Narratives of a race: how the media judged a presidential debate

The first debate in 2008 was a turning point in the presidential electioncampaign: a race that was close before the debate turned decisively inObama’s favor following it. This article explores how the media reachedtheir verdict that “Obama won.” We examine two aspects of this problem:how, in practice, the media reached this verdict and whether they madethe right decision from a normative standpoint. Based on content analysisof debate transcripts, we argue that the media interpreted the debate bysynthesizing three pre-debate narratives in roughly equal proportions.Crucially, two of these narratives favored Obama. We also find that the“Obama won” verdict was consistent with what we might expect had thedebate been judged by a public-spirited umpire.

The leaders and the press

Overall, as in 2001 and 2004, the print media provided substantial coverage of the election campaign; and, as in recent campaigns, the Prime Minister received greater coverage than the Opposition Leader. As in previous campaign coverage a small number of topics—including opinion polling—generated the majority of stories. Two features were different in the 2007 campaign, namely the gradual increase in the number of positive stories about the Opposition Leader; and an increase in the number of negative stories about and unflattering images of the Prime Minister.

Investigation of educator adoption of knowledge media

Human development has occurred against a timeline that has seen the creation of and diffusion of one innovation after another. These innovations range from language to complex computing and information technologies. The latter are assisting with the distribution of information, and extend to the distribution of the human species beyond the planet Earth. From early times, information has been published and mostly for a fee to the publisher. The absorption and use of information has had a high priority in most societies from early times, and has become institutionalised in universities and institutes of technical learning. For most in Western societies, education is now a matter of ‘lifelong learning’. Today, we see higher education institutions, worldwide, adapting their organisational structures and operating procedures and forming strategic alliances with communications content providers and carriers as well as with information technology companies. Modern educational institutes seek productivity and efficiency. Many also seek to differentiate themselves from competitors. Technological convergence is often seen by management to be a saviour in many educational organisations. It is hoped that lower capital and recurrent costs can be achieved, and that competitors in an increasingly globalised industry can be held at bay by strategic use of knowledge media (Eisenstadt, 1995) commonly associated with distance education in the campus setting. Knowledge media set up costs, intellectual property costs and training costs for staff and students are often so high as to make their use not viable for Australian institutes of higher education. Against this backdrop, one might expect greater educator and student use of publisher produced textbooks and digital enhancements to the textbook, particularly those involved in distance education. A major issue is whether or not the timing of instructor adoption of converging information technology and communications technologies aligns with the wishes of both higher education management and government, and with those who seek commercial gain from the diffusion and adoption of such technologies. Also at issue is whether or not it is possible to explain variance in stated intentions to recommend adoption of new learning technologies in higher education and implementation. Will there occur educator recommendation for adoption of individual knowledge media such as World Wide Web access to study materials by students? And what will be the form of this tool and others used in higher education? This thesis reports on more recent changes in the technological environment and seeks to contribute to an understanding of the factors that lead to a willingness, or unwillingness, on the part of higher education instructors, as influencers and content providers, to utilise these technologies. As such, it is a diffusion study which seeks to fill a gap in the literature. Diffusion studies typically focus on predicting adoption based on characteristics of the potential adopter. Few studies examine the relationship between characteristics of the innovation and adoption. Nearly all diffusion studies involve what is termed discontinuous innovation (Robertson, 1971). That is, the innovation involves adoptees in a major departure from previous practice. This study seeks to examine the relationship between previous experience of related technologies and adoption or rejection of dynamically continuous innovation. Continuous and dynamically continuous innovations are the most numerous in the real world, yet they are numerically the least scrutinised by way of academic research. Moreover, the three-year longitudinal study of educators in Australian and New Zealand meets important criteria laid down by researchers Tornatzky and Klein (1982) and Rogers (1995), that are often not met by similar studies. In particular the study examines diffusion as it is unfolding, rather than selectively examining a single innovation and after the fact, thus avoiding a possible pro-innovation bias. The study examines the situation for both ‘all educators’ and ‘marketing / management educators’ alone in seeking to meet the following aim: Establish if intended adopters of specific knowledge media have had more experience of other computer-based technologies than have those not intending to adopt said knowledge media. The analytical phase entails use of factor analysis and discriminant analysis to conclude that it is possible to discriminate adopters of selected knowledge media based on previous use of related technologies. The study does not find any generalised factor that enables such discrimination among educators. Thus the study supports the literature in part, but fails to find generalised factors that enable unambiguous prediction of knowledge media adoption or otherwise among each grouping of educators examined. The implications are that even in the case of related products and services (continuous or dynamically continuous innovation), there is not statistical certainty that prior usage of related products or technologies is related to intentions to use knowledge media in the future. In this regard, the present study might be said to confirm the view that Rogers and Shoemaker's (1971) conceptualisation of perceived innovation characteristics may only apply to discontinuous innovations (Stratton, Lumpkin & Vitell, 1997). The implications for stakeholders such as higher education management is that when seeking to appoint new educators or existing staff to knowledge media project teams, there is some support for the notion that those who already use World Wide Web based technologies are likely to take these technologies into teaching situations. The same claim cannot be made for computer software use in general, nor Internet use in general.

Reverse ascertainment bias in microsatellite allelic diversity in owls (Aves, Strigiformes)

A rich source of markers may be overlooked by screening for polymorphism in the source species only. We screened 129 microsatellite loci isolated from the powerful owl (Ninox strenua) against two closely related species; Ninox  connivens and Ninox novaeseelandiae. From the screening effort 20 polymorphic markers were isolated, including six loci which were originally discarded as they were monomorphic in the source species. Further cross-species amplification of all 20 loci across species from two families, Strigidae and Tytonidae, revealed unusually high levels of polymorphism within closely related species, and limited success within phylogenetically distant species. Routine screening of multiple  species during the marker development phase can yield a wider range of  polymorphic markers which can subsequently enhance cross-species  amplification attempts.

Law-and-order politics, public-opinion polls, and the media

Over the past two decades, considerable political rhetoric has focused on the need to get tough on crime. Justification for this hard-line approach has been the public's apparent concem about rising crime rates and its increasing dissatisfaction with criminal sentencing. In this paper, we consider characteristics both of the measurement of public opinion and of the influences upon public opinion that may contribute to the depiction of a fearful, punitive community. In particular, we identify sources of bias in the methods and contexts of opinion-polling that promote a distorted representation of the discrepancy between community expectations of sentencing and the practices of the judiciary. We argue that the practices of pollsters, politicians, and media combine to create a self-sustaining obstacle to considered community discussion of crime and criminal sentencing.

The inclusion of ‘then-test’ questions in post-test questionnaires alters post-test responses: a randomized study of bias in health program evaluation

Objectives Program evaluations are frequently based on ‘then-test’ data, i.e., pre-test collected in retrospect. While the application of the then-test has practical advantages, little is known about the validity of then-test data. Because of the collection of then-test in close proximity to post-test questions, this study was aimed at exploring whether the presence of then-test questions in post-test questionnaires influenced subjects’ responses to post-test.
Patients and methods To test the influence of then-test questions, we designed a randomized three-group study in the context of chronic disease self-management programs. Interventions had comparable goals and philosophies, and all 949 study participants filled out identical Health Education Impact Questionnaires (heiQ) at pre-test. At post-test, participants were then randomized to one of the following three groups: Group A responded to post-test questions only (n = 331); Group B filled out transition questions in addition to post-test (n = 304); and Group C filled out then-test questions in addition to post-test (n = 314).
Results Significant post-test differences were found in six of eight heiQ scales, with respondents who filled out then test questions reporting significantly higher post-test scores than respondents of the other groups.
Conclusions This study provides evidence that the inclusion of then-test questions alters post-test responses,
suggesting that change scores based on then-test data be interpreted with care.

Improving reliability of unbalanced text mining by reducing performance bias

Class imbalance in textual data is one important factor that affects the reliability of text mining. For imbalanced textual data, conventional classifiers tend to have a strong performance bias, which results in high accuracy rate on the majority class but very low rate on the minorities. An extreme strategy for unbalanced learning is to discard the majority instances and apply one-class classification to the minority class. However, this could easily cause another type of bias, which increases the accuracy rate on minorities by sacrificing the majorities. This chapter aims to investigate approaches that reduce these two types of performance bias and improve the reliability of discovered classification rules. Experimental results show that the inexact field learning method and parameter optimized one class classifiers achieve more balanced performance than the standard approaches.

Unis accused of 'elite bias' in enrolments

Australia’s elite universities are biased against taking disadvantaged students for fear it will lower their prestigious image, an Adelaide academic says.

Anger at schools' Christian 'bias'

Buddhist community leader Dr Sue Smith has complained of the ''Christian bias'' in religious education in Victoria, saying if her group had access to government funding, they too could expand to hundreds of schools.

One tweet does not a revolution make : technological determinism, media and social change

This paper discusses the problematic influence of technological determinism in popular news media coverage and analysis of the Arab Spring events of 2010-11.

The purpose is to develop insights into how and why elements of a ‘soft’ technological determinism inflect both journalistic practice and news discourse in relation to the Arab Spring. In particular it discusses how the ‘bias of convenience’ and a journalistic obsession with the ‘continuous present’ connect with this determinist inflection to create a potential distortion in the journalists’ ‘first rough draft’ of history in relation to significant and complex events such as social revolution.

Reptile responses to fire and the risk of post-disturbance sampling bias

Altered fire regimes are a driver of biodiversity decline. To plan effective management, we need to know how species are influenced by fire and to develop theory describing fire responses. Animal responses to fire are usually measured using methods that rely on animal activity, but animal activity may vary with time since fire, potentially biasing results. Using a novel approach for detecting bias in the pit-fall trap method, we found that leaf-litter dependent reptiles were more active up to 6 weeks after fire, giving a misleading impression of abundance. This effect was not discovered when modelling detectability with zero-inflated binomial models. Two species without detection bias showed early-successional responses to time since fire, consistent with a habitat-accommodation succession model. However, a habitat specialist did not have the predicted low abundance after fire due to increased post-fire movement and non-linear recovery of a key habitat component. Interactions between fire and other processes therefore must be better understood to predict reptile responses to changing fire-regimes. We conclude that there is substantial bias when trapping reptiles after fire, with species that are otherwise hard to detect appearing to be abundant. Studies that use a survey method based on animal activity such as bird calls or animal movements, likely face a similar risk of bias when comparing recently-disturbed with control sites.