The rise of 'information disorder' that undermine Western political principles has become one of the key political concerns in current Europe and United States and led to searching for new solutions how to fight the spread of mis- and dis-information. While the nature of this danger is still subject to much debate, we can already observe a rise of new experts explaining the threat of information war and how to deal with it. This research looks at how this novel problematization of security affects the politics of security expertise. Or, who gains power in this 'battle for truth'? Building on sociological approaches in security studies, this thesis focuses on the Czech Republic as a country that has become very active in the fight against disinformation and analyses the network of actors recognized as providing security expertise on information warfare. Based on social network analysis, the research maps the structure of social relations among actors recognized as experts and points out the empowerment of think-tanks and journalists, who build their expertise by bringing together their social capital, bridging knowledge of Russian politics and the new media environment, and introducing new practices to make the society resilient towards information warfare.

Die zunehmende Bedeutung von Social Media im privaten und beruflichen Kontext ist mit der steigenden Notwendigkeit einer spezifischen Kompetenz für Social Media als Voraussetzung für die Bewältigung individueller beruflicher Alltagssituationen verbunden. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird das Konstrukt der Social-Media-Kompetenz beschrieben und mit dem Projekt „Social Media Communication“ eine Möglichkeit vorgestellt, wie die Entwicklung einer solchen Kompetenz unter gleichzeitiger Verwendung von Social-Media-Technologien als Lernmethode gefördert werden kann. Hergeleitet aus theoretischen und organisatorischen Anforderungen an ein entsprechendes Lernarrangement wird die Entwicklung und Erprobung eines prototypischen Blended-Learning-Arrangements zur Förderung einer hochschultyp- und fächerübergreifenden Social-Media-Kompetenz vorgestellt.

Second language (L2) learners of English must learn to produce English phonemes, words, and sentences. These L2 learners make many errors when learning English; they may change the place or manner of articulation, insert vowels, or delete consonants. Obstruent sounds, such as fricatives, affricates, and stops, can be especially difficult for L2 learners. This study analyzed native English speakers’ perception of the quality of obstruents produced by native Mandarin Chinese and Korean speakers. Target words containing obstruents had been produced in three different tasks: in a carrier phrase, in a paragraph, and in a spontaneous speech sample. Obstruents were produced in word-initial position and word-final position. Raters with differing levels of expertise listened to these words and rated the perceptual quality of the obstruents within the words. This study found that overall, English obstruent productions by native Mandarin and Korean L2 speakers learning English were rated most clear when produced in word-initial position in a carrier phrase or a paragraph. The lowest ratings given were of obstruents in word-final position in spontaneous speech. No significant differences were found for listener expertise level. Combined with future research, results from this study will help educate the field of second language instruction as to how the speech of Korean and Mandarin learners of English is perceived. It also provides additional information on the effect that listener expertise has on the judgment of L2 speech production.

L’observation du système nerveux, de son métabolisme et de certaines de ses structures est possible grâce à la neuroimagerie. Une littérature importante issue du « neurodroit » véhicule des imaginaires et des fantasmes relatifs aux possibilités judiciaires qu’offriraient ces technologies. Qu’il s’agisse de détection du mensonge, d’identification cérébrale des individus dangereux ou encore de prédiction de comportements déviants, la neuroimagerie, en l’état actuel des technologies, ne peut pourtant être sérieusement conçue comme pouvant faire l’objet de telles applications. L’utilisation de la neuroimagerie dans le cadre d’expertises est néanmoins une réalité, dans les tribunaux canadiens comme dans la loi française. Cette thèse souligne que les conceptions des technologies dont témoignent les deux systèmes juridiques étudiés s’avèrent lacunaires, ce qui engendre des risques. Elle évoque les conditions du recours à une normativité extra-juridique, la normalisation technique, qui pourrait s’élaborer dans ce contexte controversé, et esquisse les traits d’un dialogue amélioré entre les normativités juridique et technologique. / Neuroimaging allows the observation of the nervous system, of both its metabolism and some of its structures. An important literature in “neurolaw” conveys illusions and fantaisies about the judicial possibilities that imaging technologies would contain. Whether it is about lies detection, cerebral identifications of dangerous individuals through their neurobiology or predictions of criminal behaviors, neuroimaging, in the current state of technologies, can not be seriously conceived as being able to offer such applications. Judicial uses of neuroimaging through expertise are a reality nonetheless, in Canadian courts as in French law. This thesis emphasizes that the conceptions of imaging technologies integrated in the two legal systems studied are incomplete, which creates an important amount of risks. It discusses the conditions for the use of an extra-legal normativity, the international technical standardization, which could be elaborated in this particular and controversial context, and outlines several features of an increased dialogue between legal and technological norms

Political parties in the Czech Republic have a dominant position in decision-making and nomination of public representatives. At the same time they must deal with complex problems, such as pension reform. I suppose therefore that they need an expert opinions for building their decision-making. Therefore, I would like to figure out my research how to deal with this, how they are able to generate the requisite expertise and how that expertise is used in the final decision. I wonder how institutional arrangements of political parties affects the process of creating professional views on public policy, namely to focus on the reform of the Czech pension system. Where and how exactly are formed the expert views on the functioning of the pension system in different political parties? I would like to reveal the basic criteria that determine who is considered an expert, and how this person is related to the organization of political party. I also focus on mainstreaming expertise during the subsequent political decisions. The basic methods of research will document analysis, interviews and observations.

Cognitive studies reveal that less-than-expert clinicians are less able to recognize meaningful patterns of data in clinical narratives. Accordingly, psychiatric residents early in training fail to attend to information that is relevant to diagnosis and the assessment of dangerousness. This manuscript presents cognitively motivated methodology for the simulation of expert ability to organize relevant findings supporting intermediate diagnostic hypotheses. Latent Semantic Analysis is used to generate a semantic space from which meaningful associations between psychiatric terms are derived. Diagnostically meaningful clusters are modeled as geometric structures within this space and compared to elements of psychiatric narrative text using semantic distance measures. A learning algorithm is defined that alters components of these geometric structures in response to labeled training data. Extraction and classification of relevant text segments is evaluated against expert annotation, with system-rater agreement approximating rater-rater agreement. A range of biomedical informatics applications for these methods are suggested.

In the digitally mediated world that we live in, self-tracking and monitoring technologies have been observed to become part of the various realms of our social lives, shaping and even disturbing relations that we take part in. This thesis has sought to explore how tensions emerge between digital tracking technologies, players and other human members of an elite football team and, thus, to address how those tensions are dealt with. By applying the ethnographic research methodology and adopting the theoretical framework of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the study has pursued to investigate how the technologies participate in the players’ everyday practices as well as how the players navigate between the expertise of different human and non-human sources in the team. The results indicate that the involvement of tracking technologies can increase the possibility of tensions to arise between different participants in a network such as the studied football team. To deal with these tensions, this thesis has contributed with a prototype of a system around a player monitoring technology. It suggests roles, relations, factors and actions in order to enhance the understanding among those who manage such a technology, helping them to acknowledge and overcome possible tensions in the social process of tracking a football team. This service blueprint is constructed through co-design workshops together with the player participants.

L’observation du système nerveux, de son métabolisme et de certaines de ses structures est possible grâce à la neuroimagerie. Une littérature importante issue du « neurodroit » véhicule des imaginaires et des fantasmes relatifs aux possibilités judiciaires qu’offriraient ces technologies.Qu’il s’agisse de détection du mensonge, d’identification cérébrale des individus dangereux ou encore de prédiction de comportements déviants, la neuroimagerie, en l’état actuel des technologies, ne peut pourtant être sérieusement conçue comme pouvant faire l’objet de telles applications.L’utilisation de la neuroimagerie dans le cadre d’expertises est néanmoins une réalité, dans les tribunaux canadiens comme dans la loi française.Cette thèse souligne que les conceptions des technologies dont témoignent les deux systèmes juridiques étudiés s’avèrent lacunaires, ce qui engendre des risques. Elle évoque les conditions du recours à une normativité extra-juridique, la normalisation technique, qui pourrait s’élaborer dans ce contexte controversé, et esquisse les traits d’un dialogue amélioré entre les normativités juridique et technologique. / Neuroimaging allows the observation of the nervous system, of both its metabolism and some of its structures. An important literature in “neurolaw” conveys illusions and fantaisies about the judicial possibilities that imaging technologies would contain.Whether it is about lies detection, cerebral identifications of dangerous individuals through their neurobiology or predictions of criminal behaviors, neuroimaging, in the current state of technologies, can not be seriously conceived as being able to offer such applications.Judicial uses of neuroimaging through expertise are a reality nonetheless, in Canadian courts as in French law.This thesis emphasizes that the conceptions of imaging technologies integrated in the two legal systems studied are incomplete, which creates an important amount of risks. It discusses the conditions for the use of an extra-legal normativity, the international technical standardization, which could be elaborated in this particular and controversial context, and outlines several features of an increased dialogue between legal and technological norms.

Coaching effectiveness is a result of a coach getting the best out of the people and resources in their environment. For coaches, learning from experience is vital in a role that is a complex, dynamic and multifaceted process of balancing fun and winning where one cannot be sure if results will go according to plan. At the Olympic level, due to commercialization more money is being spent than ever before on developing more professional and effective training systems to maximize athletic performances. Medals won determine how a coach is evaluated and with more nations competition at a higher level, success is becoming even more competitive. More qualified and adaptable coaches are required to cope with the demands of international competition. The literature has been extensively examined based on the research question: to what extent is coaching success predicted by a coaches' ability to self-reflect on past experiences? The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that if coaches who are highly self-reflective and have successful athletic and coaching experiences would be more likely to have future coaching success than those who either were not self-reflective or had less success in the past. Coaching knowledge is acquired though experience and the process of learning and self-reflection is an activity that facilitates this process. This study showed that rowing coaching experience and rowing athletic experience are positive predictors of coaching success, albeit weakly so. While self-reflective activities are not predictors of coaching success, self-reflection is an activity that coaches engage in. This study also identified the challenges in measuring coaching success. But like any domain, deliberate practice, which is a known pathway to developing expertise, is an activity that contributes to the professionalization of sports coaching and its advancement as a profession. / Ph. D.

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