Movies and meaning : studying audience, fiction film and existential matters

In what ways and under what circumstances can a movie be a resource for individuals and their thoughts about existential matters? This central research question has been investigated using a both quantitative and qualitative approach. First, a questionnaire was distributed amongst 179 Swedish students to provide a preliminary overview of film habits. The questionnaire was also used as a tool for selecting respondents to individual interviews. Second, focus group and individual interviews were conducted, with viewers choosing their favourite movie of all time. In the study socio-cognitive theory and a schema-based theoretical tool is adopted to analyze how different viewers make use of movies as cultural products in an interplay between culture and cognition in three contexts; a socio-historic process, a socio-cultural interaction with the world and inner psychological processes. The viewers in the study seem to be inspired by movies as a mediated cultural resource, promoting the development of a personal moral framework with references to values deeply fostered by a humanistic tradition. It is argued that these findings support theories discussing individualised meaning making, developing ‘self-expression values’ and ‘altruistic individualism’ in contemporary western society.

Gymnasisters skrivande : En studie av genre, textstruktur och sammanhang

Students in upper secondary school write in a number of different genres, and do this in school contexts as well as in their spare time. The study presented here is an overview of this activity and the genres concerned. The theoretical framework of the study is that of genre theory whereby genre is understood as a socially situated concept. The study is based on 2 000 texts gathered from students on different study programmes all over Sweden in the school year of 1996-97. The texts were written in different situations. The most important distinction made here is between test texts (i.e. texts from national tests) and self-chosen texts, which may come from schoolwriting or spare-time writing. The texts are categorized according to genre. This text inventory shows a repertoire of 33 different genres in the text material. A small number of genres, such as story, book-review and expository essay dominate the school writing. The test genres differ from this pattern in that they clearly imitate texts with a genuine communicative intent. The most frequent genres are studied further and each of them is demonstrated by an interpretative reading. This reading shows that the genres differ considerably with respect to genre character and stability of text structure. A quantitative study of text length and variation in vocabulary further shows that texts written by two categories of students, those on vocationally oriented programmes and those on programmes preparing for higher education, differ significantly. Reference cohesion is studied in a smaller sample of the texts. This lexico-semantic mechanism of cohesion proves to exhibit an interrelation with variation in vocabulary as well as with text type. One particular cohesive tie, inference, shows different patterns in texts written by the two categories of students mentioned above.

The Tastes of a Nation: M.F.K. Fisher and the Genre of Culinary Literature

This project works to situate this gastronomic revolution within a historical context, arguing at greater length that our contemporary food culture in the United States is in part the legacy of the body of food representations. Here we witness the evolution of a particular culinary sensibility that appealed to readers differently in different historical moments, as exhibited by the variety of ways that Fisher’s body of work was publicly received. By the end of the twentieth century, Fisher’s ethos reigned supreme, because Americans began to view food with less fear and anxiety as they slowly became more comfortable expressing their physical appetites and desires. By the millennium, Americans began to respect and honor the physical appetite and give more consideration to the quality and origin of the foods that they consumed. Feelings of guilt associated with the enjoyment of food began to diminish as well.

Product placement in movies: a cross cultural study between Brazil and the USA

The broader objective of this study undertaking can briefly be articulated in particulate aims as follows: to measure the attitudes of consumers regarding the brand displayed by this strategy as well as to highlight recall, recognition and purchase intentions generated by product placement on consumers. In addition, check the differences and similarities between the behavior of Brazilian and American consumers caused by the influence of product placements. The study was undertaken targeting consumer audience in Brazil and the U.S. A rang3 modeling set ups were performed in order to realign study instruments and hypothesis towards the research objectives. This study gave focus on the following hypothesized models. H1: Consumers / Participants who viewed the brands / products in the movie have a higher brand / product recall compared to the consumers / participants who did not view the brands / products in the movie. H2: US Consumers / Participants are able to recognize and recall brands / products which appear in the background of the movie than Brazil. H3: Consumers / participants from USA are more accepting of product placements compared to their counterparts in Brazil. H4: There are discernible similarities in consumer / participant brand attitudes and purchase intentions in consumers / participants from USA and Brazil in spite of the fact that their country of origin is different. Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient ensured the reliability of survey instruments. The study involved the use of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for the hypothesis testing. This study used the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to assess both the convergent and discriminant validities instead of using the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) or the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). This reinforced for the use of the regression Chi Square and T statistical tests in further. Only hypothesis H3 was rejected, the rest were not. T test provided insight findings on specific subgroup significant differences. In the SEM testing, the error variance for product placement attitudes was negative for both the groups. On this The Heywood Case came in handy to fix negative values. The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative approach where closed ended questionnaires and interviews respectively were used to collect primary data. The results were additionally provided with tabulations. It can be concluded that, product placement varies markedly in the U.S. from Brazil based on the influence a range of factors provided in the study. However, there are elements of convergence probably driven by the convergence in technology. In order, product placement to become more competitive in the promotional marketing, there will be the need for researchers to extend focus from the traditional variables and add knowledge on the conventional marketplace factors that is the sell-ability of the product placement technologies and strategies.

Manuel d'utilisation de l'Observatoire de l'égalité de genre de l'Amérique Latine et des Caraïbes

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Enquêtes auprès des ménages en Haïti et perspective de genre (1999-2005)

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New trends in musical genre classification using optimum-path forest

Musical genre classification has been paramount in the last years, mainly in large multimedia datasets, in which new songs and genres can be added at every moment by anyone. In this context, we have seen the growing of musical recommendation systems, which can improve the benefits for several applications, such as social networks and collective musical libraries. In this work, we have introduced a recent machine learning technique named Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) for musical genre classification, which has been demonstrated to be similar to the state-of-the-art pattern recognition techniques, but much faster for some applications. Experiments in two public datasets were conducted against Support Vector Machines and a Bayesian classifier to show the validity of our work. In addition, we have executed an experiment using very recent hybrid feature selection techniques based on OPF to speed up feature extraction process. © 2011 International Society for Music Information Retrieval.

Quel genre d'État pour quel genre d'égalité?: XI Conferénce régionale sur les femmes de l'Amérique latine et les Caraibes: Brasilia, 13 al 16 juillet 2010

Le document Quel genre d'état pour quel genre d'égalité? analyse les progrès de l'égalité entre les sexes dans la région, 15 ans après l'Adoption du Programme d'action de Beijing, 10 ans après la formulation des objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement et 3 ans après l'Adoption du Consensus de Quito à la dixième Conférence régionale sur les femmes de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes qui s'est tenue en 2007. Il examine en outre les succès et les défis auxquels sont confrontés les gouvernements à la lumière de l'interaction entre l'état, le marché et les familles, en tant qu'institutions sociales construites sur la base de politiques, de lois, d'us et coutumes qui, ensemble, créent les conditions pour rénover ou perpétuer les hiérarchies sociales et de genre.

Quel genre d'État pour quel genre d'égalité?: XI Conferénce régionale sur les femmes de l'Amérique latine et les Caraibes: Brasilia, 13 al 16 juillet 2010. Synthese

Le document Quel genre d'État pour quel genre d'égalité? analyse les progrès de l'égalité entre les sexes dans la région, 15 ans après l'adoption du Programme d'action de Beijing, 10 ans après la formulation des objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement et 3 ans après l'adoption du Consensus de Quito à la dixième Conférence régionale sur les femmes de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes qui s'est tenue en 2007. Il examine en outre les succès et les défis auxquels sont confrontés les gouvernements à la lumière de l'interaction entre l'État, le marché et les familles, en tant qu'institutions sociales construites sur la base de politiques, de lois, d'us et coutumes qui, ensemble, créent les conditions pour rénover ou perpétuer les hiérarchies sociales et de genre.

Rapport de la vidéoconférence des institutions spécialisées et autres organisations du système des Nations Unies sur les préparatifs de l'observatoire de la parité du genre en Amérique Latine et dans les Caraïbes

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Les unions conjugales en Amérique Latine: transformations dans un contexte d'inégalité sociale et de genre

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