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1 – 10 of 343
Article
Publication date: 22 June 2023

Chiara Alzetta, Felice Dell'Orletta, Alessio Miaschi, Elena Prat and Giulia Venturi

The authors’ goal is to investigate variations in the writing style of book reviews published on different social reading platforms and referring to books of different genres…

Abstract

Purpose

The authors’ goal is to investigate variations in the writing style of book reviews published on different social reading platforms and referring to books of different genres, which enables acquiring insights into communication strategies adopted by readers to share their reading experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose a corpus-based study focused on the analysis of A Good Review, a novel corpus of online book reviews written in Italian, posted on Amazon and Goodreads, and covering six literary fiction genres. The authors rely on stylometric analysis to explore the linguistic properties and lexicon of reviews and the authors conducted automatic classification experiments using multiple approaches and feature configurations to predict either the review's platform or the literary genre.

Findings

The analysis of user-generated reviews demonstrates that language is a quite variable dimension across reading platforms, but not as much across book genres. The classification experiments revealed that features modelling the syntactic structure of the sentence are reliable proxies for discerning Amazon and Goodreads reviews, whereas lexical information showed a higher predictive role for automatically discriminating the genre.

Originality/value

The high availability of cultural products makes information services necessary to help users navigate these resources and acquire information from unstructured data. This study contributes to a better understanding of the linguistic characteristics of user-generated book reviews, which can support the development of linguistically-informed recommendation services. Additionally, the authors release a novel corpus of online book reviews meant to support the reproducibility and advancements of the research.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 80 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2023

Victoria M. Nagy

Abstract

Details

Male Rape Victimisation on Screen
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-017-7

Article
Publication date: 28 February 2024

Alexandra Thrall, T. Philip Nichols and Kevin R. Magill

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people imagine civic futures through speculative fiction writing about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The authors…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people imagine civic futures through speculative fiction writing about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The authors argue that young people’s speculative fiction writing about AI not only helps make visible the ways they imagine the impacts of emerging technologies and the modes of collective action available for leveraging, resisting or countering them but also the frictions and fissures between the two.

Design/methodology/approach

This practitioner research study used data from student artifacts (speculative fiction stories, prewriting and relevant unit work) as well as classroom fieldnotes. The authors used inductive coding to identify emergent patterns in the ways young people wrote about AI and civics, as well as deductive coding using digital civic ecologies framework.

Findings

The findings of this study spotlight both the breadth of intractable civic concerns that young people associate with AI, as well as the limitations of the civic frameworks for imagining political interventions to these challenges. Importantly, they also indicate that the process of speculative writing itself can help reconcile this disjuncture by opening space to dwell in, rather than resolve, the tensions between “the speculative” and the “civic.”

Practical implications

Teachers might use speculative fiction writing and the digital civic ecologies framework to support students in critically examining possible AI futures and effective civic actions within them.

Originality/value

Speculative fiction writing offers an avenue for students to analyze the growing civic concerns posed by emerging platform technologies like AI.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 November 2023

Joanna Batt and Michael Lee Joseph

Conversations around diversity, race and science fiction and fantasy films/television have sparked in response to recent casting decisions made in the upcoming live-action The

Abstract

Purpose

Conversations around diversity, race and science fiction and fantasy films/television have sparked in response to recent casting decisions made in the upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi (Deggans, 2022; Romano, 2022). Backlash against casting of actors of Color in these genres highlights racial projects where a cultural memory of whiteness comes up against multicultural change. The authors of this paper feel that there is great potential in using current-day racial issues around fantasy films/television to explore these racial projects with students in social studies classes (Omi and Winant, 2014).

Design/methodology/approach

Using a qualitative textual analysis (Peräkylä, 2005), the authors examined online news media outlets addressing the casting of actors of Color in the aforementioned media pieces. After reviewing over twenty articles, the authors determined two major themes that would serve as the findings.

Findings

In this paper, themes of nostalgia for an imagined ‘way things were’ and future-based fears of how things will become emerged from the analysis, revealing a need for engaging students in the history of sci-fi and fantasy media, and the existing, diverse histories of storytelling featuring multiple races.

Originality/value

The authors argue that examining racial projects found in contemporary sci-fi and fantasy casting are chances for students to understand complex racial histories and how they blend into current-day cultural landscapes, and are opportunities to practice analysis of real-life racial histories and richly-imagined fantasy worlds, noticing how and why the two often collide when it comes to race.

Details

Social Studies Research and Practice, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1933-5415

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 June 2022

Tetiana Hranchak, Nicholas Dease and Irene Lopatovska

This study aims to determine college/university students’ mobile phone practices to understand key user preferences and set a baseline understanding for the development of…

318

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to determine college/university students’ mobile phone practices to understand key user preferences and set a baseline understanding for the development of prospective library informational mobile services.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on the results of an online-survey method. The authors recruited students majoring in the Information Science program in School of Information at Pratt Institute (USA) (74 participants) and in Kyiv National University of Cultural and Arts (Ukraine) (89 participants).

Findings

The general trends in the use of mobile technologies by American and Ukrainian students were identified. Key components of library mobile services are offered. Such services may include information and reference service via messengers; development of library mobile applications of audio and video content; access to educational, scientific, popular science literature and fiction; and supplementing online services with library chatbots.

Research limitations/implications

This study was limited to only students majoring in information science at university; however, the data obtained helps outline several general trends common to student youth who are actively working with information.

Practical implications

The obtained results will be useful in the practical activities of libraries and other information institutions for the development of a comprehensive information service based on mobile technology.

Originality/value

This study contributes to understanding how to improve library informational service considering users habits and preferences. Libraries management and librarians can use the findings as a basis for prioritizing the improvement of library informational mobile service.

Details

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, vol. 73 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9342

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 16 November 2023

M. Paola Ometto, Michael Lounsbury and Joel Gehman

How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of…

Abstract

How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of many new technologies. In this chapter, we study the emergence of the US nanotechnology field, focusing on uncovering the mechanisms by which leaders of the National Nanotechnology Initiative managed hype and its concomitant legitimacy challenges which threatened the commercial viability of nanotechnology. Drawing on the cultural entrepreneurship literature at the interface of strategy and organization theory, we argue that the construction of a naturalizing frame – a frame that focuses attention and practice on mundane, “rationalized” activity – is key to legitimating a novel and uncertain technological field. Leveraging the insights from our case study, we further develop a staged process model of how a naturalizing frame may be constructed, thereby paving the way for a decrease in hype and the institutionalization of new technologies.

Details

Organization Theory Meets Strategy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-869-0

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 October 2023

Peter Tarlow

This paper aims to discuss the complexity of predicting the future and of making tourism futuristic predictions. It argues that tourism cannot be separated from the world context…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to discuss the complexity of predicting the future and of making tourism futuristic predictions. It argues that tourism cannot be separated from the world context in which it operates and explores the various impacts of tourism on people and planet both in a near and more distant future.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper revises several reports and research by world economic and tourism authorities as they provide arguments for the study of trends and the complexity of the evolution of the travel and tourism industry.

Findings

There is no certain way to know what the future will bring to the tourism industry or how it will interact with society and the physical environment. What the author does know is that from the beginning of time, events do not occur in isolation and that travel and tourism will impact everything that it touches. It is impossible to make exact predictions as to what tourism will be like in the near and distant future, what the author does know is that humans will want to travel, to explore and to learn, and this desire will interact not only with tourism but with the course of history.

Originality/value

By exploring the evolution of tourism in the context of science, the author cannot even be certain where tourism will occur, if only on the same planet, within the other planets of the solar system or in the vastness of space. Science fiction predicts the latter, but only the unfolding of history will teach of the accuracy of future predictions and how the future of travel will be.

Details

Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, vol. 15 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-4217

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Courageous Companions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-987-1

1 – 10 of 343