Florida Partnership for Reading Excellence-Florida Reading Initiative Program Binder

An informational binder about Florida Partnership for Reading Excellence-Florida Reading Initiative Program

A financial crime analysis methodology for financial discussion boards using information extraction techniques

Financial discussion boards (FDBs) have been widely used for a variety of financial knowledge exchange activities through the posting of comments. Popular public FDBs are prone to be used as a medium for spreading misleading financial information due to having larger audience groups. Moderation of posted content heavily relies on manual tasks. Unfortunately, the daily comments volume received on popular FDBs realistically prevents human moderators or relevant authorities from proactively monitoring and moderating possibly fraudulent FDB content as it is extremely time-consuming and expensive to manually read all the content. This thesis presents a financial crime analysis methodology (which is comprised of novel forward analysis and novel backward analysis methodologies) implemented in a template-based Information Extraction (IE) prototype system, namely FDBs Miner (FDBM). The methodologies aim to detect potentially illegal Pump and Dump (P&D) activities on FDBs with the integration of per minute share prices in the detection process. This integration can reduce false positives during the detection as it categorises the potentially illegal comments into different risk levels for investigation purposes. P&D is a well-known financial crime that happens through different methods including FDBs. P&D happens when fraudsters deceive investors into buying stocks by spreading misleading information. FDBM extracts a company’s ticker symbol (i.e. a unique symbol that represents and identifies each listed company on the stock market), comments and share prices from FDBs based in the UK for experimental purposes. Results from both forward and backward analysis experiments show that the two novel methodologies can aid relevant authorities in the detection of potentially illegal activities on FDBs. Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) experiments have also shown that the approach could be adopted in the process of detecting potentially illegal activities on FDBs

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Emotional appeals in UK banks’ print advertisement

“A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy”The unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty experienced in global economic and financial markets because of the ―credit crunch‖ has had a damaging impact on consumer confidence. Trust and credibility have been eroded as many customers feel let down by the banks suggesting the need for banks to rebuild constructive dialogue and long-term, meaningful relationships with their customers again. Though financial service, in this case, is considered a utilitarian service, based on the fact that money is needed to support people‘s daily activities, the present state of financial service has suggested the need for banks to appeal to consumers‘ emotions with the aim of improving their reputation. Also, the competition within the industry also could suggest the need to adopt an emotionally appealing advertisement strategy as emotions are known to play an influential role in building robust brand preference. This study builds on the communication theory, meaning transfer theory and consumer involvement theory, to understand the messages the banks are sending out and to elicit consumers‘ emotional reaction. One thousand, two hundred and seventy-four UK bank advertisements in nine national newspapers were content-analysed to identify the emotional appeals presented by the banks. The perception of these appeals and their associated meanings were sought through semi-structured interviews with 33 participants in London and Luton. The results of the analysis indicated that UK Banks are utilising emotional appeal in their advertisements to reach out to the consumers to convince them to upgrade their account, to open an additional account or switch their account. The most predominantly used appeals were relief and relaxation followed by excitement and happiness or satisfaction with the bank, and finally, security and adventure. However, variations were found in different financial products that employed emotional appeals. It was found that high-involvement products such as mortgages and loans used fewer emotional appeals. Both bank groups - high street banks, including the big four (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS) and non-high street banks, such as the new entrants, supermarket brands, and online banks were using emotional appeals. However, it is acknowledged that the communication strategies between these banks could be different as the non-high street banks are more likely to repeat and publish the same messages across many newspapers, instead of publishing different emotionally appealing advertisements. Though consumers acknowledged these emotional appeals in the advertisements, they were more concerned about their relationship with the banks as they don‘t rely on advertisements to make a financial decision. Rather, recommendations from families, friends and associates and also branch location are more important when deciding on which bank to choose. The lack of congruency between financial services and emotional appeals in advertisements is also observed as customers are more likely to be persuaded by rational appeals however this study has not completely ruled out emotional appeals in bank advertisements as the use of both types of appeals is recommended. The study provides important theoretical and managerial contributions to understanding how the consumers understand meaning-embedded advertisements produced by the banks. Managers will be able to consider the implications of advertisements in enhancing their brand equity and building relationships with customers in anticipation that, by word of the mouth and established relationship, their bank‘s reputation will be enhanced. Limitations of the study and opportunities for future research are identified

Perfect moments: British advertising during the 1990s - an assessment of determinants

The aim of this thesis is to consider how advertisers and their clients in the 1990s conceptualised social and technological change. In particular, I address how advertisers deduced and represented new characteristics in their customers. By reflecting on changes in the content of adverts, I take a symptomatic approach in considering how new conceptualisations were incorporated into new and broader ad styles. To do this, in Chapter 1, the Literature Review, I identify my central approach and key issues against existing literature in the field. Given that this study is essentially an industry-oriented analysis of advertising, which not been attempted this way before, I consider the relevance of existing industrial and academic-centred critical models for this study. Chapter 2 then maps out the key changes in advertising in the 1990s from previous decades. It considers what prompted the ad industries to change their perspectives and how advertisers restructured their operations in an attempt to re-imagine their consumers. In Chapter 3 benchmarks of the key changes are examined in more detail. Three campaigns are examined to explore how promotional strategies negotiated (perceived) changes in consumers. The campaigns for Britvic Tango (1992), Daewoo cars (1995) and Tesco Clubcard (1997) were chosen because they are symptomatic of key moments during the 1990s in which the way advertising targeted consumers was re-addressed. In the final part of this chapter I consider how shifting methods of advertising during the 1990s registers in the 'bigger picture' of twentieth century communication. Following the case studies, the next two chapters review two key issues for advertising during the 1990s. Chapter 4 considers how advertisers changed their tone of address. Here issues such as national/personal representation and 'boutiques of history' are considered. Most notably, changes in youth mood is considered against advertising's own strategies for coping with change. Chapter 5 then considers changes in modes of address, and in particular the impact of digital technology on advertising's means of communication. Unlike the previous chapter, which demonstrates how advertising negotiated change, this section shows how the existing agency system was forced to change. Before 1990 an attitude perSisted in the ad industry that changes to the way agencies communicated and did business was (to a large extent) determined by advertisers themselves. This was not the case in 1990s. This study maps out how change was negotiated in a climate of cultural fragmentation and digitised communication

Alienation and educational inclusion : a mixed methods study of teaching and learning with contemporary art in the Level 1 university curriculum

UNESCO (2006b) proclaims that' Arts Education is a universal human right'. However, art educators have observed that Western visual arts education is still dominated by a culturally exclusive canon of artworks which some students find alienating and irrelevant. Calls to abandon the canon in the name of inclusion have been made by school arts educators and research in secondary schools has shown that including contemporary art in the curriculum can empower and engage learners. However, inclusive visual arts curriculum development in higher education is infrequently explored.This thesis is intended to address such imbalance. It reports the findings of a mixed methods study exploring the impact of adults' affective and cognitive responses to art on their learning. A questionnaire and interviews were used to gather information about Open University undergraduates' responses to contemporary and non-contemporary artworks and their experiences of studying a visual arts module featuring meta-cognitive scaffolding and guided reflection. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data indicated that while the Western canon has the power to exclude, replacing canonical works with contemporary art is not a 'one size fits all' solution to achieving educational inclusion. Rather, it appears there is an age and experience-related divide in adults' affective and cognitive responses to art. Younger, and art-trained adults often relish studying provocative, emotionally potent and offensive contemporary artworks, especially works addressing topics they feel are personally relevant. In contrast, some older adults' cynical preconceptions about contemporary art's unworthiness for serious study, and preferences for visually pleasing, inoffensive artworks, can prevent productive engagement with contemporary art. However, the study findings suggest that meta-cognitive scaffolding can offer a structure within which students can reflect on and make sense of their responses to contemporary art, while also developing the skills to interpret works with unstable and controversial meanings