Thematic Dimension Research Articles

Experimental Finance: Introduction to the Special Issue in the QJF

We delineate the field of experimental finance. This is done along two dimensions. To delineate the methodological dimension, we use the accepted view in the community. To delineate the thematic (research questions) dimension, we use a comparison with experimental economics with a historical perspective and a brief bibliometric analysis. The article further introduces, motivates, and provides context to the articles published in the special issue. These articles also serve to illustrate the delineation of the field proposed in the first part.

Entre conselhos e conferências: as arenas deliberativas sobre direitos humanos em Minas Gerais

ABSTRACT Introduction: The academic literature on deliberative systems suggests exploring the connections between deliberative forums and other components of the political system and society. This article investigates the participation of governmental actors and civil society in councils and conferences addressing public policies on human rights in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The objectives are twofold: to propose a theoretical framework for examining deliberative subsystems and to identify the connectors in a multilevel network consisting of human rights councils and conferences. Materials and methods: We adopted a methodology centered on subsystem theory, prioritizing the dynamics of deliberation arenas and the synergy between councils at local and state levels. We reinterpreted the concept of subsystem to develop an empirical model that incorporates its thematic dimension. To examine the interconnections between councils and conferences, we employed an analytical approach known as two mode network analysis, also referred to as affiliation network analysis, situated in the domain of Social Network Analysis. Results: Our findings suggest a high level of integration within the subsystem. In contrast to prior studies, we found that civil society actors, alongside governmental agents, significantly contribute to interconnecting various arenas within the subsystem. This finding underlines the functional specialization of liaison agents within the context of the deliberation system. Discussion: Our findings offer a twofold contribution to the existing literature. Firstly, we present an innovative theoretical model for analyzing deliberative systems. Secondly, we recommend the use of multilevel network analysis as a robust tool for identifying connections between multiple arenas.

Clustering Professional Communication Exploring the Methodology of Clustering the Thematic Dimension in Professional Communication (Politics)

This article examines the challenges associated with selecting appropriate methodologies and principles for organizing the intricate thematic dimension of professional communication. By employing suitable methods, fragmented knowledge can be synthesized, while the explanatory principle facilitates the identification of essential attributes within a given cluster. The rational application and integration of fundamental scientific principles, concepts, and methodological approaches establish specific criteria for objectively evaluating the construct of a cluster. Clustering is recognized as one of the most effective techniques for segmenting the diverse thematic dimensions of professional communication. The article analyzes the “Politics” cluster as an exemplar within the broader thematic dimensions of professional communication. The clustering process within the thematic dimension aims to encompass an expansive scope with a sense of comprehensive coherence. The model for clustering the thematic dimension provides a range ofconstraints and assumptions crucial in creating appropriate constructs.

The Scope of the Concept of Poetry in Afghanistan

The poetry of stability in Afghanistan, like the poetry of stability in other countries of the world, has a conceptual richness that has not yet been dealt with in its wide angles, and in the opinion of the author, it is considered necessary that its conceptual foundation be broken and explained. Afghanistan is a country that has been affected by accidents for a long time, and the mastery of its people in front of the eyes of the aggressors has become famous in the world, which should not be ignored. On the other hand, there is no doubt that such a struggle has played a prominent role in contemporary Persian poetry, and it is necessary to examine the existence and conceptual structures of the poetry of stability in Afghanistan because the poetry of stability in Afghanistan was able to show the main identity with social awareness and consciousness. To show the people of Afghanistan in different political and social scenes to the world, various political events, especially the invasion of the Russians into Afghanistan as the biggest event in the contemporary history of Afghanistan and the world, added to the social tensions in Afghanistan and the resulting consequences caused many political, social and cultural crises that these factors caused so that the religious feelings and emotions, patriotism and freedom that were created, will open a new perspective for the artists and poets of our country. From this point of view, the current research is based on the thematic dimension and has paid attention to the conceptual aspects of sustainable poetry in Afghanistan.

The Unseen—An Investigative Analysis of Thematic and Spatial Coverage of News on the Ongoing Refugee Crisis in West Africa

The fastest growing regional crisis is happening in West Africa today, with over 8 million people considered persons of concern. A culmination of identity politics, climate-driven disasters, and extreme poverty has led to this humanitarian crisis in the region and is exacerbated by a lack of political will and misplaced media attention. The current state of the art does not present sufficient investigations of the thematic and spatial coverage of news media of this crisis in this region. This paper studies the spatial coverage of this crisis as reported in the media, and the themes associated with those locations, based on a curated dataset. For the time frame 12 March to 15 September 2021, 2017 news articles related to the refugee crisis in West Africa were examined and manually coded based on (1) the geographical locations mentioned in each article; (2) the themes found in the articles in reference to a location (e.g., Relocation of people in Abuja). The dataset introduces a thematic dimension, as never achieved before, to the conflict-ridden areas in West Africa. A comparative analysis with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) data showed that 96.8% of refugee-related locations in West Africa were not covered by news during the considered time frame. Contrastingly, 80.4% of locations mentioned in the news do not appear in the UNHCR repository. Most news articles published during this time frame reported on Development aid or Political statements. Linear multiple regression analysis showed GDP per capita and political stability to be among the most influential determinants of news coverage.

Misanthropic Aspects of Science Fiction: The Examples of Battlestar Galactica and Borislav Pekić’s Atlantis

Anthropological interest in science fiction derives from the fact that works of science fiction, while depicting imaginary worlds, actually speak about existing human communities. This paper looks at how misanthropy is communicated in science fiction works, specifically, in Borislav Pekić’s novel Atlantis (Atlantida), first published in 1988, and the TV series Battlestar Galactica, which originally aired between 2003 and 2009. The theme of both works is essentially the same: the end of human history in its present form and the attempt to create a better civilization, all of this resulting from a long-standing conflict between humans and their biggest historical mistake – robots. The subject matter of the two works is also the same: having reached a high level of technological and spiritual development, humans design robots to replace them first in the most difficult jobs, and then in everyday tasks; the robots develop self-awareness and rise against their makers, and then come to believe that they should replace people and rectify all the errors and shortcomings they have identified in them as beings and also in their social development and organization, and eventually achieve deification by surpassing their makers and initiating their own independent and – compared to humans – more just history. The novel and the series have in common, not only with each other but also with many other science fiction works, a pessimistic view of human existence: a proneness to corruptibility in terms of morals and actions as a human characteristic, and its embedding and presence in the modes of human cultural thought and social organization and actions, represent a distinct, misanthropic thematic dimension in science fiction. This is particularly apparent when the acts of othering and institutional inflicting of evil on Others are considered. This is contrary to the humanistic ideal of humanity as an essential, ennobling quality of human beings. Science fiction works that problematize misanthropy as a sociocultural category suggest that human society reflects human nature: human communities are a product of human mental and material organization, and thus the lack of agreement between proclaimed social and cultural values and corresponding behavior represents a product of human thought and actions. What follows from this in Battlestar Galactica and Atlantis is that robots are like people: they know of no values other than human ones, hence their society is similar to human societies. They strive to evolve and thus distance themselves from their makers, yet it turns out that their patterns of behaviour towards Others and their tendency to other those among them who do not think like them or refuse to behave like them, are identical to those of humans.

Event-Based Clustering for Reducing Labeling Costs of Event-related Microposts

Automatically identifying the event type of event-related information in the sheer amount of social media data makes machine learning inevitable. However, this is highly dependent on (1) the number of correctly labeled instances and (2) labeling costs. Active learning has been proposed to reduce the number of instances to label. Albeit the thematic dimension is already used, other metadata such as spatial and temporal information that is helpful for achieving a more fine-grained clustering is currently not taken into account. In this paper, we present a novel event-based clustering strategy that makes use of temporal, spatial, and thematic metadata to determine instances to label. An evaluation on incident-related tweets shows that our selection strategy for active learning outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches even with few labeled instances.

Unboxing the vague notion of policy goals: Comparison of Croatian public policies

AbstractThis study aims at empirically improving public policy theory by unfolding the concept of policy goals and contributing to their classifications. The research focuses on the thematic dimension of policy goals and investigates 11 Croatian governmental strategies using qualitative content analysis. The research identifies original policy goal types and classifies them into sector‐, process‐, evaluation‐, instrument‐, and value‐oriented goals. Article concludes with a more comprehensive definition of policy goals, as governmental statements about desired futures in relation to specific sectoral purposes, values, and principles in democratic political systems, policymaking process improvements, necessary instrumental innovations, and evaluation standards that should be fulfilled. The application of this definition and developed goals’ classification reveals that elements of policy‐process theories, evaluation research, policy design theory and instrument analysis, democracy theory, and sector‐specific research need to be synthesized to better understand the concept of policy goals and to advance their research.

Antigone’s Collective Body Myth and Rewritings in Sara Uribe’s Antígona González

In this article we will analyse the use of intertextuality in Sara Uribe’s Antígona González. From a theoretical point of view, we will focus on the relationship between Antígona González and both Sophocles’ myth and other European and Latin-American reinterpretations of it, trying to set the structural function of myth as a textual device, which tries to undermine its permanent structure. This specific use of myth will be therefore connected with the thematic dimension of Antigone’s body, in order to investigate the meaning of its collective re-use in the Mexican recontextualisation proposed by Uribe, together with all the esthetical, ethical and political implications derived from that.

Antigone’s Collective Body Myth and Rewritings in Sara Uribe’s Antígona González

In this article we will analyse the use of intertextuality in Sara Uribe’s Antígona González. From a theoretical point of view, we will focus on the relationship between Antígona González and both Sophocles’ myth and other European and Latin-American reinterpretations of it, trying to set the structural function of myth as a textual device, which tries to undermine its permanent structure. This specific use of myth will be therefore connected with the thematic dimension of Antigone’s body, in order to investigate the meaning of its collective re-use in the Mexican recontextualisation proposed by Uribe, together with all the esthetical, ethical and political implications derived from that.

EVALUATING THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL THROUGH THE MULTI-COMPLEMENTARY APPROACH

This study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of the Flipped Classroom Model (FCM) in an educational setting. For this purpose, a multi-complementary approach (MCA) was used including both quantitative (meta-analysis) and qualitative (thematic). MCA consists of three parts, the first of which is the pre-complementary information stage. In this context, the data from sixty-four studies were used and it was analysed using CMA and MetaWin software. In addition, the meta-thematic data were obtained by analysing thirty-two qualitative studies of FCM and analysed through content analysis. In the second stage of the MCA, an experimental process took place involving the implementation of FCM. A thematic dimension was added to the second stage and analyses were made through MAXQDA software. In the last stage of the approach, the results of the first two stages were combined to get complementary and general outcomes. The results of the study showed that FCM had a positive impact on academic success in general, thus some recommendations were presented on the use of both FCM and MCA.

La calidad en la docencia universitaria. Una aproximación desde la percepción de los estudiantes

The objective was to build a notion of quality of university teaching, depending on the demand of the recipients of the service, the students, based on their opinions and perceptions, contrasting it with the notions that emerge or are considered in the respective regulations, given in the country. It was developed at the Universidad Señor de Sipán, Juan Mejía Baca Private University and Pedro Ruiz Gallo National University. The study design has been exploratory and descriptive, as well as hermeneutical phenomenological type and cross-sectional. The sample consisted of 164 students. 90% agree that a quality university must necessarily have quality teachers, and indicates that this quality teacher must demonstrate mastery in four dimensions: thematic dimension, methodological dimension, scientific dimension, and ethical dimensión, according to the literature consulted.

La calidad en la docencia universitaria. Una aproximación desde la percepción de los estudiantes

The objective was to build a notion of quality of university teaching, depending on the demand of the recipients of the service, the students, based on their opinions and perceptions, contrasting it with the notions that emerge or are considered in the respective regulations, given in the country. It was developed at the Universidad Senor de Sipan, Juan Mejia Baca Private University and Pedro Ruiz Gallo National University. The study design has been exploratory and descriptive, as well as hermeneutical phenomenological type and cross-sectional. The sample consisted of 164 students. 90% agree that a quality university must necessarily have quality teachers, and indicates that this quality teacher must demonstrate mastery in four dimensions: thematic dimension, methodological dimension, scientific dimension, and ethical dimension, according to the literature consulted.

Druze Reincarnation in Fiction

In the Druze outlook, each human soul completes successive life-circuits as different human beings. If one of these human beings dies, the soul immediately migrates to the body of a newborn child. Normally, it is unknown who the soul was previously. However, in exceptional cases, mostly young children remember and “speak” about a previous life that usually came to an unexpected and tragic end. This also represents the backdrop of Anīs Yaḥyà’s novel Jasad kāna lī, which is set in a Druze context and revolves around a murder case and a little girl that remembers her death and names her murderer. The subject of transmigration is omnipresent in the novel. As this article seeks to show, this turns the novel into a highly relevant source for anthropological research into the Druze understanding of transmigration. The novel not only corroborates respective findings, but also complements them and thus contributes to a fuller understanding of the social and discursive presence of transmigration and “speaking” in Druze contexts. At the same time, anthropological research seems essential for a more profound understanding of this particular thematic dimension of the novel.

Coalescence of Form and Content in Ali’s English Ghazal: The Trauma of Kashmir in The Country without a Post Office

This paper investigates the enunciation of meaning in the coalescence of form and content in the ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali. In the last decade of the twentieth-century escalation of political and civil clashes handicapped the social system in Kashmir; all the government institutions remained closed for months. Post offices were one of those institutions which remained shut and the letters piled on without finding reaching their addressees. In this backdrop Ali wrote the collection, The Country Without a Post Office, where Ali mourns the state oppression. This research explores through literary stylistics the chaos and trauma inextricably interwoven in the form-content synchronization in the English ghazals of this collection. The form and content of these ghazals have aptly enunciated the trauma of Kashmir. Although ghazals to-date have been sung to mourn the unrequited love and separation of lover yet Ali has given this a novel thematic dimension by incorporating the blood and shreds, cannons and sticks, and nostalgia and dreams.

The OpenStreetMap folksonomy and its evolution

The comprehension of folksonomies is of high importance when making sense of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), in particular in the case of OpenStreetMap (OSM). So far, only little research has been conducted to understand the role and the evolution of folksonomies in VGI and OSM, which is despite the fact that without a comprehension of the folksonomies the thematic dimension of data can hardly be used. This article examines the history of the OSM folksonomy, with the aim to predict its future evolution. In particular, we explore how the documentation of the OSM folksonomy relates to its actual use in the data, and we investigate the historical and future scope and granularity of the folksonomy. Finally, a visualization technique is proposed to examine the folksonomy in more detail.

A Meta-Analytic and Thematic Comparative Analysis of the Integration of Augmented Reality Applications into Education

The aim of this study is to determine the efficiency of Augmented Reality Applications (ARAs) in the learning environment. In this regard, both quantitative (meta analytic) and qualitative (thematic) dimensions are used in the study. In terms of meta-analysis, the data of 12 studies from different databases of national and international arenas in which the effect size of ARAs on academic success was determined were analyzed through CMA and MetaWin programs. Data on thematic dimension were obtained from the teacher candidates at Kilis 7 Aralik University, Faculty of Muallim Rifat, Department of Science Teaching chosen by a maximum variation sampling method through a semi-structured interview form. The views from the interview were resolved in accordance with the content analysis method and the action research design through Maxqda 11 program. Meta-analytic results showed that the effect of ARAs on academic success was found to be as ES= +0.360 which is a small level. On the other hand, thematic assessment shows that ARAs has a positive effect on social, cognitive and emotional improvement and it makes the learning environment more realistic. In line with the relating results, well-designed ARAs can be proposed to be used in a more common and systematic way in order to create fruitful environments that increase academic success.

“Glossary Islands” as Sites of the “Abroad” in Post-Colonial Literature: Towards a New Methodology for Language and Knowledge Relations in Keri Hulme’s <em>The Bone People</em> and Melissa Lucashenko’s <em>Mullumbimby</em>

The publication of Melissa Lucashenko’s Mullumbimby in 2013 drew attention once more to the issue of how post-colonial scholars might best engage with English-language literary texts also containing a glossary of Indigenous words. This issue emerged first with the publication of Keri Hulme’s The Bone People in 1984. This article argues that, to date, scholars like Simon During and Eve Vincent have perpetuated a binary either/or approach to the interpretation of these glossaries. The result of this approach has been that either the pre-colonial Indigenous language or the colonial/post-colonizing English language has been privileged as the locus of linguistic power in the text. One problem with this approach is that it does not adequately represent the complex historical, cultural and political circumstances of post-colonial and multi-cultural nations like Australia (setting of Mullumbimby) and New Zealand (setting of The Bone People) as these link to matters of language. Another problem is that this binary approach restrains a close reading of the differences between different types of such glossaries, and of the nuanced relationship of a glossary to the text it accompanies. In place of this approach, this article proposes a new methodology that works with Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey’s notion of “tidalectics” as a way of reading island literatures. The neologism “glossary islands” allows another way into considering the function of glossaries in islandic literary texts like Lucashenko’s and Hulme’s. The post-colonial connection between islands and glossaries lies in the fact that they are each an intensified site of knowledge.

Bridging the gap between interviewer and interviewee: developing an interview guide for individual interviews by means of a focus group.

In developing an interview guide, pre-existing knowledge about the research topic is essential. In a recent study, we were interested in exploring the experiences of weight changes among women treated for breast cancer using individual interviews. However, to develop an interview guide for the individual interviews that covered relevant thematic and dynamic dimensions, we found existing literature insufficient. Thus, we turned our attention to the benefit of the focus group method. This study aims to discuss how a focus group prior to individual interviews may contribute in developing the thematic dimension and translating the dynamic dimension of an interview guide into everyday language. We conducted one focus group interview of five women treated for breast cancer with experiences in weight changes. Data were analysed using content and conversation analysis and discussed with relevant literature on interview guide development. The study is approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency (2008-58-0028) and follows the ethical guidelines for qualitative research. Data generation and analysis resulted in themes for the thematic dimension, as well as three dynamic areas to consider in the individual interviews to bridge the gap between the interviewer and the interviewee. The dynamic areas are as follows: The use of words, images and metaphors - a shield and self-protection, Multiple meanings to explore and Staying close to the everyday language. The analysis made us more familiar with the content and meaning of weight changes among breast cancer survivors. Furthermore, it provided images and metaphors, multiple meanings and a sense of the women's everyday language that calls for an open interview frame to be used in subsequent individual interviews.

Interactive visual cluster detection in large geospatial datasets based on dynamic density volume visualization

The emerging spatial big data (e.g. detailed spatial trajectories, geo-referenced social media data) provide tremendous opportunities for GIScientists and geographers. However, their large volume also poses challenges to existing spatial data analytical techniques (including visual analytical techniques). This article presents an interactive visual approach to detect clusters from those emerging data sets based on dynamic density volume visualization in a three-dimensional space (two spatial dimensions plus a third temporal or thematic dimension of interest). Cluster can be visually discovered through dynamic adjustment of density to colour/opacity mapping and extracted through flexible selection tools. The approach was tested on a large simulated data-set and a spatial trajectory data-set. The results show that the approach can overcome the visual clotting problem in traditional visualization tools caused by large data volume and facilitate the involvement of domain knowledge in analysis. It can effectively support visual cluster detection in the emerging large geospatial data sets.