1,721,180 research outputs found
Three papers on decision theoretic agent-based modelling in demography
No full textThis thesis consists of three papers, which address Agent-Based Modelling (AM) as a methodology in demography, focusing on the modelling of decision making processes. The discussion begins by assessing the utility of AM as a methodology and some of the issues peculiar to it, and argues that the modelling of choice is of special significance in the demographic context. Of the three papers, the first one outlines an approach to model development combining aspects of game theory, and decision theory. It then contrasts the effect of four choice models on the behaviour of a simulation based on qualitative accounts of the disclosure behaviours surrounding alcohol misuse in pregnancy. The second paper applies this approach to help-seeking in older adult care, drawing on survey data to parameterise and validate the model. Simulation results, and variance-based sensitivity analysis indicate that a model of decision making which incorporates a representation of the interactions between agents are necessary to reproduce observed rates of caregiving. The third paper reports experiments designed to validate the choice behaviour of agents in the older adult care model. I examine human decision making about paired gambles from experience, where the pair has some features common to both choices. I report results for eight decision problems undertaken by 20 participants, and contrast the predictive ability of four models of decision making. I then estimate parameters to maximise the fit where possible, and find that while the best performance is offered by decision models with a representation of the problem, they do not offer a significant advantage over heuristic methods. I discuss the implications of this, in the context of the original agent-based model, and for agent-based modelling more generally
Censorship
No full textFor as long as humans and societies have communicated using media technologies, there have been measures to regulate media content. At their strongest, such controls have constituted censorship , defined as the restriction, suppression or prohibition of forms of speech and media content deemed to be contrary to the common good. The word comes from the Latin censor , which referred to the officials in the Roman Empire who took the public census, and whose role was also to supervise public behavior and morals. While governments are not the only institutions that can engage in censorship, it has generally been connected to the government of social conduct and the security and protection of the state (Dean, 2011) ..
Pornography as creative industry
No full textMuch academic writing on pornography focuses on the genre’s exceptionalism (the ways in which it is different from other forms of culture). This paper rather focuses on its typicality as a Creative Industry. As with other Creative Industries, in the production and distribution of pornography it is producers who make most money. While a small number of on-camera performers become wealthy and powerful the majority lack creative control and are poorly paid. The careers of performers are typically short examples of “nomadic labour”. Many creative workers are involved in the production of pornography apart those in front of the camera, and the skills of these behind-the-camera creatives can be transferable across sectors. Like other Creative Industries, the pornography business is facing challenges from increased digitalization and globalization; and like other Creative Industries the solutions to these challenges lie in branding, niche marketing, and exploiting new technological possibilities
Un-indexing forest media: repurposing search query results to reconsider forest-society relations
Get PDFGeographical research is increasingly focused on how digital technology shapes human-nature relations. This article explores how internet search engines and their associated algorithms and indexing technologies order and produce homogenising accounts of forest places. We put forward ‘un-indexing’ as a critical and inventive method for un-ordering and re-ordering search engine results to complicate digital perspectives on forest-society relations. We present Everything at the Forest Park, a series of four speculative catalogues we created to invite collective inquiries into the digital mediation of a forested area in Scotland – Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. Fostering a slower form of engagement with web material, the catalogues suggest how geographers and other scholars might critically repurpose, reappropriate and interrogate the algorithmically curated and advertising-oriented orderings of search engines to foster more careful and convivial forest-society relations
Introduction:Why Still Study Fans?
No full text“Most people are fans of something”—with this assertion we began the first edition of this anthology in 2007. Today, following continued technological, social, and cultural changes, fandom is an even more commonplace experience. The proliferation and simultaneous transformation of fandom are well illustrated, for instance, by the emergence of “fan” as a common description of political supporters and activists. Shortly after the first edition of this volume was published, Barack Obama’s primary campaign illustrated the capacity of grassroots enthusiasm through the now-existent infrastructure of social media (combined with the effective management of mainstream media) to transform his outsider’s bid..
Choosing the Choice: Reflections on modelling decisions and behaviour in demographic agent-based models
No full textThis paper investigates the problems associated with choosing appropriate models of choice for demographic agent-based models. In particular, the importance of context, time-preference and dealing with uncertainty in decision modelling are discussed, together with the heterogeneity between agents in their decision-making strategies. The paper concludes by advocating empirically driven, modular, and multi-model approaches to designing simulations of human decision-making, given the lack of a canonical strategy for dealing with any of these issues. Furthermore, it is suggested that an iterative process of data collection and simulation experiments, with the latter informing future empirical data collection, should form the basis of such an endeavour. The discussion is illustrated with reference to selected demographic agent-based models, in particular those relating to migration
Convergence
No full textConvergence is a dynamic of change. In the most neutral and general sense, it describes the tendency for separate streams or pathways (whether of matter, of technologies, or of biological life) to come together. Its complement is divergence—the tendency for these same paths and streams to branch, fork, and drift apart. In the context of media and communication, convergence is the tendency of separate media technologies, cultural forms, and/or social practices to come together to perform similar functions and make new hybrid media systems. In this sense, it is a key driver of economic, technological, and cultural change in the media environment. Convergence, then, is one of the constitutive dynamics of new media (Hartley, Burgess, & Bruns, 2013). To be able to describe and understand the different forms convergence takes is to begin to unravel one of the deepest and most longstanding issues in the history of media studies: the nature of the relationship between technological and sociocultural change
The fans of cultural theory
No full textFandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world
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
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