1,720,954 research outputs found
Between the Covers and Beyond the Page: Gauging Climate Fiction's Impact through Ecocriticism and Virtual Book Club Observations
No full textDespite increasing global concern about climate change, a gap persists between climate worry and action. Researchers across various disciplines and popular media suggest that narratives can motivate pro-environmental behaviour. Cli-fi novels, in particular, are believed to influence readers’ behaviours and perceptions of climate change. However, most evidence supporting these claims comes from classroom observations and traditional humanistic inquiry. In 2018, a new research methodology emerged, empirical ecocriticism, which set out to determine how general readers engage with these novels. This dissertation follows the principles of this method, namely, the combination of ecocritical analyses with empirical methods. To that end, the first part of this dissertation (Chapters 2 and 3) is an ecocritical examination of four diverse cli-fi novels published in the last decade to determine how they conveyed climate change information to their readers and how this portrayal may affect readers’ understanding of this issue. The second part of this dissertation (Chapter 4) is a report on empirical findings from a book club observation study of readers reading these same cli-fi novels.
The two interdisciplinary objectives of this dissertation were to firstly examine how cli-fi novels relate information about climate change and what aspects of climate change are emphasized to readers in these novels, and secondly to contribute to the emerging field of empirical ecocriticism by reporting on how groups of readers discussed cli-fi novels and the climate change information therein. To achieve these objectives, I: (1) interpreted of four diverse cli-fi novels using ecocritical methods and (2) designed and implemented a book club observation study of general readers reading these same novels.
Drawing on ecocriticism, climate change communication, and social sciences research, Chapter 2 introduces a new subcategory of cli-fi – ambivalent cli-fi. This subcategory is defined through an analysis of two realistic cli-fi novels Weather by Jenny Offill and Blaze Island by Catherine Bush to determine how climate change is portrayed in these novels and how their narratives might help readers explore their emotional responses to climate change. The novels were chosen due to their connections to the 2020s and the ecocritical analysis of these novels demonstrates that they can help readers sit in the uncomfortable space where the world is not yet irreversibly ruing, yet there is also no easy solution.
Chapter 3 examines Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller and The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, two speculative cli-fi novels, whose authors claimed they wanted their readers to feel hope despite narratives that portray radically altered environments and nightmarish societies. This chapter reviews climate change communication research that points towards more inclusive messaging favouring neither hope nor despair. The ecocritical analysis of the two novels utilizes Albert Camus’ notion of the absurd to address the feelings of existential crisis evoked by the novels’ depictions of climate change. It concludes by advocating for the creation of narratives that help audiences find ways to embrace futures that are neither apocalyptic nor utopic.
Chapter 4 reports on virtual cli-fi book club sessions conducted from January to June 2022, involving 40 participants from across Canada. Participants read the same cli-fi novels discussed above in order to ascertain how ecocritical readings of these novels might differ from general readers’ interpretations. Pre- and post-survey data indicated that participants were younger than the average Canadian population (65% less than 44 years old compared to 42%), liberal, and concerned about climate change. The study identified three main themes from participant discussions: (1) the relatability of the cli-fi novels enhanced the believability of the story and climate change; (2) the presence or absence of hope was linked to whether novels included individual actions to mitigate climate change; and (3) participants experienced anxiety when they empathized with characters and scenarios. These findings suggest that readers use cli-fi novels to understand current climate issues. Results from the book club observation study also suggested that general readers in groups find solace and reach new conclusions through discussion. This discovery underscores the importance of considering reading as both an individual and social practice for empirical ecocriticism.
The conclusions drawn from the ecocritical chapters highlight how cli-fi narratives have the potential to influence reader emotions. The arguments in Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate that the negative emotions present in each cli-fi novel are necessary for readers to engage with and learn from. Chapter 5 concludes with a comparison of these arguments with the results from the book club study (Chapter 4). This discussion reinforces research from climate change communication and the social sciences that argues audiences (and readers) do not need to be frightened with catastrophic images of climate change dystopias. Instead, what readers (and non-scholarly audiences) might need now are stories that help them learn how to live-with climate uncertainty, and spaces to do this together
Responding to Ethical Dilemmas in the Anthropocene: Sven Böttcher’s Prophezeiung
No full textThis thesis examines Sven Böttcher’s novel, Prophezeiung (2011), a climate change thriller. Prophezeiung does not call into question the reality of climate change or global warming; rather it seeks to come to terms with these issues. The novel explores a number of ethical dilemmas that arise due to a computer-predicted climate catastrophe. This thesis establishes a theory of ethics and then investigates key scenes from the plot as well as the actions of the characters to determine their ethical merit.
Prophezeiung is a mixture of three different genres: science fiction, thriller, and docufiction. The impending climate catastrophe in the novel constrains and changes some of the genre-specified roles of the characters. Analysing some of these changes reveals that the characters are used mainly to depict different outcomes of popular responses to climate problems in the Anthropocene. Böttcher appends to the novel a recommended reading list to provide some context to the positions held by the main characters. After establishing who the heroes of the novel are, this thesis explores that reading list to understand some of the novel’s many references to the real world.
Finally, the novel is analysed using one such reading: Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. More specifically, Prophezeiung’s ambiguous conclusion is examined using Camus’s philosophy of the absurd as outlined in this work. Prophezeiung concludes when the catastrophe is revealed as an elaborate hoax, leaving unresolved the real issues of climate change and global warming. Instead of allowing the reader to feel overwhelmed or despair that humanity is ultimately doomed to failure, Prophezeiung suggests facing these climate problems by relying on Camus’s categories of revolt, freedom, and passion
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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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