In this thesis, I examine the practical challenge of constructing communication at the Arabic Translation Service (ATS) of the UN through the process of translation. Unlike in English in which "communication" has only one equivalent, in Arabic it has many depending on the context. My analysis focuses on analyzing the occurrence of two translation equivalents, namely ittissal and tawassul given that their use in translation sometimes proves to be cultural. I conducted participant observation over the course of a two-month internship at the UN Headquarters in New York. Using grounded theory, I pieced together insights from a database of occurrences of the term "communication," interviewed staff members about their opinion about previous translations of "communication," witnessed staff interactions during their weekly meetings, and participated in a communication framework to create closer relationships between the ATS and other duty stations outside the UN. The way this framework is designed helps define how communication is understood as both theoretical concept and word used for translation purposes. Adopting an ethnography of communication approach, I illuminate the cultural differences involved in translating the term "communication" into Arabic in UN documents by an Arab multicultural team. By means of exploring translation issues, I aim at defining the prominent model of communication in the UN ATS community, and showing how this community's talk reflects tensions between different culturally embedded models. My conclusion is that ittissal is preferred over tawassul, the first involving more technical meaning and less contact among people. Some translators disagree with some translations. The UN ATS has its own language, given that it communicates to particular audiences. I aim at finding out why ittissal is the preferred term, why is standard Arabic not used for communication among the staff, and what aspects during translation are cultural.

Given the severe environmental problems we are facing, it is crucial to communicate environmental knowledge to society in order to facilitate a trajectory towards sustainability. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore how departments at Swedish universities, whose research revolves around environmental topics, communicate their research. At four departments at two universities, I examine based on semi-structured interviews (I) with whom and in what ways these departments communicate their research, (II) what the motivations are to do so, and (III) if there are challenges in communicating environmental science. For examining the departments’ communication strategies, I apply the theory of a multi-model framework of expert-public interaction. This multi-model framework, however, proved to be too simplistic for the complexity of reality, as the models underlying this framework are too intertwined, and not competing descriptions of reality. They rather describe specific aspects of communication practices.  The results show that even though there are two-way communication practices with both the government, specific stakeholders, and the general public, the mere dissemination of environmental knowledge seems to be the default practice of science communication at the examined departments - especially concerning the general public. The motivation to communicate environmental knowledge is of intrinsic nature, to give something back to society and to increase awareness about sustainability practices. Discovered challenges in science communication include a general lack of time to effectively communicate research results, as well as deficient education in science communication for researchers.  For transforming into sustainable societies communication strategies need to be improved.

The Role of Information and Communication in Organisations Diagnostic Tools of Information and Communication Processes The thesis has the objective to explore the interaction of the terms information and communication in organizational settings, and to identify their common characteristics and direct mutual influence. By introducing settings with open and closed communication climates, and diagnostic tools of communication and information audits, the author highlights the mutual overlap of these terms. The first part of the thesis provides an introduction into the theoretical terms information and communication as used in the historical context of their mother disciplines, identifies their similarities and differences, and, most importantly, highlights the long-term intense overlap of these terms at various levels. The second part goes on to introduce the basic forms of organizational structures affecting information transfer, i.e. direction, speed and accuracy of formal and informal information flows in organizational communication networks. The concept of information is brought into context with communication climate which has a direct influence on its form, quantity, quality and timeliness. When characterizing the most frequently used communication diagnosis tools falling into the category of...

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19110号 / 情博第556号 / 新制||情||98(附属図書館) / 32061 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 西田 豊明, 教授 乾 敏郎, 教授 河原 達也 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DGAM

Técnicas e ferramentas (middlewares para desenvolvimento de aplicações distribuídas são utilizadas no caso dos recursos de um único computador não serem suficientes, ou para atender requisitos de qualidade de serviço, ou mesmo para abranger uma maior quantidade de usuários. A Realidade Virtual é uma das áreas da computação a sua complexidade, se beneficia de tais técnicas e middlewares, seja para proporcionar ambientes mais imersivos e/ou possibilitar a interação de múltiplos usuários. A Realidade Virtual engloba uma ampla diversidade de aplicações, incluindo infraestruturas de alta imersão, jogos multi-jogadores, e simuladores de voo, e cada classe de aplicação têm demandas específicas de distribuição, como escalabilidade, ou requisitos de tempo-real, entre outros. Devido à complexidade e a essa diversidade de aplicações de realidade virtual, as alternativas de middlewares disponíveis atendem requisitos específicos de uma única classe, ou, as genéricas, não fornecem modelos de objetos, comunicação ou execução favoráveis às aplicações de realidade virtual. Esse trabalho tem o objetivo de propor um novo modelo de objetos e arquitetura de um middleware para desenvolvimento de aplicações distribuídas de realidade virtual suficientemente flexível para atender diversas classes de aplicações. O modelo de objetos proposto une os modelos publicador/assinante e requisição/ resposta em uma única entidade similar aos objetos do paradigma de programação orientada a objetos, que, além de empregar conceitos intuitivos para desenvolvedores, possibilita o desacoplamento lógico entre os processos, simplificando o projeto e a implementação das aplicações distribuídas. O principal diferencial desta abordagem é a possibilidade de distribuir a implementação de cada membro dos objetos em diferentes processos. / Techniques and middlewares for distributed application development are used in cases the resources available in a single computer are not enough for the demanded complexity, to meet the required quality of services, or even to cover a greater number of users. The Virtual Reality is one of the computer fields that, because of its complexity, benefits from such techniques and tools, either to provide more immersive virtual environments, or to enable multi-user interaction. The Virtual Reality covers a wide range of applications, including high immersion infrastructures, multiplayer games, and full mission flight simulators. Each application class has specifics distribution demands, such as high scalability, or real-time requirements. Because of complexity and the diversity of virtual reality applications, the distribution solutions available meet the specific requirements of a single class, or the generic ones do not provide object, communication, or execution favorable for virtual reality applications. This work proposes a new model of objects and architecture of a middleware for distributed virtual reality applications that is flexible enough to suit several classes of applications. The proposed object model joins the publisher/subscriber and request/response models to a single logic entity similar to the objects of the object-oriented programming paradigm. Besides being an intuitive concept for developers, this entity enable logical decoupling between processes, simplifying the design and implementation of distributed applications. The main feature of this approach is the possibility to distribute the implementation of each member of the objects in different processes.

Técnicas e ferramentas (middlewares para desenvolvimento de aplicações distribuídas são utilizadas no caso dos recursos de um único computador não serem suficientes, ou para atender requisitos de qualidade de serviço, ou mesmo para abranger uma maior quantidade de usuários. A Realidade Virtual é uma das áreas da computação a sua complexidade, se beneficia de tais técnicas e middlewares, seja para proporcionar ambientes mais imersivos e/ou possibilitar a interação de múltiplos usuários. A Realidade Virtual engloba uma ampla diversidade de aplicações, incluindo infraestruturas de alta imersão, jogos multi-jogadores, e simuladores de voo, e cada classe de aplicação têm demandas específicas de distribuição, como escalabilidade, ou requisitos de tempo-real, entre outros. Devido à complexidade e a essa diversidade de aplicações de realidade virtual, as alternativas de middlewares disponíveis atendem requisitos específicos de uma única classe, ou, as genéricas, não fornecem modelos de objetos, comunicação ou execução favoráveis às aplicações de realidade virtual. Esse trabalho tem o objetivo de propor um novo modelo de objetos e arquitetura de um middleware para desenvolvimento de aplicações distribuídas de realidade virtual suficientemente flexível para atender diversas classes de aplicações. O modelo de objetos proposto une os modelos publicador/assinante e requisição/ resposta em uma única entidade similar aos objetos do paradigma de programação orientada a objetos, que, além de empregar conceitos intuitivos para desenvolvedores, possibilita o desacoplamento lógico entre os processos, simplificando o projeto e a implementação das aplicações distribuídas. O principal diferencial desta abordagem é a possibilidade de distribuir a implementação de cada membro dos objetos em diferentes processos. / Techniques and middlewares for distributed application development are used in cases the resources available in a single computer are not enough for the demanded complexity, to meet the required quality of services, or even to cover a greater number of users. The Virtual Reality is one of the computer fields that, because of its complexity, benefits from such techniques and tools, either to provide more immersive virtual environments, or to enable multi-user interaction. The Virtual Reality covers a wide range of applications, including high immersion infrastructures, multiplayer games, and full mission flight simulators. Each application class has specifics distribution demands, such as high scalability, or real-time requirements. Because of complexity and the diversity of virtual reality applications, the distribution solutions available meet the specific requirements of a single class, or the generic ones do not provide object, communication, or execution favorable for virtual reality applications. This work proposes a new model of objects and architecture of a middleware for distributed virtual reality applications that is flexible enough to suit several classes of applications. The proposed object model joins the publisher/subscriber and request/response models to a single logic entity similar to the objects of the object-oriented programming paradigm. Besides being an intuitive concept for developers, this entity enable logical decoupling between processes, simplifying the design and implementation of distributed applications. The main feature of this approach is the possibility to distribute the implementation of each member of the objects in different processes.

This thesis examines the ways in which public sector organisations communicate with people from lower socio-economic communities. The study is guided by the research question: Do the existing communication strategies of public sector organisations serve the needs of low decile communities in New Zealand? The study looks at the communication strategies used by three public sector organisations - Ministry of Social Development, Inland Revenue and Hamilton City Council - to interact with residents of a low-decile neighbourhood in Hamilton. Positioned within the critical theoretical paradigm (e.g., Deetz, 2005; Mumby, 2000) which looks at issues of power, domination and asymmetry in terms of communication practices, the research shows how social policy is socially constructed in order to serve the political aims of the public sector but is not necessarily constructed in terms of the target publics of that organisation. The study uses a three dimensional discourse analysis - text, context, and social practices (Fairclough, 1992) - to analyse the formal communication and information dissemination structures, processes, and texts of these organisations and to examine the ways in which some of the intended target publics of these organisations make sense of them and respond to them. The study includes an analysis of public documents put out by the organisations as well as interviews with youth workers, social workers, and representatives of the specific neighbourhood community. Juxtaposing the textual analysis with the analysis of the interviews facilitates an evaluation of whether the communication strategies of the organisations relate to the context of the socio-cultural practices of lowdecile neighbourhoods.

This research explores how community leaders could use Corbett’s Spectrum of Environmental Ideologies (2006) to analyze the ideologies of communication campaigns before adopting one into a community. In this research, a mixed age class of elementary students and local artisans created two “parks” in public parking spaces and participated in an arts contest in Nelson, BC. This action research used analytic coding to reflect on participants’ relationship with nature based on their response to: international Park(ing) Day and Transition Nelson. Additionally, participant recommendations for greening Nelson’s downtown core were compared with four models of social change for generating ecocentric solutions. Ecocentric solutions stem from the belief that humans and nature are interdependent. Found to be key were nurturing participants’ nascent ecocentric values and investigating the campaign materials deeply. Additionally building motivation, exploring alternatives, problem-solving, partnerships and improved organizational communication are important elements of social change.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 286-312). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 170-190).