We live in a world where social media allows everyone to have a voice regardless of their expertise on any subject. With so many anonymous voices giving their opinions are the expert reviews of film critics no longer as useful? Some may believe there is a disconnect between what critics like and what people like. With this in mind, this research puts the usefulness of expert movie reviews and word of mouth against each other as can be seen through the need for cognition scale and social media affinity scale. / text

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka aktiva bloggares syn på yrket bloggare, sin egen blogg och bloggandet i allmänhet. Bloggen som yrke är ett område där tidigare forskning undersöker läsarnas och företagens interaktion med bloggaren. Det saknas dock ännu forskning som undersöker bloggarnas perspektiv på yrket och vad yrket kan innebära. Undersökningen fokuserar på den professionella sidan av bloggandet och utgörs av en kvalitativ intervjustudie med 13 respondenter. Resultaten diskuteras utifrån tidigare forskning samt teorier med utgångspunkt från olika marknadsföringsbegrepp. Resultaten visar att bloggarna är glada och stolta över vad de gör, men samtidigt upplever de att det finns en skepsis och oförstående från många. Bloggen ses inte som ett riktigt yrke, men i realiteten bevisar bloggarna att det kan vara allt från ens huvudsakliga yrke, till en hobby eller till ens digitala CV. Bloggen blir ett CV då det är en översikt över allt man gör samlat på ett ställe med kontinuerlig uppdatering. Enligt respondenterna ses bloggare som yrke fortfarande på med tveksamma ögon från stora delar av samhället. Det framkommer även att det ännu råder mycket okunskap, såväl bland bloggare som hos företag, kring hur man förhåller sig inom lagen när man arbetar med marknadsföring via bloggar. / The purpose of this study was to investigate and account for active bloggers view of the blogging profession, their blog and blogging in general. Previous research has been made about blogging and the interaction with the readers. This study revolves around the blogging profession and professional parts of working as a blogger and a qualitative selection of respondents led to 13 interviews. We discuss our results by applying marketing concepts as a point of departure. Looking closely into the subject makes it easy to see that the bloggers are happy with and proud of what they do, but they feel that the profession is still seen with skepticism and incomprehension from a lot of people. The blog is not considered as a real job, but in reality it can be anything from one's main occupation, just a hobby to one´s digital CV. The blog becomes a CV since it´s a place where you can store and display what you do and have done, with continual update. The study also concluded that even amongst the bloggers and the companies working alongside them, the industry is still evolving. Especially when it comes to advertising and marketing through blogs and maintaining legal working boundaries between blogger and company. According to our respondents the blogging profession still struggles when being scrutinized by bystanders.

Previous empirical research and anecdotal accounts suggest that “subclinical narcissism” or “average Joe’s narcissism” is one of the most prevalent social phenomena in many parts of the world. Research also suggests that there will be an unprecedented escalation “in average Joe narcissists” among future generations of consumers. The objective of this study is two-fold. The first objective of this study is to explore the moderating effect of the individual’s level of narcissistic personality on their word-of-mouth (WOM) communications. The second objective of this study is to explore the boundary conditions of the first objective. The data were collected from a large number of consumers through Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results support many of the hypotheses accordant with the characteristics of the subclinical narcissistic individual. Specifically, the moderating effect of an individual’s level of narcissistic personality trait on the decision to engage in different types of WOM communications varies across the tested contexts. This study is intended to respond to social scientists' recent call for studies that investigate the fundamental motives behind the individual’s propensity to engage in WOM communication as a function of individual characteristics. The results of this study provide some prescriptive guidance to help companies target appropriate consumers to increase the effectiveness of WOM communication. In addition, this study explores the effect of individual and contextual differences on consumers’ willingness to engage in different types of WOM communication.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att analysera sambandet mellan digital gerillamarknadsföring och Word-of-Mouth (WOM). Design/metod/tillvägagångssätt: Data samlades in från 105 deltagare inom Generation Y som svarade på en enkätundersökning online. Resultat: Resultatet visar att det finns ett svagt samband mellan gerillamarknadsföring och WOM. Majoriteten av svaren visar en brist på intresse, vilket vi förklarar som ett tecken för reklamtrötthet i Generation Y. Studien tyder på att det finns en skillnad mellan produkter och tjänster, även om den inte är stor. Av alla reaktioner är ett passivt beteende märkbart. Forskningens begränsningar/implikationer: På grund av storleken på undersökningen och bristen på urvalsgrupper, kan inga generaliseringar göras. Resultatet syftar till att hjälpa till att fylla kunskapsluckor inom forskningsområdet för gerillamarknadsföring och WOM, därmed ämnar vi inte dra några generella slutsatser. Praktiska implikationer: Resultaten från denna studie ger vägledning för företag. Vi föreslår att företag inte ska förlita sig enbart på digital marknadsföring eftersom kunden idag inte är redo för att göra en sådan strategi effektiv. Originalitet/värde: Denna studie är den första att granska gerillamarknadsföring och WOM när det gäller skillnaden mellan produkter och tjänster, samt de olika typer av WOM gerillamarknadsföring genererar. / Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between guerrilla marketing and Word-of-Mouth (WOM), through analysing the differences between guerrilla marketing of product and services and what type of WOM it generates. Design/methodology/approach: Data were gathered from 105 participants of the Generation Y who responded to an online survey. Findings: Results show that there is a weak connection between guerrilla marketing and WOM. The majority of the answers showed a lack of interest in the marketing examples, suggestion a advertisement-tiredness in Generation Y. However, guerrilla marketing for services gave slightly higher response than marketing for products, and out of all the reactions a passive behaviour was noticeable. Research limitations/implications: Due to the size of the survey and the shortage in certain sample groups, generalisations cannot be made. Although, the findings aim to help fill in knowledge gaps in the research area for guerrilla marketing and WOM. Practical implications: The results of this study provide guidance for businesses in terms of not relying solely on digital marketing since the customer of today is not yet ready to make such strategy efficient. Originality/value: This study is the first to examine guerrilla marketing and WOM in terms of differences between products and services, and the different types of WOM it produces.

Writing assessments have taken two primary forms in the past two decades: direct and indirect. Irrespective of type, either form needs to be anchored to making decisions in the classroom and predicting performance on high-stakes tests, particularly in a high-stakes environment with serious consequences. In this study, 11th-grade students were given a classroom assessment in which they had 1 minute to think and 3 minutes to write. Student work was scored for correct word sequence (CWS), total words written (TWW), and correct minus incorrect word sequence (CIWS). Students were also given a high-stakes state test to determine eligibility for graduation. This study focuses on the relation between performance on the classroom assessment and the state tests, with comparisons made between the performance of students receiving special education services (SPED) and students in general education. In an age of accountability, test validity has become an increasingly complicated topic. The social consequences of assessments impact students and their educational experience.

A ambiguidade lexical é considerada uma das principais barreiras para melhoria de aplicações do Processamento de Língua Natural (PLN). Neste contexto, tem-se a área de Desambiguação Lexical de Sentido (DLS), cujo objetivo é desenvolver e avaliar métodos que determinem o sentido correto de uma palavra em um determinado contexto por meio de um conjunto finito de possíveis significados. A DLS é empregada, principalmente, no intuito de prover recursos e ferramentas para diminuir problemas de ambiguidade e, consequentemente, contribuir para melhorias de resultados em outras áreas do PLN. Para o Português do Brasil, pouco se tem pesquisado nesta área, havendo alguns trabalhos bem específicos de domínio. Outro fator importante é que diversas áreas do PLN engajam-se no cenário multidocumento, onde a computação é efetuada sobre uma coleção de textos, todavia, não há relato de trabalhos de DLS direcionados a este cenário, tampouco experimentos de desambiguação neste domínio. Portanto, neste trabalho de mestrado, objetivou-se o desenvolvimento de métodos de DLS de domínio geral voltado à língua Portuguesa do Brasil e o desenvolvimento de algoritmos de desambiguação que façam uso de informações multidocumento, bem como a experimentação e avaliação destes no cenário multidocumento. Para tanto, a fim de subsidiar experimentos, desenvolvimento e avaliação deste projeto, anotou-se manualmente o córpus CSTNews, caracterizado como um córpus multidocumento, utilizando a WordNet de Princeton como repositório de sentidos, que organiza os significados por meio de conjuntos de sinônimos ( synsets) e relações linguísticas entre estes. Foram desenvolvidos quatro métodos de DLS e algumas variações, sendo: um método heurístico (para aferir valores de baseline); variações do algoritmo de Lesk (1986); adaptação do algoritmo de Mihalcea and Moldovan (1999); e uma variação do método de Lesk para o cenário multidocumento. Foram realizados três experimentos para avaliação dos métodos, cujos objetivos foram: determinar o desempenho geral dos algoritmos em todo o córpus; avaliar a qualidade de desambiguação de palavras mais ambíguas no córpus; e verificar o ganho de qualidade da desambiguação ao empregar informação multidocumento. Após estes experimentos, pôde-se observar que o método heurístico apresenta um melhor resultado geral. Contudo, é importante ressaltar que a maioria das palavras anotadas no córpus tiveram apenas um synset, que, normalmente, era o mais frequente, o que, consequentemente, apresenta um cenário mais propício ao método heurístico. Outro fato importante foi que, neste cenário, a diferença de desempenho entre o método de DLS multidocumento e o heurístico é estatisticamente irrelevante. Já para a desambiguação de palavras mais ambíguas, o método heurístico foi inferior, evidenciando que, para a desambiguação de palavras mais ambíguas, são necessários métodos mais sofisticados de DLS. Por fim, verificou-se que a utilização de informação multidocumento auxilia o processo de desambiguação. As contribuições deste trabalho podem ser agrupadas entre teóricas e técnicas. Nas teóricas, tem-se a investigação e análises da DLS no cenário multidocumento. Entre as contribuições técnicas, foram desenvolvidos métodos de DLS, um córpus anotado e uma ferramenta de anotação direcionados à língua Portuguesa do Brasil, que podem avançar as pesquisas em DLS para o idioma / The lexical ambiguity is considered one of the main barries to improving applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP). In this context, it has benn the area of Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD), whose goal is to develop and evaluate methods to determine the correct sense of a word in a give context by a nite set of possible meanings. The DLS is used mainly in order to provide resources and tools to reduce problems of ambiguity and thus contribute to improved results in other areas of NLP. In the Portuguese of Brazil, little has been researched in this area, with some work and specic domain. Another important factor is that many areas of NLP commit themselves in multidocument scenario, where the computation is performed on a collection of texts, however, there is no report of WSD work directed to this scenario, either disambiguation experiments in this eld. Therefore, this master thesis aimed to develop methods of WSD general domain facing the Portuguese language in Brazil and the development of algorithms that make use of disambiguation multidocument informations, as well as experimentation and evaluation of the multidocument scenario. Therefore, in order to support experiments, development and evaluation of this project, the corpus CSTNews with 50 document collections, was manually annotated by means of synsets of the WordNet Princeton. Four methods were developed: A heuristic method (to measure values fo baseline); variations of the Lesk (1986) algorithm; a adaptation of the Mihalcea and Moldovan (1999) algorithm; and a variation of the Lesk method for multidocument scenario. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the methods, whose objectives were to determine the general performance algorithms across the corpus; evaluate the quality of disambiguation of most ambiguous words in the corpus, and check the gain quality of disambiguation by employing information multidocumento. After these experiments, it was observed that the heuristic method presents a better overall result. However, it is important to note that most of the words in the annotated corpus had only one synset, which usually was the most frequent, which, in turn, presents a scenario more conducive to the heuristic method. Another important fact was that in this scenario, the performance dierence between the heuristic method and multidocument algorithm was statistically irrelevant. As for the disambiguation of most ambiguous words, the heuristic method was lower, indicating that, for the disambiguation of ambiguous words, more sophisticated WSD methods are needed. Finally, it has been found that the use of multidocument information assists the disambiguation process. The contributions of this work can be divided between theoretical and technical. In theory, there is the research and analysis of WSD in multidocument scenario. Among the techniques contributions, WSD methods have been developed an annotated corpus and annotation tool targeted to the Portuguese language in Brazil that can advance research in WSD for the language

A mudança de classe gramatical consiste na criação de uma unidade lexical em uma classe gramatical diferente da classe da base. Para efetuar essa criação, os falantes dispõem de diversos mecanismos, como a derivação sufixal (com diversos sufixos), a derivação parassintética, a derivação regressiva e a conversão. Nosso objetivo, no presente trabalho, é o de descrever tais mecanismos, procurando compreender por que motivo(s) os falantes criam novas unidades lexicais em classes gramaticais diferentes. Buscando a fundamentação teórica da Linguística Cognitiva, procuramos dividir nossa análise em duas perspectivas: a perspectiva onomasiológica, em que analisamos os mecanismos de criação lexical, e a perspectiva semasiológica, em que analisamos os mecanismos de interpretação de uma nova unidade lexical. Seguindo as ideias da Linguística Cognitiva, entendemos que as classes gramaticais devem ser consideradas categorias semânticas, e a mudança de classe, um processo de natureza basicamente semântica. Considerando apenas as classes gramaticais de natureza lexical, os seis tipos de mudança de classe possíveis em português são: adjetivo para substantivo, verbo para substantivo, substantivo para adjetivo, verbo para adjetivo, substantivo para verbo e adjetivo para verbo. Dessa forma, separamos 1.209 neologismos resultantes de mudança de classe gramatical integrantes da Base de neologismos do português brasileiro contemporâneo (que faz parte do Projeto TermNeo Observatório de Neologismos do Português Brasileiro Contemporâneo) e os classificamos em cada um dos seis tipos de mudança de classe. Para cada um dos tipos, analisamos onomasiologicamente os mecanismos de criação e, semasiologicamente, os mecanismos de interpretação desses neologismos. A derivação sufixal é o mecanismo mais empregado, com inúmeros sufixos produtivos no português contemporâneo, muitos deles polissêmicos; no entanto, a derivação parassintética na formação de verbos e a derivação regressiva na formação de substantivos abstratos também são mecanismos produtivos. Há alguns casos importantes de concorrência entre sufixos, como -ice e -(i)dade na mudança de adjetivo para substantivo e -ção e -mento na mudança de verbo para substantivo. Na análise da interpretação dos neologismos, a metonímia revelou-se um processo importante em quase todos os tipos de mudança de classe. Por fim, as análises parecem indicar que os falantes operam a mudança de classe gramatical com a finalidade de exprimir novos conceitos, não apenas por razões meramente morfossintáticas. / Word class change consists on the creation of a lexical unit in a word class different from the bases class. In order to do this, speakers have at their disposal many mechanisms, like suffixal derivation (with many different suffixes), parasynthetic derivation, regressive derivation and conversion. Our goal, in this study, is to describe such mechanisms, trying to figure out why speakers create new lexical units in different word classes. With the theoretical foundations of Cognitive Linguistics, we divide our analysis in two perspectives: the onomasiological perspective, in which we analyse the mechanisms of lexical creation, and the semasiological perspective, in which we analyse the mechanisms of interpretation of a new lexical unit. According to Cognitive Linguistics, we understand that word classes must be considered semantic categories, and word class change, a basically semantic process. Considering only the lexical word classes, the six possible types of word class change in Portuguese are: adjective to noun, verb to noun, noun to adjective, verb to adjective, noun to verb and adjective to verb. Therefore, we collected 1,209 neologisms resulting from a word class change process from the Base de neologismos do português brasileiro contemporâneo (Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese neologism database - part of Project TermNeo Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese Neologism Observer) and classified them into the six types of word class change. For each one of these types, we analysed onomasiologically the creation mechanisms and, semasiologically, the interpretation mechanisms of these neologisms. Suffixal derivation is the most employed mechanism, with many suffixes which are productive in contemporary Portuguese, many of them polysemic; however, parasynthetic derivation in verb creation and regressive derivation in the formation of abstract nouns are also productive mechanisms. There are some important cases of suffix competition, like -ice and -(i)dade in the change from adjective to noun and -ção and -mento in the change from verb to noun. In analyzing neologism interpretation, metonymy revealed itself an important process in almost all types of word class change. Finally, the analyses seem to show that speakers change word class in order to express new concepts, and not only for merely morphosyntactic reasons.

Kin Fai Ellick Wong. / "July 2000." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-130). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

In sum, the three studies suggest that, on one hand, Chinese compound words, particularly the opaque ones, seem to be represented as holistic orthographic units in the mental lexicon. On the other hand, the meanings of the component morphemes are activated in visual recognition of Chinese compound words, suggesting a decomposed access. The implications of these results for a model of Chinese compound word representation and access, as well as the dispute between morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic decomposition accounts of morphological processing in other languages, were discussed. / Study 2 adapted the transposed-letter similarity effect in English (Forster, Davis, Schoknecht, & Carter, 1987; Acah & Perea, 2008) into transposed-character similarity effect in Chinese to further examine the orthographic representation of Chinese compound words. Study 2 examined the processing of both transposable and untransposable compound words to distinguish the decomposed account (which assumes morpheme-to-word activation) and the holistic account (which assumes activation of word-level orthographic representation) of the mental representation of Chinese compound words. It was found that transposable word-word pairs (e.g., [special characters omitted], means tie in English-[special characters omitted], means lead in English) did not produce significant priming effects. This result is inconsistent with the decomposed account, but is explicable in terms of the holistic account. Two follow-up experiments show that the transposed-character similarity effects differ for transparent (e.g., [special characters omitted], means proud in English) and opaque words (e.g., [special characters omitted], means careless in English). Transposed nonwords show significant facilitation effect to the original words when the original words were opaque (e.g., [special characters omitted]) but not when they were transparent words (e.g., [special characters omitted]). It suggests that opaque words are more likely than transparent words to be represented as orthographic wholes. The findings of word-level orthographic representation and the influence of semantic transparency provide convergent evidence for the conclusions reached by Study 1. / The first two studies are concerned with whether Chinese two-character compound words have decomposed or holistic orthographic representations in the mental lexicon. Study 1 made use of the high frequency orthographic neighbor inhibition effect (Grainger & Jacobs, 1996; Davis & Lupker, 2006) in the masked priming paradigm. It was found that a high frequency orthographic neighbor (e.g., [special characters omitted] means virtually in English) inhibited recognition of a low frequency target word (e.g., [special characters omitted], means brief in English). The high frequency orthographic neighbor inhibition effect was supposed to be caused by lexical competition between prime and target words (Grainger & Jacobs, 1996). Therefore, the observation of inhibition in Study 1 suggests that the prime words have word-level representations that compete with those of target words for lexical access. It is argued that the activated word-level lexical representation is likely to be orthographic representation, rather than phonological and semantic representations, because the influence of phonology was found to be limited in a follow-up experiment, and the semantic relatedness between the prime and target words was low. Furthermore, because the inhibition effects were stronger for semantically opaque than transparent compound words, it seems that opaque words are more likely than transparent words to be represented as unitary units. / The third study investigated whether or not the meaning of a component morpheme would be activated in the process of recognizing a Chinese two-character compound word. Current accounts of morphological processing disagree on whether morphological processing is form then meaning, or form with meaning (Feldman, O'Connor, & Del Prado Martin, 2009; Davis & Rastle, 2010). The focus of the debate is actually whether morpheme meaning activation occurs at early stage of compound word processing. This study attempted to contribute to that debate by trying to dissociate morphological processing of form and meaning. The method was to investigate masked priming effects produced by prime-target pairs that contained a pair of semantically related morphemes but without any overlap in orthography, phonology or whole-word meaning (e.g., [special characters omitted] /surprised in English/-[special characters omitted]/break one's promise in English/). Since there was no overlap between the prime and the target in form, any priming effects produced could be attributed unequivocally to activation of morpheme meaning (e.g., [special characters omitted], both means eat in English). The results of Study 3 show that morpheme meaning activation without form overlap occurred as early as the first 60ms of word processing. This finding is more consistent with the form-with-meaning than the form-then-meaning account. / This dissertation reports on three studies of the cognitive representations and processes in visual recognition of Chinese two-character compound words. Because Chinese two-character compound words are composed of two spatially separated characters which themselves are words, there has been a debate about whether these words are represented and processed in the mental lexicon as unitary wholes or as combinations of the component characters (Zhang & Peng, 1992; Taft & Zhu, 1995). / Zhang, Lingyan. / Advisers: Yujing Ni; Ling-po Shiu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-07(E), Section: A. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-153). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; includes Chinese.

Idag vet vi att läsandet och skrivandet av bloggar ökat markant de senaste åren, framför allt bland unga kvinnor. Vidare ser vi en ökad popularitet av modebloggar, där exponering av kläder och andra produkter, dagligen finns med bland inläggen för att inspirera läsarna. I denna uppsats har vi undersökt hur inläggen i bloggarna påverkar unga kvinnors köpintention. Med köpintention menar vi önskan om att vilja köpa något.Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av djupintervjuer och en dokumentundersökning. Vi intervjuade tio personer, och intervjuerna innehöll frågor om respondenternas bloggvanor, köpbeteende samt informationsspridning. Vid dokumentundersökningen studerade vi utvalda bloggars kommentarsfält för specifika inlägg. Detta för att vi ville se hur läsarna använde sig av kommentarer för att föra fram sina åsikter.Våra resultat efter undersökningen visade att våra respondenter generellt hade en positiv attityd till bloggarna, och såg många av bloggerskorna som inspirationskällor eller förebilder. Vi har även kunnat se att respondenterna någon gång ändrat uppfattning om ett plagg på grund av en bloggare, både negativt och positivt beroende på vem bloggaren var.Slutligen kan vi även konstatera att våra respondenter samt andra unga kvinnor är mycket engagerade i bloggvärlden, eftersom de läser bloggar dagligen, och även ibland kommenterar. Det var även vanligt att de diskuterade plagg de tidigare sett på bloggar med sin bekantskapskrets. Diskussionerna kunde vara både positiva och negativa. / Program: Kandidatutbildning i företagsekonomi