Controversy trend detection in social media

In this research, we focus on the early prediction of whether topics are likely to generate significant controversy (in the form of social media such as comments, blogs, etc.). Controversy trend detection is important to companies, governments, national security agencies, and marketing groups because it can be used to identify which issues the public is having problems with and develop strategies to remedy them. For example, companies can monitor their press release to find out how the public is reacting and to decide if any additional public relations action is required, social media moderators can moderate discussions if the discussions start becoming abusive and getting out of control, and governmental agencies can monitor their public policies and make adjustments to the policies to address any public concerns. An algorithm was developed to predict controversy trends by taking into account sentiment expressed in comments, burstiness of comments, and controversy score. To train and test the algorithm, an annotated corpus was developed consisting of 728 news articles and over 500,000 comments on these articles made by viewers from CNN.com. This study achieved an average F-score of 71.3% across all time spans in detection of controversial versus non-controversial topics. The results suggest that it is possible for early prediction of controversy trends leveraging social media

Tune your brown clustering, please

Brown clustering, an unsupervised hierarchical clustering technique based on ngram mutual information, has proven useful in many NLP applications. However, most uses of Brown clustering employ the same default configuration; the appropriateness of this configuration has gone predominantly unexplored. Accordingly, we present information for practitioners on the behaviour of Brown clustering in order to assist hyper-parametre tuning, in the form of a theoretical model of Brown clustering utility. This model is then evaluated empirically in two sequence labelling tasks over two text types. We explore the dynamic between the input corpus size, chosen number of classes, and quality of the resulting clusters, which has an impact for any approach using Brown clustering. In every scenario that we examine, our results reveal that the values most commonly used for the clustering are sub-optimal

Towards the creation of 'quality' Greek national cinema in the 1960s

In the field of Greek film studies, the 1960's are widely seen as the heyday of the 'Old Greek Cinema' (PEK), while the binary model 'Old/mainstream' versus 'New/artistic' still dominates historical, theoretical and critical discourse on Greek film. The contribution of this thesis is that, on the one hand, it considers the 1960s under the light of the rise of 'New Greek Cinema' (NEK) and, on the other, complicates the relationship of PEK and NEK by focusing on the culture surrounding Greek cinema of the time and by exploring the continuities and interrelations between the 'Old' and the 'New'. Particular emphasis is given to the debates about 'quality' national cinema, including issues of realism, Greekness' and 'popular authenticity', the crucial contribution of state policies and institutions such as the 'Week of the Greek Cinema' in Thessaloniki and cine clubs, the establishment of international art film in the domestic market, and the emergence of a young generation of film critics and cinephiles who promoted the idea of an indigenous art-house film culture. This thesis highlights also the 'Old Greek Cinema's' attempts to raise the cultural status of commercial film and address international audiences and its subsequent openness to formal, thematic and artistic experimentation normally associated with NEK. The rise of history as a thematic concern of Greek cinema of the 1960s is another main focus of this thesis, which attempts to reveal how the Civil-War trauma, and oppositional historical perspectives (typically associated with NEK) found way in disguised forms in the narratives of mainstream films. Finally, through a close examination of the thematic and stylistic concerns of short films made in the 1960s (which include the early works of some of the major NEK figures) it demonstrates the continuity between the cinematic developments of the 1960s and the 1970s

Chandragupta Maurya: The creation of a national hero in India

We take it for granted that some historical figures become heroes, and others do not. Chandragupta Maurya evolved from obscure ruler to contemporary national icon. The key moment in the making of this Indian hero was a meeting by the banks of the River Indus between Chandragupta and Seleucus, founder of the Seleucid empire and one of Alexander the Great’s generals, in c.305-3 BC. This significant event was a moment of peace-making at the end of conflict. But no reliable account exists in early sources, and it is not even clear which ruler was victorious in battle. This uncertainty enabled British and Indian historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to interpret the sources in radically different ways. With Chandragupta representing India and Seleucus standing in for Britain, British scholars argued that Seleucus defeated Chandragupta, while Indian academics contended the opposite. The writing and reception of history fundamentally influences how we engage with the past, and the evolving colonial and post-colonial relationship between Britain and India is crucial here. In India, the image of Chandragupta as an idealised hero who vanquished the foreign invader has prevailed and found expression in contemporary popular culture. In plays, films, television series, comic books and historical novels, Chandragupta is the powerful and virtuous Hindu ruler par excellence. The path to this elevated standing is charted in this book