10,492 research outputs found
Identity, Power, and Prestige in Switzerland's Multilingual Education
Switzerland is known for its multilingualism, yet not all languages are represented equally in society. The situation is exacerbated by the influx of heritage languages and English through migration and globalization processes which challenge the traditional education system. This study is the first to investigate how schools in Grisons, Fribourg, and Zurich negotiate neoliberal forces leading to a growing necessity of English, a romanticized view on national languages, and the social justice perspective of institutionalizing heritage languages. It uncovers power and legitimacy issues and showcases students' and teachers' complex identities to advocate equitable multilingual education
Colour technologies for content production and distribution of broadcast content
The requirement of colour reproduction has long been a priority driving the development of new colour imaging systems that maximise human perceptual plausibility. This thesis explores machine learning algorithms for colour processing to assist both content production and distribution. First, this research studies colourisation technologies with practical use cases in restoration and processing of archived content. The research targets practical deployable solutions, developing a cost-effective pipeline which integrates the activity of the producer into the processing workflow. In particular, a fully automatic image colourisation paradigm using Conditional GANs is proposed to improve content generalisation and colourfulness of existing baselines. Moreover, a more conservative solution is considered by providing references to guide the system towards more accurate colour predictions. A fast-end-to-end architecture is proposed to improve existing exemplar-based image colourisation methods while decreasing the complexity and runtime. Finally, the proposed image-based methods are integrated into a video colourisation pipeline. A general framework is proposed to reduce the generation of temporal flickering or propagation of errors when such methods are applied frame-to-frame. The proposed model is jointly trained to stabilise the input video and to cluster their frames with the aim of learning scene-specific modes. Second, this research explored colour processing technologies for content distribution with the aim to effectively deliver the processed content to the broad audience. In particular, video compression is tackled by introducing a novel methodology for chroma intra prediction based on attention models. Although the proposed architecture helped to gain control over the reference samples and better understand the prediction process, the complexity of the underlying neural network significantly increased the encoding and decoding time. Therefore, aiming at efficient deployment within the latest video coding standards, this work also focused on the simplification of the proposed architecture to obtain a more compact and explainable model
Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse
This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses.
This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups.
In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in usersâ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018â6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena
Tourism and heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone
Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) uses an ethnographic lens to explore the dissonances associated with the commodification of Chornobyl's heritage.
The book considers the role of the guides as experience brokers, focusing on the synergy between tourists and guides in the performance of heritage interpretation. Banaszkiewicz proposes to perceive tour guides as important actors in the bottom-up construction of heritage discourse contributing to more inclusive and participatory approach to heritage management. Demonstrating that the CEZ has been going through a dynamic transformation into a mass tourism attraction, the book offers a critical reflection on heritagisation as a meaning-making process in which the resources of the past are interpreted, negotiated, and recognised as a valuable legacy. Applying the concepts of dissonant heritage to describe the heterogeneous character of the CEZ, the book broadens the interpretative scope of dark tourism which takes on a new dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone argues that post-disaster sites such as Chornobyl can teach us a great deal about the importance of preserving cultural and natural heritage for future generations. The book will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, memory, disasters and Eastern Europe
Bridging technology and educational psychology: an exploration of individual differences in technology-assisted language learning within an Algerian EFL setting
The implementation of technology in language learning and teaching has a great influence onthe teaching and learning process as a whole and its impact on the learnersâ psychological state seems of paramount significance, since it could be either an aid or a barrier to studentsâ academic performance. This thesis therefore explores individual learner differences in technology-assisted language learning (TALL) and when using educational technologies in
higher education within an Algerian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting.
Although I initially intended to investigate the relationship between TALL and certain affective variables mainly motivation, anxiety, self-confidence, and learning styles inside the classroom, the collection and analysis of data shifted my focus to a holistic view of individual learner
differences in TALL environments and when using educational technologies within and beyond the classroom. In an attempt to bridge technology and educational psychology, this
ethnographic case study considers the nature of the impact of technology integration in language teaching and learning on the psychology of individual language learners inside and
outside the classroom. The study considers the reality constructed by participants and reveals multiple and distinctive views about the relationship between the use of educational technologies in higher education and individual learner differences. It took place in a university
in the north-west of Algeria and involved 27 main and secondary student and teacher participants. It consisted of focus-group discussions, follow-up discussions, teachersâ
interviews, learnersâ diaries, observation, and field notes. It was initially conducted within the classroom but gradually expanded to other settings outside the classroom depending on the availability of participants, their actions, and activities.
The study indicates that the impact of technology integration in EFL learning on individual learner differences is both complex and dynamic. It is complex in the sense that it is shown in multiple aspects and reflected on the students and their differences. In addition to various positive and different negative influences of different technology uses and the different psychological reactions among students to the same technology scenario, the study reveals the
unrecognised different manifestations of similar psychological traits in the same ELT technology scenario. It is also dynamic since it is characterised by constant change according to contextual approaches to and practical realities of technology integration in language teaching and learning in the setting, including discrepancies between studentsâ attitudes and teacherâ actions, mismatches between technological experiences inside and outside the classroom, local concerns and generalised beliefs about TALL in the context, and the rapid and unplanned shift to online educational delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic situation.
The study may therefore be of interest, not only to Algerian teachers and students, but also to academics and institutions in other contexts through considering the complex and dynamic
impact of TALL and technology integration at higher education on individual differences, and to academics in similar low-resource contexts by undertaking a context approach to technology integration
Modern Folk Devils
The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohenâs theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world. Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled.;Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania
CITIES: Energetic Efficiency, Sustainability; Infrastructures, Energy and the Environment; Mobility and IoT; Governance and Citizenship
This book collects important contributions on smart cities. This book was created in collaboration with the ICSC-CITIES2020, held in San José (Costa Rica) in 2020. This book collects articles on: energetic efficiency and sustainability; infrastructures, energy and the environment; mobility and IoT; governance and citizenship
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