634 research outputs found
The game of goodwill: an exploratory study of discursive goodwill strategies of interest organizations in a consensus democracy
publishedVersio
Political public relations and strategic framing
acceptedVersio
Chapter 7 Political Public Relations and Strategic Framing
Frames advance coherent interpretations of issues that suggest specific problem definitions, causes, moral evaluations, and courses of action. As such, frames highlight certain aspects of an issue, and downplay or ignore others. While the use of frames is inevitableâi.e., the act of framingâactors do use frames strategically in their attempts to define issues in a way favorable to them and in their efforts to influence the course of action on issues. This is especially the case in the political realm. Thus, strategic framing is crucial to political public relations. This chapter offers a brief introduction to framing theory before shedding light on the specific ways in which political actors use frames strategically and to what effect
Using Rhetorical Situations to Examine and Improve Vaccination Communication
Opinion polls have documented a considerable public skepticism towards a COVID-19 vaccine. Seeking to address the vaccine skepticism challenge this essay surveys the research on vaccine hesitancy and trust building through the lens of the rhetorical situation and points towards five broad principles for a content strategy for public health communicators in regards to vaccination: 1) vaccine hesitancy is not irrational per se; 2) messages should be tailored to the various hesitancy drivers; 3) what is perceived as trustworthy is situational and constantly negotiated; 4) in areas of uncertainty where no exact knowledge exists, the character of the speaker becomes more important; and 5) the trustworthiness of the speaker can be strengthened through finding some common groundâsuch as shared feelings or accepted premisesâwith the audience. Such common insights are on offer in the literature on rhetoric and persuasion and linked here with the research on vaccine communication and trust focusing specifically on the latter and character
Manufacturing Humanitarian Imagery: Explaining Norwegian Refugee Councilâs Public Communication Strategies Toward the Syrian and Central African Crises
As refugee organizationsâ communication can influence public perceptions, this study analyzes the underlying motivations and practices. To explain Norwegian Refugee Councilâs (NRC) public communication strategies toward the recent Syrian and Central African crises, we conducted a 3-week office ethnography at its main communication department, interviewed 10 communication officers, and analyzed key communication policy documents. First, NRCâs discursive strategies are molded by medium-based and/or context-sensitive routines, organizational goals and trends, and challenging institutional and societal contexts. Second, NRCâs crisis foci are institutionally shaped through the âVicious Neglected Crisis Circle effect,â which is reinforced and/or limited by organizational and individual (counter) incentives, sensitive contexts, and context-sensitive routines. Third, NRCâs choice of represented forcibly displaced people is influenced by various selection criteria and sociodemographic-specific reasons. Thus, complex organizational, institutional, and societal contexts largely shape public communication strategies, suggesting that reflexivity and structural institutional changes are essential to achieve more balanced, representative humanitarian imageries
Chapter 7 Political Public Relations and Strategic Framing
Frames advance coherent interpretations of issues that suggest specific problem definitions, causes, moral evaluations, and courses of action. As such, frames highlight certain aspects of an issue, and downplay or ignore others. While the use of frames is inevitableâi.e., the act of framingâactors do use frames strategically in their attempts to define issues in a way favorable to them and in their efforts to influence the course of action on issues. This is especially the case in the political realm. Thus, strategic framing is crucial to political public relations. This chapter offers a brief introduction to framing theory before shedding light on the specific ways in which political actors use frames strategically and to what effect
AutoGCN -- Towards Generic Human Activity Recognition with Neural Architecture Search
This paper introduces AutoGCN, a generic Neural Architecture Search (NAS)
algorithm for Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using Graph Convolution Networks
(GCNs). HAR has gained attention due to advances in deep learning, increased
data availability, and enhanced computational capabilities. At the same time,
GCNs have shown promising results in modeling relationships between body key
points in a skeletal graph. While domain experts often craft dataset-specific
GCN-based methods, their applicability beyond this specific context is severely
limited. AutoGCN seeks to address this limitation by simultaneously searching
for the ideal hyperparameters and architecture combination within a versatile
search space using a reinforcement controller while balancing optimal
exploration and exploitation behavior with a knowledge reservoir during the
search process. We conduct extensive experiments on two large-scale datasets
focused on skeleton-based action recognition to assess the proposed algorithm's
performance. Our experimental results underscore the effectiveness of AutoGCN
in constructing optimal GCN architectures for HAR, outperforming conventional
NAS and GCN methods, as well as random search. These findings highlight the
significance of a diverse search space and an expressive input representation
to enhance the network performance and generalizability
Public Ethos in the Pandemic Rhetorical Situation:Strategies for Building Trust in Authoritiesâ Risk Communication
As illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, risk and crisis communication are crucial responsibilities of modern governments. Existing research on risk and crisis communication points to the importance of trust, both as a resource in and an end goal of communicative activities. In this paper, we argue that revisiting the classical rhetorical concept of ethos in combination with the modern concept of the rhetorical situation can contribute to fitting responses in risk and crisis communication. The paper examines how appeals to ethos may build trust in health authoritiesâ public communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through interviews and participant observation in public health institutions that handle the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway, the paper finds that understanding the rhetorical situation of the pandemic allows for a better understanding of the available means of persuasion. For instance, through the active communication of transparency and independence when faced by uncertainty and rapidly changing information
From Movements to Metrics: Evaluating Explainable AI Methods in Skeleton-Based Human Activity Recognition
The advancement of deep learning in human activity recognition (HAR) using 3D
skeleton data is critical for applications in healthcare, security, sports, and
human-computer interaction. This paper tackles a well-known gap in the field,
which is the lack of testing in the applicability and reliability of XAI
evaluation metrics in the skeleton-based HAR domain. We have tested established
XAI metrics namely faithfulness and stability on Class Activation Mapping (CAM)
and Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) to address this
problem. The study also introduces a perturbation method that respects human
biomechanical constraints to ensure realistic variations in human movement. Our
findings indicate that \textit{faithfulness} may not be a reliable metric in
certain contexts, such as with the EfficientGCN model. Conversely, stability
emerges as a more dependable metric when there is slight input data
perturbations. CAM and Grad-CAM are also found to produce almost identical
explanations, leading to very similar XAI metric performance. This calls for
the need for more diversified metrics and new XAI methods applied in
skeleton-based HAR
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