{"title":"Rethinking \"Oil Nationalism\": The Case of Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)","authors":"Neveen Abdelrehim","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2015070103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2015070103","url":null,"abstract":"In the early twentieth century, Great Britain began a new wave of imperialism, focusing on areas in the Middle East strategic to enhance their trade. Iran was one of the countries in which Britain gained enormous power and influence. This power was derived from its control of Iranian oil resources, through the Anglo Iranian Oil Company AIOC. After many years of AIOC producing oil in Iran with Iranian Government support, a wave of economic nationalism led to the nationalization of AIOC in 1951 by the Iranian Prime Minister Musaddiq. The nationalization of the AIOC angered the British and seemed part of a growing pattern of pressure on their interests culminating in wresting Musaddiq from the control of the oil industry. As a result, in considering the above effects, by using AIOC as a case study, a textual analysis of the Chairman's Statement to Shareholders is conducted and the validity of the Statements is reappraised with reference to historical evidence.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133770027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ontology Learning from Text: Why the Ontology Learning Layer Cake is not Viable","authors":"Abel Browarnik, O. Maimon","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2015070101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2015070101","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of Ontology Learning from Text is to learn ontologies that represent domains or applications that change often. Manually learning and updating such ontologies is too expensive. This is the reason for the Ontology Learning discipline's emergence. The leading approach to Ontology Learning from Text is the Ontology Learning Layer Cake. This approach splits the task into four or five sequential tasks. Each of the tasks may use diverse methods, ranging from uses of Linguistic knowledge to Machine Learning. The authors review the shortcomings of the Ontology Learning Layer Cake approach and conclude that the approach is not viable for Ontology Learning from Text. They suggest alternative approaches that may help learning ontologies in an efficient, effective way.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124390111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"News-Seekers vs. Gate-Keepers: How Audiences and Newsrooms Prioritize Stories in Print and Online Content","authors":"Sharon E. Jarvis, Maegan Stephens","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2015070104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2015070104","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional research on gatekeeping examines how journalists, editors, and publishers construct and position information to become news. Opportunities for interactivity in online news outlets, however, are creating space for audience members to also play this role. This article analyzes the tone and scope of the stories appearing on the print front-pages in the online most-read lists in twelve news outlets. Findings reveal how news-seekers prefer serious soft news articles, stories that position readers prominently, and fact-laden updates. These trends are interpreted in light of an elitist approach to gatekeeping versus a more egalitarian mindset and the authors conclude that the articles promoted by news-seekers are far less frivolous than feared.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130116820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"If Pandora had a Blog: Towards a Methodology for Investigating Computer-Mediated Discourse","authors":"Otilia Pacea","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2015070102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2015070102","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of internet genre migration and proliferation, conventional taxonomies are no longer valid. To classify blogs between thematic and personal blogs is to blissfully ignore the legions of successful content prosumers, from political blogs to travel blogs, from food blogs to MAD mom and dad blogs, from fashion blogs to milblogs. With the recent explosion of social media, the digital landscape shifted and today there are more voices online than ever before. For blogs, however, the original purpose for communication has always been twofold: to inform and to emote. Computer-mediated communication may be overpopulated with a myriad of mixed forms and blogs might be dead or simply, difficult to reach with so much overlapping. Yet high-impact blogs still remain and are widely read. This paper explores the language of high-impact blogs, testing a new methodology for genre analysis to solve genre hybridity in the case of computer-mediated discourse.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125078524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discourse and Creativity Issues in EFL Creative Writing on Facebook","authors":"Reima Al-Jarf","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2015010103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2015010103","url":null,"abstract":"Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have been used by young Arabs for many purposes such as reporting breaking news, posting special events, launching political campaigns, announcing family gatherings and sending seasons' greetings. Another emerging type of timeline posts is creative writing in English. Some Arab Facebook users post lines of verse, short anecdotes or points of view, express emotions, personal experiences, and/or inspirational stories or sayings written in literary style. A sample of Facebook creative writing pages/clubs, and creative timeline posts was collected and analyzed to find out the forms and themes of creative writing texts. A sample of Facebook Arab creative writers was also surveyed to find out the reasons for their creative writing activities in English. This article describes the data collection and analysis procedures, and reports results quantitatively and qualitatively. Implications for developing creative writing skills in foreign/second language learners using Facebook are given.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116604874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robot Friendship: Can a Robot be a Friend?","authors":"C. Emmeche","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2014070103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2014070103","url":null,"abstract":"Friendship is used here as a conceptual vehicle for framing questions about the distinctiveness of human cognition in relation to natural systems such as other animal species and to artificial systems such as robots. By exploring this very common form of a human interpersonal relationship, the author indicates that even though it is difficult to say something generally true about friendship among humans, distinct forms of friendship as practiced and distinct notions of friendship have been investigated in the social and human sciences and in biology. A more general conceptualization of friendship as a triadic relation analogous to the sign relation is suggested. Based on this the author asks how one may conceive of robot-robot and robot-human friendships; and how an interdisciplinary perspective upon that relation can contribute to analyse levels of embodied cognition in natural and artificial systems.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130763582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biological Self-Organization","authors":"Guenther Witzany","doi":"10.4018/IJSSS.2014070101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSSS.2014070101","url":null,"abstract":"Biological organisation was long assumed to represent mechanical cause and effect reactions on a quantum theoretical basis following the laws of thermodynamics. Current empirical data show an abundance of signaling molecules that serve as information carriers in the exchange of information between biological agents. More recently an abundance of articles demonstrate successful research on communication processes inherent in the interactions of cells, tissues, organs and organisms in biological processes in all domains of life. Without such biological communication processes no coordination of organizational goals is possible. If biocommunication is disturbed, deformed or damaged organization will happen inappropriately or even incomplete. In contrast to former opinions about the essential features of natural communication recent empirical knowledge indicate a non-mechanistic explanation.","PeriodicalId":424248,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Signs Semiot. Syst.","volume":"375 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115987796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}