Governing and societal media for building resilience: A sociocybernetic study of the disaster recovery in Japan

How can society deal with a severe disaster that entails wide-ranging societal problems? This article aims to elaborate a sociocybernetic approach to describe and improve collective efforts which are tackling such problems. First, a concept of ‘governing’ will be introduced to describe efforts of not only public actors but also private actors. A case study of recovery efforts which were made in response to the large-scale disasters in 1995 and 2011 in Japan shows that governing can and needs to be empowered by the media. Focusing on one disaster-hit area in Japan, this article examines in what way and to what extent the media (the mass media and the Internet) supported local non-profit organizations (NPOs) working for their communities. The supportive use of the media will be defined as ‘societal media’. Making use of these key terms (governing and societal media), this article concludes that combining a variety of efforts with the supportive use of media is an essential component of building resilience in contemporary society.

Download Full-text

Inconsistent XML as a barrier to reuse of Open Access Content

Proceedings of the Impromptu JATS User Group Meeting ◽

10.4242/balisagevol12.mietchen01 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Mietchen ◽

Chris Maloney ◽

Nils Dagsson Moskopp

Keyword(s):

Open Access ◽

Text Mining ◽

Large Scale ◽

Specific Content ◽

Current State ◽

The Media ◽

Media Types ◽

Machine Readable

In this paper, we will describe the current state of some of the tagging of articles within the PMC Open Access subset. As a case study, we will use our experiences developing the Open Access Media Importer, a tool to harvest content from the OA subset for automated upload to Wikimedia Commons. Tagging inconsistencies stretch across several aspects of the articles, ranging from licensing to keywords to the media types of supplementary materials. While all of these complicate large-scale reuse, the unclear licensing statements had the greatest impact, requiring us to implement text mining-like algorithms in order to accurately determine whether or not specific content was compatible with reuse on Wikimedia Commons. Besides presenting examples of incorrectly tagged XML from a range of publishers, we will also explore past and current efforts towards standardization of license tagging, and we will describe a set of recommendations related to tagging practices of certain data, to ensure that it is both compatible with existing standards, and consistent and machine-readable.

Download Full-text

Emergency Operating Centre Response to Media Blame Assignation: A Case Study of an Emergent EOC

Disaster Prevention and Management An International Journal ◽

10.1108/09653569410064976 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 7-17 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Henry W. Fischer ◽

Valerie J. Harr

Keyword(s):

Research Literature ◽

Organizational Response ◽

News Stories ◽

Field Team ◽

Post Impact ◽

The Media ◽

Gathering Data ◽

Emergency Operating ◽

Made In

A three‐person field team devoted four days to gathering data in Andover, Kansas, USA, after a tornado devastated the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park on 26 April 1991. They sought to assess the extent to which the media′s reporting of the local emergency management team′s response to the disaster influenced the team′s subsequent decisions. The researchers functioned as participant observers in the emergency operating centre (EOC), informally interviewed principal EOC members and media personnel, and obtained copies of media news stories (television and newspaper) which reported on the organizational response to the disaster. Assesses the observation and interview data as well as the content analysis of the news stories and suggests that the EOC team devoted a considerable portion of their time to responding to the negative press they received centring around two issues: pre‐impact warning and post‐impact debris clearance. Some of the media′s news stories sought to engage in blame assignation. The EOC members devoted time to developing strategies to control the media damage and changed some decisions they had made in response to the media′s criticism. The relevant disaster research literature is utilized to explain the response of the EOC personnel and the media. Reliance on normal time roles explains the EOC response to blame assignation.

Download Full-text

The way to analyse ‘way’: A case study in word-specific local grammar

International Journal of Lexicography ◽

10.1093/ijl/ecz005 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 247-269 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patrick Hanks ◽

Sara Može

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

20Th Century ◽

Empirical Analysis ◽

Large Scale ◽

The Other ◽

Lexical Analysis ◽

Syntactic Theory ◽

Local Grammar ◽

Made In

Abstract Traditionally, dictionaries are meaning-driven—that is, they list different senses (or supposed senses) of each word, but do not say much about the phraseology that distinguishes one sense from another. Grammars, on the other hand, are structure-driven: they attempt to describe all possible structures of a language, but say little about meaning, phraseology, or collocation. In both disciplines during the 20th century, the practice of inventing evidence rather than discovering it led to intermittent and unpredictable distortions of fact. Since 1987, attempts have been made in both lexicography (Cobuild) and syntactic theory (pattern grammar, construction grammar) to integrate meaning and phraseology. Corpora now provide empirical evidence on a large scale for lexicosyntactic description, but there is still a long way to go. Many cherished beliefs must be abandoned before a synthesis between empirical lexical analysis and grammatical theory can be achieved. In this paper, by empirical analysis of just one word (the noun way), we show how corpus evidence can be used to tackle the complexities of lexical and constructional meaning, providing new insights into the lexis-grammar interface.

Download Full-text

Cyberspace as a Tool of Contemporary Propaganda

Safety & Defense ◽

10.37105/sd.72 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 95-108

Author(s):

Grzegorz Pilarski

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Research Methods ◽

Significant Role ◽

The Internet ◽

Contemporary Society ◽

The Media ◽

Research Analysis ◽

Internet And Social Media

The scientific deliberation presented in this article concerns the use of cyberspace in contemporary propaganda activities. The aim of the analysis is to identify propaganda activities and to state the role of cyberspace as an indispensable element for its existence. The following research methods were applied in the research: analysis, synthesis, abstracting, generalization, and a case study. The case study presented in this article, concerning the identification of propaganda activities based on the engagement of Germany in the issue of refugees from Syria, perfectly points to the significance and possibilities offered by cyberspace in the realization of the activities in question and attaining the set goals. The results obtained from the research underline the significant role of cyberspace in contemporary society where the success of propaganda is conditioned by the use of tools which allow to appeal to a vast group of recipients through the media, the Internet, and social media. The presented deliberation indicates that cyberspace with all its elements is a prerequisite for the success of propaganda activities conducted nowadays.

Download Full-text

Working with the homeless: The case of a non-profit organisation in Shanghai

Local Economy The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit ◽

10.1177/0269094212437011 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 27 (4) ◽

pp. 373-387

Author(s):

Heather Xiaoquan Zhang ◽

Jimmy McWhinney

Keyword(s):

Social Issue ◽

Homeless People ◽

Active Citizenship ◽

Complex Dynamic ◽

Public And Private ◽

Non Profit ◽

The Public ◽

Official Policy ◽

Private Actors

This article addresses a two-pronged objective, namely to bring to the fore a much neglected social issue of homelessness, and to explore the dynamics of state-society relations in contemporary China, through a case study of a non-profit organisation (NPO) working with the homeless in Shanghai. It shows that the largely invisible homelessness in Chinese cities was substantially due to exclusionary institutions, such as the combined household registration and ‘detention and deportation’ systems. Official policy has become much more supportive since 2003 when the latter was replaced with government-run shelters, but we argue that the NPO case demonstrates the potential for enhanced longer-term support and enabling active citizenship for homeless people. By analysing the ways in which the NPO offers services through collaboration and partnership with the public (and private) actors, we also argue that the transformations in post-reform China and the changes within the state and civil society have significantly blurred their boundaries, rendering state-society relations much more complex, dynamic, fluid and mutually embedded.

Download Full-text

Religious Communication as A Mass Communication:A Case Study of Effective Da'wah in The Contemporary Society

Ulum Islamiyyah ◽

10.33102/uij.vol12no.218 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

pp. 127-143

Author(s):

Lateef Kayode Adeyemo

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Development ◽

Human Life ◽

Group Discussion ◽

Physical Development ◽

Contemporary Society ◽

Modern Time ◽

Religious Communication ◽

Norms And Values ◽

The Media

Religion has continued to be a very important aspect of human life from the very beginning of time. It has equally continued all through the ages to influence the forms of people life in their respective communities. It is a major determinant of their culture as ivell as their norms and values, indeed, their worldview. If there are issues held so dare by people to their heart, religion is therefore one of those things. According to Islam, about 124,000 Prophets and apostles/messengers were sent by Allah (God) to communicate His will to people. What is religious communication? What kinds of its forms and configurations? What purpose is it meant to serve? What do we mean by da 'wah and what are the principles and factors of effective da 'wah particularly as relates to modern time and contemporary society? In what follows hereunder, attempt is made to proffer answers to the above questions. Analytical survey of data collected through the media of interview, focus group discussion and review of library collections are made and conclusion is drawn from the findings availed by the study. The findings show that there shall continue to be imbalance and misplacement of priority as long as man fails to recognize the fact that just as he needs food and water for his physical development and growth, he equally stand in need of al-hidayah (Divine Guidance ofAllah) for his spiritual development and growth as well. For injustice, oppression and suppression, adultery and fornication, anarchy and chaos, ignorance and superstition, internecine warfare, animism and barbarism, dissoluteness and wanton conviviality shall continue to be the order of the day if he neglects this all-important communications.

Download Full-text

An historical perspective on ensemble performance

10.1093/oso/9780198860761.003.0022 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 175-181

Author(s):

Christopher Terepin

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

String Quartet ◽

Large Scale ◽

Historical Perspective ◽

Theoretical Context ◽

Ensemble Performance ◽

Made In ◽

The Way

Recordings made in the early part of the twentieth century suggest a great deal of historical diversity in musicians’ attitudes to ensemble performance. The ensemble style of the Czech (formerly Bohemian) String Quartet, traces of which were captured on record in the 1920s, offers an intriguing example of an approach to “togetherness” that is strikingly unlike that of our own time. Drawing on their recording of the Lento movement of Dvorak’s famous String Quartet in F Op.96, this case study investigates aspects of the Czech Quartet’s unusual ensemble playing, and in particular the way they combine expressive asynchrony with coordinated, large-scale shaping strategies. By situating these practices in aesthetic and theoretical context, this chapter shows how the evidence of early recordings might contribute valuable nuance to our understanding of the conventions of (good) ensemble performance.

Download Full-text

A Family With Autosomal-Dominant Progressive Sensorineural Hearing Loss

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/1059-0889.0501.23 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 23-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Chris Halpin ◽

Barbara Herrmann ◽

Margaret Whearty

Keyword(s):

Speech Production ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Role Models ◽

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Large Scale ◽

Speech Language Pathology ◽

The Family ◽

Patient Will ◽

Language Pathology

The family described in this article provides an unusual opportunity to relate findings from genetic, histological, electrophysiological, psychophysical, and rehabilitative investigation. Although the total number evaluated is large (49), the known, living affected population is smaller (14), and these are spread from age 20 to age 59. As a result, the findings described above are those of a large-scale case study. Clearly, more data will be available through longitudinal study of the individuals documented in the course of this investigation but, given the slow nature of the progression in this disease, such studies will be undertaken after an interval of several years. The general picture presented to the audiologist who must rehabilitate these cases is that of a progressive cochlear degeneration that affects only thresholds at first, and then rapidly diminishes speech intelligibility. The expected result is that, after normal language development, the patient may accept hearing aids well, encouraged by the support of the family. Performance and satisfaction with the hearing aids is good, until the onset of the speech intelligibility loss, at which time the patient will encounter serious difficulties and may reject hearing aids as unhelpful. As the histological and electrophysiological results indicate, however, the eighth nerve remains viable, especially in the younger affected members, and success with cochlear implantation may be expected. Audiologic counseling efforts are aided by the presence of role models and support from the other affected members of the family. Speech-language pathology services were not considered important by the members of this family since their speech production developed normally and has remained very good. Self-correction of speech was supported by hearing aids and cochlear implants (Case 5’s speech production was documented in Perkell, Lane, Svirsky, & Webster, 1992). These patients received genetic counseling and, due to the high penetrance of the disease, exhibited serious concerns regarding future generations and the hope of a cure.

Download Full-text