“What South Park Character Are You?”: Popular Culture, Literacy, and Online Performances of Identity

In this essay, I study MySpace and Facebook pages, as well as interviews with the university students who created them, in order to address how online literacy practices of contemporary convergence culture both use and are filtered through popular culture. Though their answers to questions of intent, audience, and rhetorical choices varied, students shared a common reliance on popular culture content and references appropriated from other sites to compose their identities and read the identities of others. They used popular culture icons, catch phrases, music, text, and film clips in postmodern, fragmented collages that seem simultaneously sentimental and ironic. The construction of these pages illustrates how popular culture practices that predate online technologies have been adopted and have flourished with new technologies that allow content to flow across media as well as increase the ease of audience participation. Online technological changes have changed what it means to be part of an “audience” by changing how individuals respond to and adapt popular culture texts to their own ends, such as the construction of identities on web pages. By creating potentially global audiences for any web page, these online technologies have changed the relationship of the popular culture audience members and their peers. The intertextual nature of popular culture texts creates opportunities for multiple readings of social networking web pages in ways that destabilize the identities students believe they have created.     

Computer-based reading and writing across the curriculum: Two case studies of L2 writers

Since the early 1980s, second language (L2) writing specialists have been examining possible roles for computers in L2 writing instruction. How, and to what extent, L2 students use computer for academic literacy purposes beyond the writing classroom, that is, across the curriculum, has not received much attention. Because a common goal of L2 college level writing courses is to prepare students to write in these other domains, an awareness of computer-based literacy activities in non-L2 writing courses is essential to the cause of helping L2 writing instructors connect what students learn in their courses to how they write (and read) in other courses. This paper describes research aimed at contributing to such awareness: a qualitative study of the computer-based reading and writing activity of two undergraduate English as a Second Language (ESL) students beyond ESL writing courses.     

Fostering parent–child dialog through automated discussion suggestions

The development of early literacy skills has been critically linked to a child’s later academic success. In particular, repeated studies have shown that reading aloud to children and providing opportunities for them to discuss the stories that they hear is of utmost importance to later academic success. CloudPrimer is a tablet-based interactive reading primer that aims to foster early literacy skills by supporting parents in shared reading with their children through user-targeted discussion topic suggestions. The tablet application records discussions between parents and children as they read a story and, in combination with a common sense knowledge base, leverages this information to produce suggestions. Because of the unique challenges presented by our application, the suggestion generation method relies on a novel topic modeling method that is based on semantic graph topology. We conducted a user study in which we compared how delivering suggestions generated by our approach compares to expert-crafted suggestions. Our results show that our system can successfully improve engagement and parent–child reading practices in the absence of a literacy expert’s tutoring.     

Moving closer to the fabric of organizing visions: The case of a trade show

This paper examines the fabric of authorized discourses about Information Technology (IT), i.e. of “organizing visions” (OVs), through the investigation of the discourses, practices, and sociomaterial contexts that make up their micro-social underpinnings. The case of a trade show allows us to explore the production of everyday discourses and practices about IT by gathering many of the parties involved in the fabric of organizing visions. Through a combination of direct observations, interviews, pictures, documents and a survey, we identify and analyze a number of micro-social practices related to the fabric of IT discourses. The trade show we studied was not a context in which new IT buzzwords and concepts emerged, but, rather, it was a setting where existing discourses about IT were repeated, refreshed, and materialized. Our three main findings reveal intriguing relationships between practices, discourses, and sociomaterial contexts: (1) practices and artifacts contribute to enclose the production of discourses; (2) practices and discourses aim at refining and updating an existing discourse about IT; and (3) many actors in the trade shows engage in discourses and practices that materialize the IT artifact. This research adds to the conceptualization of the dynamics of OVs through a better understanding of how they are affected by the relationships between the discourses and practices of multiple actors and by the sociomaterial context in which they take place. It draws several strategic implications concerning the dynamics of OVs at the industry level, how actors influence the fabric of OVs, as well as the roles and combination of artifacts, discourses and practices to build OVs.     

Feminist interventions in electronic environments

Recent feminist cultural studies of technology analyze how discourses and practices that circulate in high-tech culture reproduce and enact the same unequal power relations embedded in our institutions and day-to-day activities. Feminist interventions are communicative acts that bring attention to the shifting power relations within a specific discursive context. An analysis of the assumptions about audience that operate in electronic artifacts demonstrates how power relations play out within particular communities. The author argues that enacting feminist interventions in online environments changes the online community's identify and sense of audience, and that creating feminist multimedia can help ensure a more human, diverse and gender balanced human presence in all forms of technology and new media.     

Gender differences in adolescents’ out-of-school literacy practices: A multifaceted approach

The present study examined the out-of-school literacy activities of 70 students in 7th grade of prevocational training schools in the Netherlands. Guttmann’s Facet Theory was applied to study literacy as a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. With the increasing influence of digital technologies, the facet design approach was found especially suited to track the many changes occurring in presentation modalities, functions, and productive versus consumptive uses of literacy. The study shows that the facet approach was useful in pinpointing how these shifts in literacy engagement turn out differently for boys and girls. Based on self-reports via an Internet questionnaire, the study shows that girls outscored boys in every aspect of literacy, including computer and Internet based literacy practices. However, while among girls a more balanced profile was found regarding the engagement in traditional and new literacy practices, the boys reported a high preference for the new digital media. Moreover, we found that girls, compared to boys, used new literacy activities more often for educational purposes. The findings suggest that, given this more balanced profile, girls, compared to boys, are less at risk of losing touch with traditional print-based educational literacy in school.     

Facework on Facebook as a new literacy practice

This paper focuses on 25 UK teenagers’ language and literacy practices on Facebook; it draws on data from interviews as well as from Facebook ‘walls’. To explore whether Facebook provides opportunities for new literacy practices through text-making, the research considers how teenagers use the site to present themselves and ‘do friendship’. Continuities of the teenagers’ interactions were traced across the domains of school, home and Facebook and were found to reflect both ‘traditional’ and new ways of self presenting and of ‘doing friendship’.     

Managerial competence and new technology: don't shoot the piano player— he' s doing his best

Much concern has been expressed over the last few years regarding the lack of success of British companies when introducing new technology. Though many explanations have been given for this, often there is one common factor: the competence of British managers. This article examines the relationship between managerial competence and the poor record of British companies in successfully introducing new technology. It argues that in examining these issues too much attention is paid to the final decisions taken by managers, and their consequences, and not enough to the context— the organizational circumstances— in which the decisions are arrived at. It begins by examining the impact of organizational structures and practices (socio-structure) on managerial decision-making. Empirical evidence relating to the purchase of computer systems is presented which shows how socio-structure limits and shapes managerial behaviour and success with new technology. It then proceeds to discuss the relationship between socio-structure and culture, arguing that these need to be in harmony if organisations are to operate effectively. The article concludes by positing that many cases of poor decision-making owe more to inappropriate and conflicting socio-structures and cultures than to the competence of individual managers.     

基于UML活动图化简方法的工作流模型校核研究

针对开放、响应型系统建模UML活动图表现优良的特性，UML活动图在工作流建模领域也引起了人们的极大关注。然而相关的研究仅仅起步，特别是针对相应的模型校核技术更是研究甚少。该文提出了基于UML活动图化简方法的工作流模型校核技术，在UML活动图到活动超图映射基础之上，对活动超图建立化简规则，通过化简实现工作流模型校核。实践证明此方法有效。     

Mobile Information Literacy: Supporting Students’ Research and Information Needs in a Mobile World

Mobile devices have changed everyday life and they have had a great impact in higher education. This article describes a pilot project in which an academic librarian at Lehman College, City University of New York, taught information literacy exclusively via mobile devices. The concept of mobile information literacy is also reviewed, and its role in current and future teaching practices is evaluated. Lessons learned from this project tell us that mobile information literacy, albeit in its infancy, could play an essential part in students’ learning, and therefore academic librarians could incorporate it as part of their practice.     

Intelligent control of a rotary kiln fired with producer gas generated from biomass

During the past decade, the academic world has been extremely active in developing new algorithms and theories in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent systems. In most cases, however, emphasis has been placed more on theoretical frameworks and mathematical bases than on what the individual AI techniques could offer and on how different techniques could be applied to solve real industrial-scale problems. The reputation of intelligent systems has consequently suffered from an inability to transfer new and sophisticated techniques to industrial applications with identifiable benefits. As a result, although a wide range of intelligent control techniques has been available already for many years, most of the applications in the process industry are based on more conventional techniques. Recently, as awareness of intelligent systems has grown, industrial problems and implementations have fortunately received increasing attention. In this paper, an intelligent supervisory-level system implemented at one of the major Finnish pulp mills to control a lime kiln fired with producer gas generated from biomass is presented. First, the major results of a field study are summarised, with special attention paid to burnt lime quality aspects. Next, a novel linguistic equations approach, which provides flexible methods for both modelling and control, is briefly described. The overall structure and main functions of the developed control system are then described with the main emphasis on the control of temperature and lime quality. Finally, the results obtained during the extended testing period of the system are presented and discussed.     

“Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]”: Blackboard Flava-Flavin and other AfroDigital experiences in the classroom

This essay examines how students of African descent at a predominantly black college on the East Coast digitally perform their ethnic identities and rhetorics in a freshman composition course. The essay begins by showing how multiple uses of signifying frame students’ Blackboard discussions where they use a type of trickster motif to enact their agreements, disagreements, challenges, and questions, very much akin to Flava Flav's initial cultural role as part of the Rap/activist group, Public Enemy. Students’ online writing groups are then examined by focusing on one particular group, the “Black Long Distance Writers,” whose title signifies and signals the work of the African American writer and activist, John Oliver Killens, most notably, his seminal 1973 essay, “Wanted: Some Black Long Distance Runners.” The understandings of these “Black Long Distance Writers” bear the most powerful definition of literacy and computer-based writing instruction because their framework is not contingent upon making digitally divided minorities more technologically advanced and better at one type of English, its culture of power, or its academic discourses. Instead, these students experience rhetoric and writing as a way to alter the ways that knowledge is constructed for them and about them, “revocabularizing” the academy and its technologies. Such freshman writers are re-envisioned in this kind of cyberspace as constructors of and co-participants in black intellectual and rhetorical traditions … now AfroDigitized.     

A review of predictive policing from the perspective of fairness

Machine Learning has become a popular tool in a variety of applications in criminal justice, including sentencing and policing. Media has brought attention to the possibility of predictive policing systems causing disparate impacts and exacerbating social injustices. However, there is little academic research on the importance of fairness in machine learning applications in policing. Although prior research has shown that machine learning models can handle some tasks efficiently, they are susceptible to replicating systemic bias of previous human decision-makers. While there is much research on fair machine learning in general, there is a need to investigate fair machine learning techniques as they pertain to the predictive policing. Therefore, we evaluate the existing publications in the field of fairness in machine learning and predictive policing to arrive at a set of standards for fair predictive policing. We also review the evaluations of ML applications in the area of criminal justice and potential techniques to improve these technologies going forward. We urge that the growing literature on fairness in ML be brought into conversation with the legal and social science concerns being raised about predictive policing. Lastly, in any area, including predictive policing, the pros and cons of the technology need to be evaluated holistically to determine whether and how the technology should be used in policing.

     

Acting with genres: discursive-ethical concepts for reflecting on and legitimating genres

The concept of genre represents a meaningful pattern of communication, which has been applied in the information systems field. Genres are socially constructed: they may consequently be socially more or less acceptable or contested. This paper focuses on the concept of communicative genre and addresses the issue of how meta-communication processes guided by discursive-ethical principles can promote a rational and legitimate definition, design and structuring of genres. Such a meta-communication process has not yet been thoroughly discussed in relation to the concept of genre as a means for structuring (organizational) communication. This paper claims to make the following contributions: firstly, it provides a wider spectrum of discursive concepts for critically reflecting on and discursive evaluation of the content and structures of genres and genre instances. Secondly, it demonstrates how different kinds of meta-communications (ex ante, in-action, and ex post) can be used to legitimate genres in a manner compatible with the discourse ethics. It illustrates the discourse-ethical viewpoint concerning the legitimacy of genre structuring processes and thus, also, the legitimacy of resultant norms and contents of communication, especially in global contexts.     

One Social Movement,Two Social Media Sites: A Comparative Study of Public Discourses

Social media have become central places where public discourses are generated, sustained, and circulated around public events. So far, much research has examined large-scale dissemination patterns of prominent statements, opinions, and slogans circulated on social media, such as the analysis of keywords and hashtags on Twitter regarding a political event. However, little attention has been paid to understanding how local socio-cultural-political conditions influence the formation and development of public discourses on social media. To explore this question, we analyzed public discourses about Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement on two distinct social media sites, Facebook and Weibo, the largest micro-blogging service in China. Facebook topped Hong Kong citizens’ usage of social media sites, while Weibo’s primary user base is mainland Chinese. The social movement and these two social media sites provide a unique opportunity to explore the commonalities and differences between social media discourses generated by two different cultures. Using grounded theory and discourse analysis, we reveal how people on two sites reasoned about the many incidents of the movement and developed sometimes similar but other times strikingly different discourses. We trace the links between different discourses and the socio-cultural-political conditions of Hong Kong and mainland China. We discuss how this study may contribute deeper understandings of public discourses on social media to the CSCW literature.     

视频媒体设计与大众化传播

在科学技术的迅速发展的今天,新的传播媒介的产生和普及的周期也大大的缩短了,至今,传播媒体已经发生了翻天覆地的变化,报业、电台、电视,到现代互联网的普及,一次次的显示了新兴媒体革命的威力。在当今这个传播媒介发生巨大变化的时代,我们的视频媒体设计如何迎接时代的挑战?如何与观众产生共鸣?如何使中华文化的精髓得到大众化的传播,从而弘扬民族的优良文化?本文所要探讨的视频媒体设计是针对于电视、网络这样的视听载体而言,在广泛运用新兴媒介的时代,在视觉传达设计的范畴中,我们应该如何应对当代视频媒体设计的大众化传播。     

《大学计算机基础》课程教学中的问题分析与改革

计算机技术已广泛的应用到各个领域,为了培养适应社会发展的综合性人才,高等院校都已开设相关的计算机基础课程,该文针对高校非计算机专业计算机基础教学目前存在的问题进行了分析,并探讨如何更好的进行计算机基础教学改革以及我校在这方面的一些做法和体会。     

Supporting collaborative design activity in a multi-user digital design ecology

Across a broad range of design professions, there has been extensive research on design practices and considerable progress in creating new computer-based systems that support design work. Our research is focused on educational/instructional design for students' learning. In this sub-field, progress has been more limited. In particular, neither research nor systems development have paid much attention to the fact that design is becoming a more collaborative endeavor. This paper reports the latest research outcomes from R&D in the Educational Design Studio (EDS), a facility developed iteratively over four years to support and understand collaborative, real-time, co-present design work. The EDS serves to (i) enhance our scientific understanding of design processes and design cognition and (ii) provide insights into how designers' work can be improved through appropriate technological support. In the study presented here, we introduced a complex, multi-user, digital design tool into the existing ecology of tools and resources available in the EDS. We analysed the activity of four pairs of ‘teacher-designers’ during a design task. We identified different behaviors - in reconfiguring the task, the working methods and toolset usage. Our data provide new insights about the affordances of different digital and analogue design surfaces used in the Studio.     

Prescriptions,X-rays and Grocery Lists. Designing a Personal Health Record to Support (The Invisible Work Of) Health Information Management in the Household

For many years the introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in medical practice has been considered the best way to provide efficient document sharing among different organizational settings. The actual results of these technologies, though, do not seem to have matched expectations. The issue of document sharing has been lately readdressed by proposing the creation of patient-controlled information and communication technologies, Personal Health Records (PHRs), providing laypeople the tools to access, manage and share their health information electronically by connecting to the existing EHRs and other institutional information systems. In this scenario, patients are called to play a major role in coordinating healthcare professionals by providing them the information they need. From a CSCW perspective the PHR offers an interesting case to reflect on cooperative work that requires new infrastructures that intersect organizational settings and extend into domestic environments. So far though, there has not been enough research to shed light on the self-care activities carried out in the households and how these integrate with the organizational practices of doctors and institutions. Our analyses show that health record keeping is an articulation work necessary for meetings with doctors to proceed smoothly. To do so, people integrate the information contained in medical documents by working on them with annotations, underlinings and integrations. Moreover, we show that health record keeping is a spatialized activity that is inextricably interwoven with the everyday routine and objects. Finally, we provide a tentative classification of three different strategies laypeople use to sort out health records: minimum effort, adaptive, networking.     

Reading the Academic Library Blog Through the Lens of Genre Theory: A Preliminary Discussion

ABSTRACT

This article is a theoretical discussion that introduces examining the emerging library blog of the public academic library from the approach of genre theory. Genre theory classifies texts not only by form but by the social actions performed, a definition developed by Carol Miller. Public and private spheres are found to intersect in the library blog, complicating the traditional role of the librarian as objective information provider.