Search results

Purpose — Since a couple of years, we are confronted with the phenomenon of information overload. In particular, the web provides a rich source of a variety of information mainly in textual, i.e. unstructured form. Thus, web search faces new challenges that are how to make the user aware of the variety of content available and how to satisfy users best with such manifold content.

Methodology — This variety of content is considered as diversity, i.e. the reflection of a result set's coverage of multiple interpretations of a query. Diversification within web search aims on the one hand at adapting the ranking in a way that the top results are diverse. Increasingly important becomes on the other hand the organization and classification of content within diversification.

Findings — Various approaches to diversification are available or currently focus on research activities. They range from an adapted ranking by means of similarity measures or diversity scores to a comprehensive diversity analysis which determines topics and classifies text according to opinions etc.

Implications — Given the high diversity of web content, approaches for diversification are extremely important. Web search tries to address this problem from different perspectives. For the future, combination with image search result diversification is important. Further, benchmarks and standard data sets for evaluations need to be established to ensure comparability of results from various approaches.

Originality/value — This chapter provides an overview on diversity in web search from two directions: (a) Diversity is introduced with its notions and dimensions. (b) Methods to assess diversity within web search are presented.

Racialization is an important concept when looking at structural mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequalities. The State, and its various organizational spaces of action, is often seen as a site for race to be enacted. Policy sectors such as housing, education, taxation, and immigration have been ripe areas of research that reflect this. However, media policy research has not effectively engaged with this critical conception. Media policy research has been driven by political economy perspectives within the field of Mass Communication and Media Studies, and can benefit from an approach that analyzes it in relation to social science perspectives that focus on processes which constitute, or are constituted by, actors, groups, and organizations. Our hope is that future researchers will find this volume useful in further developing critical studies of media policy that take into account race as a social force.

This chapter traces the evolution of political–administrative relationships in the South African public service. It traces how segregation and apartheid laid down the foundation of the country’s governmental system. The public service was effectively set up for Whites and poorly resourced self-governing territories were set up for Blacks. The National Party (NP) was in office from 1948 to 1994 and this long period in office led to the politicisation of the bureaucracy, with public servants gradually starting to adopt the government’s way of thinking instead of being impartial. In the 1980s, under President P.W. Botha, the government embarked on public sector reform, which included politicisation of the top levels of the public sector.

The role of the PSC/CoA is discussed – it had omnipotent human resources powers over the public service, particularly during the dying days of apartheid. The chapter then examines constitutional change in the 1990s, looking at both the Interim and Final Constitutions, which laid down the foundation of a democratic society. There is particular emphasis on political–administrative relationships and the declining influence of the PSC.

In this project, we propose and test a new device – wearable sociometric badges containing small microphones – as a low-cost and relatively unobtrusive tool for measuring stress response to group processes. Specifically, we investigate whether voice pitch, measured using the microphone of the sociometric badge, is associated with physiological stress response to group processes.

We collect data in a laboratory setting using participants engaged in two types of small-group interactions: a social interaction and a problem-solving task. We examine the association between voice pitch (measured by fundamental frequency of the participant’s speech) and physiological stress response (measured using salivary cortisol) in these two types of small-group interactions.

We find that in the social task, participants who exhibit a stress response have a statistically significant greater deviation in voice pitch (from their overall average voice pitch) than those who do not exhibit a stress response. In the problem-solving task, participants who exhibit a stress response also have a greater deviation in voice pitch than those who do not exhibit a stress response, however, in this case, the results are only marginally significant. In both tasks, among participants who exhibited a stress response, we find a statistically significant correlation between physiological stress response and deviation in voice pitch.

We conclude that wearable microphones have the potential to serve as cheap and unobtrusive tools for measuring stress response to group processes.

In our studies of daily newspapers and news websites in small and medium-sized cities in Brazil, we view these enterprises as firms endowed with specific strengths and weaknesses reflecting the characteristics of the localities in which they operate. In addition, we use references from urban geography and the industrial economy to investigate their structure, conduct, and performance. This chapter presents our observations about the structure of these firms and the journalistic business in non-metropolitan cities of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The results point to greater consolidation of newspapers, despite their traditional way of operating; the low performance of news websites and their restricted source of revenue; and the existence of a potential regional market little explored by these media.

This chapter describes five disciplinary domains of research or lenses that contribute to the design of a team tutor. We focus on four significant challenges in developing Intelligent Team Tutoring Systems (ITTSs), and explore how the five lenses can offer guidance for these challenges. The four challenges arise in the design of team member interactions, performance metrics and skill development, feedback, and tutor authoring. The five lenses or research domains that we apply to these four challenges are Tutor Engineering, Learning Sciences, Science of Teams, Data Analyst, and Human–Computer Interaction. This matrix of applications from each perspective offers a framework to guide designers in creating ITTSs.

Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the design of conflict resolution systems to the processes used for resolving conflicts to the outcomes of the systems. Scholars from these specialties, however, have paid considerably less attention to external workplace conflict resolution through litigation. This chapter analyzes certain areas of such litigation, focusing specifically on workplace conflicts involving issues of managerial and employee misclassification, independent contractor versus employee status, no-poaching agreements, and executive compensation.

Leading recent cases involving these issues are examined, with particular attention given to the question of whether the conflicts reflected therein could have been resolved internally or through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods rather than through litigation.

Implications of this analysis are drawn for workplace conflict resolution theory and practice. In doing so, I conclude that misclassification disputes could likely be resolved internally or through ADR rather than through litigation, but that no-poaching and executive compensation disputes could very likely not be resolved internally or through ADR.

The chapter draws on and offers an integrated analysis of particular types of workplace conflict that are typically treated separately by scholars and practitioners. These include misclassification conflicts, no poaching and labor market competition conflicts, and executive compensation conflicts. The originality and value of this chapter are to show that despite their different contexts and particular issues, the attempted resolution through litigation of these types of workplace conflicts has certain common, systematic characteristics.

Advances in technology over recent years made it possible to use machines and artificial intelligence to develop commercially viable solutions for companies to listen to consumers, decode the meaning, and respond accordingly. In parallel, solutions have been developed that are able to automatically track facial expressions of consumers when reacting to a given marketing stimulus.

The authors look at how marketing executives can apply these technologies to generate enhanced customer insights, providing a realistic context for future applications. The focus is on bringing researchers and managers closer to those moments of truth and our ability to understand customer emotions, emotional reaction, everyday language, and ultimately brand engagement.

The chapter covers the application of commercially viable use cases for (1) the automated measurement of emotions through facial coding to optimize advertizing and content, and (2) the use of voice coding technology to design interactive chatbots as an alternative to traditional surveys. In the outlook, the authors describe the potential that these technologies provide for future research and further use cases.