Mapping sociocultural controversies across digital media platforms: One week of #gamergate on Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr

Social media play a prominent role in mediating issues of public concern, not only providing the stage on which public debates play out but also shaping their topics and dynamics. Building on and extending existing approaches to both issue mapping and social media analysis, this article explores ways of accounting for popular media practices and the special case of ‘born digital’ sociocultural controversies. We present a case study of the GamerGate controversy with a particular focus on a spike in activity associated with a 2015 Law and Order: SVU episode about gender-based violence and harassment in games culture that was widely interpreted as being based on events associated with GamerGate. The case highlights the importance and challenges of accounting for the cultural dynamics of digital media within and across platforms.

Book Review: "Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert, Being Digital Citizens. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015"

The concept of digital citizenship has become increasingly important to our understanding of the relationship between media and political action, and the possibilities for democratization, decentralization, and diversification of power offered by the Internet. In the era of the digitalization of just about everything, citizenship and its related concepts are in processes of technology-driven transformation, with important implications for the global future of democratic culture. Isin and Ruppert’s book is a timely engagement with these questions, and with the emerging notion of the “digital subject.”

Leading Digital Transformation: Building Technology and Information Governance Capability in Boards of Directors and the C-Suite

Information and technology and its use in organisation transformation presents unprecedented opportunities and risks. Increasingly, the Governance of Enterprise Information and Technology (GEIT) competency in the board room and executive is needed. Whether your organization is small or large, public, private or not for profit or whether your industry is not considered high-tech, IT is impacting your sector – no exceptions. But there is a skill shortage in boards: GEIT capability is concerningly low. This capability is urgently needed across the board, including those directors who come from finance, legal, marketing, operations and HR backgrounds. Digital disruption also affects all occupations. Putting in place a vision will help ensure emergency responses will meet technology-related duty of care responsibilities. When GEIT-related forward thinking and planning is carried out at the same time that you put your business strategy and plan in place, your organization has a significantly increased chance of not only surviving, but thriving into the future. Those organizations that don’t build GEIT capability risk joining the growing list of once-leading firms left behind in the digital ‘cloud of smoke’. Those organizations that do will be better placed to reap the benefits and hedge against the risks of a digital world. This chapter provides actionable, research-based considerations and processes for boards to use, to build awareness, knowledge and skills in governing technology-related organization strategy, risk and value creation.

Dynamic changes in mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activities in the corpus luteum of the bonnet monkey (Macaca radiata) during development, induced luteolysis, and simulated early pregnancy: A role for p38 MAPK in the regulation of luteal function

Changes in MAPK activities were examined in the corpus luteum (CL) during luteolysis and pregnancy, employing GnRH antagonist (Cetrorelix)-induced luteolysis, stages of CL, and hCG treatment to mimic early pregnancy as model systems in the bonnet monkey. We hypothesized that MAPKs could serve to phosphorylate critical phosphoproteins to regulate luteal function. Analysis of several indices for structural (caspase-3 activity and DNA fragmentation) and functional (progesterone and steroidogenic acute regulatory protein expression) changes in the CL revealed that the decreased luteal function observed during Cetrorelix treatment and late luteal phase was associated with increased caspase-3 activity and DNA fragmentation. As expected, human chorionic gonadotropin treatment dramatically increased luteal function, but the indices for structural changes were only partially attenuated. All three MAPKs appeared to be constitutively active in the mid-luteal-phase CL, and activities of ERK-1/2 and p38-MAPK (p38), but not Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)-1/2, decreased significantly (P < 0.05) within 12 - 24 h after Cetrorelix treatment. During the late luteal phase, in contrast to decreased ERK-1/2 and p38 activities, JNK-1/2 activities increased significantly (P < 0.05). Although human chorionic gonadotropin treatment increased ERK-1/2 and p38 activities, it decreased JNK-1/2 activities. The activation status of p38 was correlated with the phosphorylation status of an upstream activator, MAPK kinase-3/6 and the expression of MAPK activated protein kinase-3, a downstream target. Intraluteal administration of p38 kinase inhibitor (SB203580), but not MAPK kinase-1/2 inhibitor (PD98059), decreased the luteal function. Together, these data suggest an important role for p38 in the regulation of CL function in primates.

An Inexpensive Digital Network Analyzer

Frequency response analysis is critical in understanding the steady and transient state behavior of any electrical network. Network analyzeror frequency response analyzer is used to determine the frequency response of an electrical network. This paper deals with the design of an inexpensive digitally controlled Network Analyzer. The frequency range of the network analyzer is from 10Hz to 50kHz (suitable range for system studies on most power electronics apparatus). It is composed of a microcontroller (as central processing unit) and a personal computer (as analyzer and display). The communication between the microcontroller and personal computer is established through one of the USB ports. The testing and evaluation of the analyzer is done with RC, RLC and multi-resonant circuits. The design steps, basis of analysis, experimental results, limitation in bandwidth and possible techniques for improvement in performances are presented.

Composite signal decomposition by digital inverse filtering

Inverse filters are conventionally used for resolving overlapping signals of identical waveshape. However, the inverse filtering approach is shown to be useful for resolving overlapping signals, identical or otherwise, of unknown waveshapes. Digital inverse filter design based on autocorrelation formulation of linear prediction is known to perform optimum spectral flattening of the input signal for which the filter is designed. This property of the inverse filter is used to accomplish composite signal decomposition. The theory has been presented assuming constituent signals to be responses of all-pole filters. However, the approach may be used for a general situation.

Study Of The Hvdc-Torsional Interactions Through Digital Dynamic Simulation

This paper presents the detailed dynamic digital simulation for the study of phenomenon of torsional interaction between HVDC-Turbine generator shaft, dynamics using the novel converter model presented in [ 1 ] The system model includes detailed representation of the synchronous generator and the shaft dynamics, the ac and dc network transients. The results of a case study indicate the various factors that influence the torsional interaction.

Costs and Benefits of a Shared Digital Long-Term Preservation System

This paper describes the cost-benefit analysis of digital long-term preservation (LTP) that was carried out in the context of the Finnish National Digital Library Project (NDL) in 2010. The analysis was based on the assumption that as many as 200 archives, libraries, and museums will share an LTP system. The term ‘system’ shall be understood as encompassing not only information technology, but also human resources, organizational structures, policies and funding mechanisms. The cost analysis shows that an LTP system will incur, over the first 12 years, cumulative costs of €42 million, i.e. an average of €3.5 million per annum. Human resources and investments in information technology are the major cost factors. After the initial stages, the analysis predicts annual costs of circa €4 million. The analysis compared scenarios with and without a shared LTP system. The results indicate that a shared system will have remarkable benefits. At the development and implementation stages, a shared system shows an advantage of €30 million against the alternative scenario consisting of five independent LTP solutions. During the later stages, the advantage is estimated at €10 million per annum. The cumulative cost benefit over the first 12 years would amount to circa €100 million.

Monitoring Indigenous Tropical Montane Forests in the Taita Hills Using Airborne Digital Camera Imagery

The loss and degradation of forest cover is currently a globally recognised problem. The fragmentation of forests is further affecting the biodiversity and well-being of the ecosystems also in Kenya. This study focuses on two indigenous tropical montane forests in the Taita Hills in southeastern Kenya. The study is a part of the TAITA-project within the Department of Geography in the University of Helsinki. The study forests, Ngangao and Chawia, are studied by remote sensing and GIS methods. The main data includes black and white aerial photography from 1955 and true colour digital camera data from 2004. This data is used to produce aerial mosaics from the study areas. The land cover of these study areas is studied by visual interpretation, pixel-based supervised classification and object-oriented supervised classification. The change of the forest cover is studied with GIS methods using the visual interpretations from 1955 and 2004. Furthermore, the present state of the study forests is assessed with leaf area index and canopy closure parameters retrieved from hemispherical photographs as well as with additional, previously collected forest health monitoring data. The canopy parameters are also compared with textural parameters from digital aerial mosaics. This study concludes that the classification of forest areas by using true colour data is not an easy task although the digital aerial mosaics are proved to be very accurate. The best classifications are still achieved with visual interpretation methods as the accuracies of the pixel-based and object-oriented supervised classification methods are not satisfying. According to the change detection of the land cover in the study areas, the area of indigenous woodland in both forests has decreased in 1955 2004. However in Ngangao, the overall woodland area has grown mainly because of plantations of exotic species. In general, the land cover of both study areas is more fragmented in 2004 than in 1955. Although the forest area has decreased, forests seem to have a more optimistic future than before. This is due to the increasing appreciation of the forest areas.

Designing a Dependency Representation and Grammar Definition Corpus for Finnish

We outline the design and creation of a syntactically and morphologically annotated corpora of Finnish for use by the research community. We motivate a definitional, systematic “grammar definition corpus” as a first step in an three-year annotation effort to help create higher-quality, better-documented extensive parsebanks at a later stage. The syntactic representation, consisting of a dependency structure and a basic set of dependency functions, is outlined with examples. Reference is made to double-blind annotation experiments to measure the applicability of the newgrammar definition corpus methodology.