Exploring xenophobic and homophobic attitudes in Malta : linking the perception of social practice with textual analysis

Reporting on research undertaken under the auspices of the C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project, the present paper investigates the roots of xenophobic and homophobic attitudes in Malta and the extent to which these can be pinpointed in the lexical choices made in discriminatory comments posted online in reaction to local news stories pertaining to migrants and members of the LGBTIQ community. Adopting Fairclough’s threedimensional framework (1995), we start off by presenting the values that underlie local discriminatory attitudes as social practice, as these were identified by the participants of four focus group interviews that were conducted at the University of Malta. In this respect, while xenophobia seems to be a far more pressing issue in Malta, homophobia, which is still also present, is taken to be predominantly triggered by deep-rooted religious beliefs and allegiance to heteronormative values. Then, when it comes to xenophobia, the main relevant trigger seems to be the perceived threat that the different collective background of a particular subset of migrants in Malta poses to the local culture. In an attempt to show that these values can also be discerned by examining even the most basic textual characteristics of a dataset comprising xenophobic and homophobic talk in the local context, we turn to identify them by looking at quantitative measures pertaining to lexical choice and metaphorical extension in the relevant parts of our corpus. In this way, we provide evidence for the fundamental – for Critical Discourse Analysis – claim that the textual analysis of a relevant dataset can indeed reveal the axiological framework that underlies the negative stance that the general population may have in relation to particular minorities, showcasing the relevance of discourse analytic methods for the broader understanding of discrimination and hate speech.Rights, Equality & Citizenship Programme of the European Commission Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (JUST/2014/RRAC/AG/HATE/6706)peer-reviewe

Hypothermia in the early neonatal period : follow-up study

Background: Thermal care is an essential aspect of the routine care of the newborn because hypothermia is an important and preventable contributor to morbidity. Aim: To evaluate whether the new practice of postponing bathing of the newborn at St Luke's Hospital has resulted in an improvement in neonatal thermal care. Methods: Analysis of the temperature on admission to the nursery from labour ward during 2005 of a consecutive sample of 877 infants, compared to the results obtained from a similar study in 2002. Results: The proportion of babies admitted with normal body temperature (36.5-37.5°C) was 43.4% in 2005, compared to 25.5% in 2002. The proportion of babies admitted with moderate hypothermia was reduced from 32.3% in 2002 to 14.4% in 2005. Implications: Delayed bathing has resulted in a significant improvement in thermal care of the newborn.peer-reviewe

Qualitative interpretive mobile ethnography

A growing number of studies use mobile ethnography and mobile devices to collect data, yet studies reveal a lack of coherent definition and inconsistencies in validity criteria. We draw on relevant literature from tourism, health and retail, and connect research designs utilizing mobile ethnographic methods. We show how these existing studies capture mobilities and social phenomena in boundaryless dynamic settings, allowing researchers to co-create knowledge with their participants. As a result, we offer a framework for mobile ethnography, consisting of four explanatory dimensions: the role of the researcher; focus of research; data collection and tools; and data analysis. Our methodological contribution specifies validity criteria and derives concrete implications for research practices in qualitative interpretive mobile ethnography

Generation Y: evaluating services experiences through mobile ethnography

Purpose: This paper suggests mobile ethnography as a method for data collection, where Generation Y customers are integrated as active investigators. The paper aims to contribute to the debate on museums as experience-centred places, to understanding how the experience is perceived by Generation Y, to identifying the customer journey, to providing an insight into service experience consumption and to deriving managerial implication for the museum industry of how to approach Generation Y. Design/methodology/approach: Mobile ethnography is applied to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra with a sample of Generation Y visitors as the future visitor market. Findings: The paper finds that there is a need to involve museum management in measuring museum experiences, especially with regard to the definition and improvement of the service-delivery processes. Service experience must be appropriately managed by museum operators by collecting, evaluating, storing and reusing relevant data on customer experience. Mobile ethnography and tools such as MyServiceFellow offer an important potential source of sustainable competitive advantage by improving customer experience, particularly for Gen Y. Research limitations/implications: The most significant limitation is the exploratory nature of the single case study derived from a small sample within only one museum. Originality/value: This is one of the few studies to have addressed mobile ethnography in a service context and examined the museum experience of Generation Y. The paper finds that there is a need to involve museum management in service design to improve the service-delivery process, especially with regard to the different mindsets of the Millennials

Unfolding

All the beauty in the world is contained in a grain of sand.Once a rock, a shell, a boneTumbled by historyTossed through the seaAtoms traveling, changing, constantly evolvingForever creatingNew forms ~excerpt from poe

On simultaneous representations of primes by binary quadratic forms

AbstractLet p ≡ ± 1 (mod 8) be a prime which is a quadratic residue modulo 7. Then p = M2 + 7N2, and knowing M and N makes it possible to “predict” whether p = A2 + 14B2 is solvable or p = 7C2 + 2D2 is solvable. More generally, let q and r be distinct primes, and let an integral solution of H2p = M2 + qN2 be known. Under appropriate assumptions, this information can be used to restrict the possible values of K for which K2q = A2 + qrB2 is solvable and the possible values of K′ for which K′2p = qC2 + rD2 is solvable. These restrictions exclude some of the binary quadratic forms in the principal genus of discriminant −4qr from representing p