The field of Natural Language Processing in machine learning has seen rising popularity and use in recent years. The nature of Natural Language Processing, which deals with natural human language and computers, has led to the research and development of many algorithms that produce word embeddings. One of the most widely-used of these algorithms is Word2Vec. With the abundance of data generated by users and organizations and the complexity of machine learning and deep learning models, performing training using a single machine becomes unfeasible. The advancement in distributed machine learning offers a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, due to reasons concerning data privacy and regulations, in some real-life scenarios, the data must not leave its local machine. This limitation has lead to the development of techniques and protocols that are massively-parallel and data-private. The most popular of these protocols is federated learning. However, due to its centralized nature, it still poses some security and robustness risks. Consequently, this led to the development of massively-parallel, data private, decentralized approaches, such as gossip learning. In the gossip learning protocol, every once in a while each node in the network randomly chooses a peer for information exchange, which eliminates the need for a central node. This research intends to test the viability of gossip learning for large- scale, real-world applications. In particular, it focuses on implementation and evaluation for a Natural Language Processing application using gossip learning. The results show that application of Word2Vec in a gossip learning framework is viable and yields comparable results to its non-distributed, centralized counterpart for various scenarios, with an average loss on quality of 6.904%. / Fältet Naturlig Språkbehandling (Natural Language Processing eller NLP) i maskininlärning har sett en ökande popularitet och användning under de senaste åren. Naturen av Naturlig Språkbehandling, som bearbetar naturliga mänskliga språk och datorer, har lett till forskningen och utvecklingen av många algoritmer som producerar inbäddningar av ord. En av de mest använda av dessa algoritmer är Word2Vec. Med överflödet av data som genereras av användare och organisationer, komplexiteten av maskininlärning och djupa inlärningsmodeller, blir det omöjligt att utföra utbildning med hjälp av en enda maskin. Avancemangen inom distribuerad maskininlärning erbjuder en lösning på detta problem, men tyvärr får data av sekretesskäl och datareglering i vissa verkliga scenarier inte lämna sin lokala maskin. Denna begränsning har lett till utvecklingen av tekniker och protokoll som är massivt parallella och dataprivata. Det mest populära av dessa protokoll är federerad inlärning (federated learning), men på grund av sin centraliserade natur utgör det ändock vissa säkerhets- och robusthetsrisker. Följaktligen ledde detta till utvecklingen av massivt parallella, dataprivata och decentraliserade tillvägagångssätt, såsom skvallerinlärning (gossip learning). I skvallerinlärningsprotokollet väljer varje nod i nätverket slumpmässigt en like för informationsutbyte, vilket eliminerarbehovet av en central nod. Syftet med denna forskning är att testa livskraftighetenav skvallerinlärning i större omfattningens verkliga applikationer. I synnerhet fokuserar forskningen på implementering och utvärdering av en NLP-applikation genom användning av skvallerinlärning. Resultaten visar att tillämpningen av Word2Vec i en skvallerinlärnings ramverk är livskraftig och ger jämförbara resultat med dess icke-distribuerade, centraliserade motsvarighet för olika scenarier, med en genomsnittlig kvalitetsförlust av 6,904%.

This thesis investigates gossip and rumours through a narrative lens in order to understand what kind of stories emanated from eighteenth-century Stockholm, and what these stories reveal about the moral values and concerns of the urban community. Using records from the consistory court and the lower courts of Stockholm, the thesis sheds some light on the stories which tend to go under the radar, and gives insights into the subtle facets of urban life, wherein gossip nurtured a culture of speculation and suspicion.  By uncovering the narratives which preoccupied the urban population of Stockholm, some thematical patterns have emerged: people gossiped about sexual immorality, marital disorder, financial dishonesty, and perceived threats against the Lutheran faith. Typically, these stories seem to have emanated from the neighbourhood or the household. The study also shows that gossip and rumours told the stories of those who violated core moral values – stories that heavily relied on a repertoire of narrative tropes and figures to portray those who transgressed social and moral boundaries. These stories reveal a deep concern for – even fear of – the hidden threats in the urban fabric: immoral characters disguised as honest members of the community. As inversions of core values, these narrative stereotypes were perceived as dangerous threats to social order and unity, whose actions could have far-reaching implications for society at large. As such, these were symbolically charged and value-laden stories. Through highlighting the coercive aspects of these stories, this thesis also argues that gossip provided urban communities with an opportunity to voice collective concerns and protect community values by unmasking hidden threats, and control or stigmatise transgressors.

During adolescence, individuals place increasing emphasis on peer relations. Both positive and negative relationships contribute to adolescents’ academic performances and well-being. Adolescence is also a period when individuals actively engage in gossiping. Despite the various benefits brought by gossip such as information exchange, norm regulation and amusement, those who are labelled as “gossipers” tend to suffer from bad reputation and thus becoming less favored in friendship selection. Instead of focusing on evident gossiping behaviors, the current study takes an innovative approach of looking at gossip perception and the friendship and disliking relationship between perceived gossipers who are not necessarily real gossipers but are nominated when others were being asked “Who do you think talks you out with other classmates behind your back?” and the self-perceived targets. The research is conducted by applying Meta Analysis and Bayesian Multilevel Random Coefficients Analysis to 11 Hungarian classrooms of the RECENS project “Competition and Negative Networks” (2017) using Stochastic Actor Oriented Modelling (SAOM) in R. Results from Meta Analysis are in line with the expectation that gossip perception should make the self-perceived target less likely to befriend the perceived gossiper and more likely to dislike him/her. No evidence is found to support that having a shared perceived gossiper should bring two self-perceived targets closer or a self-perceived target should be more likely to dislike the friend of the perceived gossiper following Heider’s Balance Theory (1946). However, no gossip perception related effects are found statistically significant according to the results of the Bayesian approach. Overall, gossip perception is not powerful enough to affect adolescents’ attitude, whether positive or negative, towards one another.

Temos aqui um estudo de caso onde se exercita, dentro do partido teórico-metodológico da história cultural do urbano, a aplicação do conceito ‘trajetória social’ aos estudos históricos, Visa estabelecer as condições que possibilitaram ao jornalista Beto Stodieck assumir a condição de porta-voz de uma parcela dos jovens da elite florianopolitana, cuja posição apoiava-se principalmente no capital cultural e social – acesso à educação, à cultura erudita e nas redes de relações sociais – herdados de família. Centrando a atenção num indivíduo e na formação do seu ‘ponto de vista’ - entendido como o universo das posições no interior do qual o agente estava situado e onde se definiu sua ação – o registro das transformações morfológicas e culturais, conforme foram registradas nas crônicas diárias, ajudou a buscar a cidade real através das representações formuladas por Beto Stodieck. A análise dos escritos e das práticas sociais ali retratadas apontou que o alcance da coluna social desse jornalista, tratada aqui como um conjunto de crônicas sociais ligeiras, foi resultado de três características fundamentais: o estilo do escritor; a capilaridade e importância social do veículo (principalmente o jornal O Estado); e a multiplicidade de temas ligados ao cotidiano de leitores das mais diversas posições sociais. / This work presents a study of case, within the party theoretical and methodological of the urban cultural history, in which applies of the concept ‘social trajectory’ to historical studies; seeking to identify the conditions that allowed the journalist Beto Stodieck become the spokesperson of a portion of the young elite of Florianópolis, whose position was supported mainly in the cultural and social capital – access to education, to erudite culture and networks of relationships social - inherited the family. Focusing on a individual and the making of their 'point of view' - understood as the universe of positions within which the agent was located and defined his action – the record of morphological and cultural transformations, as were registered in chronic daily, helped to understand the real city, through the representations made by Beto Stodieck. The analysis of the writings and social practices there portrayed, pointed out that the reach of the social columns of the journalist, treated here as a set of ‘slight social-chronicles’, was the result of three basic features: the style of the writer, the capillary and social importance of vehicle (mainly the newspaper O Estado), and the multiplicity of themes related to the daily lives of readers within different social positions.

Submitted by Alexandre Muniz (alexandre.muniz@gmail.com) on 2018-01-15T13:13:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO_AMUNIZ_FC_FINAL.pdf: 4559786 bytes, checksum: d3eb5436b8591d936a83e3e00737e5eb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Janete de Oliveira Feitosa (janete.feitosa@fgv.br) on 2018-01-15T13:17:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO_AMUNIZ_FC_FINAL.pdf: 4559786 bytes, checksum: d3eb5436b8591d936a83e3e00737e5eb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-17T11:55:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO_AMUNIZ_FC_FINAL.pdf: 4559786 bytes, checksum: d3eb5436b8591d936a83e3e00737e5eb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-27 / This study aims to evaluate the extent to which a gossip in the workenvironment is a source of suffering, and it is proposed to investigate its associationwith the findings of the psychodynamic theory of work. A mixed method was applied, and a qualitative research was initiallycarried out to understand some aspects about the phenomenon of gossip in Brazil,obtaining testimony from 25 professionals, which allowed the delineation ofinvestigation categories through the analysis of content. A quantitative study wascarried out to evaluate the mediating impact of gossip on the pathogenic suffering, itsrelationship with physical, social and psychological damages of individuals at work, aswell as to validate the causal relations proposed by the work psychodynamics in Brazil.Through a questionnaire answered by 372 professionals, the categories were modeledinto factors through structural equations.The research results pointed out that gossip in the workplace increases theeffect of the work context on pathogenic suffering. He also revealed that individualswith lower the education level have more difficulty in dealing with rigid organizationalenvironments. In turn, the premises of work psychodynamics were confirmed,especially the conclusions of the Brazilian school, elucidating the high psychologicalimpact resulting from the work.The study did not focus on the relationship between gossipand subjective mobilization, to draw a parallel with individuals' strategy for dealing withthe harmful environment. This perspective can be explored in future studies. This study contributes to the debate on the topic of gossipand suffering in organizations, considering the incipient academic production.Social Implications - Elucidating the impacts of harmful phenomena that affect healthand people's lives, this study contributes to overcoming degraded work environments. This is the first study done in Brazil about gossip and suffering withoutwork. / Este estudo tem como objetivo avaliar em que medida a fofoca no ambiente de trabalho é fonte de sofrimento, propondo-se investigar a sua associação com os achados da teoria psicodinâmica do trabalho. Utilizou-se um método misto, sendo inicialmente realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa, com o intuito de compreender alguns aspectos sobre o fenômeno da fofoca no Brasil, obtendo-se depoimentos de 25 profissionais, o que possibilitou delinear categorias de investigação, por via da análise de conteúdo. A seguir, realizou-se um estudo quantitativo, para avaliar o impacto mediador da fofoca no sofrimento patogênico, sua relação com danos físicos, sociais e psicológicos de indivíduos no trabalho, bem como validar as relações causais propostas pela psicodinâmica do trabalho no Brasil. Através de um questionário respondido por 372 profissionais, modelou-se as categorias em fatores através de equações estruturais. Os resultados da pesquisa apontaram que a fofoca no ambiente de trabalho aumenta o efeito do contexto do trabalho sobre o sofrimento patogênico. Revelou também que quanto menor é a escolaridade maior é a dificuldade do indivíduo em lidar com ambientes organizacionais rígidos. Por sua vez, confirmaram-se as premissas da psicodinâmica do trabalho, em especial as conclusões da escola brasileira, elucidando o elevado impacto psicológico resultante do trabalho. O estudo não enfocou a relação da fofoca com o constructo mobilização subjetiva, de forma a traçar um paralelo com as estratégias dos indivíduos para lidar com ambiente nocivos. Esta perspectiva poderá ser explorada em estudos futuros. Este estudo contribui para o debate sobre o tema da fofoca e do sofrimento nas organizações, cuja produção acadêmica é ainda incipiente. Elucidar os impactos de fenômenos nocivos que afetam sobremaneira a saúde e a vida das pessoas, contribui para a superação ambientes de trabalho degradados. Trata-se do primeiro estudo feito no Brasil sobre fofoca e sofrimento no trabalho.

Temos aqui um estudo de caso onde se exercita, dentro do partido teórico-metodológico da história cultural do urbano, a aplicação do conceito ‘trajetória social’ aos estudos históricos, Visa estabelecer as condições que possibilitaram ao jornalista Beto Stodieck assumir a condição de porta-voz de uma parcela dos jovens da elite florianopolitana, cuja posição apoiava-se principalmente no capital cultural e social – acesso à educação, à cultura erudita e nas redes de relações sociais – herdados de família. Centrando a atenção num indivíduo e na formação do seu ‘ponto de vista’ - entendido como o universo das posições no interior do qual o agente estava situado e onde se definiu sua ação – o registro das transformações morfológicas e culturais, conforme foram registradas nas crônicas diárias, ajudou a buscar a cidade real através das representações formuladas por Beto Stodieck. A análise dos escritos e das práticas sociais ali retratadas apontou que o alcance da coluna social desse jornalista, tratada aqui como um conjunto de crônicas sociais ligeiras, foi resultado de três características fundamentais: o estilo do escritor; a capilaridade e importância social do veículo (principalmente o jornal O Estado); e a multiplicidade de temas ligados ao cotidiano de leitores das mais diversas posições sociais. / This work presents a study of case, within the party theoretical and methodological of the urban cultural history, in which applies of the concept ‘social trajectory’ to historical studies; seeking to identify the conditions that allowed the journalist Beto Stodieck become the spokesperson of a portion of the young elite of Florianópolis, whose position was supported mainly in the cultural and social capital – access to education, to erudite culture and networks of relationships social - inherited the family. Focusing on a individual and the making of their 'point of view' - understood as the universe of positions within which the agent was located and defined his action – the record of morphological and cultural transformations, as were registered in chronic daily, helped to understand the real city, through the representations made by Beto Stodieck. The analysis of the writings and social practices there portrayed, pointed out that the reach of the social columns of the journalist, treated here as a set of ‘slight social-chronicles’, was the result of three basic features: the style of the writer, the capillary and social importance of vehicle (mainly the newspaper O Estado), and the multiplicity of themes related to the daily lives of readers within different social positions.

Dans les logiques épistémiques, la connaissance est généralement modélisée par un graphe de mondes possibles, qui correspondent aux alternatives à l'état actuel du monde. Ainsi, les arêtes entre les mondes représentent l'indistinguabilité. Connaître une proposition signifie que cette proposition est vraie dans toutes les alternatives possibles. Les informaticiens théoriques ont cependant remarqué que cela a conduit à plusieurs problèmes, à la fois intuitifs et techniques : plus un agent est ignorant, plus elle a d'alternatives à examiner ; les modèles peuvent alors devenir trop grands pour la vérification de système. Ils ont récemment étudié comment la connaissance pourrait être réduite à la notion de visibilité. Intuitivement, l'idée de base est que quand un agent voit quelque chose, alors elle sait sa valeur de vérité. A l'inverse, toute combinaison de valeurs de vérité des variables non observables est possible pour l'agent. Ces informations d'observabilité permettent de reconstituer la sémantique standard de la connaissance : deux mondes sont indistinguables pour un agent si et seulement si chaque variable observée par cet agent a la même valeur dans les deux mondes. Notre objectif est de démontrer que les logiques épistémiques fondées sur la visibilité constituent un outil approprié pour plusieurs applications importantes dans le domaine de l'intelligence artificielle. Dans le cadre actuel de ces logiques de visibilité, chaque agent a un ensemble de variables propositionnelles qu'elle peut observer ; ces visibilités sont constantes à travers le modèle. Cela accompagne une hypothèse forte : les visibilités sont connues de tous, et sont même connaissance commune. De plus, la construction de la connaissance à partir de la visibilité entraîne des validités contre-intuitives, la plus importante étant que l'opérateur de la connaissance distribue sur les disjonctions de littéraux : si un agent sait que p ou q est vrai, alors elle sait que p est vrai ou que q est vrai, parce qu'elle peut les voir. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons des solutions à ces deux problèmes et les illustrons sur diverses applications telles que la planification épistémique ou les jeux booléens épistémiques, et sur des exemples plus spécifiques tels que le problème des enfants sales ou le problème du bavardage. Nous étudions en outre des propriétés formelles des logiques que nous concevons, fournissant axiomatisations et résultats de complexité. / In epistemic logic, knowledge is usually modelled by a graph of possible worlds, representing the alternatives to the current state of the world. So edges between worlds stand for indistinguishability. To know a proposition means that that proposition is true in all possible alternatives. Theoretical computer scientists however noticed that this led to several issues, both intuitively and technically: the more an agent is ignorant, the more alternatives she must consider; models may then become too big for system verification. They recently investigated how knowledge could be reduced to the notion of visibility. Intuitively, the basic idea is that when an agent sees something, then she knows its truth value. The other way round, any combination of truth values of the non-observable variables is possible for the agent. Such observability information allows us to reconstruct the standard semantics of knowledge: two worlds are indistinguishable for an agent if and only if every variable observed by her has the same value in both worlds. We aim to demonstrate that visibility-based epistemic logics provide a suitable tool for several important applications in the field of artificial intelligence. In the current settings of these logics of visibility, every agent has a set of propositional variables that she can observe; these visibilities are constant across the model. This comes with a strong assumption: visibilities are known to everyone, and are even common knowledge. Moreover, constructing knowledge from visibility brings about counter-intuitive validities, the most important being that the knowledge operator distributes over disjunction of literals: if an agent knows that p or q is true, then she knows that p is true or that q is true because she can see them. In this thesis, we propose solutions to these two problems and illustrate them on various applications such as epistemic planning or epistemic boolean games, and on more specific examples such as the muddy children problem or the gossip problem. We moreover study formal properties of the logics we design, providing axiomatizations and complexity results.

Temos aqui um estudo de caso onde se exercita, dentro do partido teórico-metodológico da história cultural do urbano, a aplicação do conceito ‘trajetória social’ aos estudos históricos, Visa estabelecer as condições que possibilitaram ao jornalista Beto Stodieck assumir a condição de porta-voz de uma parcela dos jovens da elite florianopolitana, cuja posição apoiava-se principalmente no capital cultural e social – acesso à educação, à cultura erudita e nas redes de relações sociais – herdados de família. Centrando a atenção num indivíduo e na formação do seu ‘ponto de vista’ - entendido como o universo das posições no interior do qual o agente estava situado e onde se definiu sua ação – o registro das transformações morfológicas e culturais, conforme foram registradas nas crônicas diárias, ajudou a buscar a cidade real através das representações formuladas por Beto Stodieck. A análise dos escritos e das práticas sociais ali retratadas apontou que o alcance da coluna social desse jornalista, tratada aqui como um conjunto de crônicas sociais ligeiras, foi resultado de três características fundamentais: o estilo do escritor; a capilaridade e importância social do veículo (principalmente o jornal O Estado); e a multiplicidade de temas ligados ao cotidiano de leitores das mais diversas posições sociais. / This work presents a study of case, within the party theoretical and methodological of the urban cultural history, in which applies of the concept ‘social trajectory’ to historical studies; seeking to identify the conditions that allowed the journalist Beto Stodieck become the spokesperson of a portion of the young elite of Florianópolis, whose position was supported mainly in the cultural and social capital – access to education, to erudite culture and networks of relationships social - inherited the family. Focusing on a individual and the making of their 'point of view' - understood as the universe of positions within which the agent was located and defined his action – the record of morphological and cultural transformations, as were registered in chronic daily, helped to understand the real city, through the representations made by Beto Stodieck. The analysis of the writings and social practices there portrayed, pointed out that the reach of the social columns of the journalist, treated here as a set of ‘slight social-chronicles’, was the result of three basic features: the style of the writer, the capillary and social importance of vehicle (mainly the newspaper O Estado), and the multiplicity of themes related to the daily lives of readers within different social positions.

Gossip is a generic protocol which was designed for spreading information between nodes in large distributed decentralised systems. This protocol can be also used for many different applications including data aggregation, topology construction, etc. This work presents and describes a framework designed for facilitating modelling and simulation of Gossip-based systems.

No description available.