scholarly journals From the unbelievable to the undeniable: Epistemological pluralism, or how conspiracy theorists legitimate their extraordinary truth claims

2019 ◽  
pp. 136754941988604
Author(s):  
Jaron Harambam ◽  
Stef Aupers
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Epistemic Authority ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Epistemological Pluralism ◽  
Mainstream Culture

Despite their stigma, conspiracy theories are hugely popular today and have pervaded mainstream culture. Increasingly, such theories expanded into large master schemes of deceit where ‘everything is connected’. Moving beyond discussions of their truthfulness, we study in this article how such ‘super conspiracy theories’ are made plausible. We strategically selected the case study of David Icke – a true celebrity in conspiracy circles and main proponent of such all-encompassing narratives – to analyze his discursive strategies of legitimation: How does he support and validate his extraordinary claims? It is our argument that Icke succeeds by exploiting multiple sources of epistemic authority; he draws eclectically on ‘experience’, ‘tradition’, ‘futuristic imageries’, ‘science’ and ‘social theory’ to convince his audience. In a Western culture without any full monopoly on truth, and for a people wary of mainstream authorities, it proves opportune to draw on a wide variety of epistemic sources when claiming knowledge.

Discursive strategies for disinformation on WhatsApp and Twitter during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Recuero ◽  
Felipe Soares ◽  
Otávio Vinhas
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Rational Explanation

This paper aims to analyze and compare the discursive strategies used to spread and legitimate disinformation on Twitter and WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. Our case study is the disinformation campaign used to discredit the electronic ballot that was used for the election. In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach that combined critical discourse analysis and a quantitative aggregate approach to discuss a dataset of 53 original tweets and 54 original WhatsApp messages. We focused on identifying the most used strategies in each platform. Our results show that: (1) messages on both platforms used structural strategies to portray urgency and create a negative emotional framing; (2) tweets often framed disinformation as a “rational” explanation; and, (3) while WhatsApp messages frequently relied on authorities and shared conspiracy theories, spreading less truthful stories than tweets.

Strategies Among Young Jehovah’s Witnesses in Compulsory School in Sweden, Age 13–15, a Case Study

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernilla Liedgren ◽  
Lars Andersson
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Jehovah’S Witnesses ◽  
Value System ◽  
Jehovah's Witnesses ◽  
A Value ◽  
Standing Up ◽  
Primary School Age ◽  
Mainstream Culture

This study investigated how young teenagers, as members of a strong religious organization, dealt with the school situation and the encounter with mainstream culture taking place at school during the final years in Swedish primary school (age 13–15 years). The purpose was to explore possible strategies that members of a minority group, in this case the Jehovah’s Witnesses, developed in order to deal with a value system differing from that of the group. We interviewed eleven former members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses about their final years in compulsory Swedish communal school. The ages of the interviewees ranged between 24 and 46 years, and the interviewed group comprised six men and five women. Nine of the eleven interviewees had grown up in the countryside or in villages. All but two were ethnic Swedes. The time that had passed since leaving the movement ranged from quite recently to 20 years ago. The results revealed three strategies; Standing up for Your Beliefs, Escaping, and Living in Two Worlds. The first two strategies are based on a One-World View, and the third strategy, Living in Two Worlds, implies a Two-World View, accepting to a certain extent both the Jehovah’s Witnesses outlook as well as that of ordinary society. The strategy Standing up for Your Beliefs can be described as straightforward, outspoken, and bold; the youngsters did not show any doubts about their belief. The second subgroup showed an unshakeable faith, but suffered psychological stress since their intentions to live according to their belief led to insecurity in terms of how to behave, and also left them quite isolated. These people reported more absence from school. The youngsters using the strategy Living in Two Worlds appeared to possess the ability to sympathize with both world views, and were more adaptable in different situations.

Polytechnic to Business Project (P2B) a Case of Innovation and Knowledge Transference

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-49
Author(s):  
Teresa Paiva
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Education Institution ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Transfer Model ◽  
Case Study Method ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Manage Innovation

Background: The theoretical background of this article is on the model developed of knowledge transfer between universities and the industry in order to access the best practices and adapt to the study case in question regarding the model of promoting and manage innovation within the universities that best contribute with solution and projects to the business field. Objective: The development of a knowledge transfer model is the main goal of this article, supported in the best practices known and, also, to reflect in the main measurement definitions to evaluate the High Education Institution performance in this area. Methods: The method for this article development is the case study method because it allows the fully understanding of the dynamics present within a single setting, and the subject examined to comprehend what is being done and what the dynamics mean. The case study does not have a data collection method, as it is a research that may rely on multiple sources of evidence and data which should be converged. Results: Since it’s a case study this article present a fully description of the model proposed and implemented for the knowledge transfer process of the institution. Conclusion: Still in a discussion phase, this article presents as conclusions some questions and difficulties that could be pointed out, as well as some good perspectives of performed activity developed.

scholarly journals Discursive Strategies and Sequenced Institutional Change: The Case of Marriage Equality in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110205
Author(s):  
Giulia Mariani ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Private Actors

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues to legitimize the process of institutional change to take off sequentially through layering, displacement, and conversion. We also pay special attention to how the discursive strategies deployed by LGBT advocates, religious-conservative organizations and other private actors created new opportunities to influence policy debates and tip the scales to their preferred policy outcome. The sequential perspective adopted in this study allows problematizing traditional conceptualizations of which actors support or contest the status quo, as enduring oppositional dynamics lead them to perform both roles in subsequent phases of the institutional change process.

scholarly journals Accessible Routes Integrating Data from Multiple Sources

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Miguel R. Luaces ◽  
Jesús A. Fisteus ◽  
Luis Sánchez-Fernández ◽  
Mario Munoz-Organero ◽  
Jesús Balado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Data Model ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Heterogeneous Data Sources ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Software Sensors ◽  
The City

Providing citizens with the ability to move around in an accessible way is a requirement for all cities today. However, modeling city infrastructures so that accessible routes can be computed is a challenge because it involves collecting information from multiple, large-scale and heterogeneous data sources. In this paper, we propose and validate the architecture of an information system that creates an accessibility data model for cities by ingesting data from different types of sources and provides an application that can be used by people with different abilities to compute accessible routes. The article describes the processes that allow building a network of pedestrian infrastructures from the OpenStreetMap information (i.e., sidewalks and pedestrian crossings), improving the network with information extracted obtained from mobile-sensed LiDAR data (i.e., ramps, steps, and pedestrian crossings), detecting obstacles using volunteered information collected from the hardware sensors of the mobile devices of the citizens (i.e., ramps and steps), and detecting accessibility problems with software sensors in social networks (i.e., Twitter). The information system is validated through its application in a case study in the city of Vigo (Spain).

scholarly journals Fieldwork on epistemic authority markers: What we can learn from different types of data

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Grzech
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Epistemic Modality ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Epistemic Authority ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
The Right To Know ◽  
Cognitive Study ◽  
The Right

AbstractEpistemicity in language encompasses various kinds of constructions and expressions that have to do with knowledge-related aspects of linguistic meaning (cf. Grzech, Karolina, Eva Schultze-Berndt and Henrik Bergqvist. 2020c. Knowing in interaction: an introduction. Folia Linguistica [this issue]). It includes some well-established categories, such as evidentiality and epistemic modality (Boye, Kasper. 2012. Epistemic meaning: A crosslinguistic and functional-cognitive study. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton), but also categories that have been less well described to-date. In this paper, I focus on one such category: the marking of epistemic authority, i.e. the encoding of “the right to know or claim” (Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada & Jakob Steensig. 2011b. Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In Stivers et al. 2011a). I explore how the marking of epistemic authority can be documented and analysed in the context of linguistic fieldwork. The discussion is based on a case study of Upper Napo Kichwa, a Quechuan language spoken in the Ecuadorian Amazon that exhibits a rich paradigm of epistemic discourse markers, encoding meanings related to epistemic authority and distribution of knowledge between discourse participants. I describe and appraise the methodology for epistemic fieldwork used in the Upper Napo Kichwa documentation and description project. I give a detailed account of the different tools and methods of data collection, showing their strengths and weaknesses. I also discuss the decisions made at the different stages of the project and their implications for data collection and analysis. In discussing these issues, I extrapolate from the case study, proposing practical solutions for fieldwork-based research on epistemic markers.

Relacyjno-symboliczne aspekty ubóstwa w dyskursie politycznym na temat programu „Rodzina 500+”. Przypadek tygodnika „Newsweek Polska”

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (274) ◽  
pp. 26-42
Author(s):  
Maciej Kostecki
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Social Program ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Social Politics ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology

The article shows relational-symbolic aspects of poverty in polish political discourse about flagship Law and Justice’s Party social program called “Family 500+”. Based on the case study of weekly newspaper Newsweek Polska the author stressed main discursive strategies such as demoralization, humiliation of poor people, lower class and unemployed people as a examples of individual blame explanations of poverty. Moreover article presents efforts of justifying inequalities as a result of neoliberal ideology and the vision of profligacy of public institutions due to social politics expenses.

scholarly journals Leveraging Business Data Analytics and Machine Learning Techniques for Competitive Advantage: Case Study Evidence from Small Businesses

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
Rathimala Kannan ◽  
Intan Soraya Rosdi ◽  
Kannan Ramakrishna ◽  
Haziq Riza Abdul Rasid ◽  
Mohamed Haryz Izzudin Mohamed Rafy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Data Analytics ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Machine Learning Techniques ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Business Data

Data analytics is the essential component in deriving insights from data obtained from multiple sources. It represents the technology, methods and techniques used to obtain insights from massive datasets. As data increases, companies are looking for ways to gain relevant business insights underneath layers of data and information, to help them better understand new business ventures, opportunities, business trends and complex challenges. However, to date, while the extensive benefits of business data analytics to large organizations are widely published, micro, small, and medium sized organisations have not fully grasped the potential benefits to be gained from data analytics using machine learning techniques. This study is guided by the research question of how data analytics using machine learning techniques can benefit small businesses. Using the case study method, this paper outlines how small businesses in two different industries i.e. healthcare and retail can leverage data analytics and machine learning techniques to gain competitive advantage from the data. Details on the respective benefits gained by the small business owners featured in the two case studies provide important answers to the research question.

Problematizing Motherhood

Glimpse ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-171
Author(s):  
Duygu Onay-Çöker ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Male Gaze ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Representations Of Women

In this paper, I focus on the representation of motherhood from a two-fold perspective by choosing the bestselling Turkish baby diapers advertisements as a case study of broadcasting in Turkish media. The first perspective analyzes the representation of motherhood by applying the concept of “Male Gaze” by Laura Mulvey, according to whom a woman is objectified by the male gaze and becomes a bearer of meaning rather than a maker of meaning. Further, the themes emerging from a careful reading of representations of women in advertisements of baby diapers are discussed. The second perspective consists of looking at discursive strategies of the term “motherhood” by problematizing the fact that baby diapers are always identified with women, thereby also reducing them to commodities in the market. The second perspective applies Julia Kristeva’s “The Semiotic Chora” to reveal the myths about motherhood created by the ruling ideology of the males, and to seek possible alternatives through that perspective.

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