1,720,959 research outputs found

    Seven Days In The Crescent City Katrina’s Handlers, Crisis Discourse, And Story Lines

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    Hurricane Katrina is one of the most important events of our lifetime. The issues raised by the response to Hurricane Katrina, stated one congressional committee, could not be more critical to America’s sense of itself in this moment in history. Some even assert that Hurricane Katina is a harbinger of America’s demise. In response to the statements above, this dissertation asserts that a Conflict Management Professional should be included with the top officials during the crisis phase of a disaster for better coordinated emergency management operations. This study explores and describes the critical seven days surrounding Hurricane Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, in New Orleans. Using discourse and narrative analyses, positioning theory, and grounded theory, the author examines the communications among Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, FEMA's Under Secretary Brown, the Department of Homeland Security’s Secretary Chertoff, and President G. W. Bush (“the Key Parties”). The research goals are to: 1) discover how the speech acts among Blanco, Nagin, and the federal government undercut the initial Hurricane Katrina response; 2) review the scholars who offer relevant conflict analysis and resolution formats; and 3) develop a conceptual model for intervention that uses discourse to shift social positioning systems and narratives to promote a more effective response to crisis. Conflict analysis and resolution are integral to successful emergency management. Data includes all relevant communications in writing or captured by electronic media (press conferences, radio, TV, interviews, etc.) by Nagin, Blanco, Brown, Chertoff, and Bush; congressional testimony; government reports; blogs; emails; personal notes of disaster officials; documentaries; books chronicling the events; newspaper, magazine, and journal articles; and other dissertations. This research sets forth the phenomenology of a disaster’s first days. After thorough review of the Key Parties’ speech acts, the author found 1) disruptions, and 2) dysfunctional communications. Disruptions, which are defined as sources of conflict, included backstories of: 1) control and politics, information gaps, and history and context; 2) the power words that were misunderstood or used to exaggerate or deny the events; 3) positioning the problem elsewhere so that it was blamed on the other, embedded in regrets and excuses, or externalized; 4) malignant positioning by Brown of Blanco and by Nagin of his state and federal counterparts; and 5) the inartful reflexive positioning of Bush and Brown. Secondly, the research determined that communication was ineffective because questions were not asked or genuinely answered. These findings revealed underlying assumptions, motivations, and powerful but conflicting narratives that drove decision-making and shaped disaster response activities and police and civilian behavior. An Ombuds is proposed as a conceptual model to assist the key officials on-site during the crisis phase of a disaster. Conflict management and emergency management theory are woven together to illustrate this concept. It is systematically explained how the Ombuds could be aware of and address the disruptions and the dysfunctional communications mentioned in the previous two paragraphs. Using discourse, narratives, and positioning theory, the Ombuds would promote professional interpersonal dynamics, collaboration, and high-quality decision-making. The Ombuds would be expected to facilitate successful communication and process, build a culture of respect, establish him/herself as neutral, and assiduously identify problems and resolutions. The author has suggested tools, outlined psychological tendencies and counter-measures, and crafted the acronym ALLURE which stands for: 1) ask and be curious, 2) listen for positions, 3) link the parties together, 4) unsettle assumptions, 5) reposition the parties, and 6) encourage new narratives. Through discourse the Ombuds can legitimize, augment, and leverage the narratives and reposition the parties. Finally, it is proposed that the Ombuds would have authority to end stalemates; deadlocks during Hurricane Katrina are used as examples. Potential contenders for the Ombuds’ role have been put forth, such as the White House chief of staff and the Principal Federal Official, as well as, experience and educational requirements. A standard operating procedure that requires inclusion of an Ombuds during the crisis phase of a disaster to work with the highest levels of government will improve emergency response activities. This research is significant for all future disaster victims, any disaster handler, and all Conflict Management Professionals

    Preparing for the Stranger: Assessing Theories for Analyzing and Attending to Religious-Based Conflict

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    This thesis will address two related questions: one regarding conflict analysis and the other conflict resolution. As instruments for analyzing religious-based conflict, what are the possibilities and limitations of: 1.) Theologies of the Other and the ethical grounds for interreligious dialogue, 2.) Fowler's theory of faith development for individuals, and 3.) Rothbart & Korostelina's theory of axiological difference for groups? As a theory informing interreligious dialogue as a means of addressing religious-based conflict, what are the possibilities and limitations for hermeneutical theory in the tradition of Hans- Georg Gadamer? This study will conclude by identifying opportunities for incorporating the findings of this research and possibilities for future research during the author's follow-on assignment as the World Religions Instructor at the United States Army Chaplain Center and School

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

    Holy war, holy peace : How religion can bring peace to the middle east

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    New Yorkviii, 269 p.; 23 cm

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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