War reporting and the new war paradigm: a critical analysis of the UK military’s media operations policies

The current military-media relationship, in which war reporters face greater challenges accessing operational zones, is marked by destabilisation. The key focus of this thesis is to describe the struggle of the military and the media in a British context, one that involves keeping up with the pace of massive developments in: (a) the nature of warfare, (b) the revolution in military affairs, and (c) information and communications technologies. I argue that the relationship between operational security, digitalisation, and moral obligations is vulnerable in today’s conflicts – considering those aspects of journalistic values which claim truthfulness and objectivity. Grounded theory is used to analyse qualitative semi-structured interviews and official documents by employing comparative methods and coding. Research questions are grouped into three themes outlining my key methodological arguments: (1) a revolution shown in military documents in the forms of new war; (2) the characteristics of war journalism in post-Iraq War; and (3) the impact that the digital revolution has had on the role of war reporters. My findings illustrate some implications and recommendations for military policies and journalistic practices. In theory, the military’s media policy is aimed at securing journalistsʼ safety and operational security. However, in practice, the loss of autonomy, a lack of clear objectives, and editorial restraints have made journalistic work more complicated. The analytical framework utilised has identified two emergent themes: (1) the post-embedding era recognises the struggle of the military to incorporate the media into today’s conflicts because of the extent of violence in the ‘War Amongst the People’ (WAP); and, (2) the classic form of war reportage has become vulnerable to a new type of asymmetric threats as wars are often fought in a hybrid style. The latest typology of ‘new war’ has reinforced a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity in the process of war reportage, and information management, which can create instability pertaining to the role of the media in conflicts. In conclusion, the risk of uncontrollable and unmanageable media reportage can only be eliminated by the military if journalism becomes an integral part of the military’s command and control structure

Verifying Access Control in Statecharts

Access control is one of the main security mechanisms for software applications. It ensures that all accesses conform to a predefined access control policy. It is important to check that the access control policy is well implemented in the system. When following an MDD methodology it may be necessary to check this early during the development lifecycle, namely when modeling the application. This paper tackles the issue of verifying access control policies in statecharts. The approach is based on the transformation of a statechart into an Algebraic Petri net to enable checking access control policies and identifying potential inconsistencies with an OrBAC set of access control policies. Our method allows locating the part of the statechart that is causing the problem. The approach has been successfully applied to a Library Management System. Based on our proposal a tool for performing the transformation and localization of errors in the statechart has been implemented

Elections in digital times: a guide for electoral practitioners

Strengthening democracy and electoral processes in the era of social media and Artificial Intelligence Democracy requires free, periodic, transparent, and inclusive elections. Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and the right to political participation are also critical to societies ruled by the respect of human rights. In today’s rapidly evolving digital environment, opportunities for communication between citizens, politicians and political parties are unprecedented –– with information related to elections flowing faster and easier than ever, coupled with expanded opportunities for its verification and correction by a growing number of stakeholders. However, with billions of human beings connected, and disinformation and misinformation circulating unhinged around the networks, democratic processes and access to reliable information are at risk. With an estimated 56.8% of the world’s population active on social media and an estimate of 4 billion eligible voters, the ubiquity of social networks and the impact of Artificial Intelligence can intentionally or unintentionally undermine electoral processes, thereby delegitimizing democracies worldwide. In this context, all actors involved in electoral processes have an essential role to play. Electoral management bodies, electoral practitioners, the media, voters, political parties, and civil society organizations must understand the scope and impact of social media and Artificial Intelligence in the electoral cycle. They also need to have access to the tools to identify who instigates and spreads disinformation and misinformation, and the tools and strategies to combat it. This handbook aims to be a toolbox that helps better understand the current scenario and share experiences of good practices in different electoral settings and equip electoral practitioners and other key actors from all over the world to ensure the credibility of the democratic system in times of profound transformations

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2022, which was held during April 4-5, 2022, in Munich, Germany, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2022. The 17 regular papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. The proceedings also contain 3 contributions from the Test-Comp Competition. The papers deal with the foundations on which software engineering is built, including topics like software engineering as an engineering discipline, requirements engineering, software architectures, software quality, model-driven development, software processes, software evolution, AI-based software engineering, and the specification, design, and implementation of particular classes of systems, such as (self-)adaptive, collaborative, AI, embedded, distributed, mobile, pervasive, cyber-physical, or service-oriented applications

To what extent can knowledge management systems build and reinforce consensus around initiatives for change?: A self-reflective analysis of professional practice

This thesis reports on my attempts to \u27re-align\u27 the purpose, behaviour and underlying culture of a large military organisation through heuristic, self reflective enquiry - to \u27find its future\u27 - with and through its people. I use the word re-align with great care as I recognised that change would have been too ambitious and would (probably have) result(ed) in failure. Whilst I cannot claim total success, I have made new and valuable discoveries in knowledge elicitation and methods of integrating the views of a large number of people to \u27build and reinforce consensus around initiatives for change\u27. In the process of completing this research I developed a novel approach to strategic planning/policy making that advances the ends, ways and means construct of decision-making into a purer and more refined approach. One that anchors these elements firmly to the organisation and its environment simultaneously through a knowledge management system, enabling the strengths and weaknesses within the organisation to be drawn into sharp focus - an effects based planning approach. I have also fused together the more systematic and disciplined approaches embodied within a knowledge management system with existing and more creative scenario planning/future focussed methods. Thus allowing organisations to undertake \u27self-constructed\u27 audits that have an immediate interest or are situated well into their future, doubling its value as a planning device. As I report, the methods have been presented at the highest levels of Defence, attracting interest from the Australian Minister of Defence. The New Zealand Defence Force, Naval Warfare Development Command of the United States Navy and Australia\u27s Chief of Air Force have also expressed an interest in the potential of an effects-based orientation to planning and policy-making. Whether the concepts and underpinning ideas become established, leading to the discovery of a post-modem military is uncertain. What is clear is that there is a definite move away from a pre-occupation with the means, or the things that are done, towards a more comprehensive understanding of what are we trying to make happen as a guiding principle. This is certainly of value within military \u27organisations and has potential for others involved in complex problem-solving in social settings. A heuristic, self-reflective approach has enriched this search for focussed and \u27change-finding\u27 knowledge, allowing a more purposeful, complete and forthright account of the involvement of others

Test model coverage analysis under uncertainty: extended version

In model-based testing, we may have to deal with a non-deterministic model, e.g. because abstraction was applied, or because the software under test itself is non-deterministic. The same test case may then trigger multiple possible execution paths, depending on some internal decisions made by the software. Consequently, performing precise test analyses, e.g. to calculate the test coverage, are not possible. This can be mitigated if developers can annotate the model with estimated probabilities for taking each transition. A probabilistic model checking algorithm can subsequently be used to do simple probabilistic coverage analysis. However, in practice developers often want to know what the achieved aggregate coverage is, which unfortunately cannot be re-expressed as a standard model checking problem. This paper presents an extension to allow efficient calculation of probabilistic aggregate coverage, and also of probabilistic aggregate coverage in combination with k-wise coverage

A Topical Plan For Conducting Marriage and Parenting Seminars for Couples

Excerpt: To write about marriage and parenting these days seems quite presumptuous. After all, there is a plentiful supply of informative books, pamphlets, periodicals, films, filmstrips and tapes. How do I know this? Personal visits were made to several Christian book stores, public libraries, college and seminary libraries. Then, close examination was made of book catalogs, the Minister\u27s Library (and supplements),! the 1981-82 Current Christian Books, film and filmstrips catalogs, and tape catalogs. Why, then, do a writing project in a field already crammed with good material

Developing a catalogue of errors and evaluating its impact on software development

The development of quality software is of paramount importance, yet this has been and continues to be an elusive goal for software engineers. Delivered software often fails due to errors that are injected during its development. Correcting these errors early in the development or preventing them altogether can, therefore, be considered as one way to improve software quality. In this thesis, the development of a Catalogue of Errors is described. Field studies with senior software engineering students are used to confirm that developers using the Catalogue of Errors commit fewer errors in their development artifacts. The impact of the Catalogue of Errors on productivity is also examined

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2022, which was held during April 4-5, 2022, in Munich, Germany, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2022. The 17 regular papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. The proceedings also contain 3 contributions from the Test-Comp Competition. The papers deal with the foundations on which software engineering is built, including topics like software engineering as an engineering discipline, requirements engineering, software architectures, software quality, model-driven development, software processes, software evolution, AI-based software engineering, and the specification, design, and implementation of particular classes of systems, such as (self-)adaptive, collaborative, AI, embedded, distributed, mobile, pervasive, cyber-physical, or service-oriented applications