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    Analysing underpinning patterns in social media posts that promote fat stigmatisation : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Information Technology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Wanniarachchi, Vajisha Udayangi
    Social media offers users an online platform to freely express themselves; however, when users post opinionated and offensive comments that target certain communities, this could instigate hatred towards them. With the global increase in obese/fat populations, social media discourses laced with fat hatred have become commonplace, leading to much fat stigmatising content being posted online. This research aims to investigate the patterns of fat stigma, and how female and male genders are positioned in fat stigmatising discourses that are being conducted over social media. To achieve this objective, a methodological framework is proposed for unearthing underlying stigmatising patterns prevalent in social media discussions, with specific focus on fat stigma. Methods incorporating natural language processing techniques such as sentiment analysis and topic modelling, along with discourse analysis have been described for classifying users’ emotions and comprehending the stigma patterns embedded in social big data. The framework has been applied to weight-based textual data, extracted from Twitter and Reddit, to identify emergent gender-based themes, emotions and word frequency patterns that underpin the fat stigmatising content posted online. The experiential consequences of being considered fat across both genders have been analysed with objectification theory. The findings from this study have provided a holistic outlook on fat stigmatising content that is posted online which can further inform policymakers in planning suitable props to facilitate more inclusive social media spaces. This study showcases how lexical analytics can be conducted by combining a variety of data mining methods to draw out insightful subject related themes that add to the existing knowledge base; therefore, has both practical and theoretical implications.
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    Automating the measurement of critical thinking in discussion forums : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Corich, Stephen Paul
    Critical thinking is seen as an essential skill for survival in the 21st century and those involved in education agree that encouraging students to think critically is an essential requirement of the educational system. There is considerable debate among educationalists concerning the most effective way to encourage the development of critical thinking skills and little agreement on the best way to measure evidence of critical thinking. This study examines what is meant by the term critical thinking and investigates some of the tools that have been used to measure evidence of critical thinking. The study concentrates on the measurement of critical thinking among discussion forum participants and describes the development and testing of a tool designed to automate the process of measuring critical thinking. Since the study involved the design, development and testing of a computerised tool, an action research approach was adopted. Action research gained popularity among information systems developers around the mid 1990s. It is seen as a methodology that encourages the generation of scientific knowledge by allowing the researcher to modify intentionally a real setting and carefully evaluate the results. The study describes the development of an automated text classification system that uses content analysis to classify discussion forum transcripts using critical thinking models developed by Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (2000), Henri (1992) and Perkins & Murphy (2006). The findings from the study suggest that automated tools have the potential to assist in the measurement of critical thinking abilities and are worthy of further investigation.