Visualizing a Non-Visual Medium through Social Media: The Semiotics of Radio Station Posts on Instagram

For decades, radio was primarily a hidden or unseen medium to listeners. In recent years, digital technologies have transformed radio to a medium that can both be seen and heard. In particular, visuals on social media have given audiences a real-time glimpse of broadcast operations and talent, while enhancing interaction with stations. This study examined how commercial stations across the United States portrayed themselves through posts on Instagram. Using a qualitative methodology and social semiotic theory, results of the study revealed two dominant themes of station posts—station promotion and community—that signified the essence of radio stations.     

Safety concepts and early childhood education: An integrated curriculum

In the United States injuries are the leading cause of death and disability in all children after the first year of life. The National Safety Council has indicated that children from birth to four years of age are at greater risk than any other age for injuries and deaths due to poisoning and ingestions, burns, and drownings.E. Audrey Clark is Professor and Chairperson, Department of Home Economics, California State University, Northridge, CA. Robert A. Simmons is Program Director, Just Say No International. Dr. Simmons was working with the American Lung Association of Los Angeles County at the time this curriculum was developed.     

What Reaching Teaches: Consciousness, Control, and the Inner Zombie

What is the role of conscious visual experience in the controland guidance of human behaviour? According to some recent treatments,the role is surprisingly indirect. Conscious visual experience,on these accounts, serves the formation of plans and the selectionof action types and targets, while the control of ‘online’visually guided action proceeds via a quasi-independent non-consciousroute. In response to such claims, critics such as (Wallhagen[2007], pp. 539–61) have suggested that the notions ofcontrol and guidance invoked are unacceptably vague, and thatthat the image of ‘zombie systems’ guiding actionfails to take account of the possibility that there is genuinebut unconceptualized, unnoticed, and/or unreportable experiencetaking place and guiding or controlling the actions. I addressboth sets of concerns. I try to show that refining and clarifyingthe key notions of control and guidance leaves the originalargument intact, as does the appeal to unconceptualized, unnoticed,or unreportable experiences. The exercise serves, however, tohighlight an important complex of considerations concerningthe relations between control, agency, and experience. Betterunderstanding these relations is, I suggest, an important sourceof insights concerning the nature of phenomenal experience.     

Assessing dialogic argumentation in online environments to relate structure,grounds, and conceptual quality

The national science standards, along with prominent researchers, call for increased focus on scientific argumentation in the classroom. Over the past decade, researchers have developed sophisticated online science learning environments to support these opportunities for scientific argumentation. Assessing the quality of dialogic argumentation, however, has proven challenging. Existing analytic frameworks assess dialogic argumentation in terms of the nature of students' discourse, formal argumentation structure, interactions, and epistemic forms of reasoning. Few frameworks, however, connect these assessments to conceptual quality. We present an analytic framework for assessing argumentation in online science learning environments that relates levels of opposition with discourse moves, use of grounds, and conceptual quality. We then apply the proposed framework to students' dialogic argumentation within a representative online science learning environment to investigate the framework's potential affordances as well as to assess issues of reliability and appropriateness. The results suggest that the framework offers significant affordances and that it also offers high interrater reliability for trained coders. The applicability of the framework for offline contexts and future extensions of the framework are discussed in light of these results. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 293–321, 2008