Introduction

Musical sound can be measured with the help of physical methods, and on the other hand, it will be percept with human’s hearing. In order to use objective measurements of the sound in musicology, these two kinds of information extraction must be compared and associated with each other.

About the musical sound research in Russia

In 1920^th, some Russian researchers fulfilled significant works on the field of musical sound investigations. Vsevolod S. Kazansky and Sergey N. Rzhevkin studied the timbre properties of a singing voice and string instruments [1]. V. S. Kazansky developed also a recording device where the form of sound oscillations was fixed with a light ray on a photo-sensitive film.

At this time professor Nikolay A. Garbuzov, who had both technical and musical education, organized in Moscow the State Institute for Musical Science (1921–1931) and then the Scientific Research Institute of Music (since 1931). In 1929, prof. N. Garbuzov proposed to use the oscillation-recording device for exact measurement of melody. This work have been fulfilled by A. V. Rabinovich, who published the results in a 32-pages brochure [2]. He calculated the number of oscillation periods on a known time interval and derived on this way the main tone frequency. Using this method, A. Rabinovich estimated the deviation of tones from the standard pitch values in violin music performance. He showed that the changing of sound pitch is a usual performer’s method for improving the harmony.

From 50^th until 80^th of the XX century, several measurements of this kind have been made. In this investigations, chromatic stroboscopes and other technical devices were used. These works have been fulfilled in Acoustical Laboratory of Moscow Conservatory by pupils of N. Garbuzov Sergey Screbkov, Eugeny Nazaikinsky, Youry Rags, Olga Sakhaltueva etc.

After the end of 1980^th, musical sound investigations will be based on computer methods. Nikolay Bazhanov in the Conservatory of Novosibirsk examined performance styles of different famous piano-players with the help of a personal computer and self-made sound card. In 1994 N. Bazhanov published a book with results of these investigations [3].

In 1993, the computer center of Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory have been organized. Since 1994, we began to study vocal sounds with computer and a ‘Soundblaster’ card. Some measurements of vowel sounds were fulfilled under the direction of the vocal sound expert prof. Vladimir P. Morozov (who began the investigations of singing voice in the 1960^th).

In 1995, the author of this report began to develop his own computer program for measurements of musical sound. This work will be continued until present day [4].

Methods

For computer study of musical sound, mostly ‘sliding’ methods will be used, i.e. the estimation of sound properties happens in a ‘window’ with a width , which moves along the time axis with a small step . ‘Sliding’ Fourier transform allows to follow the spectrum changing during the musical piece. The form of used ‘window’ causes more or less estimation errors of spectrum components. Spectrum resolution and time width are in an ‘uncertainty relation’: , which limits the possibilities of exact estimation of parameters in time- and frequency- domain.

The immanent properties of musical sounds require high resolution in frequency domain. For instance, frequency difference between stages c and cis vary from 1.95 Hz in contraoctave to 248,91 Hz in 5^th octave; in musical scale, it is always the interval 100 cents. According to human’s hearing possibilities, the accuracy of about 4..5 musical cents (1/20 of octave) must be assured for sound pitch estimations. Non-ideality of sound structure and noise, witch contains any sound recording, and other voices and also errors of numerical methods used in computer programs are the main causes of result errors.

For the calculation of changing sound pitch, i.e. melody, both spectral and temporal methods can be used. In order to study properties of musical sound of different traditional cultures, some new methods measurements have been developed by the author. For example, a special technique of estimation of pitch row was elaborated, based on phonogram processing.

Results and Discussion

Accuracy control

An investigation of characteristic estimation errors for different sound parameters have been made by the author, including the pitch extraction methods — difference method (YIN), autocorrelation method and cepstrum method. The estimation errors were measured statistically for test-sounds in four ‘central’ octaves and in consideration of influence of ‘white’ noise with different levels, additional tones and for various ‘window’ width . The method parameters and conditions for keeping the summary error under 4..5 cents have been defined.

Some results of ethnomusicologycal investigations

Folklore Singing. In many folk singing examples the sound pitch row contains an equidistant stage structure like the European equal tempered pitch row. But, as a rule, there are more then 12 stages in octave — this number varies from 15 to 30 or more. In some other pieces, the pitch row contains linear rising steps between stages (from about 30 cents to 90..100 cents within 1,5..2 octaves) [5, 6, 7].

Tuva throat (overtone) singing (khoomei). In this traditional singing pieces usually contain a vocalization part, which sounds like a flute with an additional lower voice (bourdon). This effect was usually explained through two independent oscillations — of ‘true’ and ‘false’ ferrein’s cords, but the spectrums show only one overtone system. In author’s investigation, based on modulation theory (radio-signal transmission systems), a new model of sound production was offered, which allows to explain this spectrum structure. A computer simulation (in SPAX program) discovered also the ‘mechanism’ of two-voice hearing during vocalize part in khoomei [8].

Traditional Kazakhstan instruments. In this computer investigation, the traditional dombra pitch row was studied, based on old master’s recordings. This investigation showed that the pitch row includes stages with are close similar to Pythagorean’s, pure scale or equal tempered scale and includes also very ‘narrow’ intervals like ⅛, ⅓, and also ¾ of a halftone [9, 10].

Classical music of the East: analysis of performance style parameters. Traditional performance of classical music of Transcaucasia and Central Asia have been compared on the basis of phonograms of famous Azerbaijani and Tadjik musicians, belonging to two generations. This analysis showed some ‘historical’ differences during the period 1960^th–2010^th in the used pitch row — an increasing of percentage of ‘European’ intervals (multiple of 100 cents) instead of small intervals (about 25 cents and multiple of it). It indicates a certain trend in the thinking of musicians who studied western music and played pianoforte in conservatory [11].

Conclusion

Contemporary computer investigations on the field of musical information research in Russia mostly deals with traditional music and instruments study. On this way, some interesting new results have been obtained, which are useful for musicology and ethnomusicology.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my co-authors — ethnomusicologists, who became interested in quantitative objective methods of musical sound investigation and had patience enough to finish its study in spite of lacks of mathematics-understanding which is typically for humanitarians.

References

1. Kazansky, V.S., Rzhevkin, S.N. Issledovaniya pevcheskogo golosa (The investigations of singing voice), -Petersburg, Russian Federation, Journal of Applied Physics, 1928, v. 5, P. 87 (in Russian).
2. Rabinovich, A.V. Oscillografichesky metod analiza melodii.Problemy musikoznaniya. Teoreticheskaya biblioteka. (Oscillographical method of melody analysis.Problems of musicology. Theoretical library). Muzgiz: Moscow, Russian Federation, 1932 (in Russian).
3. Bazhanov, N.S. Dinamicheskoe intonirovanie v iskusstve pianista: issledovanie (Dynamical intonation in the art of piano player: an investigation). State Conservatory of Novosibirsk: Novosibirsk, Russian Federation, 1994.
4. Kharuto, A.V. Program SPAX for Windows. #2005612875 of Federal Institute of Industrial Property of Russia, 2005.
5. Kharuto, A.V., Smirnov, D.V. Ispolzovanie komputernogo analiza v issledovanii zvukovysotnogo stroeniya narodnoy muzyki (Using of computer analysis in investigations of folk music). Proc. of International scientific conference in memory of A.V. Rudneva: Music of oral tradition. Moscow P.I.Tchaikovsky Conservatory: Moscow, Russian Federation, 1999, P. 335–340 (in Russian).
6. Smirnov, D.V., Kharuto, A.V. Nelineiny zvukoriad v musicalnom folklore: obschaya zakonomernost i individualnost (Non-linear sound pitch row in musical
   folklore: common consistent pattern and individuality). Languages of
   science — languages of art. / Ed.: Z.E.Zuravleva, V.A.Kopzic, G.Yu.Reznichenko. Progress-Traditsiya: Moscow, Russian Federation, 2000. P. 347-352 (in Russian).
7. Kharuto, A.V. Komputerny analiz zvukoriada po fonogramme (Computer analysis of pitch row based on phonogram). Musicalnaya Academya, 2010, № 3, P. 83–89 (in Russian).
8. Kharuto, A.V. Tuva throat singing: forming of many voices from a ‘single-voice’ spectrum (model of sound production and perception). Abstracts of V International symposium on khoomei (throat-singing) — cultural phenomenon of the peoples of Central Asia. UNESCO National Committee of Tuva Republic, International Scientific Center ‘Khoomei’: Kyzyl, Russian Federation, 2008, P. 134–142.
9. Utegalieva, S.I., Kharuto, A.V. Komputernoe issledovanie traditsionnogo stroya kazakhskoy dombry na primere fragmenta is kuia D.Nurpeisovoy ‘Enbek epi’ (Computer analysis of traditional pitch row of Kazakh dombra on the fragment from D. Nurpeisova’s kui ‘Enbek epi’). Musicovedenie, N 8, 2013, P. 28–39 (in Russian).
10. Utegalieva, S.I., Kharuto, A.V. Komputernye issledovaniya zvukoriadov kazakhskogo kyl-kobyza (Computer investigations of pitch rows of Kazakh kyl-kobyz). Musicovedenie, N 12, 2013, P. 38–45 (in Russian).
11. Yunusova,V.N., Kharuto, A.V. Objective analysis of performance style parameters
    (on the material of classical music of the East). Proc. of the 24th National Scientific Symposium with International Participations ‘Metrology and Metrology Assurance’, Sept. 7–11, Sozopol, Bulgaria. TU Sofia: Sofia,, Bulgaria, P. 96–100.

This research attempts to present a picture of the structure and design of virtual social networking sites such as Facenama, Cloob, Facebook, and Google+. The aim of this research is to study what are the differences between Iranian and non-Iranian social networks structures mainly used by Iranian users and representation of social life in these sites .

Content analysis method has been used in the present research. Elements such as real images, personal photos, high attractiveness, image plus text, warm and cool colors, lots of comments (more than ten comments), and minimal use of symbolic signs have been used more than other types. Moreover, it was identified that there is no significant difference between the type of selected structures by users in Iranian and non-Iranian social network websites. Moreover the results show that in the information society there is no basic differences in the image provided by the social networks of social life .The results of the research could be use to reach a pattern of use of these websites for creating and developing personal social networking.

Computer-assisted exploratory experiments are used in computational science and engineering as well as computational sociology. Classical (numerical) simulations in science and engineering are mostly based on toy models with very specific hypotheses. However, non-classical simulations have a broader scope: they rely on decentralized information and distributed control thus supporting simulation from-the-bottom-up. Examples include agent-based models (ABMs) and multi-agent systems (MAS). Since emergence is one of the key features of such systems the different variants of emergence in agent-based systems are described. From a system engineer’s perspective the emergent properties, pattern and phenomena in agent-based simulations permit to make creative use of the chance events which may arise during a simulation.

Introduction

In our research the collaborative learning with and without the use of the computer is analyzed. The process of collaborative learning is applied to the first year calculus students at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, for examining functions and drawing their graphs. The collaborative learning process was analyzed, compared and described, for experimental and control group regarding their way of learning. First part of research was conducted in 2011 and 2012, were both experimental and control group were divided to small four member groups by using Kagan’s (1994) principles. In 2013 the new experimental group was formed by using mathematical model for the group making.

The students in both experimental groups learned with the help of GeoGebra, and the students in the control group learned without using GeoGebra. After the collaborative learning, the students were tested with a test and post test, and the results of the experimental groups were significantly better than the results of students in the control group. The results are of the first part of research is published in the paper Takači et al (2015).

Methods

The research had started in 2011 year with the control group with 180 students, and continued in 2012 with the experimental group. In 2012 we had 210 students, but 180 students were chosen for experimental group having a corresponding student from 2011, same major, according to the pre-test results.

Both the experimental and the control group were structured according to Kagan’s, instructions:

• The results of the pre-tests considering their pre-calculus knowledge were used to form a list order of all the students (ranging from the worst to the best one).
• Each student had to make two lists of persons whom he likes or dislikes, particularizing up to three names.

The research was continued in 2013 when the second experimental group is formed analogously as in 2012, but the small four members groups are formed by using variable neighborhood search algorithm, (metaheuristic for solving the mathematical optimization problems) based on Kagan’s (1994) principles. The students also worked with the help of Geogebra.

The task for all students was to examine twenty 20 appropriate functions and draw their graphs. The calculations for chosen functions could be done easily even without computer. The control group finished their task in two weeks (2 times 5 classes a week), but both experimental groups finished the whole task in 5 hours. The students worked on the task at the university, with the help of the authors. All the members in the group were given 5 points (of 100) for the successfully finished task, both in experimental and control group.

After collaborative learning the students got test (colloquium) and post test (exam) to be done without the computer.

Results and Discussion

The analysis of the students work (examining 20 functions) had confirmed that learning calculus with the use of GeoGebra is more “constructivist” than without computer. Students used the opportunities to consider together algebraic and graphic view in order to examine, analyze and test the adequacy of their knowledge of the properties of functions. The students used the characteristics of the package GeoGebra to analyze both the formula and its graph at the same time in different ways. Both experimental groups finished all 20 tasks with the precision of 18.02% (2012), 18.25%, (2013), but the control group finished all 19.64 tasks with the precision of 12.84%.

The statistical analysis (t-test, effect size) proves that the students’ learning achievement in examining functions and drawing their graphs is better when they use GeoGebra.

The difference between the results of the test and post tests was statistically significant at the level of significance of 0.05 and 0.01, regarding control and both experimental groups.

Conclusions

Taking into account the results of the students’ achievement both at the test and the post-test, the results of the interviews, and the average number of solved tasks (of 20) per one group, we can say that the learning of examining functions and drawing their graphs by GeoGebra in CSCL groups is more efficient than the learning without it in collaborative groups.

Since the difference between the tested experimental groups, of pre test, and post test was not statistically significant at the level of significance of 0.05 05 and 0.01, it can be concluded that the application of variable neighborhood search algorithm is very useful for team building procedure when we have lot of students to work with.

References and Notes

1.      Kagan, S. (1994). Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Resources for Teachers,Inc.

2.      O'Malley, C. (ed.) (1995). Computer-supported cooperative learning. Berlin: Springer- Verlag.

3.      Tall, D. (2011). A Sensible approach to the Calculus. Handbook Calculus and its teaching. Ed. F. Pluminage and A. Cuevas.

4.      Takači, Dj., Stankov, G., Milanovic, I., (2015) Efficiency of learning environment using GeoGebra when calculus contents are learned in collaborative groups, Computers & Education 82: 421-431.

A commonist or communist internet and society require a multitude of different kinds of struggles. This contribution to the debate develops on the strategic alliances of peer production with capital, mainly the use of externally paid wage labour as a way to out-compete, in the long run, capitalism, rather than focusing on classical forms of class struggle. Empirical examples will be taken from a study of Swedish language version of Wikipedia.

Capitalist controlled platforms using crowdsourcing of so called user generated content or data mining of the activities exploit the voluntarily engaged users to get a slice of the value production, theirs or the society’s depending on theoretical perspective. The process depends either on some kind of capture of unpaid value production or a kind of appropriation of redistributed value from other value producing sectors (which theoretically goes back to Marx thought of the equilibrium of the general profit ratio in society, money or investment flow to the crowdsourcing projects with low expenditure of variable capital and these projects get rewarded by un-proportionate profit relative the small amount of wage labour directly connected to them; the added value mostly being a kind of rent).

Peer controlled platforms’ strategic alliances with capital, in the form of donations of money or abstract labour to the project, are different. Looking at it from a traditional critical point of view it could, as above, either be regarded as exploitation of unpaid abstract labour when a state institution or a company like IBM uses Wikipedians or free software programmers to develop their services or production, or as a new form of exploitation of their own wage labour with the help of voluntary engaged work, understood as concrete labour in the Marxian sense, by the peer producers. The differences here, once again, being if you stress the exploitation of the voluntary peers or the already hired labour force by the capitalist when it comes to value production (or a combination of both); or if you see the exploitation of unpaid work as a source of rent rather than value production. Both perspectives have been proposed within autonomist Marxism and by other Marxists.

Yet, it is also possible to stress the emancipatory potentials of these alliances from the peer production’s viewpoint. Instead of different interpretations of communism of capital, as post-Fordist capitalism has been called by Paolo Virno, it is possible to talk of a capital of communism, but the perspective brings some apparent paradoxes to the radical analysis. Counter-production is stressed before counter-politics mediated by the content. In the case of Wikipedia the policy of neutral point of view is one of the biggest obstacles for company control and power. The policy is therefore a main disciplining tool within the peer community’s strategic alliance-work with a capital that wants more of subjective interactivity on the digital platforms for the construction of their customer relations. The policy of neutral point of view results in practice in a liberal point of view, which is even admitted by some wikipedians in the core of the project. But this liberal view comes with a twist and makes the peer project Wikipedia more competitive within a broader range of people than a progressive and radical encyclopaedia would have. To sum up: maybe peer production as a practice is more subversive than critical theory in today’s capitalism, but that does not mean that critical theory is without a mission.

Critical theory is needed to supervise and guide the strategic work on the alliances with capital. Not all kinds of cooperation strengthen the peer production. How does Google’s presentation of central parts of Wikipedia articles, within their corporate search engines’ interface, affect the encyclopaedia? How does the increasing use of wage labour within the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as increasing sums of money from fundraising, affect the processes of peer producing? How does the increasing number of co-operations with institutional actors within the GLAM-sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) affect the peer production with its division of the community into an A- and B-team of participants? And where should a line be drawn up against companies contributions to “their” articles (knowing that company-related articles are suffering from bad quality and a lack of voluntary engagement in Wikipedia)? Is there realistic to organize courses, conferences and contests in editing for companies (as a way of controlling them)? And how should the peer producing community and its foundation react in relation to PR-consultant firms like Wiki-PR that helps firms to edit “their” articles? All these questions are questions for a new and revitalized critical theory to address. Some tentative answers from the study of the community behind the Swedish language version and its WMF-Sweden local organization, suggest that it comes down to finely tuned calibrations of the co-operation with the enemy, if these should result in the capital of communism rather than the communism of capital.

Introduction

Churchman recognized the importance of information (knowledge) in the systems approach and cited the potential for deception throughout (Churchman, 1968). If information quality includes criteria for veracity, then information which deceives can be considered information of poor quality. Information quality perceived as an objective truth (through Churchman's guarantor perhaps) provides a useful component in the utilitarian model of information quality. But when viewed from a subjective perspective, the concept of information veracity raises complex philosophical questions concerning the ethics and values of the subject.

Representations of information quality imply a clear and understandable presentation of the information (Arazy & Kopak, 2011; Lee, Strong, Kahn and Wang, 2002; Liu, 2004). Information quality criteria include accuracy and objectivity of the author and source. Information which is accurate is considered reliable and correct, and information that is complete provides all necessary information from a utilitarian perspective. Information which is objective provides an impartial view of the topic. However, information which is false is still considered information, but evaluated under various objective criteria may not be considered quality information. Information quality is one dimension of relevance as part of information consumption (Taylor, 2012a).

Methods

The cross-disciplinary approach used here will examine the consumption of information within the context of the systems approach, information science relevance theory, consumerism, postmodernism, and significant changes in information technology which provide nearly ubiquitous access to all forms of information. Relevant arguments and theory will be presented as evidence of the impact of this convergence on perceptions of information quality in relation to subjective values, and the pursuit of an objective truth as part of a utilitarian model of information consumption.

If valuation of information quality includes truth, then a discussion of subjective perceptions of truth are warranted. Specifically interpretations of truth in relation to spiritual and ethical value systems will be examined as part of this process.

Discussion

Relevance theory in information science examines information use from a user's perspective as a utilitarian concept. A document retrieved from an IR system is considered relevant if it has utility in fulfilling the information requirement of the user. Evaluations of relevance by the user involve the use of various relevance criteria for document evaluation which include characteristics of information quality. This is by definition a subjective view of the document's relevance. Interpretations of the characteristics of the document are also subjective in this approach, and information quality characteristics including veracity, authenticity, qualifications of the author and bias are also subjective. These documents and their constituent information are therefor evaluated in the context of the subject's worldview. The notion of truth value becomes part of this evaluation. In the utilitarian view of information consumption, a false document may in fact have value and be considered relevant Additionally, a document evaluated as true based on a subject's worldview, may have an objective evaluation of false (perhaps biased) but still be considered relevant and useful to the subject.

Information production and consumption as part of a market add additional complexities and create a further perversion of the information gathering process as part of a systems approach. When information consumption is viewed from the perspective of consumerism in a market it is cast into a capitalistic economic model where information consumers may view information as yet another market product to be consumed at the lowest cost.   Information producers seek profit by lowering the cost of production and enticing consumption through production of information which suits the bias of a particular audience. Due to the confluence of these forces, information quality, including veracity, may be of limited concern where information is simply a product in a market transaction. Evidence from a variety of sources would suggest that information distributed in an economic system which values capital and subsumes or possibly ignores ethics and morality, the valuation of truth in information becomes even more suspect.

Further analysis can consider dimensions of information quality in relation to consumerism and postmodernism. Postmodern thought embraces the market and consumerism. Information production (journalism, mass media) is yet another cultural product in the market. Information production cast into the market framework is influenced by the revised sequence of capital consumer markets where demand control through advertising and marketing and pursuit of additional surplus value impact the quality of information. This leads to biased and fragmented dissemination of information. Breakdown of traditional control structures is another side effect of this convergence, leading to prosumerism (amateur) information dissemination with similar impacts on information quality.

Information is consumed from a source. Media products provide information and in a world with ubiquitous technology the Internet increasingly provides access to these media sources and thus represent a significant nexus of control. Managers at Google, the most popular Internet search engine in the world, claim to answer more than one billion search queries a day (Google-1, 2013; Sullivan, 2013). For a significant demographic segment of the general population, almost any consumption of information is filtered through an Internet search engine operated by a private business (Rowlands et al, 2008; Pew, 2012). That these search engines are owned and operated by private, for-profit businesses is yet another problematic dimension of the consumption of information.

Results

In a world where information is produced and distributed across vast information networks, information production time has been drastically shortened and the information produced has become increasingly fragmented. As an extension of the postmodern age, current technology creates a world where information from dubious sources surrounds us and pervades our senses. Interpreting this fragmented and disjointed information in relation to an internal system of values is increasingly challenged leading to further questions of truth value.

Capitalism is an amoral economic system for the distribution of scarce resources, and thus the unregulated system itself has no recognition of truth value for the information which has become a product in a market transaction. In businesses which are managed and operate with little regard for social consequences, the ethics or value of truth or information quality may be greatly reduced. In a business with profit motive, veracity or quality of information may be secondary to profit, or without social pressure to the contrary, information quality may not even be a consideration. Postmodernism acknowledges the consolidation of knowledge, technology and production and recognizes the power that information holds in this scenario.

The postmodernists readily acknowledge the subjective truth and find difficulty in the pursuit of objective truths. Consumerism converges with postmodernism in the production of knowledge in a capitalistic society. Jean-Francois Lyotard saw the growing connection between knowledge production and capital markets and saw the potential for problems. As he foresaw, knowledge is now a salable commodity in an environment where it has lost its truth value and is consumed largely on the basis of its utility value (use-value) (Lyotard, 1984). It is possible that those who have come of age with the pervasive information cacophony of the Internet gather information from fragmented, disjointed information sources of dubious value and have little concern about the veracity or authority of those sources. They evaluate information sources as subjective, not objective, and regard critical evaluation of the information and the source as a task to be managed by some other individual or by the technology involved (Gross and Latham, 2011; Taylor, 2012b, Harley et al, 2001).

Conclusions

This discussion provides some evidence that the convergence of consumerism, postmodernism and broad technical access to a variety of information sources has had an impact on both the perception of what information is and on the quality of information being disseminated and consumed. The question of moral, ethical and spiritual values within this convergence were examined. It provides a basis for further discussion and examination.

References and Notes

Arazy, O., & Kopak, R. (2011). “On the measurability of information quality”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 89-99.

Churchman, C. W. (1968) The Systems Approach. New York: Dell Publishing.

Google (2013), Facts about Google. retrieved on 6/27/2013 available at http://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html

Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2011). Experiences with and perceptions of information: A phenomenographic study of first-year college students. Library Quarterly, 81(2),161-186.

Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2011). Experiences with and perceptions of information: A phenomenographic study of first-year college students. Library Quarterly, 81(2),161-186.

Harley, B.,, Dreger, M., & Knobloch, P. (2001), The postmodern condition: students, the Web, and academic library services. Reference Services Review, 29(1),23-32.

Harley, B.,, Dreger, M., & Knobloch, P. (2001), The postmodern condition: students, the Web, and academic library services. Reference Services Review, 29(1),23-32.

Lee, Y.W., Srong, D.M., Kahn, B.K., Wang, R.Y. (2002). AIMQ: A methodology for information quality assessment. Information and Management, 40(2), 133-146.

Liu, Z. (2004). Perceptions of credibility and scholarly information on the web.. Information Processing and Management, 40(6), 1027-1038.

Lyotard, J.F (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Pew (2012), “Pew Research Center – Search Engine Use 2012”. retrieved on 6/30/2013 available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Press-Releases/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012.aspx#

Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Williams, P., Huntington, P., Fieldhouse, M., Gunter, B., Withey, B., Jamali, H. R., Dobrowolski, T., and Tenopir, C. (2008), The Google generation: the information behaviour of the researcher of the future. ASLib Proceedings, 60(4),290 – 310.

Sullivan, D. (2013). Google Still World’s Most Popular Search Engine By Far, But Share Of Unique Searchers Dips Slightly. retrieved on 6/27/2013 available at http://searchengineland.com/google-worlds-most-popular-search-engine-148089

Taylor, A. R. (2012a), User relevance criteria choices and the information search process. Information Processing and Management, 48(12),136-153.

Taylor, A. (2012b. "A study of the information search behaviour of the millennial generation" Information Research, 17(1) paper 508. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/17-1/paper508.html]

In this paper, I attempt to identify and describe the "cultural feedback"  in the information society that tie together with China’s urban youth life in such fields as material, system, behavior, thoughts, I briefly discuss some of the more recent changes ,particularly in the life-style, and suggest some lines for future research .

 Cultural structure , can be divided into "material, system, behavior, thoughts" four levels.
Among them, the culture of material refers to the sum of human material production activities and products, including people's food, clothing, shelter, trip , etc.
The cultural of system refers to the people in the social practice to establish the specification of the behavior and adjust the relationship between the criteria.
The culture of behavior refers to people’s habits and customs forming from the social activities.
The cultural of thoughts refers to people's social mentality and social ideology, including people's values, aesthetic taste and way of thinking, etc. 

Traditional society follows the "Mentor-Mentee Program ", the social members sharing values, knowledge system, make-a-living skills and way of life passing on generation after generation, "Mentor-Mentee Program "is the basic way of accumulation for culture and civilization. Cultural feedback, is a new way in which the younger generation gives the lessons to the older generation in the culture, education and demonstration. 

Today, China is going into the information age. With the help of material change and update, the working range of "cultural feedback" is very wide, directly going into the everyday life of the Chinese people, it changes the people identity with the values, reconstruct the life attitude of the Chinese people and the social behavior patterns.

On the culture of material in China, the information age is subverting the traditional Chinese pattern of material production activities, such as the "food, clothing, shelter, trip" mode. The advent of the computer, is the Waterloo to the older generation. The older generation of Chinese people,just know a little about almost all of the appliances ,using a few of the most simple operation. And the younger generation, is almost synchronous growth of generation and computer development. The network shopping, has become a new choice to China's young people. 11.11 Shopping Festival is a typical representative of the information society in contemporary China. The boom and development of the E-Business in China , become the witness of the prosperity of the information age. 

On the culture of system in China, young people participate in social practice through the network. Through their claims, they establish a new code of conduct demonstrating to the older generation of Chinese, so as to reconstruct the contemporary Chinese rule of daily life. Traditional Chinese rural society, followed the pattern of difference sequence of association rules. In the network era, Chinese are overturning the traditional institutionalization of the honour his birthright pattern. A new communication mode, similar to the western democratic, has become the contemporary Chinese urban social principle. 

On the culture of behavior in China, the interpersonal habits and customs, are also gradually becoming more open. For example in heterosexual contacts, science and technology improve the love, also destroy the love. " Fuck Buddies" has occurred in the China urban , completely subverting the traditional Chinese model of emotional. "MOMO ", becomes a tool for urban young men to find a " Fuck Buddies ". In 2014, A kind of "virtual lover" was sold on TAOBAO , a few dollars, giving a girlfriend or boyfriend on the phone, flirting, being cared and even renewing for years. ...... All this, it is a kind of cultural reconstruction. 

On the culture of thought in China, "decentralized" has become an unstoppable trend. In the past, the social "discourse power" was only for the older generation . Today, represented by mobile phone and  point-to-point communication, the " everyone has a microphone in hand " pattern has coming to the Chinese society, everyone is a communicator, as a result, the communication of traditional "one to many" gradually break down , young people are no longer controlled by their parents, but constantly pass new ideas to the older generation.

Facing the future, we have a new mission: to learn from our children. With more equal attitude, in the face of the younger generation, is a responsible attitude.

Introduction

Microblogging history begun less than a decade ago, although it could not be explored under a long-term perspective, however there is already a wide set of publications that covered the development of microblog platforms both in the West, analyzing the success of Twitter and in China in case of Sina Weibo.

Most of the literature addressed more attention to the reasons that drove the quantitative growth of the medium, focusing on the relationship between new media and important events such as the U.S President election (2008), the Arab Spring (2012) but also the Wenzhou train collision (2012) and the scandal of the Red Cross Society of China in 2011. Articles with comparative approach between Twitter and Sina Weibo have been published highlighting the role of control provided by the government in case of Sina Weibo; the orientation towards news and information sharing in the case of Twitter. In other words management of the platforms and content have been the focus of the comparison (Gao et all, 2012; Chen et all, 2011; Sullivan, 2012). Other studies criticized the effectiveness of microblog in terms of political empowerment highlighting a dystopic perspective (Morozov, 2011; Fuchs, 2012; Eltantawy and Wiest, 2011; Franceschini et Negro, 2014). Nevertheless, less attention has been addressed to the role played by the aesthetic design and the constitutive choices that characterized the two microblog services.  

Methods

The aim of this paper is to present the constitutive choices of the two platforms (Starr, 2004) describing all the main steps and changes they had since the time they were officially lunched. The analysis will take in account the six versions of Sina Weibo on one hand, and the three ones of Twitter (the original, the “new Twitter” and the “new new Twitter”) through a historical diachronic approach. The author will apply the three layer aesthetic analysis (Benney, 2013) analyzing the two microblog platforms through: their concentration on consumption and entertainment; their strategy to implement surveillance and identify (if any); their level of “hackerbility” (see Santo, 2013) offered to their users in order to guarantee a control over the interface. The author will also argue how the role of aesthetics layout as well as the design of the two microblog platforms impact users flow of information supporting political and economic strategic decisions ex ante.

Results and Discussion

The second part of the article will be dedicated to explore the operational design of both services evaluating the level of openness and interaction with other platforms. Questioning to what extent they could be considered walled gardens systems and in which way they interact with application programing interface. This second level of analysis argues in which terms microblogging could be purely defined as “information networks”; whether it implement specific policies addressed to trading and marketing sites (TMSs) and/or play and game sites (PGS) (Van Dijck, 2013) and eventually how these platforms implement their ideas of business model.

References and Notes

Benney, J. (2014). The Aesthetics of Chinese Microblogging: State and Market Control of Weibo. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 1(3), 169-200.

Chen, S., Zhang, H., Lin, M., & Lv, S. (2011, December). Comparision of microblogging service between Sina Weibo and Twitter. In Computer Science and Network Technology (ICCSNT), 2011 International Conference on (Vol. 4, pp. 2259-2263). IEEE.

Eltantawy, N., & Wiest, J. B. (2011). The Arab Spring| Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory. International Journal of Communication, 5, 18.

Franceschini, I., & Negro, G. (2014). The ‘Jasmine Revolution’in China: the limits of the cyber-utopia. Postcolonial Studies, 17(1), 23-35.

Fuchs, C. (2012). Social media, riots, and revolutions. Capital & Class, 36(3), 383-391.

Gao, Q., Abel, F., Houben, G. J., & Yu, Y. (2012). A comparative study of users’ microblogging behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter. In User modeling, adaptation, and personalization (pp. 88-101). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Morozov, E. (2011). The Net Delusion: How not to liberate the world. Penguin UK.

Sullivan, J. (2012). A tale of two microblogs in China. Media, Culture & Society, 34(6), 773-783.

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present a critical examination of the perceived obstacles operating within the United Kingdom's (UK) academic community to engaging with the praxis of open access (OA) publishing and dissemination. It draws on research currently underway seeking to problematise and challenge some of the orthodox perceptions operating within the academic publishing environment.

It is a given that the academy has long relied on the dissemination of research findings through formally distributed publication to ensure quality assurance, knowledge propagation and engender discourse. This legacy publication model was configured around the distribution of physical (rivalrous) hardcopy material with exclusive reproduction rights transferred to an increasingly industrialised academic publishing industry. The resultant commodified academic dissemination sector has arguably configured an increasingly unbalanced and exploitive relationship between immaterial knowledge producers and publishers [1].

However, due to the increasing ease of digital (non-rivalrous) dissemination, growing institutional financial tensions and ideological pressures to shift from normative modes of intellectual property enclosure, this traditional publishing hegemony has been challenged over the last two decades by emergent moves towards opening access to academic publications [2]. Despite the arguable “self-evident” societal good [3] that OA represents and the reported global academic community’s intellectual willingness to engage [4], collectively British academic culture has been perceived to have lagged behind comparator nations [5]. While some argue that the UK situation has improved [6], typically only fifth of total publication output is deposited within green OA repositories [7], although the number of academics utilising gold OA publishing routes has risen in the wake of recent national policy shifts [8-10]. Nevertheless, the implementation of the government mandated Finch Group’s review [5] and subsequent parliamentary hearings on scholarly communication have revealed the importance to which the national political economy attaches to OA dissemination. Consequently the UK represents a uniquely fascinating environment with respect to university policy, infrastructure and practice as a target for cultural inquiry.

Methods

This research seeks to address the questions behind this seeming cultural inertia by UK academics towards new paradigms of openness that. Using a qualitative ethnographically framed approach this research began by seeking to establish a grounding in the current institutional OA related praxis, an approach which offered a broad and adaptable range of methods suitable for research into academic cultures. These results will contribute to contextualising and critiquing a systematic analysis of the actors and power relationships impacting on the epistemological foundations of scholarly praxis within the UK academic community.

Prior work into this area has often been predicated on quantitative metrics or a technological deterministic epistemology [11-13], exposing a particular flaw in seeking to propose solutions without sufficient rationalisation of the complex constructs and relationships configuring the UK academy. Particularly there is scant consideration of the impacts on the academy’s behaviour from the neoliberal and marketisation ideologies subsuming the UK university sector in the wake of the Jarratt report [14]. Subsequent governments have continued to enact policies in line with neoliberal capitalism's free market competitive ethos, as a result the UK academy’s praxis has become subverted from the Newmanian elite scholarly institution ideal to mass-market neo-Taylorist metric driven education factories [15]. Subsequently as the academy increasingly prioritises competitive productivity over authentic scholarship then the quest for capital dominates, generating genuine tensions around the potentialities for embracing openness in academic dissemination praxis. Thus considering the ontological and epistemological questions around the purpose, function and ethos of the academy is crucial in focussing this work’s intellectual framework.

Consequently, this research draws on aspects of cultural, social and political economic theory as they encompass how societies change and develop, seeking to explain social behaviour and structures [16]. While the work of free culture scholars around concepts such as the digital commons offer potential resonances with OA [17], much of it is steeped with neoliberal, positivist and technological deterministic epistemology.  Methodologically then this research has established that the work of Marx, Gramsci, Autonomism and Foucault provides the most suitable intellectual infrastructure in terms of problematizing and understanding the tensions, conflicts, power relationships and discourses which constitutes the academy’s OA behaviour. These methodologies comprise the underlying intellectual framework and analytical lens, shaping both methods used to gather and analyse data.

To establish a baseline of the current discourse and praxis within the academy, a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews [18] were conducted with OA support staff based at a broad cross-section of UK universities, permitting a dynamic and authentic narrative to be generated. Respondents, through being embedded within organisational structures and cultures provided knowledgeable authentic insights into the local academic corpus’ praxis. The interviews focussed on four thematic areas (activities, engagement, influences, obstacles) and established a multi-faceted account of current and historical behaviours. Following qualitative content analysis [19], the data was used to construct a narrative representing current OA praxis across the UK academy. Additionally, respondent quotations were utilised to represent genuine insider-insight, as well as contributing towards a deeper “revelatory and emancipatory” [20] analysis exposing underlying mechanisms, cultural conventions and power relationships.

Results and Discussion

Seven major themes were elicited from the interviews. While these broadly aligned with the thematic areas, the greatest degree of variance was demonstrated around the obstacles to engendering a culture of successful normative OA cultural praxis. Obstacles included procedural uncertainties, cultural attitudes, procedural workloads and the complexity of publisher license regimes. It also became clear that academics across the UK do not comprise a heterogeneous monolithic culture even within a single institution or discipline. Such was the multiplicity of obstacles exposed that attempting to resolve so many competing barriers may in itself represent a significant challenge for those seeking to propagate a coherent enabling OA discourse. While approaches to advocacy were typically uniform within institutions, these results suggest that a greater level of bespoke support is required to resolve these issues.

Additionally, normative OA discourse commonly centres on a disciplinary split portraying those within scientific disciplines as leading on OA praxis compared to arts and humanities scholars typified as reticent or resistant. Orthodox perceptions rationalise this as a consequence of a prior focus on article sharing, insufficiently robust models for OA books and learned societies’ influences. These results challenged this orthodoxy, in that exemplars of good or poor engagement were demonstrated across all disciplines. However it was commonly observed that engagement with OA was sporadic across the institutions and had yet to reach a cultural tipping point.

It is important to recall that these interviews were conducted with support staff, working to enable OA among their academic colleagues. Thus perceptions of problems may demonstrate a subjectivity based within the difficulties encountered in their own working environments. The fact that that academic awareness of OA praxis was commonly cited as poor may speak as much to the priority with which support staff ascribe to advocacy work, or may represent an inherent defence of their function’s import within the competitive neoliberal university environment.

Conclusions

The aim of this research has been that efforts towards achieving sustainable OA cultural engagement will be enhanced through achieving a deeper understanding of the praxis, power relationships and discourse operating in the UK academy. What became clear from the analysis was that it is impossible for the UK academy’s culture to escape from the pervasive influence of capital, shaped as it is by influences both internal and external. The linking of research income to OA requirements by funders represents a significant further shift towards capital. The interviews made it apparent that this has significantly contributed to recently elevated levels of OA engagement and support from senior institutional management. Such closer involvement brings with it a perceivable shift towards a creeping pragmatism in institutional OA processes. Thus the maintenance of institutional financial health supplants ambitions of achieving broader ideological goals, such as contributing towards the emergence of an open scholarly digital commons.

From this work a perception is reached that while across the UK university sector great strides are being made towards OA, at the same time its cultural integration remains conflicted. Though this research has constructed a rich overview of UK institutions’ cultural responses it is clear that further interviews must be conducted with scholars across the disciplines to contextualise these results with the academic views. Only through this additional contextualisation can any mismatch between the challenges perceived by the key institutional actors be exposed and resolved.

Additionally, efforts towards problematizing the network of actor power relations operating on academic culture, discourse and praxis clearly necessitate broadening the enquiry’s scope to incorporate dialogues with publishers, learned societies and research funders. In this way a rationalised contextual picture of the forces shaping the UK academic responses to OA can be created.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for funding this work, and the collaborative input of Dr Andreas Wittel and Dr David Woods

References and Notes

1. Lilley, S. How publishers feather their nests on open access to public money. Times Higher Education 2012, 1^st November.
2. Suber, P. Open Access.; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2012.
3. BOAI. Read the Budapest Open Access Initiative.; Budapest Open Access Initiative: Budpest, Hungary, 2002.
4. Rowlands, I.; Nicholas, D. The changing scholarly communication landscape: an international survey of senior researchers. Learned Publishing 2006, 19(1), 31-51
5. Finch, J. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group (Finch Report). Research Information Network.; Research Information Network: UK, 2012.
6. Gargouri, Y.; Lariviere, V.; Gingras, Y.; Brody, T.; Carr, L.; Harnad, S. Testing the Finch Hypothesis on Green OA Mandate Ineffectiveness. University of Southampton: Southampton, UK, 2012.
7. Blackman, T. The Transition to Finch – the implications for individual researchers. Academy of Social Sciences: London, UK, 2012.
8. Macilwain, C. Is Open Access Finally on the Ascendancy? Bioscience 2013, 63(1), 7-11.
9. RCUK. RCUK Policy on Open Access and Supporting Guidance.; Research Councils UK: London, UK, 2013.
10. HEFCE. Open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework.; HEFCE: London, UK
11. Fry, J.; Oppenheim, C.; Probets, S.; Creaser, C.; Greenwood, H.; Spezia, V.; White, S. PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-à-vis Journals and Repositories.; LISU: Loughborough University, UK, 2009.
12. Lee, S.D. The Gates are Shut: Technical and Cultural Barriers to Open Education. In Opening up Education: The collective advancement of education through open technology, open content and open knowledge.; Iiyoshi, T., Kumar, M.S.V., Eds.; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2008; pp. 47-60.
13. Swan, A.; Brown, S. Open Access Self-Archiving: An Author Study.; Key Perspectives Ltd: Truro, UK, 2005.
14. Jarratt, A. Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities.; Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom: London, UK, 1985.
15. De Angelis, M.; Harvie, D. 'Cognitive capitalism' and the rat-race: how capital measures immaterial labour in British universities. Historical Materialism 2009, 17(3), pp. 3-30.
16. Murphy, M. Introduction. In: Social Theory and Education Research. Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida.; Murphy, M., Ed.; Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2013; pp. 3-17.
17. Benkler, Y. Networks of power, degrees of freedom. International Journal of Communication 2011, 5, pp. 721-755.
18. Rubin, S.R.; Rubin, I.S. Qualitative Interviewing: The art of hearing data.; Sage: London, UK, 2005.
19. Schreier, M. Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice.; Sage: London, UK, 2012.
20. Alvesson, M.; Deetz, S. Critical Theory and Postmodernism: Approaches to organization studies. In Critical Management Studies: A Reader.; Grey, C., Willmott, G., Eds.; OUP: Oxford, UK, 2005, pp. 60-106.

Introduction

In this paper three closely related philosophical problems are discussed. Each of them can be considered as source of difficulties in understanding the very nature of information. First we focus on the ontological character of signs. Then a simple hermeneutic concept of information will be proposed. Finally an important dimension of the sign-information relationship will be introduced.

On the ontological character of signs

Considering the huge number of approaches to the concept of information and the numerous philosophical debates on it (see e.g. Capurro – Hjørland [1], Floridi [2], Hofkirchner [3]), it is not really surprising to entertain some confidence on a philosophical analysis of the ontological character of information.

In our view one of the most important ontological issues is the recognition that it is better to conceptualize the information as a relation instead of a thing. (If we are dialectical thinkers it is easy to see that every being is a thing, and at the same time it is a bunch of coexisting relations and at the same time it is a historical process.) Another fundamental philosophical issue is taking into seriously the sign-information differences and the sign-information relationship.

Even at first sight it is clear that the condition of the existence of information is the coexistence of two “different levels” of beings. One of the levels consists of beings/events, but at the same time, we can also identify beings/events existing on a different level which can correspond to the beings/events of the “first level”. As a result of the correspondence, the beings/events of the “second level” become the signs of the beings/events of the first level (or of the relations between them). Signs have a crucial ontological character: they necessarily include and hold a relation, the relation between the beings/events of the above mentioned two different “levels of beings”, or in a more general sense a relation between two (arbitrary) beings. A sign is an existing relation or relating existences (beings/events).

The constituents of an existing relation represent each other. A sign stands here and now instead of something else, refers to something else, “substituting” or representing that. A further understanding of the nature of representation has a fundamental role in the philosophy of information.

There is no representation without using signs. In other words: there is no representation without two kinds of beings, or two contexts for the beings. The sign has a specific, double nature: the sign is an actual being, but at the same time, potentially something else. We can identify something as a sign if and only if these two faculties of its nature (actually something and potentially something else) are simultaneously present.

In the above mentioned context: every kinds of “re-presentation” presupposes two kinds of beings (the beings what are represented and the beings what is representing that) or two different contexts for the beings (to consider the same thing in two different ways). It is the crucial that there is a necessary interrelationship between these two kinds of beings or contexts to create re-presentations. The re-presentation based on the existence of this relation. The (free) creation of this relation sometimes called coding or signifying. Any kind of relation is a source of the “actually something, but potentially something else” nature of a thing. Representations produce necessarily - such - virtual beings. On the language of philosophy it can be stated that representations have a specific ontological characters: the ontology of relations, or interrelationships, which is the ontology of virtual beings. All beings produced by representational technologies are necessarily virtual.

Hermeneutic concept of information – form and content

In the history of culture a well known and widely accepted methodology can be found on the treatment and utilization of two interrelating beings (or two interrelating contexts for a being): hermeneutics. In hermeneutics the interpretation through which the correspondence of beings/events on different levels (or the correspondence of different contexts) can be established.

In this way it has a meaning to conceptualize signs as hermeneutical products, which are created through a direct mediation between two beings/events/contexts, shortly two “worlds”.

However, if we want to conceptualize the information in a hermeneutic approach it is needed to repeat almost all again what was told above on the sign. Let us say in this way: in the process of the creation of information a mental act, interpretation, is needed, the active agent is without any doubt the interpreting man. His activity of interpretation consists in considering an event as a sign of another, that is, on the one hand he assumes that the chosen event includes the possibility of a sign, on the other, he interprets the realization of this possibility by developing a system of signs, for example. After a successful interpretation, he can infer the processes of the signified world, just “as if” he were trying to find out about them directly on their level. If we did not regard a sign as something which can be a sign of something, it would not be a sign. Furthermore, if we did not regard this possibility as something which is actually realized, it would not give us any information. It is obviously not enough to consider an abstract possibility, since that can be a sign of anything; that does not provide us with any knowledge. Thus, a sign used in the production of information is virtually the signified.

From the earlier train of thoughts it can be clear that in hermeneutic approach signs and information are also created by interpretation. However, it would be necessary to make a clear distinction between the existence of an interpretation and the content of it. The existence of an interpretation is completely enough to identify something as a sign. A working interpretation, however, using the different contexts and interrelating to each other different beings/events produces also definite meanings for the signs. Signs in themselves have no meanings. Information is a meaningful sign. Summarily: information is an “interpreted being” – also the existence and the meaning of the interpretation. Based on meanings we can have acquaintance, knowledge, cognition, etc.

Based on these differences the sign-information relationship can be described using a form-content relationship. Sign is the form of the information, while meaning is the content of it. Information is a meaningful sign or a signified meaning – created by interpretation

Conclusions

The sign-information relationship has a close similarity with the relationship between formal and “dialectical” logic. Considering only the formal aspects of propositions we can build up more or less complete formal logical systems – but in many practical cases we are interested in the contents of propositions too, so we can try to create content-dependent logics as it was proposed several times by dialectical thinkers. Similarly, the formal aspects of information is extensively studied in numerous versions of information theories (it would probably be better to call them theories of signs), where the meanings are disregarded. In fact, the creation of some kind of content-dependent information science is not so popular and not so easy – similarly again to an effective dialectical logic.

References

1. Capurro, R.; Hjørland, B. The concept of information. In Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Cronin, B., Eds.; American Society for Information Science and Technology: Bethesda, MD USA, 2003, Volume 37, pp. 343-411.
2. Floridi, L. The Philosophy of Information, OUP: Oxford, England, 2011.
3. Hofkirchner, W. ed.. The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information, Routledge: London, England, 1999.