Need for narrative

What do consumers need from a narrative? How can videographers satisfy those needs? Through semi-structured interviews with 55 Eurostar passengers from 14 countries, this film documents how people define narratives, why they need them, and how they experience the effects of need for narrative. The adjoining commentary contributes to the development of videography as an attractive method by introducing the videographer’s perspective and elucidating key story elements that can help satisfy viewers’ needs for narrative. The suggested approach maintains the vivid quality of videography and respects its methodological rigour, while increasing its effectiveness in close alignment with a consumer society that visual communication increasingly permeates. As such, the commentary and the film jointly unveil videographers’ etic and viewers’ emic use and evaluation of the videographic method

Improving control of storage diseases on apple by combining biological and physical post-harvest methods

Post-harvest non-chemical treatments consists of a large range of different approaches, including strengthening of the commodity’s natural defence mechanisms, thermotherapy, application of antagonistic microorganisms and natural antimicrobial substances. NEX0101 is a promising antagonistic biocontrol agent containing the yeast Candida oleophila as the active ingredient. NEX0101 was developed by Bionext, a spin-off from the laboratory of Dr. H. Jijakli, and is currently evaluated for commercial use. The product contains a yeast strain isolated from apple fruit and was originally developed for the control of post-harvest diseases on apple. The antifungal effectiveness of this antagonist can be increased by addition of calcium salts. As the mode of action of this yeast is based on the colonisation of wounds, the mean targets of NEX0101 are blue mould, caused by Penicillium expansum, and grey mould, caused by Botrytis cinerea. Facing possible latent infections, thermotherapy by using hot water treatments could provide an advanced control towards lenticelrot (Gloeosporium spp.). A combination of both physical and biological treatment techniques could broaden the spectrum to all key pathogens on apple and pear. The use of NEX0101 for the control of P. expansum was examined in combination with calcium gluconate. According to the results the combination NEX0101 with calcium gluconate provides an advanced mould control towards P. expansum The best results were achieved using NEX0101 in combination with post-harvest dipping by thermotherapy. The hot water treatment alone was clearly inefficient towards wound parasite P. expansum, on the contrary thermotherapy stimulates the decay caused by this postharvest pathogen. For the future a combination of biological and physical treatments could offer a worthy non-chemical alternative for organic and integrated fruit growers towards fruit rot decay, although more research is necessary to implement these methods in practice

Evaluation of the users value of salts against apple scab and powdery mildew for fruit production

The research was aimed at finding anti resistance strategies for Integrated fruit growing. As the salts tested may be approvable for organic farming, the trial results are also of value for the development of scab an mildew control strategies for organic fruit growing. As new fungicides are mainly unisite action fungicides, the problem of fungicide resistance development is becoming more important every year. Combining chemical fungicides, which is the best anti-resistance strategy, is not always possible or recommended in the case when the number of available chemical fungicides are limited or a reduction in fungicide use is asked for. Therefore the use of salts as an anti-resistance strategy was looked upon. The salts evaluated were K(HCO3), KH2PO3, KHPO4 and K2SiO3. When using these salts as an anti-resistance strategy the efficacy obtained when spraying the compounds alone was often to low to be used in rotation with chemical fungicides. Only with K(HCO3)2 a good efficacy can be observed in some years. The variation in efficacy with K(HCO3)2 observed is higher for powdery mildew. K(HCO3)2 can be considered as a ideal product for scab control in organic orchards at moments of low infection risk

Generalizing Refinement Operators to Learn Prenex Conjunctive Normal Forms

Inductive Logic Programming considers almost exclusively universally quantied theories. To add expressiveness, prenex conjunctive normal forms (PCNF) with existential variables should also be considered. ILP mostly uses learning with refinement operators. To extend refinement operators to PCNF, we should first do so with substitutions. However, applying a classic substitution to a PCNF with existential variables, one often obtains a generalization rather than a specialization. In this article we define substitutions that specialize a given PCNF and a weakly complete downward refinement operator. Moreover, we analyze the complexities of this operator in different types of languages and search spaces. In this way we lay a foundation for learning systems on PCNF. Based on this operator, we have implemented a simple learning system PCL on some type of PCNF.learning;PCNF;completeness;refinement;substitutions

Storytelling in the Digital Era: Relevant Moderators of the Narrative Transportation Effect

In the digital era, marketers increasingly use storytelling techniques to narratively transport and persuade their customers. This paper pursues three primary objectives: (1) to integrate three digitally relevant moderators of the narrative transportation effect into the marketing literature, (2) to empirically assess the integrated model with a quantitative meta-analysis of extant research, and (3) to provide directions for marketing managers to enhance the narrative transportation effect in an evolving te chnological environment. The paper contribute s to the field by means of a meta-analysis of 64 articles featuring 138 narrative transportation effect sizes . The research shows that the narrative transportation effect is stronger when the story falls in a commercial (vs. non- commercial) domain, is user ( vs. professional) generated , and is received by one story receiver at a time. The study concludes with implications for research and practice and directions for future research

Assessing the effect of narrative transportation, portrayed action, and photographic style on the likelihood to comment on posted selfies

Purpose: This research assesses the effect of narrative transportation, portrayed action, and photographic style on the likelihood to comment on posted consumer photos. Design/methodology/approach: Integrating visual semiotics and experiments, this research empirically examines the influence of consumer photos on viewers’ likelihood to comment on the visualised narrative. One pilot, three experimental, and a content analysis involve photos varying in their narrative perspective (selfie vs. elsie) and portrayed content (no product, no action, or directed action). We also test for the boundary condition of the role of the photographic style (snapshot, professional, and “parody” selfie) on the likelihood to comment on consumer photos. Findings: Viewers are more likely to comment on photos displaying action. When these photos are selfies, the effect is exacerbated. The experience of narrative transportation — a feeling of entering a world evoked by the narrative — underlies this effect. However, if a snapshot style is used (primed or manipulated) — namely, the photographic style appears genuine, unposed, unconstructed, and natural — the superior effect of selfies disappears because of greater perceived silliness of the visualised narrative. Practical implications: Managers should try to motivate consumers to take selfies portraying action if their aim is to encourage eWOM. Social implications: Organisations can effectively use consumer photos portraying consumption for educational purpose (e.g. eating healthfully, reducing alcohol use). Originality/value: This research links consumer photos and eWOM and extends the marketing literature on visual narratives, which is mainly focused on company — rather than user-generated content

What Happens in Vegas Stays on TripAdvisor? A Theory and Technique to Understand Narrativity in Consumer Reviews

Many consumers base their purchase decisions on online consumer reviews. An overlooked feature of these texts is their narrativity: the extent to which they tell a story. The authors construct a new theory of narrativity to link the narrative content and discourse of consumer reviews to consumer behavior. They also develop from scratch a computerized technique that reliably determines the degree of narrativity of 190,461 verbatim, online consumer reviews and validate the automated text analysis with two controlled experiments. More transporting (i.e., engaging) and persuasive reviews have better developed characters and events as well as more emotionally changing genres and dramatic event orders. This interdisciplinary, multimethod research should help future researchers (1) predict how narrativity affects consumers’ narrative transportation and persuasion, (2) measure the narrativity of large digital corpora of textual data, and (3) understand how this important linguistic feature varies along a continuum

Generalizing Refinement Operators to Learn Prenex Conjunctive Normal Forms

Inductive Logic Programming considers almost exclusively universally quantied theories. To add expressiveness, prenex conjunctive normal forms (PCNF) with existential variables should also be considered. ILP mostly uses learning with refinement operators. To extend refinement operators to PCNF, we should first do so with substitutions. However, applying a classic substitution to a PCNF with existential variables, one often obtains a generalization rather than a specialization. In this article we define substitutions that specialize a given PCNF and a weakly complete downward refinement operator. Moreover, we analyze the complexities of this operator in different types of languages and search spaces. In this way we lay a foundation for learning systems on PCNF. Based on this operator, we have implemented a simple learning system PCL on some type of PCNF