Genre Groups in Knowledge Organization

The article is an introduction to the development of Andersen's concept of textual tools used in knowledge organization (KO) in light of the theory of genres and activity systems. In particular, the question is based on the concepts of genre connectivity and genre group, in addition to previously established concepts such as genre hierarchy, set, system, and repertoire. Five genre groups used in KO are described. The analysis of groups, systems, and selected genres used in KO is provided, based on the method proposed by Yates and Orlikowski. The aim is to show the genre system as a part of the activity system, and thus as a framework for KO.     

A layered framework to study collaboration as a form of knowledge sharing and diffusion

Collaboration can be described using layered systems such as the article–author–institute–country structure. These structures can be considered ‘cascades’ or ‘chains’ of bipartite networks. We introduce a framework for characterizing and studying the intensity of collaboration between entities at a given level (e.g., between institutions). Specifically, we define the notions of significant, essential and vital nodes, and significant, essential and vital sub paths to describe the spread of knowledge through collaboration in such systems. Based on these notions, we introduce relative and absolute proper essential node (PEN) centrality as indicators of a node's importance for diffusion of knowledge through collaboration.We illustrate these concepts in an illustrative example and show how they can be applied using a small real-world example. Since collaboration implies knowledge sharing, it can be considered a special form of knowledge diffusion.     

Rhetorical theory as message reception: A cognitive response approach to rhetorical theory and criticism

Traditional rhetorical theory tends to adopt the rhetor's point of view, emphasizing invention of rhetorical messages, rather than the audience's reception and interpretation of messages. The audience is ordinarily conceptualized in humanistic rhetorical theory as a target, a source of expectations to guide the rhetor's invention, a means to accomplish the rhetor's ends, or even an obstacle. We argue that a more complete view of rhetoric should include the audience as a potentially active part of the process of persuasion. Accordingly, we propose to supplement our traditional theories of rhetoric by sketching a complementary view of rhetoric as the process of an auditor's processing and responding to messages. The inspiration for this conception, Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model, is sketched, and implications for rhetorical theory and criticism are discussed.     

The Flexible Organization: How Contemporary Employees Construct the Work/Life Border

The subject of work/life balance and boundaries has received much scholarly attention in the last 15 years. How employees understand these concepts and organizational response to this construction can and does have real consequences for an employee's work/life balance. Consistent with work/life border theory, initial qualitative data indicated that employees identify flexibility and permeability as key concepts in work/life balance. We sought to understand how contemporary employees define these terms. Interview data suggested that contemporary employees desire four distinct but interdependent types of flexibility: time, space, evaluation, and compensation. The emphasis on flexibility suggested a trend, at least among this sample, toward integrating the domains of work and life consistent with work/life boundary theory and raised questions about the changing conception of work in contemporary organizations. Conclusions and implications are discussed. Results of this study suggest that future research should seek to uncover what communicative strategies organizations and employees use to co-create and negotiate this work/life border.     

The influence of warning messages on the public's perception of substance use: A theoretical framework

We bring different theories together to develop a theoretical framework that helps to understand how early warning messages about (new) dangerous drugs can influence the public's perception of substance use. We bring together the agenda setting theory, framing theory, dual processing theory, social learning theory, health belief model, theory of planned behavior, and cultivation theory in order to explain how warning messages diffused through the mass media can have an impact on the receivers' perceptions. Based on these insights we construct the Integrated Media Effect Framework (IMFE) that takes into account the role of cultural and structural contexts in the realm of early warning systems (EWS). Ultimately, this framework provides valuable guidelines for conceptualizing EWS and for developing applications by governments.     

A fantasy theme analysis of political cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr affair

–We used Symbolic Convergence Theory to analyze 2,000 political cartoons on the investigation, impeachment, and trial of the president. The cartoonists' vision incorporates components from Starr's and Clinton's visions: “Our public figures (Clinton, Starr, Congress, the news media) are engaged in a tawdry burlesque drama.” The number of levels in a rhetorical vision depends on the vision's complexity. We show that multiple, independent, rhetors can create a rhetorical vision. These messages, highly visual and generally critical, freely use metaphor and allusions, allowing multiple interpretations and rendering the fantasy themes in these dramas accessible to readers with widely divergent attitudes. Despite their fictionality, these messages concern important issues and make moral judgments on these public figures.     

Real options theory,flexibility and the media industry

Abstract

This conceptual paper is based on two propositions: 1.) An efficient flexibility management is a critical success factor for media companies. 2.) The concept of real options theory (ROT) aims at improving a company's flexibility management. As a consequence, it is analysed how ROT can contribute to the flexibility management in media companies. In this context, two research issues are investigated. First, it is shown that real options as substantiations of flexibility are of great importance for media companies: In doing so, it is outlined that options which focus on a company's fixed costs management and options which aim at improving a company's sales situation are of high relevance for all segments in the media industry. Contrarily, options which focus on a company's variable costs are only relevant for media companies engaged in the print segment. Second, it is illustrated how ROT can contribute to the reactive and proactive management of flexibility in media companies.     

儿童博物馆核心教育理念

儿童博物馆在过去二十年间由于种种原因,并没有在中国发展起来。一些相关的基本问题:“什么是儿童博物馆？儿童博物馆展示什么？为什么需要儿童博物馆？”在中国并不为大众熟悉,也没有受到太多博物馆专业领域人士的关注。本文将从影响儿童博物馆的理论及研究,儿童博物馆与其它场馆的区别,儿童博物馆的教育内容等几个方面来介绍儿童博物馆的核心教育理念。以期通过本文能够把儿童博物馆的精髓呈现出来,让更多的人了解并关注儿童博物馆,为中国儿童教育方式的发展提供一些参考。     

Concept analysis for library and information science: Exploring usage

Although several library and information science (LIS) and information needs, seeking, and use (INSU) scholars have called for improving the discipline's conceptual and theoretical foundation, the LIS literature presents surprisingly few models for exploring and clarifying central concepts. While models for concept exploration such as the treatise or explication focus on determining “the” definition of a concept, other approaches, such as discourse analysis, have clear methodological and theoretical premises but lack sufficiently identifiable methods for application. The purpose of this paper is to describe, a collection of innovative approaches of concept analysis (CA) from nursing scholarship. While individual approaches to CA differ slightly from each other in terms of theoretical standpoint and method, all share the goal of clarifying individual concepts to establish a foundation for empirical research. This paper describes the theoretical foundations and application of CA approaches from nursing scholarship and presents an abbreviated case of its application to usage, a concept of interest to the LIS community. CA holds a great deal of potential for LIS scholars who seek to clarify the discipline's concepts, whether foundational and basic, or more obscure and specific.     

Theory–data interaction from the standpoint of scientific realism: a reaction to bostrom

This author is in general agreement with the arguments in Bostrom's () essay concerning theory–data interaction. Nevertheless, an examination of the issues raised in the essay from the standpoint of scientific realism lead to two different conclusions. First, the opening rationale is based on a nondefensible distinction between empiricists and interpretivists. Second, debates among paradigms are based on real ontological and epistemological differences, and the scientific realist's view of theory–data interaction accepts the validity of these differences.     

Inoculation to resist attacks

The present study tested inoculation theory in international context. Core inoculation concepts and variables were examine, especially focusing on relationships among inoculation treatments, issue involvement, perceived threat, resistance to counter-attitudinal attack, attitudinal confidence, and change of attitude.

A two-wave telephone survey of 206 randomly sampled citizens was conducted in Taiwan. The method of field experiment in a context of the formation of public opinion regarding Taiwan's political future was performed. Results from the panel data supported major hypotheses of this study. Inoculation strategies elevated people's resistance to attitude change. People who identified themselves with higher party identification were more resistant to counter-attitudinal political attacks. In addition, people who received an inoculation pretreatment, as compared to those who did not, grew more confident in their attitudes over time. A partial support data also indicated that higher involved participants tended to be more resistant to counter-attitudinal messages. This study has provided international evidence for the robust inoculation theory and related strategies.     

It's All About Me: The User-Centered Approach as a Solution to the Challenges Posed by Information Literacy Instruction

The Future Voices in Public Services column is a forum for students in graduate library and information science programs to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to tell us of their visions for the profession, or to tell us of research that is going on in library schools. We hope to provide fresh perspectives from those entering our field, in both the United States and other countries. Interested faculty of graduate library and information science programs, who would like their students’ ideas represented in these pages, are invited to contact Nancy H. Dewald at nxd7@psu.edu

Samantha Sinanan is an MLIS candidate in the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Here she proposes that librarians should seek to understand the Net Generation searcher's perspective in order to teach information literacy most effectively.

Accredited by the American Library Association with the Canadian Library Association, SLAIS is an internationally recognized graduate school at The University of British Columbia, in beautiful Vancouver. At SLAIS we are in the business of preparing professionals to exercise leadership in planning, implementing, and promoting the preservation, organization, and effective use of society's recorded information and ideas. We offer the master's degree in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) and the master's degree in Archival Studies (MAS). In addition, we sponsor a multidisciplinary Master of Arts in Children's Literature (MACL) with five other departments. Opportunities are also available for post-master's study, including a Ph.D. program in library, archival & information studies. For more information, visit www.slais.ubc.ca     

International Student Stakeholders of the Academic Library

University libraries traditionally follow the student-as-customer service model. However, as globalization facilitates international student mobility, the transformed profile of this group engenders needs and expectations infrequently met using this approach. This article contends that the student-as-stakeholder, as defined by R. Edward Freeman's Stakeholder Theory, presents a more appropriate model for relationship management given the neo-liberal concept of the 21st-century university. Negotiations of identity and power become important as they relate to diversity and equality for this marginal group. The neglect of these concepts may be instrumental in breeding resistance to service innovation and use, thereby affecting grade achievement and student retention.     

The Event Movie: Marketing Filmed Entertainment for Transnational Media Corporations

Films have become an essential asset to transnational media corporations (TNMCs) such as Sony, Time Warner, or Disney. Since the 1990s these and other corporations have utilized a strategy called event movie. The central goal of this marketing strategy is to ensure the success of a film, as well as to provide content for the many different divisions owned or controlled by TNMCs, for example home entertainment, cable, and pay-television. The event movie strategy takes advantage of the film industry's macro structure and combines established concepts (blockbuster, high-concept marketing) with new business models, turning the value chain into a value cycle. This article describes an analytical framework for the event movie strategy that is used by the world's leading TNMCs. As a conclusion, the framework of the event movie strategy can be applied to better understand the success of individual films. The concept can also be expanded to describe the individual TNMC's strategy within the field of audiovisual content.     

Challenges of Interviewers' Institutional Positionings: Taking Account of Interview Content and the Interaction

Interviewing is a much used methodological tool in communication and other social sciences. For discourse analysts, interviewing is often judged to be both overused and poorly used; to understand communicative life, researchers should be observing interaction rather than asking people to report their stories, experiences, or beliefs. As discourse scholars we agree with many of the criticisms fellow discourse scholars have made, but we disagree that interviewing should be avoided. Our paper has two purposes. The first is to describe an interview design and interpretation issue that needs attention. The issue is the effect of an interviewer's institutional positioning on interview answers, a concern that only becomes visible when we look at actual interview interaction. The second purpose is to sketch out an approach that takes interview interaction and the troubles that arise in it seriously while also addressing the substantive topics/issues that motivated interviewing in the first place. After reviewing the major challenges of research interviewing, we analyze interview excerpts in two different research projects. We show how interviewers' institutional positionings caused misalignment and interactional trouble. In the conclusion we consider how to understand and use these kinds of unavoidable interactional troubles to arrive at interesting and persuasive interpretations of the topical foci of interviews.     

Homonationalism and Western progressive narrative: locating ‘conservative heartlands’ with Zenne Dancer (2012) and its Western reviews

In this paper, we analyze the Turkish film Zenne Dancer (2012), which is largely based on what has been called a first gay honor killing in Turkey. We employ a framing analysis to both the film's content and its Western reviews to compare how different media texts frame the murder. The results indicate that while both the film and the reviews recognize tradition, understood here as native and archaic values as well as Islamic religion, as a key factor behind the murder, they locate this tradition quite differently: the film relegates it to the eastern Turkey, and thus implicitly to Kurds, while the reviews tend to extend it to the entire country or even the whole Middle East. We relate these results to the Western progressive narrative that positions the West as a civic and moral ideal that could be achieved by others over time. In particular, we employ Puar's concept of homonationalism to show how different media texts challenge or exploit the Western imperative to ‘come out’ and what effects it has for the East–West juxtapositions.     

Tying Television Comedies to Information Literacy: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

Many components of Information Literacy (IL) are too massive to be addressed in a single instruction session, yet an introduction to these concepts is essential for students' academic careers and intellectual development. This study evaluates the impact of applying excerpts from television comedies that illustrate ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to library instruction sessions for first-year students. Pre- and posttest results from 193 subjects and interview data from two focus groups indicate that television comedies can be integrated into one-shot instruction sessions to demonstrate IL concepts in an accessible and dialogue-provoking manner.