1,721,083 research outputs found
La comunicazione sociale contro l'evasione fiscale: un contributo nella prospettiva della psicologia fiscale
No full textNational audienceDespite the large literature that psychology has provided during the last 30 years about fiscal evasion, so far scarce attention has been given to social communication campaigns on tax compliance. The present study aims to provide a first exploration on the subject, with the objective of better understanding how social communication campaigns might deal with the topic of tax compliance, using as a theoretical background the Slippery Slope Framework. The exploration relies on qualitative methods, and it is based on a semiotic approach in two steps: first, an analysis of the strategies realized in two tv-ads promoted by the Italian Government in 2011 to contrast tax evasion; second, an analysis of the reactions to the tv-ads as expressed by citizens in social media (YouTube). Results discuss two main communicative strategies (ethical and punitive) that can be adopted to approach tax evasion, coherently with the dimensions of the Slippery Slope Framework
Fate or Agency? Comparing Practical Inference and Narrative Scheme
No full textInternational audienceThis paper argues for some essential differences between action and narration. These differences become evident if we compare two well-known descriptive models: the Practical Inference (developed by E. Anscombe and G. von Wright to understand everyday actions) and the Narrative Scheme (formulated by A.J. Greimas for explaining narrated actions). The first is grounded on the agents' intentions and their possibility to do otherwise, that is granted by the language games in which agents operate. The second dissolves the actors' intentions into a comprehensive necessitated structure, in which there are no alternative possibilities of action, and what matters the most is the organisation of the whole. These are the reasons why the Narrative Scheme is not suited to explain everyday action, as well as the Practical Inference does not bring about a satisfactory understanding of narratives. Agents are personally responsible for their actions. Whenever we observe someone acting, we attribute a certain intention to that person. Instead, the interpreter of a narrative perceives an "immanence filter", and cannot attribute personal responsibility for action to each actor. Actors only seem to act, but they are actually directed by another instance taking decisions for them-an author. The author, the instance that is responsible for everything that happens in a story, has been underestimated by contemporary semiotics, whereas its role is fundamental to understand and describe texts as intentional products. Texts have a double dimension: they are holistic systems turning characters' intentions and chance into author's choices; at the same time they are also communicative tools effectively used in our world of actions. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to use both the Narrative Scheme and the Practical Inference to describe text production, because each of the two models gives a necessary and irreducible perspective on the author
Implementing Eco’s Model Reader with Word Embeddings. An Experiment on Facebook Ideological Bots
Get PDFIn semiotics, the concept of model reader is used to describe the felicity conditions of a text, that is, the information and pragmatic competence needed to interpret the text with reference to a hypothesis on its producer's intention. The model reader permits to formulate inferences about the implicit content of sentences and of the entire text. In this paper we propose to formalize the model reader as a function that takes as inputs a text and a larger context and produces as output what is needed to complete the text's implicit information, filling up its “blank spaces”. One possible technique to implement this function is word embedding. We performed an experiment in this sense, using the data collected and analyzed by the Tracking Exposed group (TREX) during the Italian 2018 elections. For their study, six blank Facebook profiles were created, each characterized by a political orientation: all profiles followed the same common set of 30 pages, representative of the entire Italian political spectrum at the time, but each profile interacted only with content linked to its distinctive political orientation. TREX's study of the profiles' newsfeeds demonstrated that each profile was prompted with an uneven distribution of information sources, biased by its political orientation. For our study, we created six different word spaces, one for each profile. Then we identified a certain number of politically neutral terms and observed the semantic associations of these terms in each word space. To identify the terms, we performed a classification of the entire corpus with the software Iramuteq and selected the most significant terms associated with each cluster. Finally, by performing some operations within each word space, we observed some differences in semantic associations that are coherent with the political orientation of the corresponding profile. These results appear to show that word embedding is a valuable approach for computational text pragmatics, as they can help to model the inferences performed by a certain reader. Also, these results suggest the pertinence of such analyses for the study of filter bubbles resulting from algorithmic personalization
Computational approaches to the figurative and plastic dimensions of images
No full textInternational audienceThis article’s aim is to explore the possibilities and limitations of some quantitative tools for the analysis of images. It shows how three different families of tools – manual annotation, eye-tracking and signifier analysis – can help to better understand the meaning effects of figurative and plastic (abstract) elements in pictures. Advantages and disadvantages for each family of tools are discussed. The author also suggests some theoretical implications of the adoption of quantitative tools in the humanities and especially within semiotic disciplines
Intentio auctoris e la possibilità del linguaggio
No full textInternational audienceOne logical requirement for language is intention recognition. Considering or not considering phenomena as intentional, influences the meaning we attribute to them. Furthermore, all interpretations of texts make hypotheses on their production-a sentence cannot be thought as not having an author. U. Eco formulates the distinction between intentio operis and intentio auctoris; we will suggest that this redoubling is necessary only within a poststructural paradigm, that separates semiotic meaning from psychological intentions. In the perspective suggested by L. Wittgenstein, the role of intentions lays in language, and not behind it; people do not mean by thinking but by speaking, and much of what we usually consider as private to the individual, actually depends on the use of language. If intention is semiotic, built in communications, then all texts carry an author as real effect of their interpretation: interpreters wonder about what in the text is and is not deliberately intended. We will propose to read in Eco's partition of intentiones a guide to a pragmatic method, rather than an implicit ontological threshold between thoughts and words. We will also suggest to consider choices as a valuable concept for semiotic research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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