Rumour verification through recurring information and an inner-attention mechanism

Verification of online rumours is becoming an increasingly important task with the prevalence of event discussions on social media platforms. This paper proposes an inner-attention-based neural network model that uses frequent, recurring terms from past rumours to classify a newly emerging rumour as true, false or unverified. Unlike other methods proposed in related work, our model uses the source rumour alone without any additional information, such as user replies to the rumour or additional feature engineering. Our method outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets (RumourEval2017) by 3% accuracy and 6% F-1 leading to 60.7% accuracy and 61.6% F-1. We also compare our attention-based method to two similar models which however do not make use of recurrent terms. The attention-based method guided by frequent recurring terms outperforms this baseline on the same dataset, indicating that the recurring terms injected by the attention mechanism have high positive impact on distinguishing between true and false rumours. Furthermore, we perform out-of-domain evaluations and show that our model is indeed highly competitive compared to the baselines on a newly released RumourEval2019 dataset and also achieves the best performance on classifying fake and legitimate news headlines

“Does the Truth Pass Across the Fire without Burning?” : Transitional Justice and its Discontents in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts

The modernized tradition of the Gacaca courts has become the key mechanism to deal with the past in Rwanda. Due to the design of the Gacaca tribunals, truth telling is the cornerstone of the transitional justice framework. Nevertheless, popular narratives and survey results reveal a problematic quest for the truth. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in rural Rwandan villages, we demonstrate that the state-sanctioned speaking of the truth goes against establised social practices. Our exploration of the truth problem further brings into focus the socio-political environment mediated by a culture of deceit and dominated by a war victor as the context of the truth; the confession and denunciation policy as the source of the truth; the decentralized and ‘traditional’ setting as the locus of the truth. A concluding section sketches the contours of the truth and questions the possible consequences of the truth.

The whistleblower in the workplace: The influence of the personal characteristics of individuals who have blown the whistle in one Australian context

Whistleblowing is not a new phenomenon but recent technological advances, which make corrupt behaviour difficult to hide, have exposed whistleblowingg as a burgeoning problem on several levels: international, national and local. Whistleblowing presents problems not only for the organisation which must deal with the offender, contain any damage to its reputation and manage the problems that enabled the corrupt behaviour in the first place; but it presents problems for the whistleblower. While ultimately an organisation may benefit from a whistleblower\u27s action, the whistle blower\u27s journey is rarely without sacrifices. Individual whistleblowers must call upon personal strengths to report misconduct despite probable adverse consequences. To explore an aspect of contemporary whistle blowing, this research relies on the theory of Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) which identifies five characteristics of whistleblowing behaviour: altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, civic virtue and conscientiousness (Organ 1990, 1997). Van Dyne, Graham and Dienesch (1394) whose research tested OCB theory, argued that loyalty to the organisation was also an important characteristic. In a later study Paine and Organ (2000) concluded that in Australia. OCBs and loyalty to the organisation are negated by the Australian ethos of mateship . These concepts are a springboard for the proposed research

"And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame

Bibliography: pages 74-83.The thesis attempts to show the complexity of the literary challenge which Chaucer undertook in the House of Fame. Firstly, I establish a sense of the tradition of criticism inspired by the poem, and then show the ramifications of the choice of medium. The poem is a "dream vision", a genre which took the contentious truth-claims and unsettled status of dreams, and used it as the foundation for a poetics which concentrated on the relation of the conscious subject to truth. This is investigated in an extended metaphor, where the experience of the unconscious subject in a purely linguistic world is tested, and from the experiment, conclusions may be drawn concerning the human condition with regard to all knowledge. I briefly examine the divergent positions of the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose, situating Chaucer in the debt of both, but philosophically in the French camp. The House of Fame I see as a "deconstruction" of any position of certainty in rational or mystical epistemology, which marks out a secular sphere of influence for literature in the manner of Ovid. The second half of the thesis is largely a close reading of the poem itself, which attempts to trace the development of these "skeptical" ideas in literary form, showing how, by appealing to the whole European literary inheritance, the force of the argument is enhanced in subtlety, range and wit. Love, Nature, and Fame, the three topoi of the three books, are each in turn unsettled, as too are the three "ways of knowing" - perception, reason, and memory. The poem does not "end" in the traditional mode of closure largely because it has made such a notion an impossible ideal, beyond the reach of the unaided human mind

Identifying ‘Immigrants’ through Violence: Memory, Press, and Archive in the making of ‘Bangladeshi Migrants’ in Assam

This research studies the violent conflict between Bengali Muslims, who mostly migrated from the former East Bengal during colonial times, and the Bodo Tribe, who mostly follow the Bathou religion in the Bodoland region of Assam. This conflict is often seen through the preexisting lens of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India. Here, conflict between a religious minority and an ethnic one is investigated in its locality and this investigation highlights the complex history of the region and its part in shaping this antagonism. It does so by looking into the colonial archive which introduced the category of ‘immigrant’ to the region, together with Urdu and English press coverage of four violent events that essentialize the categories ‘Muslim’ and ‘immigrant’, respectively. Defying simple categorization, the Bengali Muslims in the Kokrajhar district have devised their own strategy for narrating time. Through archival and ethnographic research this study shows the shifting meaning of the concept of an ‘immigrant’ and its implication for social and political realities. This research addresses some less studied dynamics of the clash between two minorities and its representation in both the English and Urdu Media

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

#Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations

The project #Blockchain4EU is a forward looking exploration of existing, emerging and potential applications based on Blockchain and other DLTs for industrial / non-financial sectors. It combined Science and Technology Studies with a transdisciplinary policy lab toolbox filled with frameworks from Foresight and Horizon Scanning, Behavioural Insights, or Participatory, Critical and Speculative Design. Amid unfolding and uncertain developments of the Blockchain space, our research signals a number of crucial opportunities and challenges around a technology that could record, secure and transfer any digitised transaction or process, and thus potentially affect large parts of current industrial landscapes. This report offers key insights for its implementation and uptake by industry, businesses and SMEs, together with science for policy strategic recommendations.JRC.I.2-Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Polic

The South African press code and investigative journalism: an in-depth study of the Sunday Times

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities (Journalism and Media Studies), 2012Application of the Press Code in relation to investigative journalism has become a topical issue in recent years following public criticism of breaches of the code by South African newspapers. Using the Sunday Times as a case study, this research examines the application of the Press Code to two Sunday Times stories that were publicly challenged – the Land Bank reports and the Transnet story – with a view to determine what went wrong and why. As the Press Code is a major instrument of self-regulation, the research uses the social responsibility theory of the press to provide a theoretical background that effective application of the code largely determines the credibility of this regulatory mechanism. In depth interviews and document analysis are the qualitative methods used in conducting the research. The study then draws on themes emerging from these two sources to address the research questions. Is the Press Code a set of rules which South African investigative journalists are actually familiar with? Does it inform the decisions they take? Is the Press Code seen as a help or hindrance? Can it be a force for good as a guideline for best practice? At what stage may investigative journalists have breached the Press Code and why? The findings demonstrate that investigative journalists at South African newspapers are aware of the Press Code and have “a fair idea” of what it is all about but lack the basic knowledge of its content to guide them in making informed decisions in their day-to-day practice. The findings also demonstrate that breaches of the Press Code in the Land Bank and Transnet stories were largely due to failure to properly apply the Code. Among causes of the breaches are the failure of the gatekeeping function, failure to get the views of subjects of reportage and the pressure of deadlines. The study also shows that effective application of the code could help keep journalists within reasonable limits and standards. Sufficient knowledge and conscientious application of the Press Code could also prevent breaches. If well managed by journalists and the industry, correct application of the Press Code could be of great help and a force for good as a guide for best practice of the profession. It could also protect the self-regulation system from its critics and the print media generally from criticisms of shabby journalism

The making and remaking of history in Shakespeare's History Plays

History is a problem for the history plays. The weight of ‘true’ history, of fact, puts pressure on the dramatic presentation of history. Not fiction and not fact, the plays occupy the interstitial space between these opposites, the space of drama. Their position between the binary opposites of fact and fiction allows the history plays to play with history. They view history as a problem to be solved, and the different ways in which each play approaches the problem of history gives us a glimpse of how they attempt to engage and deal with the problem of creating dramatic history. Each history play rewrites the plays that preceded it; the plays present ‘history’ as fluid and shifting as competing narratives and interpretations of the past come into conflict with each other, requiring the audience to act as historians in order to construct their own narrative of events. In this way the plays dramatise the process of remaking history. This can be seen in the relationship between the two parts of Henry IV, which restage the same narrative in a different emotional key, and the way that Henry IV’s retelling of the events of Richard II from his own perspective at the conclusion of 1 Henry IV forces the audience to re-evaluate the events of the earlier play, reinterpreting the dramatic past and imaginatively rewriting the play in light of the new perspective gained on events. The history plays thus create a new, dramatic history, a history without need for historical precedent. The plays deliberately signal their departure from ‘fact’ through anachronism, deviation from chronicle history and wholesale dramatic invention. In this sense the plays deliberately frustrate audience expectations; knowledge of chronicle history does not provide foreknowledge of what will happen onstage. History in the theatre is new and unpredictable, perhaps closer in spirit to the uncertainty of the historical moment rather than the reassuring textual narrative of the chronicles