Measuring Emotions in the COVID-19 Real World Worry Dataset

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic impact on societies and economies around the world. With various measures of lockdowns and social distancing in place, it becomes important to understand emotional responses on a large scale. In this paper, we present the first ground truth dataset of emotional responses to COVID-19. We asked participants to indicate their emotions and express these in text. This resulted in the Real World Worry Dataset of 5,000 texts (2,500 short + 2,500 long texts). Our analyses suggest that emotional responses correlated with linguistic measures. Topic modeling further revealed that people in the UK worry about their family and the economic situation. Tweet-sized texts functioned as a call for solidarity, while longer texts shed light on worries and concerns. Using predictive modeling approaches, we were able to approximate the emotional responses of participants from text within 14% of their actual value. We encourage others to use the dataset and improve how we can use automated methods to learn about emotional responses and worries about an urgent problem.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2020 COVID-19 worksho

Contextual meanings: an investigation of their persuasive power in research article introductions

The thesis explores the persuasive power of contextualisaton in research article (RA) introductions. Contextualisation is understood within the framework of systemic functional grammar (SFL). It refers to the interpersonal working of meanings at the interface of discourse semantics and lexicogrammar, as these meanings frame and shape discourse participants and processes, to evoke particular understandings that serve the text's social purpose. A corpus of six RA introductions from the disciplines of history, social science and inorganic chemistry was selected. Analysis included transitivity, periodicity, Theme and appraisal. The thesis argues that in the corupus, contextual meanings fulfil crucial interpersonal tasks, such as framing inquiry, engaging communities, establishing research importance and foregrounding critical issues. Findings suggest contextual meanings work in several ways, with varying densities and on multiple levels, to create interpersonal impacts. Analysis indicates the conglomeration of contextual meanings at particular points is a significant indication of persuasive risk, where precise meaning is required, such as in research claims. It is intended the research will be pedagogically useful in informing development of resources for students who struggle with academic English and experience difficulty, and even failure, in effectively foregrounding their work

Circumstantiation: taking a broader look at circumstantial meanings

This paper argues for a view of circumstantial meaning as a region of ideational meaning that is instantiated across a range of lexicogrammatical structures: from the rank of the clausal constituent of circumstance in both directions: up to clause rank and down to below or within constituent rank (eg as Qualifier). This paper brings together and extends the work of Halliday & Matthiessen (An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2004) on expansion and circumstantiation, and the work of Martin (English Text: System and Structure, 1992) within the discourse semantic system of ideation. Each type of circumstantial meaning is defined structurally, that is, according to rank, and semantically, according to type. Analysis of circumstantial meanings is conducted on a small corpus of four introductions to journal articles in order to demonstrate the use of viewing circumstantial meaning in this way

Comprehensive investigation of Ge-Si bonded interfaces using oxygen radical activation

In this work, we investigate the directly bonded germanium-silicon interfaces to facilitate the development of high quality germanium silicon hetero integration at the wafer scale. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy data is presented which provides the chemical composition of the germanium surfaces as a function of the hydrophilic bonding reaction at the interface. The bonding process induced long range deformation is detected by synchrotron x-ray topography. The hetero-interface is characterized by measuring forward and reverse current, and by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3601355

The temporal evolution of a far-right forum

The increased threat of right-wing extremist violence necessitates a better understanding of online extremism. Radical message boards, small-scale social media platforms, and other internet fringes have been reported to fuel hatred. The current paper examines data from the right-wing forum Stormfront between 2001 and 2015. We specifically aim to understand the development of user activity and the use of extremist language. Various time-series models depict posting frequency and the prevalence and intensity of extremist language. Individual user analyses examine whether some super users dominate the forum. The results suggest that structural break models capture the forum evolution better than stationary or linear change models. We observed an increase of forum engagement followed by a decrease towards the end of the time range. However, the proportion of extremist language on the forum increased in a step-wise matter until the early summer of 2011, followed by a decrease. This temporal development suggests that forum rhetoric did not necessarily become more extreme over time. Individual user analysis revealed that super forum users accounted for the vast majority of posts and of extremist language. These users differed from normal users in their evolution of forum engagement