Segregation, integration, inclusion and effective provision: a case study of perspectives from special educational needs children, parents and teachers in Bangalore, India

Educating special educational needs (SEN) children in special schools is the norm in India but there is a growing trend towards inclusive practice. Perspectives were sought from children, their parents and teachers in Bangalore, India to investigate perceptions of effective provision for SEN children using an interpretative approach to provide ‘thick descriptions’. Findings suggest that integration of SEN children in mainstream schools was not the preferred model for both the children and adults in the study. Separate schooling was cited by the majority of respondents as the most appropriate model for reasons of unsuitable pedagogy and curriculum, a lack of individualised attention for children and difficulties of social interaction. The study reveals that teacher dedication, passion and care for the SEN children in their classes is juxtaposed with an acknowledgment of their professional training and development needs. These findings provide teachers and policy makers with an in depth insight from this sample case study into the perspectives of children, their parents and teachers on appropriate SEN provision and the challenges of implementing inclusive practice

From the projected to the transmitted image: the 2.0 construction of tourist destination image and identity in Catalonia

This thesis aims to explore online projected and perceived images of a tourist destination, to assess their mutual correspondence, and to shed light on the role of online user-generated images in destination image formation. It also seeks to analyse the spatial distribution of image by tourists and the complex image identity issues concerning a destination. To achieve this, online image sources regarding the case study of Catalonia were analysed through massive computerized quantitative content analysis of some 25,000 travel blog and review entries (perceived image) and around 3,000 official tourism webpages (projected image). The results showed significant dissonance between tourists’ images and official images of the destination in several aspects, notably its attraction factors and cultural identity. Tourists' destination images were found to be greatly concentrated on certain elements and spaces. Finally, this thesis proposes the concept of "transmitted image" to reflect the new central role of tourists’ online images in the creation, dissemination and formation of destination image. Keywords: tourist destination image; destination identity; online image; perceived image; projected image; transmitted image; travel blog; travel review; official tourism websites; Web 2.0; quantitative content analysis; Catalonia.Aquesta tesi té com a objectiu explorar les imatges projectades i percebudes online d’una destinació turística, examinar la seva correspondència mútua, i contribuir a aclarir el rol de les imatges online generades pels usuaris en la formació de la imatge d’una destinació. Amb aquests propòsits, es van analitzar fonts d’imatge online sobre el cas d’estudi de Catalunya a través d’una anàlisi computeritzada quantitativa de contingut massiu d’aproximadament 25.000 entrades de travel blogs i travel reviews (imatge percebuda) i aproximadament 3.000 pàgines de webs oficials (imatge projectada). Els resultats mostren que hi ha una dissonància important entre les imatges dels turistes i les imatges oficials de la destinació en diversos aspectes, notablement en els seus factors d’atracció i identitat cultural. S’ha trobat que les imatges dels turistes sobre la destinació estaven altament concentrades en certs elements i espais. Finalment, aquesta tesi proposa el concepte d’ “imatge transmesa” per tal de reflectir el nou rol central de les imatges online dels turistes en la creació, disseminació i formació de la imatge d’una destinació. Paraules clau: imatge d’una destinació turística; identitat de la destinació; imatge online; imatge percebuda; imatge projectada; imatge transmesa; blog de viatges; review de viatges; webs oficials de turisme; web 2.0; anàlisi de contingut quantitatiu; Catalunya.Esta tesis tiene como objetivo explorar las imágenes proyectadas y percibidas online de un destino turístico, examinar su correspondencia mutua, y contribuir a aclarar el rol de las imágenes online generadas por los usuarios en la formación de la imagen de un destino. Con estos propósitos, se analizaron fuentes de imagen online sobre el caso de estudio de Cataluña a través de un análisis computerizado cuantitativo de contenido masivo de aproximadamente 25.000 entradas de travel blogs y travel reviews (imagen percibida) y aproximadamente 3.000 páginas de webs oficiales (imagen proyectada). Los resultados muestran que hay una disonancia importante entre las imágenes de los turistas y las imágenes oficiales del destino en varios aspectos, notablemente en sus factores de atracción e identidad cultural. Se ha encontrado que las imágenes de los turistas sobre el destino estaban altamente concentradas en ciertos elementos y espacios. Finalmente, esta tesis propone el concepto de “imagen transmitida” para reflejar el nuevo rol central de las imágenes online de los turistas en la creación, diseminación y formación de la imagen de un destino. Palabras clave: imagen de un destino turístico; identidad del destino; imagen online; imagen percibida; imagen proyectada; imagen transmitida; blog de viajes; review de viajes; webs oficiales de turismo; web 2.0; análisis de contenido cuantitativo; Cataluña.Cette thèse a pour objectif d’explorer les images projetées et perçues en ligne d'une destination touristique, examiner sa correspondance mutuelle, et contribuer à clarifier le rôle des images en ligne générées par les usagers dans la formation de l'image d'une destination. Dans ce but, des sources d’image en ligne sur le cas d'étude de la Catalogne ont été analysées à travers d'une analyse informatisée quantitative d'un contenu massif d'à peu près 25.000 travel blogs et travel reviews (image perçue) et à peu près 3.000 pages de sites web officiels (image projetée). Les résultats montrent qu'il y a une dissonance importante entre les images des touristes et les images officielles de la destination selon quelques aspects, surtout dans ses facteurs d'attraction et d'identité culturelle. On a trouvé que les images des touristes sur la destination étaient hautement concentrées dans certains éléments et des espaces. Finalement, cette thèse propose le concept d’ "image transmise" pour refléter le nouveau rôle central des images en ligne des touristes dans la création, la dissémination et la formation de l'image d'une destination. Mots clés: image d'une destination touristique; identité de la destination; image en ligne; image perçue; image projetée; image transmise; blog de voyage; review de voyage; sites web officiels de tourisme; web 2.0; analyse de contenu quantitatif; Catalogne

Untangling the Web: A Guide To Internet Research

[Excerpt] Untangling the Web for 2007 is the twelfth edition of a book that started as a small handout. After more than a decade of researching, reading about, using, and trying to understand the Internet, I have come to accept that it is indeed a Sisyphean task. Sometimes I feel that all I can do is to push the rock up to the top of that virtual hill, then stand back and watch as it rolls down again. The Internet—in all its glory of information and misinformation—is for all practical purposes limitless, which of course means we can never know it all, see it all, understand it all, or even imagine all it is and will be. The more we know about the Internet, the more acute is our awareness of what we do not know. The Internet emphasizes the depth of our ignorance because our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. My hope is that Untangling the Web will add to our knowledge of the Internet and the world while recognizing that the rock will always roll back down the hill at the end of the day

Mobile translation applications: On the verge of a post-Babel world 2.0?

Situated within the technological realm of Translation Studies, this thesis provides an analysis of the ways in which people are using Machine Translation (MT) on a mobile device. This is a growing area of use of MT, given the increased accessibility of the technology and the proliferation of mobile devices this millennium. The thesis explores the history of MT, how the technology works and how it has reached the point of being accessible to almost anyone almost anywhere in the world, exploring the fact that MT is a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that the emergence of AI and specifically MT can be examined through the lens of mobility and ubiquitous connectivity. This thesis offers an insight into how people are using the technology, what effects this may be having on their perceptions of translation and potential implications for the language barrier. It does this through two principal methods of data collection and analysis. The first is a survey of people’s use of MT on a mobile device, soliciting new data from them to enable a deeper understanding of how they use the technology, the particular features they use, their thoughts on its quality and limitations. The second is a more novel approach as it is an analysis of reviews left on the Google Play Store by users of two MT apps, Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, exploring what information can be gathered and analysed from an unsolicited dataset. This thesis offers an initial study of this new way of interacting with the technology of MT and seeks to lay groundwork for future studies, including a categorisation tool and a taxonomy of MT use, to enable reliability and comparability across studies, platforms and time. Ultimately, it argues that the technology has improved substantially since its inception in 1954, but that it is too soon to say that we are on the verge of a post-Babel world 2.0. Rather, the technology is moving human society further in this direction and towards this possibility

Identity and quality of life among Badagas in South India with reference to rural-to-urban migration and new media

The thesis is about the experiences of Badagas living in contemporary India as they navigate a society in flux, the extent to which change permeates and influences understandings of self and life. Badagas, like others in India, have been experiencing profound changes as new ideas, products, and ways of living have become widespread. An increasing number of people are migrating to cities in search of education and employment, and technologies such as new media now influence communication and interaction. To understand these new circumstances, the primary concern of the thesis is an investigation of the identities and life quality of Badagas in South India with reference to rural-to-urban migration and new media, an important case study of the impact of India's social and economic transformation on its people, and a timely update of the antiquated picture of Badagas in the literature. At an empirical level, the thesis unpacks how Badagas understand themselves and their lives in today's India. However, it is also about changing the ways they have been understood and represented in the literature. At a theoretical level, therefore, the thesis deconstructs and redefines the meaning of 'Badaga' portrayed in the academic literature, and rebalances inequalities of representation. The thesis, then, is an empirical and theoretical investigation of the meaning of being Badaga, a critical appraisal of previous writings combined with empirical research to advance new ideas. To set the scene of the thesis, the first chapter introduces the Nilgiri and its peoples and their general depiction in the literature, and teases out some of the themes and styles which characterise writings. It also endeavours to identify what is already known about Badagas, and gaps in knowledge, to make a case for the empirical research in subsequent chapters. Chapter one highlights the numerous markers which have been used to differentiate Badagas based on the assumption in the literature that they are a distinct social group sharing a common history and culture. It also reveals the limitations of their portrayal based on the style and trends of social science in the first and latter halves of the twentieth century which reify a simple Badaga identity, an artefact which has since become a staple of the literature. Building on this introduction, chapter two reviews in further detail the diverse ways identity has been deployed in social science generally and the Nilgiri specifically, and the varied, loose, and contradictory ways the identities of Badagas have been documented. Similarly, chapter two also explores the varied meanings of quality of life and previous studies concerning Badagas. The chapter shows the majority of writings align with classical essentialist conceptualisations of fixity and rigidity, and 'the Badagas' as a category of difference has been framed in terms of homogeneity as a bounded group, isolation in a unique region, and speculations of identity change which mirror old-fashioned views of bounded undifferentiated cultures coming into contact, namely a minority group adopting the culture of the majority, as if change among Badagas is a product of the colonial experience. Similarly, regarding their quality of life, the majority of writings are concerned with imperial history and Western culture to speak for Badagas, which positions the changed way of life in the Nilgiri after the arrival of the British as important and superior to the past. Collectively, chapters one and two show previous representation of Badagas, although a rigorous and meticulous attempt at documenting their rich culture and history, is unsatisfactory in both theoretical and practical terms when it comes to understanding identity and life quality, a failure to offer terms with which to understand their complexity and diversity. The methodology of the monograph, outlined in chapter three, provides a contemporary social constructionist approach to iron out the epistemological problems discussed above. It begins with an overview of the multi-site approach of the research, designed to overcome the limitations of previous studies which regard Badagas and the Nilgiri as local and bounded in an isolated region, essentially the removal of geographical barriers to appreciate Badagas as dynamic and mobile and to capture new forms of identities in flux in multiple situations, namely rural-to-urban migration and new media, that transcend bounded spaces. The next section of the chapter introduces the thesis's theoretical orientation, symbolic interactionism, employed to examine the shared subjective experiences, meanings, and lived experiences of Badagas in contemporary India with emphasis on agency, social process, and subjective experience, a deliberate move away from previous macro-level deterministic and functionalist trends in the literature. The remaining sections of chapter three describe the operationalization of identity in the thesis, data collection from forum posts and face-to-face interviews, data analysis involving coding and thematic analysis, and ethical considerations. The thesis's methodology, then, is an interpretative group of complementary methods-multisite ethnography, symbolic interactionism, thematic analysis, and reflexivity-focused on analytically disclosing the subjective knowledge and meaning-making of Badagas, and thus providing greater flexibility in understanding their identities and quality of life. Grounded on this methodology, chapters four and five empirically investigate the identities and life quality of Badagas in two connected locations in a multi-site approach, the first online with Internet forum users, and the second in the real world with rural-to-urban migrants in Bangalore. Specifically, chapter four examines online portrayals and understandings of identity and life among Badagas in a virtual forum community, an online website with discussions in the form of posted messages, and the nature of the new type of community. It begins with a discussion of the paucity of media and visual studies of the Nilgiri and its peoples, the need for further research, and the role of media as a prime information source and facilitator of cultural change. Next is an analysis of the content of the virtual forum, a source of information about the goings-on of Badagas including their past and current circumstances which contain new material hitherto undocumented in the literature. As the first study of new media usage among Badagas, it shows they now have an online presence, a new type of Badaga social collective connected by online social interaction and notions of culture. Regarding identity, a strong sense of being Badaga was revealed in forum dialogues, as the study analysed how forum members articulated and expressed different understandings of their caste, reasserted perceptions of distinctiveness, and deployed identity strategically in activism when they constructed images of Badagas as victims of marginalization. While the findings seem to support, at least from the perspective of forum members, the reification of an overarching Badaga identity as something tangible, the forum discussions also revealed their abstractness and diversity, a heterogeneity of Badaga identities, particularly in lively debates and discussions in which images were contested, defended, and negotiated. Regarding quality of life, a negative depiction was a salient theme in forum discussions which centred on the demise and low profitability of agriculture, and there were also concerns about education and healthcare provision. Next, chapter five is about rural-to-urban migration. It begins with a brief review of the literature about migration and the Nilgiri and Badagas, and then analyses empirical evidence using interviews with rural-to-urban migrants in Bangalore to understand more about their experiences of leaving their villages in the Nilgiri and living in the city, personal meanings of being Badaga. A key finding was changing notions of what it meant to be a member of their caste as they engaged the city, as being Badaga was malleable and in a state of flux. It revealed a new identity and collective, City Badaga, characterized by shared experiences of living in the city as Badagas, a phenomenon unique to their caste and not reported in the literature on migration in other parts of India or elsewhere. The study also uncovered the ways by which Badagas constructed distinctions between themselves and others, the specific processes and contextual determinants of identity construction and change. A negative depiction of life in the Nilgiri continued to be a salient theme, although the migrants painted a picture of contentment with life in Bangalore, particularly with employment, income, convenient-living, and access to education, grounded on notions of social mobility and personal growth. There was no evidence of any interference with their social and economic activities in the city or limits to their opportunities. In summary, the findings from the two studies show Badagas do not conform to the model of a closed and bounded tribal society in the Nilgiri with customary cultural prescriptions, the simplified view in the literature which ignores the complex lived realities of people with a Badaga heritage who have diverse experiences shaped by a range of circumstances. Instead, the findings reveal complicated, flexible, and pluralistic notions of identities and living circumstances which are thoroughly in flux and negotiated and contested across multiple spaces, characterised by openness and variation. Also, whereas the literature emphasised objective aspects of life quality, notably economy and standard of living, the thesis reveals subjective quality of life?their own perspectives of life and circumstances, and attention to subjective processes and meanings?an approach hitherto neglected in the literature. The ?nal chapter concludes the thesis with a summary of the key findings followed by a consideration of their limitations as well as directions for future research. It discusses further the alternative conceptualisation of Badagas in the thesis as dynamic, fluid, and multi-site, much messier than conveyed in the literature. Also, as the thesis is about the lives of Badagas, it shows the research in Bangalore and the Internet forum revealed a rich array of information, a timely update as previous in-depth research was completed in the 1990s. The approach of the research means that the changes taking place in India and among Badagas are considered a cultural and personal process involving people and their understandings envisaged within their local settings and resources, and not simply about social and economic standards as often assumed in writings. There is no doubt Badagas are living in truly momentous times. Migration to urban areas and overseas, and the dramatic rise of technologies such as new media, grounded on broader transformation of Indian society, have shaped multifaceted changes in people's lives. The evolving local and global realities of the twenty-first century elicit fundamental changes in the meaning and expression of being Badaga, not only ways of living and social mobility but alternative notions of becoming and self-understanding

Mobile translation applications: On the verge of a post-Babel world 2.0?

Situated within the technological realm of Translation Studies, this thesis provides an analysis of the ways in which people are using Machine Translation (MT) on a mobile device. This is a growing area of use of MT, given the increased accessibility of the technology and the proliferation of mobile devices this millennium. The thesis explores the history of MT, how the technology works and how it has reached the point of being accessible to almost anyone almost anywhere in the world, exploring the fact that MT is a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that the emergence of AI and specifically MT can be examined through the lens of mobility and ubiquitous connectivity. This thesis offers an insight into how people are using the technology, what effects this may be having on their perceptions of translation and potential implications for the language barrier. It does this through two principal methods of data collection and analysis. The first is a survey of people’s use of MT on a mobile device, soliciting new data from them to enable a deeper understanding of how they use the technology, the particular features they use, their thoughts on its quality and limitations. The second is a more novel approach as it is an analysis of reviews left on the Google Play Store by users of two MT apps, Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, exploring what information can be gathered and analysed from an unsolicited dataset. This thesis offers an initial study of this new way of interacting with the technology of MT and seeks to lay groundwork for future studies, including a categorisation tool and a taxonomy of MT use, to enable reliability and comparability across studies, platforms and time. Ultimately, it argues that the technology has improved substantially since its inception in 1954, but that it is too soon to say that we are on the verge of a post-Babel world 2.0. Rather, the technology is moving human society further in this direction and towards this possibility

Technical vs Ideological Manipulation of MENA Political Narratives via Subtitling

MENA political conflicts have inculcated controversial narratives, giving rise to deep-seated political tensions and combat, locally and globally. Political media can accentuate or contest such narratives and, sometimes, even create new ones. Narratives dwell in their source text until they are relocated to the target text through the translation process, in which they can often be subject to multi-level manipulation in proportion to the ideological constraints of translators and their institutions. Subtitling, in particular, also has its own technical constraints that can require textual manipulation. This variation of constraints motivated the study to investigate whether manipulation is technically necessitated or ideologically driven. The ultimate purpose is to raise awareness of the commonly unrecognised role of ideology in manipulating the subtitling of political narratives under the pretext of technicality. Focusing on the Arabic–English subtitling of MENA political narratives produced by Monitor Mideast, Palestinian Media Watch, and Middle East Media Research Institute, the investigation starts with the first phase, where a micro-analysis drawing on Gottlieb’s (1992) subtitling strategies differentiates between the subtitlers’ technical and ideological choices. The second phase of the investigation comprises of a macro-analysis (comprehensive framework) drawing on Baker’s (2006a) narrative account, which interprets the subtitlers’ ideological choices for the text in association with broader patterns of manipulation in the paratext and context. The study discussed concrete examples where ideology—rather than a technicality—manifested in textual choices. Coherently woven, furthermore, the narrative distortion shown was not only limited to the text but also included the paratext and context. Besides paratextual verbal manipulation (e.g., using different titles), there were also higher-level patterns of non-verbal manipulation that included reconfiguring the original narrative features. These multi-level manipulation patterns have ultimately led to the source text narratives being reframed in the target text

ICT-oriented Strategic Extension for Responsible Fisheries Management

The Course Manual is developed as a part of the ICAR funded Short Course on “ICT -oriented Strategic Extension for Responsible Fisheries Management” held at Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Cochin during 05-25 November, 2013