Protect the Filter Bubbles

In 2018, Knight v. Trump sparked discussion about the boundaries between government and citizen speech on social media. Some scholars argued that the courts erred in their decision to characterize the speech in question as government speech. Others argued that the court decided correctly and claimed that the use of forum analysis was necessary to protect both the health of our democracy and the First Amendment rights of social media users. Within the context of algorithmic curation of social media feeds, this article argues that (1) social media platforms are not designated public forums due to the algorithmic curation of online user speech, (2) due to this, the public forum doctrine should not have been applied to the Knight v. Trump case, (3) despite this, user speech rights should be protected online. It also reviews proposed models of thinking that could address unresolved issues of the case.

Understanding patient needs and gaps in radiology reports through online discussion forum analysis

Our objective is to investigate patient needs and understand information gaps in radiology reports using patient questions that were posted on online discussion forums. We leveraged online question and answer platforms to collect questions posted by patients to understand current gaps and patient needs. We retrieved six hundred fifty-nine (659) questions using the following sites: Yahoo Answers, Reddit.com, Quora, and Wiki Answers. The questions retrieved were analyzed and the major themes and topics were identified. The questions retrieved were classified into eight major themes. The themes were related to the following topics: radiology report, safety, price, preparation, procedure, meaning, medical staff, and patient portal. Among the 659 questions, 35.50% were concerned with the radiology report. The most common question topics in the radiology report focused on patient understanding of the radiology report (62 of 234 [26.49%]), image visualization (53 of 234 [22.64%]), and report representation (46 of 234 [19.65%]). We also found that most patients were concerned about understanding the MRI report (32%; n = 143) compared with the other imaging modalities (n = 434). Using online discussion forums, we discussed major unmet patient needs and information gaps in radiology reports. These issues could be improved to enhance radiology design in the future.

Research Topics on Educational Data Mining in MOOCS

Educational Data Mining Techniques have been widely used in MOOC environments to conduct different educational analyzes. In this context, a systematic mapping was conducted in five databases in order to verify which aspects of studies are inherent to the use of Educational Data Mining in MOOCs. The search comprised the period from 2015 to 2019, and 253 searches were found, out of this total, 133 studies were selected. The results revealed that studies on performance analysis, behavior analysis, forum analysis and implementation of recommendation systems are the most frequent themes.

Twirling Triplets: The Qualia of Rotation and Musical Rhythm

While musicologists have long noted that triplet rhythms evoke sensations of rotation in listeners, no theory has been proposed to account for this apparent association. To investigate this phenomenon, 33 excerpts of “spinning, rotating, twirling, or swirling” music were crowd-sourced from an online discussion forum. Analysis revealed a prominence of fast, repeated, isochronous patterns using stepwise pitch movement, with significantly more compound meters than generally found in Western music. Inspired by ecological acoustics, an Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds (ETRoS) is proposed to explain these associations. The theory maps patterns of loudness fluctuations to trajectories of rotating sound sources. Two experiments tested the theory. In Experiment A, listeners rated how much binary, ternary, quaternary, and quinary figures (of 2–5 notes) evoked sensations of rotation. Experiment B used a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm pitting ecological quaternary stimuli (strong-medium-weak-medium) against unecological stimuli with permuted stress values more typical of Western music (strong-weak-medium-weak). Results indicate that perceived rotation increases with tempo and is poorly evoked by binary rhythms. Loudness patterns consistent with rotating trajectories were perceived as more rotating than unecological patterns—but only when pitch was also moving. Altogether, moderate support is provided for an acoustic-ecological account of rotating sounds.