Gendered discourses and discursive strategies employed in Twitter-hashtagged debates about Saudi-women’s issues

This study is motivated by Twitter’s growing popularity as a space where Saudi men and women discuss issues pertaining to their lives without being stigmatised in an otherwise gender-segregated society. It aims to shed light on the multiple perspectives adopted by them to reveal an existing tension between tradition and modernity in SA (Yamani, 2000). Adopting an eclectic qualitative method, I draw from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) tools to analyse the constellation of discourses that are related to gender and the discursive strategies used as resources for stance taking in a corpus of 1000 unique text-based tweets derived from two selected topical hashtags collected in June, 2015. These two hashtags mark the public reaction to a) newly-announced travel controls for Saudi women and b) statistics about the percentages of unmarried Saudi women. in. The data provides evidence that voices of difference, protest, and dissent regarding women’s rights and their social role are in a dialogic relation with dominant conservative discourses. The analysis reveals that hashtag contributors mainly engage in the evaluation of gendered discourses, epitomised by a predominant Discourse of Patriarchy, and a Discourse of Gender Equality and Human Rights. A Discourse of Patriarchy manifests in two mutually-supporting discourses: a discourse of dominance that privileges men and gives them control over women, and a discourse about the subordination of women. The Discourse of Gender Equality discusses women’s retrieval of their full citizenship status, without the need for guardianship, and an equal social respect for their life choices, including those related to marriage and mobility. While drawing on these discourses, contributors position themselves on a spectrum of conservative (anti-change) and progressive (pro-change) stances. By way of critiquing them, and sometimes, constructing new democratic social worldviews, the contributors show signs of engaging in a form of linguistic intervention to promote social change. Invocations of these discourses were manipulated for the macro-functions of perpetuating, undermining, or transforming existing discriminatory practices against women. Within these macro-strategies, other meso-discursive strategies were employed, namely referential and predicational strategies, assimilation and differentiation, legitimation and delegitimation, intensification and mitigation, and humour. These meso-strategies were fulfilled drawing on linguistic and semantic means including sarcasm, laughter, mock suggestions, comparison, metaphors, etc. I argue that the identified patterns found in the Twitter data reflect as well as facilitate (on the discursive level) an ongoing gradual social change in the Saudi society since the unheard can now be heard and the dominant social practices involving women are being presented for public deliberation. In addition to contributing to the Arabic literature on discourse and gender, this study engages in an act of historicising these changes in SA and provides an assessment of the transformative potential of Twitter

Scientific dissemination and professional practices through digital media: The study of pragmatic strategies in the communication of international research projects

La investigación científica hoy en día está ligada a los procesos de globalización y a la búsqueda de la innovación y la excelencia, lo cual favorece una creciente colaboración, internacionalización y multidisciplinariedad. Para llevar a cabo estas iniciativas ambiciosas y de gran escala, los investigadores necesitan la financiación externa que distintas organizaciones, instituciones y programas pueden proporcionar. Esta reconfiguración del trabajo académico va de la mano de la ubiquidad y popularidad de Internet. Un extenso abanico de géneros, plataformas y medios digitales permiten a los científicos y académicos difundir sus investigaciones a una audiencia amplia y heterogénea. La inversión de esfuerzo en la comunicación mediada digitalmente permite a los investigadores contribuir a una diseminación más efectiva del conocimiento generado, así como cumplir con su compromiso social. Por otra parte, este esfuerzo les puede permitir reforzar su reputación como investigadores y conseguir un mayor impacto. Un ejemplo destacado de este escenario académico cambiante donde se maximiza el discurso digital para propósitos investigadores es el de los proyectos de investigación internacionales. Se trata de consorcios compuestos de miembros provenientes de entornos socioculturales y profesionales distintos que hacen uso de sitios web y redes sociales para la diseminación de sus proyectos conjuntos y utilizan las características tecnológicas y comunicativas de estos espacios digitales para ofrecer actualizaciones periódicas de su trabajo e información sobre hallazgos en progreso y resultados de investigación. De este modo, rinden cuentas a los organismos que los financian y aumentan su visibilidad entre los lectores digitales. Las intenciones comunicativas de estos equipos de investigación para cumplir dichos objetivos se codifican y transmiten discursivamente a través de diversas estrategias pragmáticas, que se encuadran en determinados parámetros contextuales y que responden a las especificidades del medio y se ven constreñidas por estas. Estas estrategias revelan cómo los investigadores comparten la información, cómo publicitan sus hallazgos y cómo se dirigen a sus potenciales lectores.Así, esta tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo investigar las estrategias pragmáticas prominentes en lengua inglesa empleadas por grupos de investigación internacionales en sus prácticas digitales discursivas, que normalmente se materializan en sitios webs y redes sociales para sus proyectos. Con este propósito, se compiló y analizó el corpus digital EUROPRO, que contiene 30 sitios web de proyectos de investigación que recibieron financiación en el marco del programa Horizonte2020 (subcorpus EUROPROwebs) y las correspondientes cuentas de Twitter de aquellos proyectos (subcorpus EUROPROtweets). Dichos subcorpus han sido extraídos de la base de datos digital EUROPRO recopilada por el grupo de investigación InterGedi. En mi tesis doctoral propongo una taxonomía derivada de los datos como resultado del análisis del corpus, que comprende 27 estrategias organizadas en torno a tres macrocategorías: informativas, promocionales e interaccionales. Incido teórica y metodológicamente en el proceso de diseñar y revisar esta herramienta analítica para así demonstrar su solidez y viabilidad. Además, analizo el rango de ocurrencia, la frecuencia y el uso específico de estas estrategias en las secciones que aparecen de manera sistemática en los sitios web incluidos en el corpus y en las páginas web donde se aloja la mayor parte de la información sobre el proyecto (Homepage, About, Partners, News & Events), en las cuentas de Twitter y, de forma comparativa, entre las secciones web y los tuits, con el fin de observar tendencias significativas y en cuanto a similitudes y diferencias en su funcionamiento en estos medios digitales. Además, adopto un enfoque etnográfico mediante la inclusión de evidencias contextuales conseguidas a través de entrevistas semi-estructuradas con investigadores de los proyectos Horizonte2020, cuyos resultados ayudan a sustentar los hallazgos procedentes del análisis textual. También tomo una perspectiva multimodal sobre cómo se emplean las estrategias pragmáticas en los sitios web de proyectos de investigación en relación a la sección Homepages. Este análisis, en concreto, permite reconocer el potencial de los recursos verbales y visuales para la construcción de significado desde una perspectiva pragmática. En general, el presente estudio busca ahondar en nuestro entendimiento de prácticas académicas digitales que están evolucionando rápidamente y que tienen gran alcance, en particular adoptadas por grupos de investigación, que pueden beneficiarse de los resultados y las implicaciones de esta investigación para la futura comunicación y diseminación de sus proyectos científicos.<br /

A Multimodal Approach to Sarcasm Detection on Social Media

In recent times, a major share of human communication takes place online. The main reason being the ease of communication on social networking sites (SNSs). Due to the variety and large number of users, SNSs have drawn the attention of the computer science (CS) community, particularly the affective computing (also known as emotional AI), information retrieval, natural language processing, and data mining groups. Researchers are trying to make computers understand the nuances of human communication including sentiment and sarcasm. Emotion or sentiment detection requires more insights about the communication than it does for factual information retrieval. Sarcasm detection is particularly more difficult than categorizing sentiment. Because, in sarcasm, the intended meaning of the expression by the user is opposite to the literal meaning. Because of its complex nature, it is often difficult even for human to detect sarcasm without proper context. However, people on social media succeed in detecting sarcasm despite interacting with strangers across the world. That motivates us to investigate the human process of detecting sarcasm on social media where abundant context information is often unavailable and the group of users communicating with each other are rarely well-acquainted. We have conducted a qualitative study to examine the patterns of users conveying sarcasm on social media. Whereas most sarcasm detection systems deal in word-by-word basis to accomplish their goal, we focused on the holistic sentiment conveyed by the post. We argue that utilization of word-level information will limit the systems performance to the domain of the dataset used to train the system and might not perform well for non-English language. As an endeavor to make our system less dependent on text data, we proposed a multimodal approach for sarcasm detection. We showed the applicability of images and reaction emoticons as other sources of hints about the sentiment of the post. Our research showed the superior results from a multimodal approach when compared to a unimodal approach. Multimodal sarcasm detection systems, as the one presented in this research, with the inclusion of more modes or sources of data might lead to a better sarcasm detection model

Misogynistic Hate Speech on Social Networks: a Critical Discourse Analysis

The present dissertation aims at recognising online misogyny as a form of hate speech, by providing a qualitative analysis of this discourse on Twitter and Facebook. While recent reports in media coverage have revealed that sexist harassment is the most pervasive social problem on Web 2.0, much scholarly research has mainly focused on other types of hate speech (e.g., racist and xenophobic vilification), overlooking the seriousness of misogynistic verbal abuse. The multilayered impact of misogynous discourse on women’s lives shows the urgent need to recognise gender-based prejudice as a form of hate speech, and to provide a more thorough and updated theorisation of this phenomenon. For this reason, the present dissertation suggests considering online misogyny as a harmful speech act which employs different tactics and discursive strategies to harass and silence women who engage in online public conversation. Following the methodology of feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, it develops an extensive qualitative study of the abuse experienced online by six women who reside in three different countries (i.e., Australia, Italy, and the USA). By analysing the discursive strategies commonly employed in user-generated contents to reaffirm hegemonic patriarchal ideologies and fixed gender identities, this dissertation also examines the entanglement between gender prejudice and other types of discrimination (i.e., racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and ageism), and it identifies the articulation of online misogynistic hate speech through a series of tactics which harm women’s lives on multiple levels. Therefore, it presents a taxonomy of these impacts through a new model that was specifically developed for the research at issue, and that will hopefully guide future research on misogynistic hate speech. In conclusion, this study argues for the development of effective educational tools to tackle sexist hate speech online, to guarantee women’s digital citizenship, and to promote a more respectful conversation in cyberspace

The Trouble With Big Data

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Trinity College Dublin, DARIAH-EU and the European Commission. This book explores the challenges society faces with big data, through the lens of culture rather than social, political or economic trends, as demonstrated in the words we use, the values that underpin our interactions, and the biases and assumptions that drive us. Focusing on areas such as data and language, data and sensemaking, data and power, data and invisibility, and big data aggregation, it demonstrates that humanities research, focussing on cultural rather than social, political or economic frames of reference for viewing technology, resists mass datafication for a reason, and that those very reasons can be instructive for the critical observation of big data research and innovation

NEMISA Digital Skills Conference (Colloquium) 2023

The purpose of the colloquium and events centred around the central role that data plays today as a desirable commodity that must become an important part of massifying digital skilling efforts. Governments amass even more critical data that, if leveraged, could change the way public services are delivered, and even change the social and economic fortunes of any country. Therefore, smart governments and organisations increasingly require data skills to gain insights and foresight, to secure themselves, and for improved decision making and efficiency. However, data skills are scarce, and even more challenging is the inconsistency of the associated training programs with most curated for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Nonetheless, the interdisciplinary yet agnostic nature of data means that there is opportunity to expand data skills into the non-STEM disciplines as well.College of Engineering, Science and Technolog

HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE DEI CLIMATE: EXPLORING AND UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA, SELF ESTEEM, AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION INITIATIVES ON THE COLLEGE CAMPUS

This study seeks to understand the effects and levels of impact that a university student’s intercultural communication competence, social media usage, and self-esteem have on the students’ attitudes towards diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts implemented by institutions of higher education. By studying these three independent variables, this research seeks to improve the understanding of the university students’ attitudes on DEI efforts for leaders and change agents in higher education, providing an inspiration for leaders, administrators, and change agents of higher education to continue collaborating to innovate methods and avenues towards creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus climate, as well as focusing on the roles that intercultural communication competence, social media usage, and self-esteem play in this construction of DEI programming. The researcher administered a questionnaire to 351 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from the University of the Pacific Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco campuses using various scales examining campus DEI climate, intercultural communication competency levels, self-esteem, and university-specific and general social media usage. The data from the surveys were analyzed to determine how the independent variables influence the students’ attitudes towards the DEI efforts being implemented by their university. The results indicate that self-esteem (SE) (r= 0.30) and students’ satisfaction with the university’s DEI-related social media campaigns and content (SSPDEI) (r= 0.38) are strongly correlated with the students’ attitudes towards the university’s commitment to DEI. Although intercultural communication competence (ICC) (r= 0.20) and how students use university- affiliated social media (USEPSM) (r= 0.21) offer levels of influence on the students’ attitudes towards the university’s commitment to DEI, they lag behind the levels shown by SE and SSPDEI. The results indicate that the students’ satisfaction with the university’s DEI-related social media campaigns and content (SSPDEI) (r= 0.35) provides a significant correlation with the students’ feelings towards diversity, equity, and inclusion on the campus (DEISF). Although ICC (r= 0.20), SE (r= 0.20), and USEPSM (r= 0.19) offer levels of influence on the DEISF, they lag behind the level shown by SSPDEI. The results also indicate that the student’s satisfaction with the university’s DEI-related social media campaigns and content (SSPDEI) (r= 0.28) and self-esteem (SE) (r= 0.23) provide the greatest influence on evidence-based DEI (DEIEV), which includes the student’s feelings and beliefs about the university’s commitment to non- discrimination and respect of each student’s individual qualities and demographics. Although ICC (r= 0.19) and USEPSM (0.16) offer levels of influence on DEIEV, they lag behind the level shown by SSPDEI and SE. Intercultural Communication Competency, Self Esteem, and Social Media Usage all have a significant positive relationship with a student’s attitude towards the DEI efforts being implemented by their university. A regression analysis found that the variables of self-esteem and intercultural communication competency have a strong predicting effect on any variances that are seen in the students’ attitudes toward the university’s commitment to DEI. The students’ use of social media may provide enough positive effect on the student’s attitudes towards the university’s efforts and actions related to DEI, however, the focus should then be placed on student satisfaction with the overall strategy and implementation. The multiple linear regression analysis also provides further support that the variables of social media usage, intercultural communication competence, and self-esteem are significant in moving forward the work in creating a campus climate centered on DEI

The Effect of Message Valence and Emoji Types on Processing Fluency when Reading Text Messages

The main goal of this thesis was to examine the influence of face and non-face emoji as a means to increase processing fluency and ratings of rapport in positive and negative contexts. This thesis aimed to draw on two key theoretical frameworks – the Processing Fluency Framework and the Rapport Management Model. In an initial naturalistic analysis (Chapter Two), the prevalence and types of emoji used were investigated, along with their relationship to self-presentation and related variables. Face but not non-face emoji were found to be linked to self-presentation variables, although the effects were weak. These emoji informed the design of subsequent experiments. In a series of five experiments (Chapters Three to Seven), the effect of face and non-face emoji on processing fluency and rapport were examined across positive and negative message contexts and manipulating a series of variables of relevance to the emoji (e.g., type, position, congruency with message). In each experiment, participants were presented with hypothetical text messages between friends and asked to rate them on a series of measures relating to fluency (efficiency, clarity, and/ or understandability and believability) and rapport (interest in the friendship and improving the friendship). Consistent with previous literature, emoji presence affected processing fluency and rapport. However, the effect varied depending on message valence, emoji types and the specific message content. Overall, the findings suggest a connection between processing fluency and rapport, related to the perception of emoji in text messages, a relationship which to date has not been identified in the literature. The findings, while supporting the processing fluency account, suggest that emoji effects are more complex, context dependent and nuanced than originally expected

Creating Knowledge, volume 6, 2013

It is my great pleasure to introduce the sixth volume of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ “Creating Knowledge,” our undergraduate student scholarship and research journal. First published in 2008, the journal is the outcome of an initiative to enhance and enrich the academic quality of the student experience within the college. Through this publication, the college seeks to encourage students to become actively engaged in creating scholarship and research and gives them a venue for the publication of their essays. This sixth volume is, however, unlike the previous ones in one major respect: the papers in this volume reflect a decision to alter the very method by which papers were selected for inclusion and a decision about the best way to more fully represent the considerable breadth of subject matter that reflect the many different departments and programs that we have in the college of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Each major undergraduate department and program was challenged to develop a system whereby the single best scholarly essay written by a student during the academic year would be decided by faculty within that academic unit and awarded a publication slot in the current annual issue. This necessitated the cooperation and hard work of many within the undergraduate units in our college. The resulting collection of papers representing the efforts of our best students and the collaboration of faculty reviewers in 20 of our programs is certainly ample testimony to not only the creativity, hard work, and sophistication of our undergraduate scholars, but of the dedication of our programs to the quality of the educational experiences and opportunities offered by them to students. It is through the continuing annual publication of this undergraduate student journal that we aim to underscore that leadership within their disciplines requires students to not only be familiar with the knowledge base of the discipline, but to have the experience of being actively engaged in sustaining an intellectual community. Students must understand how their creative work and the work of others also depends on its dissemination and on the sharing of that knowledge within a community of scholars. I want to congratulate, first and foremost, the many student scholars whose work is featured in this sixth volume of the journal. They truly represent the best of the best. I also want to thank the faculty who served to make this publication possible—those who served on the editorial committees in each department and program who had the difficult task of selecting the best submissions their respective programs could make for this edition of the journal. I want to particularly thank Warren Schultz, Ph.D., associate dean for undergraduate studies, who spearheaded this year’s efforts and coordinated the implementation of the new paper selection process —no small undertaking. To the students who are featured in this edition, it is my fondest hope that this will lead you to make similar contributions beyond the department and program, the college and DePaul University. To one and all, I extend my most sincere congratulations and gratitude. Chuck Suchar Deanhttps://via.library.depaul.edu/ckgallery/1005/thumbnail.jp