Search Results (8)

Non-EU international students encounter considerable challenges in social integration, cultural adaptation, and emotional well-being within UK higher education. Despite this, the role of internet memes as a form of participatory digital media in mediating these experiences has not been extensively studied. This paper examines how non-EU students at a British university utilise memes to manage cross-cultural identity and daily stressors. Employing an Experience-Centred Design (ECD) approach, our qualitative research involved 20 participants through digital cultural probes, semi-structured interviews, and co-design workshop. We discovered that memes serve a dual role: they provide emotional bridges that foster a sense of belonging through shared humour, yet they also risk exclusion due to cultural opacity. We introduce the concept of “negotiated humour”, which requires cross-cultural explanation and reduces comedic spontaneity but enhances intercultural understanding. Furthermore, we identify a continuum of meme usage that reflects different phases of acculturation, ranging from expressing frustrations to creating hybrid cultural expressions. This study contributes to cross-cultural adaptation theory by highlighting memes as boundary objects in identity negotiation. We suggest design implications for culturally sensitive platforms, such as contextual footnotes, and institutional interventions like meme-based orientation activities to exploit humour’s potential for fostering inclusive dialogue. Our research highlights how transient digital humour can provide deep insights into identity, community, and the complex dynamics of cross-cultural adaptation. Full article

Building on my recent argument that an all-good, all-powerful God is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world, I explore what grounding ethics can have without the God of traditional theism. While theists have argued that ethics is grounded either in God’s commands and/or in his nature, I show that no such adequate grounding exists, even if my argument—showing that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world—were shown to be unsuccessful, and I further show that such a grounding is impossible, given that my argument is successful. I then go on to provide an account of the norms on which an ethics without God can be appropriately grounded and show how an ethics, so grounded, can be appropriately related to our biological and cultural past, present, and future, as understood through Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this way, I hope to undercut a recent attempt to use Darwinian evolutionary theory to debunk ethics. Full article

The spiking neural network (SNN) is regarded as a promising candidate to deal with the great challenges presented by current machine learning techniques, including the high energy consumption induced by deep neural networks. However, there is still a great gap between SNNs and the online meta-learning performance of artificial neural networks. Importantly, existing spike-based online meta-learning models do not target the robust learning based on spatio-temporal dynamics and superior machine learning theory. In this invited article, we propose a novel spike-based framework with minimum error entropy, called MeMEE, using the entropy theory to establish the gradient-based online meta-learning scheme in a recurrent SNN architecture. We examine the performance based on various types of tasks, including autonomous navigation and the working memory test. The experimental results show that the proposed MeMEE model can effectively improve the accuracy and the robustness of the spike-based meta-learning performance. More importantly, the proposed MeMEE model emphasizes the application of the modern information theoretic learning approach on the state-of-the-art spike-based learning algorithms. Therefore, in this invited paper, we provide new perspectives for further integration of advanced information theory in machine learning to improve the learning performance of SNNs, which could be of great merit to applied developments with spike-based neuromorphic systems. Full article

Twitter analysis through data mining, text analysis, and visualization, coupled with the application of actor-network-theory, reveals a coalition of heterogenous religious affiliations around grief and fascination. While religious violence has always existed, the prevalence of social media has led to an increase in the magnitude of discussions around the topic. This paper examines the different reactions on Twitter to violence targeting three religious communities: the 2015 Charleston Church shooting, the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, and the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shootings. The attacks were all perpetrated by white nationalists with firearms. By analyzing large Twitter datasets in response to the attacks, we were able to render visible associations among actors across religions communities, national identities, and political persuasions. What this project revealed is that if we apply actor-network-theory and data visualization to look at networks created by human/non-human (text, computer, phone, meme, tweet, retweet, hashtag) actors, we can see that knowledge, empathy, and fascination drive communication around mass violence against religious communities. Full article

The central thesis of this paper is that memetic practices can be crucial to understanding deception at present when hoaxes have increased globally due to COVID-19. Therefore, we employ existing memetic theory to describe the qualities and characteristics of meme hoaxes in terms of the way they are replicated by altering some aspects of the original, and then shared on social media platforms in order to connect global and local issues. Criteria for selecting the sample were hoaxes retrieved from and related to the local territory in the province of Alicante (Spain) during the first year of the pandemic (n = 35). Once typology, hoax topics and their memetic qualities were identified, we analysed their characteristics according to form in terms of Shifman (2014) and, secondly, their content and stance concordances both within and outside our sample (Spain and abroad). The results show, firstly, that hoaxes are mainly disinformation and they are related to the pandemic. Secondly, despite the notion that local hoaxes are linked to local circumstances that are difficult to extrapolate, our conclusions demonstrate their extraordinary memetic and “glocal” capacity: they rapidly adapt other hoaxes from other places to local areas, very often supplanting reliable sources, and thereby demonstrating consistency and opportunism. Full article

Digital Visual Content (DVC), as sets of meanings, constitutes a pictorial representation of phenomena and may lead users of Social Networking Sites (SNS) to specific behavioral activities, i.e., connected with the expression of emotions. The goal of this research paper was to create a methodology of analysis and visualization of SNS users’ emotional responses to the hitchhiker archetype, built on the basis of a semantic decomposition of photos shared by hitchhikers in a closed group of Facebook users. Hitchhiker, as an archetype of authentic and sustainable tourism, was used as an illustrative example. ABSA (Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis) methodology was used for a semantic decomposition of 300 randomly selected photos, applying the theoretical framework of information ecology. As a result, collections of single meanings (aspects) were distinguished and grouped into four main denotation groups: “Hitchhiker environment”, “Activities of hitchhikers”, “Season” and “Heritage”. Having created a holistic view of the archetype from aspects appearing at different frequencies, it was assumed that the archetype could be viewed as a meme. Given this memetic archetype and the emotional response associated with it, it could be considered a subject of cultural selection, conditioned by the influence of several factors, e.g., user demographics. The results allow for the development of the premises for research related to the dynamics, evolutionary analysis, and visualization of memes as well as emotional responses of visual content recipients. Full article

Meeting today’s grand challenges means changing the economics paradigm that informs both business practice and business/management education. This paper asks whether business schools meet the challenges of the 21st century and argues not without shifting away from the core—neoliberal—paradigm of economics. This essay makes the following argument. Paradigms shape narratives. Changing core narratives is a powerful lever for transformation. Narratives are constructed of core ideas (memes) that replicate readily from mind to mind. Neoliberalism’s memes are pervasive and highly resonant in business schools. To move towards sustainability, the fundamentals taught in business school need to shift away from neoliberalism’s tenets towards what gives life to economic systems. From a theory perspective, neoliberalism’s lack of attention to social and ecological consequences of economic activity plays a large part in shaping today’s crises, including the pandemic, climate change, and biodiversity loss. A new/next economics paradigm is needed that shifts away from an emphasis on only financial wealth and constant economic growth on a finite plant towards life-centered economies that foster wellbeing and flourishing for all, creating what scholars call collective value. The result of this analysis is a conceptualization supporting new memes that include collaboration and competition, stewardship of the whole system, a cosmopolitan to local sensibility, and recognition of humanity’s deep embeddedness and connection with other people, other beings, and nature. The article concludes that business schools need to meet this challenge head on, changing the fundamentals of what is taught and why. Full article

In his book “What is Information”, Robert Logan explores certain issues related to information on the basis of the connotation of information itself, and puts forward two important theories of “extended mind” and “symbolosphere”. Based on the strong-emergence theory, Logan depicts the material emergence and non-material emergence, and proposes a neo-dualism view, a weak form of dualism. According to this, different from the biosphere, the evolution and reproduction mechanism in symbolosphere do not follow the rules of genetic inheritance, but the mechanisms of memes, belonging to the territory of information study. However, the new dualism faces the difficulty to correctly explain the ontological position of the symbolosphere, while the philosophy of information provides a standard solution in its theory of human evolution. Full article