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1 – 10 of over 2000The nuclear purpose of this research paper is to analyse representative bridges around the world as a tourist attraction and iconic element through destination marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
The nuclear purpose of this research paper is to analyse representative bridges around the world as a tourist attraction and iconic element through destination marketing organisations’ (DMOs’) tourism official websites where these are localised and three online travel agencies’ (OTAs’) websites.
Design/methodology/approach
This research used a mixed method. The author carried out Google research (13 March 2023) that included the following search word string “iconic bridges around the world” and “the most famous bridges worldwide” to select the most relevant bridges around the globe. Moreover, this research used a content analysis to examine how Expedia, Booking and Orbitz OTAs promote the bridges through their websites in terms of a tourist attraction, iconic element, tourist package, images and information.
Findings
Findings suggest that the most representative bridges analysed in this study are promoted as iconic element and tourist attraction through DMOs’ websites. Nevertheless, Booking, Expedia and Orbitz OTAs promote and sell products and services related to bridges selected, except in the case of the Millau Viaduct in France, the Si-O-Se-Pol bridge in Iran, the Danyang Kunshan Grand bridge in China and the Royal Gorge in the USA. Furthermore, results support that OTAs need to enhance the quality and variety of products and services that are linked to iconic bridges sightseeing tours because at the moment, there is a great uniformity in the promotion of products and services provided.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to broader debates in the importance of bridges as a tourist attraction and iconic element to attract tourists through tourism promotion websites.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics and functions of images in scientific practices and how scientific images differ to other types of representation (e.g…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics and functions of images in scientific practices and how scientific images differ to other types of representation (e.g. textual, numerical or artistic images). To address these questions, the study looks into the illustration practice of the Swedish researcher Gaston Backman, who wrote several books on the origin of the human species, human anatomy, physical anthropology and race biology in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative and functional analytical method is applied to show how the images act in his writings and how rhetorical and technical circumstances affect the way the images communicate and document scientific facts and ideas. Theoretically, the study relates to ideas suggesting: images to be serious partakers and vehicles of representation in the practice of science; and the need for images to be schematic and more abstract in comparison to an iconic image in order to work in this practice.
Findings
The findings of this study show that Backman used both schematic and iconic images in his research writings, and that these different image expressions had different functions: where the former was based on facts and had an informative and scientific function, the latter was based on fantasy/myth and used to promote ideological values and ideas.
Originality/value
This study stresses the importance of images in the practice of science, i.e. how images alongside verbal or numerical expressions act as important information and knowledge carriers in the work of science. Even though images intermingle with verbal and numerical expression, they also have a unique and specific, a role that needs to be taken seriously and investigated further in the realm of information studies and document studies. The authors also need to be aware that images can have different functions in the scientific practice, and are not always there to carry scientific facts or ideas, but ideologies and fantasies.
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Claire-France Picard, Sylvain Durocher and Yves Gendron
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative cultural shift from professionalism to commercialism in the accounting profession, based on an analysis of the promotional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative cultural shift from professionalism to commercialism in the accounting profession, based on an analysis of the promotional brochures used by the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec (Institute of Chartered Accountants of Québec), over the last 40 years, to attract new members.
Design/methodology/approach
The study's specific objectives are: to examine accountancy's cultural representations depicted in promotional brochures; to evaluate the extent to which these representations are indicative of the commercialist shift as documented in the literature; and to establish whether the representations under study provide further insight into the nature of the cultural shift. Drawing on the semiotic approach developed by Roland Barthes, the authors' analysis is predicated on the idea that promotional brochures and advertisements, though often simple in appearance, constitute complex representations that convey meaningful information about influential values and cultural change.
Findings
The authors found that commercial values are increasingly apparent through the celebration of multidisciplinary services and the emphasis on generous compensation and high dynamism.
Originality/value
Barthes' framework was especially useful to analyze the interplay between images and text to gain insight into the historical emergence of what has become the accountant's representation of today. As such, this study points to promotional representations participating to the inculcation of a cosmopolitan culture, where the internationalization of business is supposedly natural, inevitable, and beneficial to everyone. The authors' research also highlights the increasingly significant role played by marketing experts in designing professional institutes' brochures, consistent with the broader view of marketization as a key trend within the accounting industry.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine Barthes' influence on, and potential for, accounting communication research; and to apply Barthes' principles to visual images of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine Barthes' influence on, and potential for, accounting communication research; and to apply Barthes' principles to visual images of professional accountancy.
Design/methodology/approach
The study seeks to provide: a synthesis of prior accounting research that has drawn on Barthes' work, followed by an overview of Barthes' work in both its rational, structuralist, phase, and its more sentimental, post‐structuralist, phase, that identifies strands of interest to accounting communication; and Barthesian semiotic interpretations of visual images of accountancy portrayed in the annual report front covers of a major UK accounting firm through their linguistics (anchorage and relay), denotation and connotation.
Findings
Barthes' work has been surprisingly little used in accounting; a number of aspects of Barthes's work could be more fruitfully exploited, especially those from his later post‐structuralist phase; a Barthesian approach assists in reading the dual portrayal of accountancy as both an art and a science, and as business‐aware as well as traditionally professional.
Research limitations/implications
The theoretical section is limited to a broad overview of Barthes' very extensive work; the empirical section provides a detailed analysis of one organization. It would be useful to extend the research to more extended analyses based on Barthes' prolific work, and to many aspects of accounting communication.
Practical implications
The analysis may be of interest to all accounting researchers, practitioners, trainees and auditors, since communication is central to accounting.
Originality/value
The paper adds to theoretical work in accounting communication, to the empirical literature on the interpretation of verbal and visual signs in accounting and accountability statements, and to understanding of the external images of professional accountancy.
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This paper aims to examine GCC companies' use of visual images to interplay modernity and globalism with tradition, Islam and local culture. The analysis aims to bring attention…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine GCC companies' use of visual images to interplay modernity and globalism with tradition, Islam and local culture. The analysis aims to bring attention to the way that businesses in the GCC use visual images to engage with or influence debates in their societies concerning the tension between modernity, globalisation and traditional values in the Arab‐Islamic world.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is critical and discursive and based on a close reading of the visual images reported in the 2005 annual reports of companies listed on GCC stock markets.
Findings
The analysis suggests that GCC companies on many occasions used visual images to depict and represent the possibility of a successful profitable, modern and global business that is also sympathetic to tradition and operates within the framework of Islamic principles.
Originality/value
While visual images are increasingly used in companies' annual reports they have been largely ignored in accounting research. Furthermore, when this research manifests, it has been concerned with investigating Anglo‐American and Western contexts. This paper instead emphasises the significance of researching the use of visual images in a variety of contexts and locations. It critically and contextually explores the use of visual images in a largely unexplored, non‐Western and a significantly Islamic context.
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Priska Daphi, Anja Lê and Peter Ullrich
This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this purpose, a method of visual analysis is…
Abstract
This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this purpose, a method of visual analysis is developed that draws mainly on semiotics and art history. Following this method, the contribution examines a selection of images (pictures and graphic design) from the anti-surveillance protests in three steps: description of components, detection of conventional signs, and contextual analysis. Furthermore, the analysis compares the images of the two major currents of the protest (liberal and radical left) in order to elucidate the context in which images are created and used. The analysis shows that images do not merely illustrate existing political messages but contribute to movements’ systems of meaning creation and transportation. The two currents in the protests communicate their point of view through the images both strategically and expressively. The images play a crucial role in formulating groups’ different strategies as well as worldviews and identities. In addition, the analysis shows that the meaning of images is contested and contextual. Images are produced and received in specific national as well as issue contexts. Future research should address the issue of context and reception in greater depth in order to further explore the effects of visual language on mobilization. Overall, the contribution demonstrates that systematic visual analysis allows our understanding of social movements’ aims, strategy, and collective identity to be deepened. In addition, visual analysis may provide activists with a tool to critically assess their visual communication.
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Aims to define the conceptual tools of Gregory Bateson's epistemology – the nature of difference, logical typing, and recursion – and to apply this to understanding how we can…
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to define the conceptual tools of Gregory Bateson's epistemology – the nature of difference, logical typing, and recursion – and to apply this to understanding how we can approach the analysis of ethnographic reports of the Bushman n/om‐kxaosi (shamans) and the Bushman rock art of Southern Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper argues that kinesthetic interaction with n/om‐kxaosi provides a vehicle for learning their way of construing the world.
Findings
The n/om‐kxaosi have a kinesthetic lexicon and a set of dominant metaphors rooted to their ecstatic body expression that provide coherence to their ways of healing and spiritual understanding. The previously assumed incoherent nature of Bushman religious views noted by anthropologists is argued to have been the consequence of underestimating the importance Bushman thinking gives to circularity and transformation of all aspects of their experience.
Originality/value
Illuminates the analysis of the Bushman culture.
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O. Folorunso, O.R. Vincent and B.M. Dansu
This paper seeks to describe the use of edge‐detection as an approach to support the process of analyzing visual scenes.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to describe the use of edge‐detection as an approach to support the process of analyzing visual scenes.
Design/methodology/approach
Edges‐detection is considered as a KM technique task. Several edge‐detection algorithms were discussed but Canny method was chosen in conjunction with JAVA to find the edges of an image.
Findings
The paper provides an overview of knowledge need by the visual scene analyst. It reviews the process of extracting knowledge from image data. Finally, the paper looks at the management aspects of image‐edge detection.
Originality/value
Experiments herein have proved the method robustness by considering edge‐detection as a knowledge management technique for visual scene analysis by deriving knowledge from semantic information based on object boundaries shadow.
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This paper aims to present the schematic for building a multimedia information visualization system and digital archive which takes advantage of a wider spectrum of media elements…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the schematic for building a multimedia information visualization system and digital archive which takes advantage of a wider spectrum of media elements (images, sound, datasets) and interactivity with regards to research level historical body of knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology for this interactive multimedia visualized system was based on create a digital environment to explore larger bodies of research that expand on simple text‐based Information Retrieval Database systems. Through photos, videos, interactive maps, digital audio interviews, primary documents and narrative structures the system presents new methodologies for building digital libraries. The “educational” objective of this project was to present a stylistically elegant yet intellectually robust interactive multimedia information system for academic libraries.
Findings
Building new online digital libraries must involve robust interactivity to take advantage of the computer's intrinsic specificity and the wider set of choices open to the human perceptual apparatus. Instead of text‐based navigation systems, a more creative set of visual “tools” should be explored for digital libraries including interactivity and cognitive cartographies. Key here are the terms “visual metaphor” and innovatively structuring visually intuitive “narratives” into non‐linear dynamic but humanly usable information systems.
Research limitations/implications
In expanding the range of “allowable” “historical archival media” (audio, video, images, datasets, databases) in digital libraries and keeping research level academic integrity, future questions regard what this means for historiography, information construction, and questions surrounding epistemology and “archives” of the future.
Practical implications
Technically, the successes in building this digital library information system solve the question of how to present a large robust amount of information indifferent rich media formats in an interesting and engaging manner. The project points to methodologies to present a research spectrum depth structure of textual material that can seamlessly be incorporated through wider spectrum of media elements: images, video, audio, music, datasets and interactivity.
Originality/value
This paper provides a methodology for marrying a textual body of academic research with a wider spectrum of media elements (sound, images, datasets, music) and incorporating them into a digital library through an innovative methodology. It will be valuable to anyone needing guidelines and specific algorithmic recipes and suggestions for building new millennia digital libraries which take advantage of a wider spectrum of media elements.
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Carlos J. Torelli and Jennifer L. Stoner
To introduce the concept of cultural equity and provide a theoretical framework for managing cultural equity in multi-cultural markets.
Abstract
Purpose
To introduce the concept of cultural equity and provide a theoretical framework for managing cultural equity in multi-cultural markets.
Methodology/approach
Recent research on the social psychology of globalization, cross-cultural consumer behavior, consumer culture, and global branding is reviewed to develop a theoretical framework for building, leveraging, and protecting cultural equity.
Findings
Provides an actionable definition for a brand’s cultural equity, discusses consumer responses to brands that relate to cultural equity, identifies the building blocks of cultural equity, and develops a framework for managing cultural equity.
Research limitations/implications
Research conducted mainly in large cities in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Generalizations to less developed parts of the world might be limited.
Practical implications
A very useful theoretical framework for managers interested in building cultural equity into their brands and for leveraging this equity via new products and the development of new markets.
Originality/value
The paper integrates past findings across a variety of domains to develop a parsimonious framework for managing cultural equity in globalized markets.
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