Death and bereavement are human experiences that new media helps facilitate alongside creating new social grief practices that occur online. This study investigated how people’s postings and tweets facilitated the communication of grief after pop music icon Michael Jackson died. Drawing on past grief research, religion, and new media studies, a thematic analysis of 1,046 messages was conducted on three mediated sites (Twitter, TMZ.com, and Facebook). Results suggested that social media served as grieving spaces for people to accept Jackson’s death (...) rather than denying it or expressing anger over his passing. The findings also illustrate how interactive exchanges online helped recycle news and “resurrected” the life of Jackson. Additionally, as fans of deceased celebrities create and disseminate web-based memorials, new social media practices such as “Michael Mondays” synchronize tweets within everyday life rhythms and foster practices to hasten the grieving process. (shrink)

The dominant position of e-commerce is especially being articulated in the retailing industry once again due to several constraints that the world faces in the COVID-19 pandemic era. In this regard, this study explores the significant role of trust transfer and the moderating effect of consumers’ neurotic traits in the framework of trust-satisfaction-repurchase intention in the e-commerce context based on a survey with 406 Korean e-commerce consumers. Moreover, a prediction-oriented segmentation technique combined with structural equation models was utilized to reveal (...) consumers’ probable hidden heterogeneous characteristics. The outcomes of the global model SEM analysis indicate that offline-online trust transference occurs in e-commerce, and the conveyed trust significantly influences satisfaction and consumers’ repeat purchase intention through satisfaction. Neuroticism also has significant positive effects on trust transfer in the global model. However, results in three subgroups generated by POS show heterogeneous characteristics that considerably differed from the global model test results. The implications from this study will be beneficial to field practitioners in the e-commerce industry in addressing the importance of trust transfer, negative neurotic traits as well as heterogeneous aspects of consumers. (shrink)

Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop 2023 (28/09/2023).

Obituaries represent a prominent way of expressing the human universal of grief. According to philosophers, obituaries are a ritualized way of evaluating both individuals who have passed away and the communities that helped to shape them. The basic idea is that you can tell what it takes to count as a good person of a particular type in a particular community by seeing how persons of that type are described and celebrated in their obituaries. Obituaries of those killed in conflict, (...) in particular, are rich repositories of communal values, as they reflect the values and virtues that are admired and respected in individuals who are considered to be heroes in their communities. In this paper, we use natural language processing techniques to map the patterns of values and virtues attributed to Australian military personnel who were killed in action during World War I and World War II. Doing so reveals several clusters of values and virtues that tend to be attributed together. In addition, we use named entity recognition and geotagging the track the movements of these soldiers to various theatres of the wars, including North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. (shrink)

One of the success stories of formal semantics is explicating responsive moves like answers to questions. There is, however, a significant lacune concerning the characterization of _initiating utterances_, which are strongly tied to the conversational activity [language game (Wittgenstein), speech genre (Bakhtin)], or—our terminology—_conversational type_, one is engaged in. To date there has been no systematic proposal trying to account for the range of possible _language games_/_speech genres_/_conversational types_ and their global structure. In particular, concerning the range of subject matter (...) that can and needs to be discussed and by whom—ultimately a semantic analogue of Laplace’s demon. We suggest that the subject matter problem for conversational types is a central task for any semantic theory for conversation. This paper develops a theory of conversational types, which embedded in the theory of conversational interaction KoS, enables this problem to be tackled for a wide range of conversational types drawn from the British National Corpus classification of conversational domains. The theory we develop treats conversational types as first class, not metatheoretical entities, in contrast to explications of corresponding notions in game theoretic approaches. We demonstrate that this allows us to explicate the possibilities interlocutors have to refer to and seek clarification about the types of conversations they are engaged in. (shrink)

Conventional gender analysis of development policy does not adequately explain the slow progress towards gender equality. Our research analyses the gender discourses embedded in agricultural and rural development policies in Myanmar and Nepal. We find that both countries focus on increasing women’s participation in development activities as a core gender equality policy objective. This creates a binary categorisation of participating versus non-participating women and identifies women as responsible for improving their position. At the same time, gender (in)equality is defined exclusively (...) as a women’s concern. Such discourses, as constitutive practices, produce specific knowledge about rural women and new subjectivities that prescribe and govern them solely as subjects of development. Our research suggests that such a limited discursive practice invisiblises gendered power relations and structural and institutional issues, ultimately slowing progress towards gender equality. We demonstrate the importance of studying policy as discourse, beyond the effectiveness of policies or mainstreaming tools, and call for empirical evidence on the impact of these discourses on women’s subjectivities and lived experiences. (shrink)

There is not as much resistance to COVID-19 mitigation as there seems, but there are structural features that make resistance seem worse than it is. Here we describe two ways that the problem seeming to be worse than it is can make it worse. First, visible hesitation to implement COVID-19 responses signals to the wider society that mitigation measures may not succeed, which undermines people’s conditional willingness to join in on those efforts. Second, our evaluations of others’ willingness to implement (...) these measures are informed by our attempts to mind-read them. Yet attempts to mind-read groups often mislead us, because groups invariably act from diverse motives whereas mind-reading works best when identifying relatively stable and consistent motivations. This means that a small minority of people refusing to implement measures can have an outsized prominence that prompts mind-reading to diagnose widespread hesitation. These two factors form a feedback loop with each other: we see some people’s hesitation, which prompts us to mind-read other people as being more uncertain about the responses than they actually are, which undermines our confidence in the responses, which in turn encourages others to mind-read this hesitation, which further undermines confidence. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence systems based on transformers, including both text-generators like GPT-4 and image generators like DALL-E 3, have recently entered the popular consciousness. These tools, while impressive, are liable to reproduce, exacerbate, and reinforce extant human social biases, such as gender and racial biases. In this paper, we systematically review the extent to which DALL-E Mini suffers from this problem. In line with the Model Card published alongside DALL-E Mini by its creators, we find that the images it produces (...) tend to represent dozens of different occupations as populated either solely by men (e.g., pilot, builder, plumber) or solely by women (e.g., hairdresser, receptionist, dietitian). In addition, the images DALL-E Mini produces tend to represent most occupations as populated primarily or solely by White people (e.g., farmer, painter, prison officer, software engineer) and very few by non-White people (e.g., pastor, rapper). These findings suggest that exciting new AI technologies should be critically scrutinized and perhaps regulated before they are unleashed on society. (shrink)

An issue in current animal welfare ethics is the use of animals in medical education. At stake is the conflict of pain and suffering of the animals vs. the benefit to the students. The educator's role is to balance these two concepts. If the animals do suffer, this has to be justified by clearly establishing the necessity of their use. Neither this justification nor the methods for making the decision are clear. Addressed in this discussion are the arguments for and (...) against animal use, alternatives, and proposals for the resolution of the controversy. (shrink)

As the world struggles through the COVID‐19 pandemic, we should also be asking what systems‐level measures will be needed to prevent this or even worse disasters from happening in the future. We argue that the pandemic is merely one of potentially myriad and pleiomorphic future global disasters generated by the same underlying dynamical system. We explain that there are four broad but easily identifiable systemic, pathologically networked conditions that are hurtling civilization toward potential self‐destruction. As long as these conditions are (...) not resolved, we should consider catastrophe as an inevitable emergent endpoint from the dynamics. All four conditions can be reversed with collective action to begin creating an enduring and thriving post‐ COVID‐19 world. This will require maximal application of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

Whether due to simplicity or hypocrisy, the question of access to patient data for biomedical research is widely seen in the public discourse only from the angle of patient privacy. At the same time, the desire to live and to live without disability is of much higher value to the patients. This goal can only be achieved by extracting research insight from patient data in addition to working on model organisms, something that is well understood by many patients. Yet, most (...) biomedical researchers working outside of clinics and hospitals are denied access to patient records when, at the same time, clinicians who guard the patient data are not optimally prepared for the data’s analysis. Medical data collection is a time- and cost-intensive process that is most of all tedious, with few elements of intellectual and emotional satisfaction on its own. In this process, clinicians and bioinformaticians, each group with their own interests, have to join forces with the goal to generate medical data sets both from clinical trials and from routinely collected electronic health records that are, as much as possible, free from errors and obvious inconsistencies. The data cleansing effort as we have learned during curation of Singaporean clinical trial data is not a trivial task. The introduction of omics and sophisticated imaging modalities into clinical practice that are only partially interpreted in terms of diagnosis and therapy with today’s level of knowledge warrant the creation of clinical databases with full patient history. This opens up opportunities for re-analyses and cross-trial studies at future time points with more sophisticated analyses of the same data, the collection of which is very expensive. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractRecent waves of controversies surrounding genetic engineering have spilled into popular science in Twitter battles between reputable scientists and their followers. Here, a cautionary perspective on the possible blind spots and risks of CRISPR and related biotechnologies is presented, focusing in particular on the stochastic nature of cellular control processes.

Parrondo's paradox, in which losing strategies can be combined to produce winning outcomes, has received much attention in mathematics and the physical sciences; a plethora of exciting applications has also been found in biology at an astounding pace. In this review paper, the authors examine a large range of recent developments of Parrondo's paradox in biology, across ecology and evolution, genetics, social and behavioral systems, cellular processes, and disease. Intriguing connections between numerous works are identified and analyzed, culminating in an (...) emergent pattern of nested recurrent mechanics that appear to span the entire biological gamut, from the smallest of spatial and temporal scales to the largest—from the subcellular to the complete biosphere. In analyzing the macro perspective, the pivotal role that the paradox plays in the shaping of biological life becomes apparent, and its identity as a potential universal principle underlying biological diversity and persistence is uncovered. Directions for future research are also discussed in light of this new perspective. (shrink)

The epistemic position of an agent often depends on their position in a larger network of other agents who provide them with information. In general, agents are better off if they have diverse and independent sources. Sullivan et al. [19] developed a method for quantitatively characterizing the epistemic position of individuals in a network that takes into account both diversity and independence; and presented a proof-of-concept, closed-source implementation on a small graph derived from Twitter data [19]. This paper reports on (...) an open-source reimplementation of their algorithm in Python, optimized to be usable on much larger networks. In addition to the algorithm and package, we also show the ability to scale up our package to large synthetic social network graph profiling, and finally demonstrate its utility in analyzing real-world empirical evidence of ‘echo chambers’ on online social media, as well as evidence of interdisciplinary diversity in an academic communications network. (shrink)

In this study, experiments were conducted on 30 subjects by means of electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram methodologies as well as a money game to examine the effects of stress on creativity in business problem-solving. The study explained the relationship between creativity and human physiological response using the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat. The subjects were asked to perform a cognitive mapping task. Based on the brain wave theory, we identified the types of brain waves and locations of brain activities that (...) occurred during the creative problem-solving process in a business environment and studied the effects of stress on creativity. The results of the experiments showed significant differences in creativity in business problem-solving depending on whether or not stress was triggered. Differences were found in the time domain and frequency domain of heart rates, a physiological stress indicator, between the stress group and the no-stress group. A brain wave analysis confirmed that alpha waves increased in the frontal lobe of the brain during creative business problem-solving but decreased when the subjects were under stress, during which beta waves in the brain increased. This study seeks to examine creativity in business problem-solving by studying the effects of stress on human physiological response and cognitive functions in the hope of providing a new and objective interpretation of existing research results. (shrink)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO. The (...) axiomatization is designed to capture the meanings of terms commonly used in manufacturing and is designed to serve as starting point for the construction of the IOF ontology suite. (shrink)

The 2019 coronavirus (COVID‐19), also known as SARS‐CoV‐2, is highly pathogenic and virulent, and it spreads very quickly through human‐to‐human contact. In response to the growing number of cases, governments across the spectrum of affected countries have adopted different strategies in implementing control measures, in a hope to reduce the number of new cases. However, 5 months after the first confirmed case, countries like the United States of America (US) seems to be heading towards a trajectory that indicates a health (...) care crisis. This is in stark contrast to the downward trajectory in Europe, China, and elsewhere in Asia, where the number of new cases has seen a decline ahead of an anticipated second wave. A data‐driven approach reveals three key strategies in tackling COVID‐19. Our work here has definitively evaluated these strategies and serves as a warning to the US, and more importantly, a guide for tackling future pandemics. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/gPkCi2_7tWo. (shrink)

Given that there is no recent research on decomposition for global inequality, the aim of this study is to fill the gap in the literature by investigating global inequality with decomposition technique. The data of this study were compiled from the World Bank and decomposition by subgroups was conducted to evaluate the driving forces behind the evolution of inequality. Almost all the countries in the world were included in this study, and the study period spans from 2000 to 2017. The (...) analysis was carried out in several stages to evaluate the issue of North–South divide, as well as the impacts of regional and income subgroups. There are several salient findings derived from this study. First, the results show that there was a gradual decline of international inequality within the study period. Second, there was still a large disparity between the developed and developing countries, and the inequality within the developing countries has aggravated further. Third, geographical location has exerted great impacts on global inequality and East Asia contributed about 40% to the overall decline in international inequality. Fourth, decline in inequality amongst the upper-middle-income countries also contributed substantially to the fall in international inequality. The results derived from this paper can provide pertinent information for the formulation of a comprehensive and coherent strategy in coordinating international efforts and managing inequality while promoting human development under the framework of the newly established Sustainable Development Goals. (shrink)

Social media has become a basis for helping us maintain human contact, especially as our alienation from our phenomenological experiences of ‘being human’ is becoming apparent due to the pandemic. I argue for how existentialist philosophy is crucial, more than ever, to interrogate our social media usage, which is a ‘necessary evil’ in our daily lives. Firstly, Kierkegaard’s critiques of the crowd and of the press are equally applicable to social media, which plays both roles: enabling an anonymous mass of (...) public opinion and doubling-up as an information source, reducing responsibility on the individual. Secondly, social media leads to an intrinsic pressure to objectify one's self (as portrayed) due to the possibility of an omnipresent Other, based on the technological design of networks. I will link my arguments on social media to other existential ideals and will conclude by suggesting changes that may promote existential ideals in one’s social media portrayal and engagement. (shrink)

The rise of social-media-mediated celebrity culture raises several philosophical concerns. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see, for example, Hollywood actors being placed in the same bracket as YouTube artists and Instagram influencers. The increased perceived ‘connectivity’ afforded by social media allows online celebrities to reach more fans and increases the perceived engagement or intimacy in the fan-celebrity relationship. In this paper I argue that this online relationship, which is beneficial to celebrities (for brand development) and social media companies (in (...) profiting from the high engagement), has the potential to cause harm to both the celebrities as well as their fanbases (and sometimes innocent third parties). Firstly, I argue that celebrities’ attempts to be more intimate or authentic with their fanbase can turn out to be – more often than not – acts of Sartrean bad faith. Celebrities who tend to project a certain self-styled ‘online authenticity’, given the context of social media’s attention economy, can run the risk of treating a fan as a means-to-an-end, rather than an autonomous for-itself. Secondly, I argue that this phenomenon can catalyse real-world harms, by drawing upon network theory and social psychology. I argue that the connectedness of social media, ‘blending into the crowd’, and social media technologies’ ethos of optimising-for-engagement, leads to real harms to human well-being when fans do not engage critically and mindfully with online celebrities. Examples include Trump-esque celebrity politicians trying to drum up populist influence; celebrities feuding online encouraging fans’ conduct of harmful trolling and harassment; and vilification of those who do not subscribe to the same perceived worldview of a celebrity’s fandom. Following my arguments within, I shall outline an online celebrity’s ethical duties in their social media engagement, with emphasis on the duties that celebrity status comes with, particularly in preventing harms that transcend the online into the offline. (shrink)

The concept of 'authenticity' is highly valued on social media sites (SMSes), despite its ambiguous nature and definition. One interpretation of 'authenticity' by media scholars is a human's congruence with online portrayals of themselves (e.g. posting spontaneous photographs from their lives, or using real biodata online). For marketers and 'influencers', these patterns of behaviour can achieve certain gains: sales for a business, or success of a campaign. For existentialist philosophers, using 'authenticity' as a means to an end is against its (...) very definition. In this paper, I investigate what SMS users are looking for by their supposed 'authentic' portrayal online. My experimental approach draws upon empirical data from the Instagram social media site. Using machine learning techniques, descriptions and features of posts - including subjects, captions, and contexts - will be categorised and aggregated. I will then interpret these findings, drawing upon work by Taylor, Golomb, and Guignon, whose works on authenticity are based on mid-20th century existentalists. I argue that the existentialist ideals on authenticity are not necessarily present in contemporary SMS use. I will also argue that the popular interpretation of authenticity on SMSes can be self-defeating, when it seeks to turn the 'for-itself' into an 'in-itself'. (shrink)

Varying degrees of symmetry can exist in a social network's connections. Some early online social networks (OSNs) were predicated on symmetrical connections, such as Facebook 'friendships' where both actors in a 'friendship' have an equal and reciprocal connection. Newer platforms -- Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook's 'Pages' inclusive -- are counterexamples of this, where 'following' another actor (friend, celebrity, business) does not guarantee a reciprocal exchange from the other. -/- This paper argues that the basic asymmetric connections in an OSN leads (...) to emergent asymmetrical behaviour in the OSN's overall influence and connectivity, amongst others. This paper will then draw on empirical examples from popular sites (and prior network research) to illustrate how asymmetric connections can render individuals 'voiceless'. -/- The crux of this paper is an argument from the existentialist viewpoint on how the above asymmetric network properties lead to Sartrean bad faith (Sartre, 1943). Instead of genuine interpersonal connection, one finds varying degrees of pressure to assume the Sartrean 'in-itself' (the en soi) mode-of-being, irregardless of the magnitude of 'followers' one has. -/- Finally, this paper poses an open question: what other philosophical issues does this inherent asymmetry in modern social networking give rise to? (shrink)

Five years ago, the Journal of Nietzsche Studies published a special issue on Nietzsche and the affects. In it, Aurelia Armstrong wrote generically about the passions, Michael Ure discussed Schadenfreude, Joanne Faulkner addressed disgust, and Joseph Kuzma focused on eroticism.1 In subsequent issues, authors have discussed love,2 emotion in general,3 resentment,4 compassion,5 honor and empathy,6 and affect in general.7 This special section on emotions and reactive attitudes is a chance to take stock of the progress we have made as a (...) field, draw connections among the affects and emotions addressed in the secondary literature, and introduce new ideas and tools for future research.If the articles here are any... (shrink)

This book chapter in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Philosophy (Open Universe) draws parallels between the main anti-heroes in Albert Camus's The Stranger and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and introduces common existential concepts such as facticity/transcendence and bad faith, aimed at a general readership.

Globalization in Malaysia has introduced the Malay Muslim population to new ethno- religious dynamics at the urban-to-urban level internationally and rural-to-urban sphere nationally. At the international level, Malay Muslims who studied abroad have returned with alternate conceptions of Islam at odds with the local version as well as fostered transnational links to outsiders that later facilitated their religious influence locally. At the national level, Malay Muslim migration to an urban economy opened to global capitalism have produced reactionary discourses and attitudes (...) by conservative Muslims desirous of countering the excesses of this economic reality. Implications for a Christian holistic transformation in light of these dynamics are proposed. (shrink)

This paper is the first to critically analyse how the newly enacted Chinese Civil Code addresses gender equality in the intersection of family and commercial contracting. It proposes ‘marriage transmitted debt’ (MTD) in China as a new concept as opposed to ‘sexually transmitted debt’ (STD) documented in English and Australian jurisprudence. MTD refers to the debt incurred by one spouse but transmitted to the other spouse due to the status of the marriage. Supported by empirical statistics, it shows that while (...) the statutory language of MTD regulation in China is neutral, wives are still disadvantaged. Although this has been partly addressed by shifting the onus of proof to creditors, the meaning of debt incurred for the daily life of a family or the joint life of the couple in the Code needs further judicial development. The Code is the beginning of a solution rather than the end to achieving gender equality in China. (shrink)

When infants and toddlers are confronted with sequences of sounds, they are required to segment the sounds into meaningful units to achieve sufficient understanding. Rhythm has been regarded as a crucial cue for segmentation of speech sounds. Although previous intermodal methods indicated that infants and toddlers could detect differences in speech sounds based on stress-timed and syllable-timed units, these methods could not clearly indicate how infants and toddlers perform sound segmentation. Thus, the present study examined whether Japanese infants and toddlers (...) could segment word speech sounds comprising basic morae, on the basis of concurrent basic mora units within syllable units, using the new intermodal matching procedure. The results indicated that, regardless of their ages and linguistic abilities, Japanese infants and toddlers aged 6–25 months tended to segment Japanese words comprising basic morae sounds on the basis of concurrent basic mora units within syllable units. This implies that infants' and toddlers' use of syllable units for segmentation of speech sounds at an early age could be evident among many infants and toddlers learning various languages. Although this finding should be interpreted carefully, the present study demonstrated the utility of the new intermodal matching procedure for examining segmentation of speech sounds and word sounds by infants and toddlers, on the basis of specific rhythm units. (shrink)

In recent years, universities have been urged to restructure and re-evaluate their ability to trace and monitor their students as the “smart campus” is being built upon datafication, while networked apps and sensors serve as the means through which its constituents are connected and governed. This paper advances a dialectical and communication-centered approach to the Internet of Things campus ecosystem and provides an empirical investigation into the tensions experienced by students and the ways that these students envision alternative practices that (...) support their digital engagement. Drawing upon student focus group interviews in a large American research and innovation intensive university, dialectical tensions identified include convenience–annoyance, integration–independence, and safety–insecurity, brought upon by students’ ongoing and prospective negotiations with Internet of Things. Furthermore, in a bid to understand students’ alternative data imaginaries, this project examined students’ preferred Internet of Things-related communication practices with campus digital application platforms, analog and older forms of digital media, as well as in-person interactions with traditional authorities within classroom and group settings. Finally, this contribution presents a discussion of the findings for theory and praxis, particularly for smart campus innovation and social data governance, in terms of potential growing challenges involving complexifying student privacy concerns, data normalization and coercion, and tertiary digital divides and inequalities. (shrink)

Modern consumers face a dramatic rise in web-based technological advancements and have trouble making rational and proper decisions when they shop online. When they try to make decisions about products and services, they also feel pressured against time when sorting among all of the unnecessary items in the flood of information available on the web. In this sense, they need to use consumer decision-making creativity to make rational decisions. However, unexplored research questions on this subject remain. First, in what ways (...) do task difficulty and time constraints affect visual attention on exploitative and exploratory activities differently? Second, how does the location of the reference influence the level of visual attention to exploitative and exploratory activities depending on affordance theory? Third, how do exploratory and exploitative activities affect CDMC? Eye-tracking experiments were conducted with 70 participants to obtain relevant metrics such as total fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count to answer these research questions. Our findings suggest that task difficulty influences exploitative activity, whereas time constraint is related to the exploratory activity. The result of the location of hints aligns with the affordance theory for the exploitative activity. Besides, exploratory activity positively affected CDMC, but exploitative activity did not show any effect. (shrink)

Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions in online self-radicalization in its myriad (...) guises, encompassing extreme as well as more mundane forms. We begin by characterizing the phenomenon of technological seduction. Next, we distinguish between top-down seduction and bottom-up seduction. We then situate both forms of technological seduction within the theoretical model of dynamical systems theory. We conclude by articulating strategies for combatting online self-radicalization. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly being used not only to classify and analyze but also to generate images and text. As recent work on the content produced by text and image Generative AIs has shown (e.g., Cheong et al., 2024, Acerbi & Stubbersfield, 2023), there is a risk that harms of representation and bias, already documented in prior AI and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms may also be present in generative models. These harms relate to protected categories such (...) as gender, race, age, and religion. There are several kinds of harms of representation to consider in this context, including stereotyping, lack of recognition, denigration, under-representation, and many others (Crawford in Soundings 41:45–55, 2009; in: Barocas et al., SIGCIS Conference, 2017). Whereas the bulk of researchers’ attention thus far has been given to stereotyping and denigration, in this study we examine ‘exnomination’, as conceived by Roland Barthes (1972), of religious groups. Our case study is DALL-E, a tool that generates images from natural language prompts. Using DALL-E mini, we generate images from generic prompts such as “religious person.” We then examine whether the generated images are recognizably members of a nominated group. Thus, we assess whether the generated images normalize some religions while neglecting others. We hypothesize that Christianity will be recognizably represented more frequently than other religious groups. Our results partially support this hypothesis but introduce further complexities, which we then explore. (shrink)

Protests and counter-protests seek to draw and direct attention and concern with confronting images and slogans. In recent years, as protests and counter-protests have partially migrated to the digital space, such images and slogans have also gone online. Two main ways in which these images and slogans are translated to the online space is through the use of emoji and hashtags. Despite sustained academic interest in online protests, hashtag activism and the use of emoji across social media platforms, little is (...) known about the specific functional role that emoji and hashtags play in online social movements. In an effort to fill this gap, the current paper studies both hashtags and emoji in the context of the Twitter discourse around the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

BackgroundAmidst expanding roles in education and policy making, questions have been raised about the ability of Clinical Ethics Committees (CEC) s to carry out effective ethics consultations (CECons). However recent reviews of CECs suggest that there is no uniformity to CECons and no effective means of assessing the quality of CECons. To address this gap a systematic scoping review of prevailing tools used to assess CECons was performed to foreground and guide the design of a tool to evaluate the quality (...) of CECons.MethodsGuided by Levac et al’s (2010) methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews, the research team performed independent literature reviews of accounts of assessments of CECons published in six databases. The included articles were independently analyzed using content and thematic analysis to enhance the validity of the findings.ResultsNine thousand sixty-six abstracts were identified, 617 full-text articles were reviewed, 104 articles were analyzed and four themes were identified – the purpose of the CECons evaluation, the various domains assessed, the methods of assessment used and the long-term impact of these evaluations.ConclusionThis review found prevailing assessments of CECons to be piecemeal due to variable goals, contextual factors and practical limitations. The diversity in domains assessed and tools used foregrounds the lack of minimum standards upheld to ensure baseline efficacy.To advance a contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, program specific assessment tool to assess CECons, clear structural and competency guidelines must be established in the curation of CECons programs, to evaluate their true efficacy and maintain clinical, legal and ethical standards. (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that the tetracycline antibiotic minocycline, or its cousins, hold therapeutic potential for affective and psychotic disorders. This is proposed on the basis of a direct effect on microglia‐mediated frontocortical synaptic pruning (FSP) during adolescence, perhaps in genetically susceptible individuals harboring risk alleles in the complement component cascade that is involved in this normal process of CNS circuit refinement. In reviewing this field, it is argued that minocycline is actually probing and modulating a deeply evolved and intricate system (...) wherein psychosocial stimuli sculpt the circuitry of the “social brain” underlying adult behavior and personality. Furthermore, this system can generate psychiatric morbidity that is not dependent on genetic variation. This view has important ramifications for understanding “pathologies” of human social behavior and cognition as well as providing long‐sought potential mechanistic links between social experience and susceptibility to mental and physical disease. (shrink)