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- ItemPlato, Xenophon, and the Uneven Temporalities of Ethos in the Trial of Socrates(Johns Hopkins University Press, ) Bjork, CMany rhetorical theories of ethos mark their relationship with time by focusing on two temporal poles: the timely ethos and the timeless ethos. But between these two temporal poles, ethos is also durative; it lingers, shifts, accumulates, and dissipates over time. Although scholarship often foregrounds the kairotic and static senses of ethos popularized in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, this article highlights how the chronic elements of ethos are no less important to rhetoric. By examining Xenophon’s and Plato’s representations of the trial of Socrates, this article contends that these com-peting views about the temporalities of ethos have a storied history that predates Aristotle’s writings. This analysis also expands received understandings of Plato’s contributions to rhetoric by illuminating how his view of ethos is deeply inter-twined with ongoing philosophical practice. The article concludes by arguing that rhetorical studies has much to gain by more closely attending to the cumulative aspects of ethos.
- ItemIntegrating Usability Testing with Digital Rhetoric in OWI(Elsevier B.V., ) Bjork, CWhile usability testing can help instructors improve the design of online writing instruction (OWI), its emphasis on student-users sometimes overlooks the networked rhetorical ecologies in which those student-users operate, tilting online composition pedagogy toward neoliberal models of higher education that cater to the student-as-consumer. In response, I propose augmenting usability testing in online writing education with the theories of digital rhetoric. In the context of OWI, usability theory and digital rhetoric share a similar emphasis on the student as a user or audience, but they also have at least two key differences. First, unlike digital rhetoric, usability testing typically elides the political and ideological implications of student-users’ experiences. Second, the usability theories of Jakob Nielsen, for example, tend to view online interfaces as static objects manipulated by users. Digital rhetoric, on the other hand, sees interfaces as dynamic, real-time interactions. Although both paradigms have their advantages, I argue that integrating usability testing with the theories of digital rhetoric can add complexity to researchers’ understanding of OWI by revealing not only how students use online writing environments but also how they use them rhetorically.
- ItemDual impacts of coronavirus anxiety on mental health in 35 societies.(Springer Nature Limited, 2021-04-26) Chen SX; Ng JCK; Hui BPH; Au AKY; Wu WCH; Lam BCP; Mak WWS; Liu JHThe spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected both physical health and mental well-being around the world. Stress-related reactions, if prolonged, may result in mental health problems. We examined the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in a multinational study and explored the effects of government responses to the outbreak. We sampled 18,171 community adults from 35 countries/societies, stratified by age, gender, and region of residence. Across the 35 societies, 26.6% of participants reported moderate to extremely severe depression symptoms, 28.2% moderate to extremely severe anxiety symptoms, and 18.3% moderate to extremely severe stress symptoms. Coronavirus anxiety comprises two factors, namely Perceived Vulnerability and Threat Response. After controlling for age, gender, and education level, perceived vulnerability predicted higher levels of negative emotional symptoms and psychological distress, whereas threat response predicted higher levels of self-rated health and subjective well-being. People in societies with more stringent control policies had more threat response and reported better subjective health. Coronavirus anxiety exerts detrimental effects on subjective health and well-being, but also has the adaptive function in mobilizing safety behaviors, providing support for an evolutionary perspective on psychological adaptation.
- ItemUse of Predictive Analytics within Learning Analytics Dashboards: A Review of Case Studies(Springer Nature BV, 2023-09-01) Ramaswami G; Susnjak T; Mathrani A; Umer RLearning analytics dashboards (LADs) provide educators and students with a comprehensive snapshot of the learning domain. Visualizations showcasing student learning behavioral patterns can help students gain greater self-awareness of their learning progression, and at the same time assist educators in identifying those students who may be facing learning difficulties. While LADs have gained popularity, existing LADs are still far behind when it comes to employing predictive analytics into their designs. Our systematic literature review has revealed limitations in the utilization of predictive analytics tools among existing LADs. We find that studies leveraging predictive analytics only go as far as identifying the at-risk students and do not employ model interpretation or explainability capabilities. This limits the ability of LADs to offer data-driven prescriptive advice to students that can offer them guidance on appropriate learning adjustments. Further, published studies have mostly described LADs that are still at prototype stages; hence, robust evaluations of how LADs affect student outcomes have not yet been conducted. The evaluations until now are limited to LAD functionalities and usability rather than their effectiveness as a pedagogical treatment. We conclude by making recommendations for the design of advanced dashboards that more fully take advantage of machine learning technologies, while using suitable visualizations to project only relevant information. Finally, we stress the importance of developing dashboards that are ultimately evaluated for their effectiveness.
- ItemPerforming smart sexual selves: A sexual scripting analysis of youth talk about internet pornography(SAGE Publications, 2023-01-22) Healy-Cullen S; Morison T; Taylor J; Taylor KIn this article, we explore young New Zealanders’ use of sexual scripts in talk about Internet pornography (IP) to perform ‘smart’ sexual selves. Using sexual scripting theory, as developed by feminist discursive psychologists, our analysis of interview data generated with 10 youth (aged 16–18 years) highlights two commonly constructed sexual identities across youth talk; (i) the proficient Internet pornography user, and (ii) the astute Internet pornography viewer. The way these young people talk about portrayals of sexuality and gender in IP – and their ability to discern its artifice – suggests they are savvy consumers who are capable of using IP as a cultural resource (e.g. for learning, entertainment) while at the same time acknowledging it as a flawed representation of sex and sexuality. We discuss the implications of our findings for strengths-based sexuality education that supports sexual agency, proposing a justice-orientated approach grounded in the notion of ethical sexual citizenship.
- ItemInvestigating aspects of paternalistic leadership within the job demands–resources model(Cambridge University Press, 2023-01-09) Lee M; Kee YJ; Lau SSY; Jan GThe literature on the job demands–resources (JD-R) theory has flourished for the past decade due to the theory's simplicity and its applications in many areas of work life. However, the literature is lacking on how leaders can utilize this theory to manage employees, especially in the Asian leadership context. Using the JD-R theory, the current study investigated each aspect of paternalistic leadership (i.e., benevolent leadership, authoritarian leadership and moral leadership) and its influence on employees' job resources (i.e., work meaningfulness and influence at work), job demands (i.e., emotional and cognitive demands), work engagement, burnout and the processes involved. Four hundred and thirty-one (431) full-time working employees (mean age: 31.58; female: 57.8%) from various organizations in Malaysia participated in the study. Using structural equation modelling, the study's results showed that the benevolent aspect of paternalistic leadership was related to higher work engagement and lower burnout through work meaningfulness (but not through influence at work). In contrast, the authoritarian aspect of paternalistic leadership was related to higher burnout through emotional demands (but not through cognitive demands), while the moral leadership aspect had no significant relationship to employees' job demands or job resources, with a mediation process not found in either relationship. Overall, the study revealed three contrasting mechanisms for each aspect of paternalistic leadership and suggested how paternalistic leadership may be practised in Asian countries.
- ItemArtificial Intelligence-Enabled DDoS Detection for Blockchain-Based Smart Transport Systems.(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2021-12-22) Liu T; Sabrina F; Jang-Jaccard J; Xu W; Wei YA smart public transport system is expected to be an integral part of our human lives to improve our mobility and reduce the effect of our carbon footprint. The safety and ongoing maintenance of the smart public transport system from cyberattacks are vitally important. To provide more comprehensive protection against potential cyberattacks, we propose a novel approach that combines blockchain technology and a deep learning method that can better protect the smart public transport system. By the creation of signed and verified blockchain blocks and chaining of hashed blocks, the blockchain in our proposal can withstand unauthorized integrity attack that tries to forge sensitive transport maintenance data and transactions associated with it. A hybrid deep learning-based method, which combines autoencoder (AE) and multi-layer perceptron (MLP), in our proposal can effectively detect distributed denial of service (DDoS) attempts that can halt or block the urgent and critical exchange of transport maintenance data across the stakeholders. The experimental results of the hybrid deep learning evaluated on three different datasets (i.e., CICDDoS2019, CIC-IDS2017, and BoT-IoT) show that our deep learning model is effective to detect a wide range of DDoS attacks achieving more than 95% F1-score across all three datasets in average. The comparison of our approach with other similar methods confirms that our approach covers a more comprehensive range of security properties for the smart public transport system.
- ItemWomen’s perspectives on long-acting reversible contraception: a critical scoping review of qualitative research(Taylor and Francis Group LLC, 2021-05-18) Morison T; Eagar DLong-acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) has significant promise both from a public health outlook and a social justice perspective. However, if women’s empowerment is to be supported, then perspectives and experiences of LARC must be considered. This scoping review assesses research about contraceptive users’ perspectives and experiences of contraceptive decision-making and practices. A content analysis was conducted to identify research trends in qualitative studies of contraceptive-user perspectives (n = 54), located by means of a systematic search. Interpreting findings through a reproductive justice lens, three main limitations in the scholarship were identified, viz., (1) an instrumentalist, individual-level focus; (2) a lack of consideration for diverse perspectives; and (3) an uncritical focus on young women. While the small body of qualitative research on LARC offers some valuable insights, when viewed from a sexual and reproductive justice perspective, it is not sufficiently user-centered or grounded within the reproductive politics surrounding contraceptive care and provision. Research is needed that draws on appropriate social theory; widens its focus beyond dominant groups; and is cognizant of the multi-level power relations surrounding LARC. Such work provides a nuanced picture of the complex social and contextual factors at play and inform person-centered approaches in sexual and reproductive health policy and programming.
- ItemPatient-provider power relations in counselling on long-acting reversible contraception: a discursive study of provider perspectives(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022-05-06) Morison TContraceptive providers play an essential role in shaping contraceptive decision-making and care, with the potential to constrain patients' agency. This is a particular concern given the rising hegemony of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) and growing evidence of negative patient experiences of LARC promotion and provision. Despite this evidence, little research has considered health providers' perspectives. Drawing on interviews with 22 contraceptive health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explored their professional identity construction, focusing on meaning-making in instances of conflict between providers' and patients' priorities and agendas. Guided by feminist poststructuralist theory, the discursive analysis highlights common rhetorical strategies used by participants to (1) justify the use of coercive practices to encourage LARC uptake, and (2) in turn, negotiate positive identities. Findings show how participants grapple with the reproductive politics structuring contraceptive care, including established understandings of the purpose of (long-acting) contraception and contraceptive providers' roles vis-à-vis provision and promotion. The findings point to limitations on contraceptive agency, despite the unanimous endorsement of rights-based voluntary care. Extending the critical literature on LARC and contributing to the under-researched area of contraceptive coercion and agency, the findings of this study have important implications for the delivery of contraceptive care.
- ItemMethodological Aspects in Study of Fat Stigma in Social Media Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2022-05-17) Wanniarachchi V; Mathrani A; Susnjak T; Scogings C; Moreno, AWith increased obesity rates worldwide and the rising popularity in social media usage, we have witnessed a growth in hate speech towards fat/obese people. The severity of hate content has prompted researchers to study public perceptions that give rise to fat stigma from social media discourses. This article presents a systematic literature review of recent literature published in this domain to gauge the current state of research and identify possible research gaps. We have examined existing research (i.e., peer-reviewed articles that were systematically included using the EBSCO discovery service) to study their methodological aspects by reviewing their context, domain, analytical methods, techniques, tools, features and limitations. Our findings reveal that while recent studies have explored fat stigma content in social media, these mostly acquired manual analytical methods regardless of the evolved machine learning, natural language processing and deep learning methods. Although fat stigma in social media has gained enormous attention in current socio-psychological research, there exists a gap between how such research is conducted and what technologies are being applied, which limits in-depth investigations of fat stigma discussions.
