Deconstruction-analysis-explanation:contextualization in professional digital discourse

It is already a truism that emerging communication technologies have changed the landscape of communication in every aspect of our lives, but this is specifically true for how we communicate at work. Advances in communication technologies have enabled a wide range of digital communication modes to be utilized for both internal and external business communication; including audio and visual communication and voice-over protocols, as well as text-based channels, such as email, forums, instant messaging and social media. In spite of the wide range of available audio-visual channels, and despite the ever-increasing popularity of email, real-time text-based communication technologies (instant messaging or IM) are also on the rise (see Mak, 2014; Pazos et al., 2013; Radicati & Levenstein, 2013; and Markman in this volume). The prominence of IM is evident in the rise of this mode of communication, not only as a tool for internal business communication, but as a front-stage channel, particularly for customer service encounters or professional-client conversations (Makarem et al., 2009; Pearce et al., 2013; L. Zhang et al., 2011).

Public scientific communication on Twitter:visual analytic approach

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to assess high-dimensional visualisation, combined with pattern matching, as an approach to observing dynamic changes in the ways people tweet about science topics. Design/methodology/approach - The high-dimensional visualisation approach was applied to three scientific topics to test its effectiveness for longitudinal analysis of message framing on Twitter over two disjoint periods in time. The paper uses coding frames to drive categorisation and visual analytics of tweets discussing the science topics. Findings - The findings point to the potential of this mixed methods approach, as it allows sufficiently high sensitivity to recognise and support the analysis of non-trending as well as trending topics on Twitter. Research limitations/implications - Three topics are studied and these illustrate a range of frames, but results may not be representative of all scientific topics. Social implications - Funding bodies increasingly encourage scientists to participate in public engagement. As social media provides an avenue actively utilised for public communication, understanding the nature of the dialog on this medium is important for the scientific community and the public at large. Originality/value - This study differs from standard approaches to the analysis of microblog data, which tend to focus on machine driven analysis large-scale datasets. It provides evidence that this approach enables practical and effective analysis of the content of midsize to large collections of microposts.

Envisioning innovation : the communication of technological change through graphic representation

Graphic depiction is an established method for academics to present concepts about theories of innovation. These expressions have been adopted by policy-makers, the media and businesses. However, there has been little research on the extent of their usage or effectiveness ex-academia. In addition, innovation theorists have ignored this area of study, despite the communication of information about innovation being acknowledged as a major determinant of success for corporate enterprise. The thesis explores some major themes in the theories of innovation and compares how graphics are used to represent them. The thesis examines the contribution of visual sociology and graphic theory to an investigation of a sample of graphics. The methodological focus is a modified content analysis. The following expressions are explored: check lists, matrices, maps and mapping in the management of innovation; models, flow charts, organisational charts and networks in the innovation process; and curves and cycles in the representation of performance and progress. The main conclusion is that academia is leading the way in usage as well as novelty. The graphic message is switching from prescription to description. The computerisation of graphics has created a major role for the information designer. It is recommended that use of the graphic representation of innovation should be increased in all domains, though it is conceded that its content and execution need to improve, too. Education of graphic 'producers', 'intermediaries' and 'consumers' will play a part in this, as will greater exploration of diversity, novelty and convention. Work has begun to tackle this and suggestions for future research are made.

Characteristics of visual function in Asperger’s syndrome and the autism spectrum

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder and Asperger’s syndrome is part of the spectrum of autism disorders. This thesis aims to: • Review and investigate current theories concerning visual function in individuals with Asperger’s syndrome and high functioning autism spectrum disorder and to translate the findings into clinical practice by developing a specific protocol for the eye examination of individuals of this population. • Investigate whether those with Asperger’s syndrome are more likely to suffer from Meares-Irlen syndrome and/or dyslexia. • Assess the integrity of the M-cell pathway in Asperger’s syndrome using perimetric tests available in optometric practice to investigate and also to describe the nature of any defects. • Evaluate eye movement strategies in Asperger’s whilst viewing both text and images. Also to evaluate the most appropriate methodology for investigating eye movements; namely optical digital eye tracking and electrophysiology methodologies. Findings of the investigations include • Eye examinations for individuals with Asperger’s syndrome should contain the same testing methods as for the general population, with special consideration for clear communication. • There is a depression of M-pathway visual field sensitivity in 57% (8/14) of people with Asperger’s syndrome, supporting previous evidence for an M-cell deficit in some individuals. • There is a raised prevalence of dyslexia in Asperger’s syndrome (26% of a sample of 31) but not necessarily of Meares-Irlen syndrome. • Gaze strategies are abnormal in Asperger’s syndrome, for both reading and viewing of images. With increased saccadic movement and decreased viewing of faces in comparison to background detail.

Investigating tiredness and ad complexity effects on visual processing of advertisements:an eye-tracking study

Although advertising is pervasive in our daily, it proves to be not necessarily efficient all the times due to bad conditions or bad contexts of reception. Indeed, the communication process might be jeopardized at its very last stage because of advertising exposure quality. However critical it may be, ad exposure quality is not very much examined by researchers or practitioners. In this paper, we investigate how tiredness combined with ad complexity might influence the way consumers extract and process ad elements. Investigating tiredness is useful because it is a common daily state experienced by everyone at various moments of the day. And although it might drastically alter ad reception, it has not been studied in advertising for the moment. In this regards, we observe eye movement patterns of consumers viewing simple or complex advertisements being tired or not. We surprisingly find that tired subjects viewing complex ads don’t adopt a lessening effort visual strategy. They rather use a resource demanding one. We assume that the Sustained Attention strategy occurring is a kind of adaptive strategy allowing to deal with an anticipated lack of resource.

Cortical dynamics and synchronization related to multiple target consolidation under rapid-serial-visual-presentation conditions

The present report reviews behavioural, electroencephalographic, and especially magnetoencephalographic findings on the cortical mechanisms underlying attentional processes that separate targets from distractors and that ensure durable target representations for goal-directed action. A common way of investigation is to observe the system’s overt and covert behaviour when capacity limitations are reached. Here we focus on the aspect of temporally enhanced processing load, namely on performance deficits occurring under rapid-serial-visual-presentation (RSVP) conditions. The most prominent of these deficits is the so-called “attentional blink” (AB) effect. We first report MEG findings with respect to the time course of activation that shows modulations around 300 ms after target onset which reflect demands and success of target consolidation. Then, findings regarding long-range inter-area phase synchronization are reported that are hypothesized to mediate communication within the attentional network. Changes in synchronization reflect changes in the attentional demands of the task and are directly related to behavioural performance. Furthermore, enhanced vigilance of the system elicits systematically increased synchronization indices. A hypothetical framework is sketched out that aims at explaining limitations in multiple target consolidation under RSVP conditions.

Modulation of long-range neural synchrony reflects temporal limitations of visual attention in humans

Because of attentional limitations, the human visual system can process for awareness and response only a fraction of the input received. Lesion and functional imaging studies have identified frontal, temporal, and parietal areas as playing a major role in the attentional control of visual processing, but very little is known about how these areas interact to form a dynamic attentional network. We hypothesized that the network communicates by means of neural phase synchronization, and we used magnetoencephalography to study transient long-range interarea phase coupling in a well studied attentionally taxing dual-target task (attentional blink). Our results reveal that communication within the fronto-parieto-temporal attentional network proceeds via transient long-range phase synchronization in the beta band. Changes in synchronization reflect changes in the attentional demands of the task and are directly related to behavioral performance. Thus, we show how attentional limitations arise from the way in which the subsystems of the attentional network interact. The human brain faces an inestimable task of reducing a potentially overloading amount of input into a manageable flow of information that reflects both the current needs of the organism and the external demands placed on it. This task is accomplished via a ubiquitous construct known as “attention,” whose mechanism, although well characterized behaviorally, is far from understood at the neurophysiological level. Whereas attempts to identify particular neural structures involved in the operation of attention have met with considerable success (1-5) and have resulted in the identification of frontal, parietal, and temporal regions, far less is known about the interaction among these structures in a way that can account for the task-dependent successes and failures of attention. The goal of the present research was, thus, to unravel the means by which the subsystems making up the human attentional network communicate and to relate the temporal dynamics of their communication to observed attentional limitations in humans. A prime candidate for communication among distributed systems in the human brain is neural synchronization (for review, see ref. 6). Indeed, a number of studies provide converging evidence that long-range interarea communication is related to synchronized oscillatory activity (refs. 7-14; for review, see ref. 15). To determine whether neural synchronization plays a role in attentional control, we placed humans in an attentionally demanding task and used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to track interarea communication by means of neural synchronization. In particular, we presented 10 healthy subjects with two visual target letters embedded in streams of 13 distractor letters, appearing at a rate of seven per second. The targets were separated in time by a single distractor. This condition leads to the “attentional blink” (AB), a well studied dual-task phenomenon showing the reduced ability to report the second of two targets when an interval <500 ms separates them (16-18). Importantly, the AB does not prevent perceptual processing of missed target stimuli but only their conscious report (19), demonstrating the attentional nature of this effect and making it a good candidate for the purpose of our investigation. Although numerous studies have investigated factors, e.g., stimulus and timing parameters, that manipulate the magnitude of a particular AB outcome, few have sought to characterize the neural state under which “standard” AB parameters produce an inability to report the second target on some trials but not others. We hypothesized that the different attentional states leading to different behavioral outcomes (second target reported correctly or not) are characterized by specific patterns of transient long-range synchronization between brain areas involved in target processing. Showing the hypothesized correspondence between states of neural synchronization and human behavior in an attentional task entails two demonstrations. First, it needs to be demonstrated that cortical areas that are suspected to be involved in visual-attention tasks, and the AB in particular, interact by means of neural synchronization. This demonstration is particularly important because previous brain-imaging studies (e.g., ref. 5) only showed that the respective areas are active within a rather large time window in the same task and not that they are concurrently active and actually create an interactive network. Second, it needs to be demonstrated that the pattern of neural synchronization is sensitive to the behavioral outcome; specifically, the ability to correctly identify the second of two rapidly succeeding visual targets

Writing online:a guide to effective digital communication at work

Online writing plays a complex and increasingly prominent role in the life of organizations. From newsletters to press releases, social media marketing and advertising, to virtual presentations and interactions via e-mail and instant messaging, digital writing intertwines and affects the day-to-day running of the company - yet we rarely pay enough attention to it. Typing on the screen can become particularly problematic because digital text-based communication increases the opportunities for misunderstanding: it lacks the direct audio-visual contact and the norms and conventions that would normally help people to understand each other. Providing a clear, convincing and approachable discussion, this book addresses arenas of online writing: virtual teamwork, instant messaging, emails, corporate communication channels, and social media. Instead of offering do and don’t lists, however, it teaches the reader to develop a practice that is observant, reflective, and grounded in the understanding of the basic principles of language and communication. Through real-life examples and case studies, it helps the reader to notice previously unnoticed small details, question previously unchallenged assumptions and practices, and become a competent digital communicator in a wide range of professional contexts.