1,721,070 research outputs found
Xenophobic reasoning : how we justify and argue anti-immigrant stances in discourse : a preliminary study
No full textThe spread of certain forms of xenophobia – either explicit or implicit – is being more and more documented in international research studies both in relation to the emergence of social and political movements assuming an anti-immigrant stance, and, more generally, in relation to the sharing of such a stance on the part of the general European public. Our general aim is to develop a multidisciplinary and multilevel analysis to the study of xenophobic thinking which integrates cognitive and discourse analysis.
In his cognitive analysis of xenophobia Rydgren (2004) takes into account:
1) illusory correlations, that is perceiving associations between variables that are not associated; 2) analogical strategies; 3) fallacious logical schemata. In this study we enlarge Rydgren’s framework by considering many potentially relevant reasoning tendencies, including various sorts of “focusing” and “mechanization” effects (Cherubini, Castelvecchio, Cherubini, 2005; Cherubini, Mazzocco, Rumiati, 2003) as well as the constraints of human hypothesis testing and belief revision strategies. In this study our purpose is to evaluate their contribution to the genesis of xenophobic ideas which support anti-immigrants stances. We argue that people discursively justify and explain these prejudicial stances through the same thought processes which have been described in laboratory experiments.
In order to explore how ‘foreigners’ are represented and which definitions of the issue of immigration emerge in citizens’ discourse we conducted two focus groups, one with Italian participants and the other with foreign ones; the topic discussed in the two focus groups was the multicultural transformation which is involving the city of Milan.
A discourse analytic approach was adopted to analyse the verbatim transcripts so to give evidence to the processes of reasoning underlying participants’ discourse. Our aim was to probe their effective role and explanatory power, both in terms of generating or welcoming xenophobic convictions and in terms of supporting argumentative strategies aimed at spreading xenophobic ideas. We found a strong relation between immigrants and crime, in accordance with previous studies. In xenophobic discourse this relation is reinforced emphasizing the idea of cultural differences, which are presented as incompatible. We suggest that the validity of these simplifications is supported by a tendency to establish illusory correlations and to use different kinds of heuristics. Moreover, similar processes of reasoning allow people to handle stereotypes, linking them each other into a more resistant structure
Approccio dendrocronologico alla storia dell'Abete bianco (Abies alba) nell'Appennino Ligure
No full textAnalisi dendrocronologiche di tronchi conservatisi in una torbiera montana dell'Appennino Ligur
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Site-aspect influence on climate sensitivity over time of a high-altitude Pinus cembra tree-ring network
No full textRecently a divergence between tree-ring parameters from temperaturelimited
environments and temperature records has been observed worldwide but
comprehensive explanations are still lacking. From a dendroclimatic analysis performed
on a high-altitude tree-ring network of Pinus cembra (L.) in the Central
Italian Alps we found that site aspect influences non-stationary growth-climate
relationships over time. A general increasing divergence between ring width and the
summer temperature record (J–A) has been observed especially for chronologies
from SW-facing slopes, whereas chronologies from N-facing sites showed stable
relationships over time. The monthly analysis revealed that the decrease in sensitivity
was mostly accounted for by the changes in the relationships with June temperature
(decreasing correlations especially for S- and W-facing site chronologies), whereas
trees from N-facing sites showed an increasing sensitivity to July temperatures. Our
data suggest that at high altitudes, low temperatures at the beginning of the growing
season no longer limit growth. We also found that our temperature-sensitive trees
did not linearly respond in radial growth to the extreme heat event of summer
2003, and formed an annual ring of average width, resulting in a strong divergence
from the temperature record. Our findings underline the importance of site ecology
for tree-ring based climate reconstructions using temperature-sensitive ring-width
chronologies, and may help in solving the ‘divergence problem’
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
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