Performing microcelebrity: Analyzing Papi Jiang's online persona through stance and style

ABSTRACT Contemporary digital media is characterized by a cultural logic of participation that encourages sharing, confession, phatic communication, and an emphasis on the visual. In this techno-cultural milieu, self-presentation has become a key mode of communication, and has enabled ordinary individuals to attain a measure of celebrity status. A key component of being a microcelebrity entails developing a consistent persona that is recognizable and unique. How such persona can be studied from the sociolinguistic perspective of stance and style is the focus of this article. We combined corpus linguistic and qualitative discourse analytic methods to examine a small corpus of videos produced by Chinese online celebrity, Papi Jiang. The article presents key lexico-grammatical, discourse-level, and non-linguistic resources that are analyzed as stance markers that together contribute to Papi's intense, critical-satirical performative style. The significance of the findings is discussed in relation to performance, performativity, and critique in digital media. (Persona, microcelebrity, style, performance, stance)*

Some identities involving Gauss sums

<abstract><p>We calculate several identities involving some Gauss sums of the $ 2^k $-order character modulo an odd prime $ p $ by using the elementary and analytic methods, and finally give several exact and interesting formulae for them. The properties of the classical Gauss sums play an important role in the proof of this paper.</p></abstract>

ELEGIES FOR THE PROPHET'S FAMILY BY CONTEMPORARY LEBANESE CHRISTIAN POETS

The study discusses elegiac poetry on the Prophet's family composed by Lebanese poets belonging to the Christian community there. We chose a selection of writings by four contemporary Christian poets: Joseph al-Hāshim, Paul Salāma, Raymond Qasīs and Joseph al-Ḥarb. The study opens with a discussion of the meaning of elegies as a human, social and individual poetic object, that has been cultivated by poets since pre-Islamic times. Next, the study discusses the reason why the Prophet's family has been the subject of so many elegies, namely the important position this family occupied among poets. Subsequently we discuss why Christian poets in Lebanon have composed numerous elegies for members of the Prophet's family, especially ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and his son al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, namely the fact that elegies constitute a unique human phenomenon that is in keeping with divine teachings, especially concerning the Prophet's family. The study uses both descriptive and analytic methods.

On the classical Gauss sums and their some new identities

<abstract><p>In this paper, we use the analytic methods and the properties of the classical Gauss sums to study the calculating problems of some Gauss sums involving the character of order $ 12 $ modulo an odd prime $ p $, and obtain several new and interesting identities for them.</p></abstract>

Another Perspective of the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test – Part II: A Quantitative Review

Reference [1] presented pooled data for the specificity of the M-FAST cut-off, but ignored or excluded data based on poor justifications and used questionable analytic methods. The analyses here corrected the problems associated with [1]. No moderator substantively influenced sensitivity values. Therefore, sensitivity values were pooled across all studies (k = 25) to provide an overall estimate. Overall, the average sensitivity of the M-FAST cut-off was estimated to be 0.87, 95% CI [0.80, 0.91], and 80% of true sensitivity values were estimated to range from 0.63 to 0.96. Thus, there could be methodological scenarios when the M-FAST cut-off may not operate efficiently. Average specificity values for the M-FAST cut-off were moderated by one variable: the comparison group. On average, specificity values for clinical comparison (k = 15) groups (i.e., 0.80, 95% CI [0.73, 0.85]) were lower than specificity values for non-clinical comparison (k = 11) groups (i.e., 0.96, 95% CI [0.89, 0.99]). Unlike the CIs, the estimated distributions of true specificity values for the two subgroups overlapped, which suggests there could be scenarios when these subgroups share the same true specificity value. The M-FAST was designed to be a screener to detect potential feigning of psychiatric symptoms. An examinee is never to be designating as feigning or malingering psychiatric symptoms based on only a positive M-FAST result. As a screening instrument, the results here show that the M-FAST cut-off is operating adequately overall and negate the conclusions of [1].

Moving Beyond Processing and Analysis-Related Variation in Neuroscience

When fields lack consensus standards and ground truths for their analytic methods, reproducibility tends to be more of an ideal than a reality. Such has been the case for functional neuroimaging, where there exists a sprawling space of tools from which scientists can construct processing pipelines and draw interpretations. We provide a critical evaluation of the impact of differences observed in results across five independently developed functional MRI minimal preprocessing pipelines. We show that even when handling the same exact data, inter-pipeline agreement was only moderate, with the specific steps that contribute to the lack of agreement varying across pipeline comparisons. Using a densely sampled test-retest dataset, we show that the limitations imposed by inter-pipeline agreement mainly become appreciable when the reliability of the underlying data is high. We highlight the importance of comparison among analytic tools and parameters, as both widely debated (e.g., global signal regression) and commonly overlooked (e.g., MNI template version) decisions were each found to lead to marked variation. We provide recommendations for incorporating tool-based variability in functional neuroimaging analyses and a supporting infrastructure.

In praise of Table 1: The importance of making better use of descriptive statistics

As data analytic methods in the managerial sciences become more sophisticated, the gap between the descriptive data typically presented in Table 1 and the analyses used to test the principal hypotheses advanced has become increasingly large. This contributes to several problems including: (1) the increasing likelihood that analyses presented in published research will be performed and/or interpreted incorrectly, (2) an increasing reliance on statistical significance as the principal criterion for evaluating results, and (3) the increasing difficulty of describing our research and explaining our findings to non-specialists. A set of simple methods for assessing whether hypotheses about interventions, moderator relationships and mediation, are plausible that are based on the simplest possible examination of descriptive statistics are proposed.

Evaluation of Latent Models Assessing Physical Fitness and the Healthy Eating Index in Community Studies: Time-, Sex-, and Diabetes-Status Invariance

Accurate measurement requires assessment of measurement equivalence/invariance (ME/I) to demonstrate that the tests/measurements perform equally well and measure the same underlying constructs across groups and over time. Using structural equation modeling, the measurement properties (stability and responsiveness) of intervention measures used in a study of metabolic syndrome (MetS) treatment in primary care offices, were assessed. The primary study (N = 293; mean age = 59 years) had achieved 19% reversal of MetS overall; yet neither diet quality nor aerobic capacity were correlated with declines in cardiovascular disease risk. Factor analytic methods were used to develop measurement models and factorial invariance were tested across three time points (baseline, 3-month, 12-month), sex (male/female), and diabetes status for the Canadian Healthy Eating Index (2005 HEI-C) and several fitness measures combined (percentile VO2 max from submaximal exercise, treadmill speed, curl-ups, push-ups). The model fit for the original HEI-C was poor and could account for the lack of associations in the primary study. A reduced HEI-C and a 4-item fitness model demonstrated excellent model fit and measurement equivalence across time, sex, and diabetes status. Increased use of factor analytic methods increases measurement precision, controls error, and improves ability to link interventions to expected clinical outcomes.

Synopsis of Ozobryum (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta), and Sequential Bayes Evaluation of Genus Integrity

Ozobryum G. L. Merr., once synonymized with Molendoa Lindb., is recognized as a good genus of Pottiaceae based on evaluation of it as a distinctive dissilient genus. Populations from Mexico are described as a new species, O. mexicanum R. H. Zander. The species Anoectangium warburgii Crundw. & M. O. Hill is transferred to Ozobryum. The genus is synthetically evaluated as integral in respect to other genera of the Pleuroweisieae through combination of critical methods of probabilism, including scientific theory, Granger causation, and verificationism, and of evidentialism, including constructivism, likelihoodism, Bayesianism, and analytic methods of classical taxonomy.