams themselves easier to learn and use

Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society

publishedVersio

International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022

This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate

Kant in English: An Index

Kant in English: An Index / By Daniel Fidel Ferrer. ©Daniel Fidel Ferrer, 2017. Pages 1 to 2675. Includes bibliographical references. Index. 1. Ontology. 2. Metaphysics. 3. Philosophy, German. 4. Thought and thinking. 5. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. 6. Practice (Philosophy). 7. Philosophy and civilization. 8). Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 -- Wörterbuch. 9. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 -- Concordances. 10. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804 -- 1889-1976 – Indexes. I. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-. MOTTO As a famous motto calls us back to Kant, Otto Liebmann’s writes (Kant and His Epigones of 1865): “Also muss auf Kant zurückgegangen werden.” “Therefore, must return to Kant.” Table of Contents 1). Preface and Introduction. 2. Background on Kant’s Philosophy (hermeneutical historical situation). 3). Main Index (pages, 25 to 2676). Preface and Introduction Total words indexed: 58,928; for the 12 volumes that are in the MAIN INDEX are indexed: pages 1 to 7321. This monograph by Daniel Fidel Ferrer is 2676 pages in total. The following is a machine index of 12 volumes written by Immanuel Kant and translated from German into English. Everything is indexed including the text, title pages, preface, notes, editorials, glossary, indexes, biographical notes, and even some typos. No stop words or words removed from this index. There are some German words in the text, bibliographies, and in the glossaries (also included in Main Index). Titles in English of Kant’s writings for this index (pages 1 to 7321). Anthropology, History, and Education [Starts on page 1 Correspondence [Starts on page 313 Critique of Pure Reason [Starts page 971 Critique of the Power of Judgment [Starts on page 1771 Lectures on Logic [Starts on page 2247 Lectures on Metaphysics [Starts on page 2991 Notes and Fragments [Starts on page 3670 Opus Postumum [Starts on page 4374 Practical Philosophy [Starts on page 4741 Religion and Rational Theology [Starts on page 5446 Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 [Starts on page 5990 Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770 [Starts on page 6541 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or An Essay on the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Entire Structure of the Universe Based on Newtonian Principles [Starts on page 7162 The whole single file which includes all of these books ends on page 7321. 12 volumes are pages 1 to 7321. These actual texts of these books by Kant are not include here because of copyright. This is only an index of these 7321 pages by Immanuel Kant. There are some German words in the text and in the glossaries, etc. Searching this Main Index. Please note the German words that start with umlauts are at the end of the index because of machine sorting of the words. Starting with the German word “ße” on page 2674 page of this book (see in Main Index). Use the FIND FUNCTION for all examples of the words or names you are searching. Examples from the Main Index mendacium, 5171, 5329, 5389 mendation, 220 mendax, 2702, 2800 mended, 360 Mendel, 416, 925, 965 Mendelian, 2212 Mendels, 345, 363, 417, 458, 560, 572, 588, 926, 928, 929 MENDELSSOHN, 925 Mendelssohn, 8, 9, 19, 98, 99, 100, 101