A Critique of Internet Polls as Symbolic Representation and Pseudo-Events

The Internet continues to grow as an information and entertainment medium. Internet growth has implications for the news industry. Twenty-four hour news networks such as CNN and MSNBC regularly encourage viewers of their television programs to visit their Web sites. While visiting news Web sites, visitors are invited to participate in opinion polls. Unfortunately, these online opinion polls are not scientific and have little real news value. In spite of these limitations, news Web sites' Internet polls are often treated as serious topics in broadcast news discussions. This article examines media organizations' Internet online polls and critiques them as instances of symbolic representation and pseudo-events that have arisen largely out of the integration of print, broadcast, and Internet media.     

Polls in an authoritarian space: reporting and representing public opinion in China

The news media’s use of polls is by no means the special preserve of democracies. Using the case of Chinese government’s official medium (i.e. the People’s Daily), this study set out to assess how poll results are communicated to the public in China by examining the presentation of methodological information in its poll stories, and how its web counterpart, the People’s Daily Online website, differs in its coverage of polls from a technical point of view. It then examined the outlets’ interpretations of poll results and the media logic the coverage implies in comparison with the political logic that shapes poll reporting in China. Further critical discourse analysis reveals the use of authoritarian populist rhetoric as a discursive strategy in both outlets’ representation of public opinion. Compared with the print outlet, the online outlet showed a more marked inclination to describe a certain class as ‘the people’ in anti-elite rhetoric.     

Poll Reporting and Journalistic Paradigm: A Study of Popularity Poll Coverage in Hong Kong Newspapers

Opinion polling has become a common feature in news and public discourse in Hong Kong. This study examines how local newspapers cover popularity polls about the government and its leaders. It is hypothesized that newspapers adhering to different journalistic paradigms would cover such popularity polls differently in terms of the inclusion of methodological information, use of news sources, emphasis on negative versus positive results, treatment of polls conducted by different entities, and use of visual means of representations. A content analysis was conducted on four newspapers which represent the professionalism, populism, and propaganda paradigms, respectively. The results show that there are both similarities and differences in the poll coverage of the newspapers, with the differences mostly corresponding to the differences in journalistic paradigms. The results also point to a number of phenomena about news media in Hong Kong and poll reporting in general.     

The rapid evolution of scholarly communication

Traditional journals, even those available electronically, are changing slowly. However, there is rapid evolution in scholarly communication. Usage is moving to electronic formats. In some areas, it appears that electronic versions of papers are being read about as often as the printed journal versions. Although there are serious difficulties in comparing figures from different media, the growth rates in usage of electronic scholarly information are sufficiently high that if they continue for a few years, there will be no doubt that print versions will be eclipsed. Further, much of the electronic information that is accessed is outside the formal scholarly publication process. There is also vigorous growth in forms of electronic communication that take advantage of the unique capabilities of the web, and which simply do not fit into the traditional journal publishing format. This paper presents some statistics on usage of print and electronic information. It also discusses some preliminary evidence about the changing patterns of usage. It appears that much of the online usage comes from new readers (esoteric research papers assigned in undergraduate classes, for example) and often from places that do not have access to print journals. Also, the reactions to even slight barriers to usage suggest that even high-quality scholarly papers are not irreplaceable. Readers are faced with a ‘river of knowledge’ that allows them to select among a multitude of sources, and to find near substitutes when necessary. To stay relevant, scholars, publishers and librarians will have to make even greater efforts to make their material easily accessible.     

Voting intentions on social media and political opinion polls

Opinion polls play an important role in modern democratic processes: they are known to not only affect the outcomes of elections, but also have a significant influence on government policy after elections. Recent years have seen large discrepancies between polls and outcomes at several major elections and referendums, stemming from decreased participation in polls and an increasingly volatile electorate. This calls for new ways to measure public support for political parties. In this paper, we propose a method for measuring the popularity of election candidates on social media using Machine Learning-based Natural Language Processing techniques. The method is based on detecting voting intentions in the data. This is a considerable advance upon earlier work using automatic sentiment analysis. We evaluate the method both intrinsically on a set of hand-labelled social media posts, and extrinsically – by forecasting daily election polls. In the extrinsic evaluation, we analyze data from the 2016 US presidential election, and find that voting intentions measured from social media provide significant additional predictive value for forecasting daily polls. Thus, we demonstrate that the proposed method can be used to interpolate polls both spatially and temporally, thus providing reliable, continuous and fine-grained information about public opinion on current political issues.     

论网络载体主流地位的确立

科学信息交流载体体系中的主流载体不会一成不变。随着科学的发展和信息载体技术的进步 ,网络载体终将取代当前主流载体———纸介质载体的主流地位。参考文献 2。     

Placing the Internet in information source horizons. A study of information seeking by Internet users in the context of self-development

The ways in which people perceive the relative value of the Internet when seeking information for self-development purposes were investigated. The concept of information source horizon was introduced, and it is a construct that enables one to put various information sources and channels in an order of preference to meet the requirements of information seeking. The horizon is based on one's conceptions of the characteristics of information sources, particularly their accessibility and quality. The study draws on interviews with eighteen Internet users who positioned various information sources in three zones of relevance. In their information source horizons, human sources such as friends and colleagues were preferred, followed by print media such as newspapers and books: networked sources were ranked third among six source types. Networked sources were favored for easy accessibility and opportunities to save time. The issue of “facilitating everyday life” was emphasized in this context. Also currency, broad repertoire of networked information, and the potential of the Internet to complement other services were valued highly. Critical stands on the Internet were mainly affected by the negative experiences of encountering low quality material.     

Young adults and everyday-life information: The role of news media

There is a paucity of research examining the everyday-life information seeking of young people, especially investigating the role that the news media has in providing information to young people for use in their everyday lives. A qualitative, interpretivist approach is adopted, involving 34 students, ages 18 to 25, from an Australian university. First, 20 students were interviewed about their news seeking (including topics and sources). Then 14 students participated in verbal protocol analysis, which involved a series of tasks concerning online and print newspapers. Lastly, students were interviewed about how they sought everyday-life information and whether they thought that they had incidentally acquired or encountered information on everyday-life topics in online or print newspapers in the recent past. Findings indicated that, contrary to expectations, traditional print media still played a role for young people, and social media were perceived as important for communication with friends, rather than for news gathering. Purposeful information seeking was more likely to occur online, but both print and online newspapers retained an incidental role in providing information to students for their everyday lives. Participants used a range of media to suit their particular needs and purposes. Thus, access to a wide variety of sources is important for everyday-life information seeking (ELIS) by young people.     

On-Line Literature Searching as a Research Method:

Database searching permits the user to conduct certain types of research beyond the mere gathering of information. An example is provided by conducting a study of geographic bias in the print media using Magazine Index. Though there are limitations in conducting such research the potential exists for using on-line databases as a powerful research tool.     

新媒体时代健康科普期刊的SWOT分析

随着信息技术的飞速发展,关于健康科普的新媒体越来越受到人们的关注,而纸媒发行量则不断下滑。文章以SWOT分析方法,对纸媒体的优势、劣势、机会、威胁逐一分析,并提出健康科普期刊的发展对策。     

Media Dialogue: Perceiving and Addressing Community Problems

Scholars have long debated the role of media and discussion in encouraging tolerance and engagement in politics and community. Theories range from the dismissal of effects to the assertion of powerful influences, and from claims of "media malaise" to the promise of "virtuous circles." Of course, results from research exploring these issues vary by context and methods of study. Yet most past research is plagued by at least 1 of 2 methodological weaknesses: the difficulty of assessing causality in cross-sectional survey designs and/or of attributing the observed effects to information gains rather than to the deliberative process itself. Acknowledging these weaknesses, we rely on data from a quasi-experimental study examining a media dialogue effort. In this study, randomly selected public television members and partners were recruited into various forms of "real world" exposure and discussion about the documentary film Two Towns of Jasper. This documentary highlights the divisions in Jasper, Texas following the racial killing of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck by 3 White men. Controlling for a wide range of preexisting differences, including past political discussion and participation, we compared individuals who had different experiences of the intervention. Results reveal that media consumption was positively related with willingness to discuss the issue of race and participate politically around this issue. Above and beyond media consumption, participation in a heterogeneous citizen's forum that discussed the documentary contributed to awareness of racism, as well as increased willingness to further discuss and participate on this issue. This article highlights the importance of citizen dialogue in combination with media consumption for engagement, and suggests an alterative to forums such as citizen juries, study circles, and deliberative polls.     

Census 2000 data products

The Internet has changed the way that people look for and obtain statistical information. The Internet will be the primary means by which the Census Bureau releases Census 2000 data, making more data available to the public than ever before. But information also will be available in other media such as print and CD-ROM.     

Still the Same?

This article analyses whether a specific news event is reported differently online compared to print newspapers. The question is hardly new but has increased in importance as more readers pass from print newspapers to online news. The conditions of news selection and production are discussed departing from the theories of market-driven journalism and media logic, and are related to aspects of audience needs and gratifications, as well as professional norms and standards. A content analysis of news reporting during the 2010 Swedish election campaign reveals no significant differences between how major newspapers reported the aspects, issues and actors online compared to in print. Individuals using online news received the same information about the election campaign as those reading the print paper, which indicates a displacing rather than complementary effect of online journalism on print journalism.     

医学论文文后参考文献的科学性问题

列举国内医学期刊中一次"结论错误文献"引用泛滥及所造成的危害,阐述对医学论文文后参考文献科学性审查的重要性;认为医学论文文后参考文献应为最佳证据.结合目前医学期刊中引用参考文献存在的问题,认为在全球性信息化时代,为提高我国科技论文的质量,作者、审稿人及期刊编辑均应该掌握和利用开放的媒体平台,对文后参考文献进行科学性审查.     

Machine learning for predicting elections in Latin America based on social media engagement and polls

The popularity of contemporary social media (SM) has impacted democratic practices, and the success of presidential campaigns is frequently attributed to SM performance. Within this new scenario, many methodological proposals that use SM data have been put forward for predicting election results. However, the most common approach, based on the volume and sentiment analysis of mentions on Twitter, has been frequently criticized and challenged. Thus, recent surveys have indicated new directions, such as the use of data from more than one SM platform, the adoption of nonlinear machine learning (ML) models, and the validation of methodologies and experiments in different elections. In this context, the present paper proposes SoMEN, the Social Media framework for Election Nowcasting, a framework composed of a process and an ML model for nowcasting election results based on SM performance as features and with offline polls as labeled data. It also defines SoMEN-DC, an execution strategy for SoMEN that enables continuous prediction during the campaign (DC). The proposed metrics and framework were applied to some of the main recent presidential elections in Latin America: Argentina (2019), Brazil (2018), Colombia (2018), and Mexico (2018). More than 65,000 posts were collected from the SM profiles of candidates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with data from 195 presidential polls. Results have demonstrated that it was possible to achieve a high level of accuracy in predicting the final vote share of the candidates and to make daily predictions, providing competitive or better results than the traditional polls. The strategies put forward in this study have attempted to address several of the current challenges in this research area and have indicated a new manner of how to face the problems. They may also be directly used for predicting future elections in similar scenarios.     

媒体融合语境下档案信息服务质量：价值、机理及提升策略

为切实把握媒体融合的发展契机,促进档案信息服务质量提升,本文通过梳理国内外档案信息服务研究成果,阐释媒体融合对档案信息服务提升的价值,并基于用户至上原则、信息安全原则构建媒体融合语境下档案信息服务质量运行机理,从思维、内容、技术、人才四个维度提出其策略,以期为档案服务工作提供新的研究视角。     

CSSCI来源期刊微信公众号跨平台学术传播全样本实证分析

[目的/意义]社交媒体提高了学术信息传播与推送效率,丰富了学术信息和服务的供给能力。学术信息在学术生态中呈跨平台传播态势,微信公众号、知识服务平台和期刊官方网站是重要的学术信息推广媒介。[方法/过程]以CSSCI来源期刊为研究对象,全面调查统计C刊微信公众号开设情况,分析C刊微信公众号运营数据和同期CNKI论文下载量之间的关系。[结果/结论]C刊微信公众号运营能力有待提升,运营数据显著影响CNKI平台论文下载量。提出C刊公众号运营应进行持续性改进的建议。     

Social Media References in Newspapers

Social media are increasingly being used as sources in mainstream news coverage. Yet, while the research so far has focused mainly on the use of social media in particular situations, such as breaking news coverage, during crisis news events or in times of elections, little attention is paid to journalists' routine, day-to-day monitoring of social media platforms. The aim of this study is to examine the use and selection of social media as sources in routine newspaper coverage. First, it presents a quantitative overview of all the articles published between January 2006 and December 2013 in the print editions of two Flemish (north Belgian) quality newspapers, De Standaard and De Morgen, that explicitly refer to Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Next, a content analysis is conducted of a sample of newspaper articles published in 2013 that explicitly mention Facebook, Twitter or YouTube as sources of information. The goal of this content analysis is to examine the different appearances and functions of social media references in the news. The study thus provides a first insight into Belgian newspaper journalists' regular sourcing routines in relation to social media.     

论高校图书馆特色信息资源建设——以北方工业大学图书馆考研专栏与英语园地为例

介绍北方工业大学图书馆“考研专栏”与“英语园地”两个栏目的设计目的、具体功能等,指出高校图书馆特色信息资源建设应注重的5个方面:准确定位是建设的前提,加入数字资源建设联盟与合作开发馆藏是建设的基础,实体馆藏与虚拟馆藏相结合是建设的捷径,提供个性化信息服务是建设的关键,不断提高馆员知识水平、实行专人负责制是建设的保障。