Zugl.: Duisburg, Essen, Univ., Diss., 2005

Freiburg, Univ., Diplomarb., 2001.

Stuttgart, Univ., Fakultät Informatik, Studienarb., 1997.

This study examined a specific and controversial issue in health communication: the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Recent studies have shown that both online newsgroups and traditional newspapers have involved in communicating CAM information, but research has not answered whether there are differences between the new and old media. From the perspective of uses and gratifications, this study first investigated that how people are using newsgroups to solve CAM-related problems. Then contents of newsgroup messages and newspaper stories were analyzed to do the comparison in topics, source types, efficacy claims, and CAM categories. The results showed that both similarities and differences existed between the two media.

Det övergripande syftet med föreliggande uppsats har varit att bidra till en djupare förståelse om självhjälp på Internet genom att belysa individens medvetande och interaktion med andra. Studiens forskningsobjekt har utgjorts av sju individers livsberättelser som återfinns på ett diskussionsforum på Internet och har genomförts enligt en narrativ forskningsmetod och hermeneutiskt ansats. Studien är av kvalitativ art och individens handlande och självupplevda verklighet har stått i fokus. Teorin som applicerats i studien är det pragmatiska mikroperspektivet, symbolisk interaktionism, med följande teoretiska utgångspunkter: symboler, bortträngning, identitetsberövande och ömsesidigt stöd. Analysen är tematiserad enligt studiens tre frågeställningar. I det första temat framgår att bortträngning och identitetsberövande utgjorde två centrala teman i livsberättelserna. Det andra temat behandlade betydelsen av grupptillhörighet, där det tydligt framkommer att diskussionsforumet betyder mycket för stärkandet av informanternas personliga identitet. Det tredje temat visade att förändringar i levnadssätt och levnadsvanor har visat sig i både psykiska och fysiska avseenden. Slutligen diskuteras huruvida en kombination av professionell hjälp som exempelvis terapi och diskussionsgruppen som komplement vore ett bra förfarringssätt att nå den känslomässiga separation, som ännu inte uppnåtts efter den rumsliga separationen som många informanter gjort från sina föräldrar. / The overall aim of this essay has been to contribute to a deeper understanding of self-help on the Internet by illuminating the individual's awareness and interaction with others. The study's subject of research has been seven individual life stories found on a newsgroup on the Internet and was implemented with a narrative research method and a hermeneutic approach. The study is qualitative in its nature and the individual's behavior and self-perceived reality has been the main focus. The theory that has been applied in the study is the pragmatic micro perspective symbolic interactionism with the following theoretical starting points: symbols, displacement, deprived of identity and mutual aid. The thematic structure of the analysis has been based on the study’s three research questions of which the first theme highlighted displacement and deprived of identity as the two main themes in the life stories. The second theme dealt with the importance of group membership, which clearly showed that the newsgroup means a great deal for strengthening their personal identity. The third theme revealed that the changes in lifestyle and habits have been both psychological and physical. Whether or not the spatial separation many informants made ​​from their parents can measure up to an emotional separation that they have not yet reached were discussed and lastly an implication that a combination of professional help such as therapy and newsgroup as a supplement may be a good method to reach the emotional separation.

This study examined a specific and controversial issue in health communication: the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Recent studies have shown that both online newsgroups and traditional newspapers have involved in communicating CAM information, but research has not answered whether there are differences between the new and old media. From the perspective of uses and gratifications, this study first investigated that how people are using newsgroups to solve CAM-related problems. Then contents of newsgroup messages and newspaper stories were analyzed to do the comparison in topics, source types, efficacy claims, and CAM categories. The results showed that both similarities and differences existed between the two media.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2001. / Proefschrift Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Erratum inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-275). Met lit. opg.-Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Purpose/Aim: In my essay I study the use of Internet with information overload as my perspective. I compare two age groups in order to find out whether there is a difference between generations in how they use the Internet and experience the vast amount of information that is found on the net.</p><p>Material/Method: I gather information from six frequent World Wide Web users to find out whether they are experiencing information overload when using the Internet in their spare time and how they structure and make sense of the vast amount of information that is found on the net. I use semi-structured interviews to gather qualitative, not quantitative, material for my study. I have also used literature and websites on information overload, the Internet, and connected themes in order to get a broader picture of the subject and help me analyse the material.</p><p>Main results: The main results of my study are that frequent Internet users do not feel that they suffer from the vast amount of information found on the World Wide Web. They rather enjoy it and if they have heard the term information overload they assume that it does not apply to their use of the Internet. They have special routines to help them structure up and make sense of the information.</p><p>The differences between the age groups are minor. The younger group draws a parallel between knowing about computers and knowing how to use the Internet whereas the older group thinks of information searching skills as a measure of how good you are at using the Internet. The younger ones were more likely than the older ones to get ideas from commercials on what to look for on the net.</p><p>Almost every respondent described a difference between generations during the interview. They thought that the elderly people using the net are more likely to suffer from information overload. The result of the study does though show that age does not matter very much in this case. The time you spend using the Internet is more important: After learning the basic methods you can learn how to structure up and find information while using the net.</p><p>Keywords: Internet, website, homepage, discussion group, newsgroup, community, e-mail, eshop, online entertainment, online games, search engine, communication, case study, information overload.</p>

Abstract Purpose/Aim: In my essay I study the use of Internet with information overload as my perspective. I compare two age groups in order to find out whether there is a difference between generations in how they use the Internet and experience the vast amount of information that is found on the net. Material/Method: I gather information from six frequent World Wide Web users to find out whether they are experiencing information overload when using the Internet in their spare time and how they structure and make sense of the vast amount of information that is found on the net. I use semi-structured interviews to gather qualitative, not quantitative, material for my study. I have also used literature and websites on information overload, the Internet, and connected themes in order to get a broader picture of the subject and help me analyse the material. Main results: The main results of my study are that frequent Internet users do not feel that they suffer from the vast amount of information found on the World Wide Web. They rather enjoy it and if they have heard the term information overload they assume that it does not apply to their use of the Internet. They have special routines to help them structure up and make sense of the information. The differences between the age groups are minor. The younger group draws a parallel between knowing about computers and knowing how to use the Internet whereas the older group thinks of information searching skills as a measure of how good you are at using the Internet. The younger ones were more likely than the older ones to get ideas from commercials on what to look for on the net. Almost every respondent described a difference between generations during the interview. They thought that the elderly people using the net are more likely to suffer from information overload. The result of the study does though show that age does not matter very much in this case. The time you spend using the Internet is more important: After learning the basic methods you can learn how to structure up and find information while using the net. Keywords: Internet, website, homepage, discussion group, newsgroup, community, e-mail, eshop, online entertainment, online games, search engine, communication, case study, information overload.

Den stora mängden tillgänglig data på internet kan användas för att förbättra förutsägelser genom maskininlärning. Problemet är att sådan data ofta är i ett obehandlat format och kräver att någon manuellt bestämmer etiketter på den insamlade datan innan den kan användas av algoritmen. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) är en teknik där algoritmen använder ett fåtal förbehandlade exempel och därefter automatiskt bestämmer etiketter för resterande data. Ett tillvägagångssätt inom SSL är att representera datan i en graf, vilket kallas för graf-baserad semi-supervised learning (GSSL), och sedan hitta likheter mellan noderna i grafen för att automatiskt bestämma etiketter.Vårt mål i denna uppsatsen är att förenkla de avancerade processerna och stegen för att implementera en GSSL-algoritm. Vi kommer att gå igen grundläggande steg som hur utvecklingsmiljön ska installeras men även mer avancerade steg som data pre-processering och feature extraction. Feature extraction metoderna som uppsatsen använder sig av är bag-of-words (BOW) och term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). Slutgiltligen presenterar vi klassificering av dokument med Label Propagation (LP) och Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB) samt en detaljerad beskrivning över hur GSSL fungerar.Vi presenterar även prestanda för klassificering-algoritmerna genom att klassificera 20 Newsgroup datasetet med LP och MNB. Resultaten dokumenteras genom två olika utvärderingspoäng vilka är F1-score och accuracy. Vi gör även en jämförelse mellan MNB och LP med två olika typer av kärnor, KNN och RBF, på olika mängder av förbehandlade träningsdokument. Resultaten ifrån klassificering-algoritmerna visar att MNB är bättre på att klassificera datasetet än LP. / The large amount of available data on the web can be used to improve the predictions made by machine learning algorithms. The problem is that such data is often in a raw format and needs to be manually labeled by a human before it can be used by a machine learning algorithm. Semi-supervised learning (SSL) is a technique where the algorithm uses a few prepared samples to automatically prepare the rest of the data. One approach to SSL is to represent the data in a graph, also called graph-based semi-supervised learning (GSSL), and find similarities between the nodes for automatic labeling.Our goal in this thesis is to simplify the advanced processes and steps to implement a GSSL-algorithm. We will cover basic tasks such as setup of the developing environment and more advanced steps such as data preprocessing and feature extraction. The feature extraction techniques covered are bag-of-words (BOW) and term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). Lastly, we present how to classify documents using Label Propagation (LP) and Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB) with a detailed explanation of the inner workings of GSSL. We showcased the classification performance by classifying documents from the 20 Newsgroup dataset using LP and MNB. The results are documented using two different evaluation scores called F1-score and accuracy. A comparison between MNB and the LP-algorithm using two different types of kernels, KNN and RBF, was made on different amount of labeled documents. The results from the classification algorithms shows that MNB is better at classifying the data than LP.