While many people enjoy hiking as a weekend activity, to many outdoor enthusiasts there is a hiking culture with which they feel affiliated. However, the way that these cultures interact with each other is still unclear. Exploring these different cultures and understanding how they relate to each other can help in engaging stakeholders of the trail. This is an important step toward finding ways to encourage environmentally friendly outdoor recreation practices and developing hiker-approved (and environmentally conscious) technologies to use on the trail. We explored these cultures by analyzing an extensive collection of tweets (over 1.5 million). We used topic modeling to identify the topics described by the communities of Triple Crown trails. We labeled training data for a classifier that identifies tweets relating to depreciative behaviors on the trail. Then, we compared the distribution of tweets across various depreciative trail behaviors to those of corresponding blog posts in order to see how tweets reflected cultures in comparison with blog posts. To harness metadata beyond the text of the tweets, we experimented with visualization techniques. We combined those efforts with ethnographic studies of hikers and conservancy organizations to produce this exploration of trail cultures. In this thesis, we show that through the use of natural language processing, we can identify cultural differences between trail communities. We identify the most significantly discussed forms of trail depreciation, which is helpful to conservation organizations so that they can more appropriately share which Leave No Trace practices hikers should place extra effort into practicing. / Master of Science / In a memoir of her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, Wild, Cheryl Strayed said to a reporter in an amused tone, “I’m not a hobo, I’m a long-distance hiker”. While many people enjoy hiking as a weekend activity, to many outdoor enthusiasts there is a hiking culture with which they feel affiliated. There are cultures of trail conservation, and cultures of trail depreciation. There are cultures of long-distance hiking, and there are cultures of day hiking and weekend warrior hiking. There are also cultures across different hiking trails—where the hikers of one trail have different sets of values and behaviors than for another trail. However, the way that these cultures interact with each other is still unclear. Exploring these different cultures and understanding how they relate to each other can help in engaging stakeholders of the trail. This is an important step toward finding ways to encourage environmentally friendly outdoor recreation practices and developing hiker-approved (and environmentally conscious) technologies to use on the trail. We decided to explore these cultures by analyzing an extensive collection of tweets (over 1.5 million). We combined those expoorts with ethnographic style studies of conservancy organizations and avid hikers to produce this exploration of trail cultures.

The task of analyzing a collection of documents generated over time is daunting. A natural way to ease the task is by summarizing documents into the topics that exist within these documents. The temporal aspect of topics can frame relevance based on when topics are introduced and when topics stop being mentioned. It creates trends and patterns that can be traced by individual key terms taken from the corpus. If trends are being established, there must be a way to visualize them through the key terms. Creating a visual system to support this analysis can help users quickly gain insights from the data, significantly easing the burden from the original analysis technique. However, creating a visual system for terms is not easy. Work has been done to develop word embeddings, allowing researchers to treat words like any number. This makes it possible to create simple charts based on word embeddings like scatter plots. However, these methods are inefficient due to loss of effectiveness with multiple time slices and point overlap. A visualization method that addresses these problems while also visualizing diachronic word embeddings in an interesting way with added semantic meaning is hard to find. These problems are managed through TimeLink. TimeLink is proposed as a dashboard system to help users gain insights from the movement of diachronic word embeddings. It comprises a Sankey diagram showing the path of a selected key term to a cluster in a time period. This local cluster is also mapped to a global topic based on an original corpus of documents from which the key terms are drawn. On the dashboard, different tools are given to users to aid in a focused analysis, such as filtering key terms and emphasizing specific clusters. TimeLink provides insightful visualizations focused on temporal word embeddings while maintaining the insights provided by global topic evolution, advancing our understanding of how topics evolve over time. / Master of Science / The task of analyzing documents collected over time is daunting. Grouping documents into topics can help frame relevancy based on when topics are introduced and hampered. The creation of topics also enables the ability to visualize trends and patterns. Creating a visual system to support this analysis can help users quickly gain insights from the data, significantly easing the burden from the original analysis technique of browsing individual documents. A visualization system for this analysis typically focuses on the terms that affect established topics. Some visualization methods, like scatter plots, implement this but can be inefficient due to loss of effectiveness as more data is introduced. TimeLink is proposed as a dashboard system to aid users in drawing insights from the development of terms over time. In addition to addressing problems in other visualizations, it visualizes the movement of terms intuitively and adds semantic meaning. TimeLink provides insightful visualizations focused on the movement of terms while maintaining the insights provided by global topic evolution, advancing our understanding of how topics evolve over time.

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The purpose of this dissertation was to use the technology of text mining and topic modeling to explore unobserved themes of medical case reports that involve medical imaging. Case reports have a valuable place in medical research because they provide educational benefits, offer evidence, and encourage discussions. Their form has evolved throughout the years, but they have remained a key staple in providing important information to the medical communities around the world with educational context and illuminating visuals. Examining medical case reports that have been published throughout the years on multiple medical subjects can be challenging, therefore text mining and topic modeling methods were used to analyze a large set of abstracts from medical case reports involving radiology. The total number of abstracts used for the data analysis was 68,845 that were published between the years 1975 to 2022. The findings indicate that text mining and topic modeling can offer a unique and reproducible approach to examine a large quantity of abstracts for theme analysis.

Reddit studies have examined community formation and collective identity on individualsubreddits, analyzed the migration of users among subreddits, or provided activity metrics across the platform. Fewer studies have examined Reddit affordances on sub-community and topical levels. In my dissertation, I introduce the concept of ‘peripheral subreddits’, which are offshoots of more prominent subreddits, by studying peripheral subreddits of the GameStop movement, which initially occurred on r/WallStreetBets (r/Superstonk, r/GME, r/GMEJungle, and r/DDintoGME). I argue that analyzing the communicative activity occurring on peripheral subreddits may help communication scholars understand the growth of emerging movements that are anonymously social and ‘digital-first’. Specifically, I examine peripheral subreddits by focusing on three characteristics: topic inheritance (the provision of content themes from a more popular root subreddit), topic similarity (the shared interests among peripheral subreddits), and topic connectivity (the explicit or implicit associations among peripheral subreddits in the form of shared dialogue, activities, beliefs, or sentiments). I use computational methods such as topic modeling and sentiment analysis to analyze user activity and posts in these peripheral subreddits. Further, following the literature on digitally mediated stock market communities, I examine whether these peripheral subreddits engage in communicative processes such as aestheticization, virtualization, and de-realization, and reflexivities such as performativity, transactionality, and gamification. / Media & Communication

The aim of this paper is to outline the means for encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya. Yucatec Maya is a tone language, displaying a three-fold opposition in the tonal realization of syllables. From the morpho-syntactic point of view, the grammar of Yucatec Maya contains morphological (topic affixes, morphological marking of out-of-focus predicates) and syntactic (designated positions) means to uniquely specify syntactic constructions for their information structure. After a descriptive overview of these phenomena, we present experimental evidence which reveals the impact of the nonavailability of prosodic alternatives on the choice of syntactic constructions in language production.

Software produced by big companies such as SAP is often feature rich, very expensive and thus only affordable by other big companies. It usually takes months and special trained consultants to install and manage such software. However as vendors move to other market segments, featuring smaller companies, different requirements arise. It is not possible for medium or small sized companies to spend as much money for business software solutions as big companies do. They especially cannot afford to hire expensive consultants. It is on the other hand not economic for the vendor to provide the personnel free of charge. One solution to this dilemma is bundling all customer support cases on special Web platforms, such as customer support forums. SAP for example has the SAP Community Network1. This has the additional benefit that customers may help each other. (...)

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Medicine, 1998. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 101-107.

Submitted by Isa Caroline Aguiar Zanin (isa-zanin@hotmail.com) on 2018-10-01T14:17:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação para defesa PDF - corrigida.pdf: 842491 bytes, checksum: 92a3aa91fea5306a299f8110ffbc8e6d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elza Mitiko Sato null (elzasato@ibilce.unesp.br) on 2018-10-01T14:45:54Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 zanin_ica_me_sjrp.pdf: 842491 bytes, checksum: 92a3aa91fea5306a299f8110ffbc8e6d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-01T14:45:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 zanin_ica_me_sjrp.pdf: 842491 bytes, checksum: 92a3aa91fea5306a299f8110ffbc8e6d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-31 / O presente trabalho é parte de um projeto maior, intitulado “Projeto de História do Português Paulista” (ALMEIDA, 2006), também conhecido como Projeto Caipira, que estuda diferentes aspectos da história do português utilizado no estado de São Paulo, dentre eles a evolução de processos de construção textual, como a organização tópica. Nesse contexto, o objetivo do trabalho é analisar o processo de organização tópica de cartas de redatores de jornais paulistas do século XIX. Os dois níveis de constituição desse processo são analisados: a organização intertópica, que consiste na combinação entre Segmentos Tópicos (SegTs) mínimos; e a organização intratópica, que é a estruturação interna de SegTs mínimos. O quadro teórico-metodológico é constituído por uma integração entre a Perspectiva Textual-Interativa (JUBRAN; KOCH, 2006) e a Teoria dos Atos de Fala (AUSTIN, 1962; SEARLE, 1969). As cartas de redatores analisadas são extraídas de Barbosa e Lopes (2002), que, como parte do material usado pelo Projeto Caipira, reúnem cartas de redatores e cartas de leitores publicadas em diferentes jornais do estado de São Paulo durante o século XIX. O resultado do trabalho mostra que as cartas estudadas se caracterizam, no nível da organização intertópica, pela propriedade da unicidade intertópica, isto é, cada carta, via de regra, desenvolve um único tópico discursivo. No nível da organização intratópica, as cartas de redatores apresentam uma regra geral, que consiste na construção de uma unidade de Elaboração Tópica (na qual o redator dirige uma mensagem aos leitores/assinantes), a qual pode ser antecedida por uma unidade de Contextualização Tópica (que introduz o tópico da carta) e/ou seguida por uma unidade de Expansão Tópica (em que se discute a mensagem dirigida aos leitores/assinantes). Os resultados mostram também que, para distinguir uma unidade intratópica da outra, as cartas lançam mão de um mecanismo que envolve o uso de diferentes tipos de atos de fala em diferentes unidades. Além disso, as unidades se diferenciam umas das outras em termos da presença/ausência de verbos performativos. / This thesis is part of a broader research project named “Projeto de História do Português Paulista” (Almeida, 2006), also known as “Projeto Caipira”, which has studied different aspects of the history of Portuguese spoken in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. One of these aspects is the evolution of a set of text construction processes, including the process of topic organization. In this way, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the topic organization process in editor’s letters published in newspapers of the State of São Paulo during de 19th century. Both levels of such process are analyzed: intertopic organization, which is the combination of minimal Topic Segments (SegTs); intratopic organization, which is the internal organization of minimal SegTs. The theoretical framework consists in an articulation between Textual-Interactive Grammar (Jubran and Koch, 2006) and Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). The editor’s letters analyzed are selected from Barbosa and Lopes (2002). These authors, as part of Projeto Caipira, have provided a set of editor’s letters and reader’s letters published in different newspapers of São Paulo during the 19th century. The results show that the letters under consideration are characterized, at the intertopic level, by intertopic unicity, that is, each letter normally has a single topic. At the intratopic level, the letters follow a general rule, which predicts the construction of a unit called Topic Elaboration (through which the editor directs a message to readers/subscribers); according to the rule, this unit may be preceded by a unit called Topic Contextualization (which presents the topic of the letter) and/or it my be followed by a unit named Topic Expansion (where the editor discusses the message elaborated before). The data also show that, as a mechanism to distinguish intratopic units, the letters use different types of speech acts in different units. In addition, these units are differentiated to each other based on the presence/absence of performative verbs.

Finding the most relevant candidate for a position represents an ubiquitous challenge for organisations. It can also be arduous for a candidate to explain on a concise resume what they have experience with. Due to the fact that the candidate usually has to select which experience to expose and filter out some of them, they might not be detected by the person carrying out the search, whereas they were indeed having the desired experience. In the field of software engineering, developing one's experience usually leaves traces behind: the code one produced. This project explores approaches to tackle the screening challenges with an automated way of extracting experience directly from code by defining common lexical patterns in code for different experience fields, using topic modeling. Two different techniques were compared. On one hand, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a generative statistical model which has proven to yield good results in topic modeling. On the other hand Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is simply a singular value decomposition of a matrix representing the code corpus as word counts per piece of code.The code gathered consisted of 30 random repositories from all the collaborators of the open-source Ruby-on-Rails project on GitHub, which was then applied common natural language processing transformation steps. The results of both techniques were compared using respectively perplexity for LDA, reconstruction error for NMF and topic coherence for both. The two first represent how well the data could be represented by the topics produced while the later estimates the hanging and fitting together of the elements of a topic, and can depict human understandability and interpretability. Given that we did not have any similar work to benchmark with, the performance of the values obtained is hard to assess scientifically. However, the method seems promising as we would have been rather confident in assigning labels to 10 of the topics generated. The results imply that one could probably use natural language processing methods directly on code production in order to extend the detected fields of experience of a developer, with a finer granularity than traditional resumes and with fields definition evolving dynamically with the technology.