Im Kontext interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit insbesondere mit Kolleg*innen aus der Informatik wird die Kommunikations- und Medienforschung seit geraumer Zeit mit einer großen Bandbreite an ...Forschungssoftware konfrontiert, mit der sie bislang nur wenig Erfahrungen hat. Neben Programmiersprachen wie Python oder R sind dies etwa spezifische Tools zur Textanalyse, die eine Alternative zu bisherigen Varianten der computergestützten Inhaltsanalyse darstellen. Mit dem brat rapid annotation tool (BRAT) stellen wir in diesem Beitrag eine solche Alternative vor und rezensieren sie vor dem Hintergrund unserer Erfahrungen im Umgang mit ihr. BRAT ist ein webbasiertes Open-Source-Tool zur Textannotation, das vor rund zehn Jahren von einem internationalen Team aus Informatiker*innen entwickelt wurde. Der Beitrag stellt das Tool und seine wichtigsten Funktionen vor, zeigt anhand von drei Fallstudien mögliche Anwendungsbeispiele zu dessen Einsatz in qualitativen und quantitativen Inhaltsanalysen auf und bewertet es schließlich mit Blick auf entsprechende Potenziale und Schwierigkeiten.
In the context of interdisciplinary collaboration, especially with colleagues from computer science, communication and media research has for some time been confronted with a wide range of research software with which it has had little prior experience. In addition to programming languages such as Python or R, these include specific tools for text analysis that represent an alternative to previous variants of computer-assisted content analysis. With the brat rapid annotation tool (BRAT) we present such an alternative in this paper and review it against the background of our experience in using it. BRAT is a web-based open-source text annotation tool that was developed by an international team of computer scientists about ten years ago. The article introduces the tool and its most important features, presents examples for its use in qualitative and quantitative content analyses on the basis of three case studies, and finally evaluates it with regard to potentials and difficulties for the field.
The historically ambiguous relationship between journalism and Big Tech can be traced back to the late 20th century, when news organizations started to recognize the potential of the Internet as a ...distribution platform. While a growing body of literature is concerned with power asymmetries between Big Tech and journalism, the role of place in shaping the layered histories of journalism remains underexplored. This study uses a framework of place—conceptualized as material and geographic, a setting for action and lived experiences carrying the legacies of their past, and a site of accumulating histories of cultural meaning and power (Usher, 2019)—to examine how Silicon Valley and Fourth Estate ideals converge. Empirically, the study analyzes job advertisements of four US and UK print-legacy news outlets serving as a window into shifting expectations, skills, and values that news organizations seek in their employees, reflecting broader trends in journalism. Findings show that journalism draws on Silicon Valley ideals, merging datasolutionism with Fourth Estate narratives of audience access. Some news organizations are not only tech-oriented but frame themselves as tech companies with a Fourth Estate mission. While both Silicon Valley and Fourth Estate narratives promote ideals of equal power distribution, findings indicate the reinforcement of hegemonic power structures in the news industry. We conclude that the influence of Silicon Valley on journalism is one of consolidating power through location, action, and cultural meaning, as news organizations construct datasolutionism as a pivotal novel layer to achieve long-standing Fourth Estate ideals. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the historical context and evolving nature of the relationship between journalism and Big Tech, highlighting the significance of place in shaping the dynamics between these two increasingly intertwined industries.
Data has become an increasingly important commodity for news organizations. The capability to extract, store, and analyze data is also central to organizational decision-making. Drawing on the ...concept of epistemic infrastructures, this study sheds light on organizational datafication in journalism. Analyzing job advertisements of incumbent broadcast, print legacy, and online-only news outlets in the US and UK, this study traces material underpinnings of data architectures, networks of data agents, and epistemic data paradigms in news organizations. We show that a professional data elite of data analysts, engineers, and product developers serves as an epistemic community that consolidates power through epistemic authority and reinforces epistemic paradigms in journalism. We describe epistemic data infrastructures in the journalistic field and highlight how reliance on these infrastructures contributes to ethical challenges that news organizations are ill-equipped to address. We conclude that news organizations are deeply engaged in fostering epistemic infrastructures and that by acknowledging them, we can better analyze socio-technological changes in journalism and its consequences.
News recommender systems provide a technological architecture that helps shaping public discourse. Following a normative approach to news recommender system design, we test utility and external ...effects of a diversity-aware news recommender algorithm. In an experimental study using a custom-built news app, we show that diversity-optimized recommendations (1) perform similar to methods optimizing for user preferences regarding user utility, (2) that diverse news recommendations are related to a higher tolerance for opposing views, especially for politically conservative users, and (3) that diverse news recommender systems may nudge users towards preferring news with differing or even opposing views. We conclude that diverse news recommendations can have a depolarizing capacity for democratic societies.
News recommender systems are an increasingly popular field of study that attracts a growing interdisciplinary research community. As these systems play an essential role in our daily lives, the ...mechanisms behind their curation processes are under scrutiny. In the area of personalized news, many platforms make design choices driven by economic incentives. In contrast to such systems that optimize for financial gain, there can be norm-driven diversity systems that prioritize normative and democratic goals. However, their impact on users in terms of inducing behavioral change or influencing knowledge is still understudied. In this paper, we contribute to the field of news recommender system design by conducting a user study that examines the impact of these normative approaches. We a.) operationalize the notion of a deliberative public sphere for news recommendations, show b.) the impact on news usage, and c.) the influence on political knowledge, attitudes and voting behavior. We find that exposure to small parties is associated with an increase in knowledge about their candidates and that intensive news consumption about a party can change the direction of attitudes of readers towards the issues of the party.
A Rail of One's Own Laugwitz, Laura Linda
Proceedings of Gender and IT Appropriation. Science and Practice on Dialogue - Forum for Interdisciplinary Exchange,
05/2014
Conference Proceeding
Volunteer-based programs such as the Rails Girls project are recruiting people from within the field of information technology (IT) to help change the ratio of men and women in programming. By ...offering free coding workshops for women without any prior experience, the Rails Girls project is challenging hegemonic notions of technology as difficult to master. Rails Girls has chapters all over the world and is quite popular within the Ruby / Ruby on Rails community. This paper gives insight into the workings of Rails Girls Berlin, analyzes how spaces for women in IT are created and which processes of inclusion and exclusion need to be considered when trying to create an empowering experience.
Cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions guide organ development and homeostasis by controlling lineage specification and maintenance, but the underlying molecular principles are largely unknown. Here, ...we show that in human developing cardiomyocytes cell–cell contacts at the intercalated disk connect to remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton by regulating the RhoA‐ROCK signaling to maintain an active MRTF/SRF transcriptional program essential for cardiomyocyte identity. Genetic perturbation of this mechanosensory pathway activates an ectopic fat gene program during cardiomyocyte differentiation, which ultimately primes the cells to switch to the brown/beige adipocyte lineage in response to adipogenesis‐inducing signals. We also demonstrate by in vivo fate mapping and clonal analysis of cardiac progenitors that cardiac fat and a subset of cardiac muscle arise from a common precursor expressing Isl1 and Wt1 during heart development, suggesting related mechanisms of determination between the two lineages.
Synopsis
In human developing cardiomyocytes cell‐cell contacts at the intercalated disc connect to remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton by regulating the RhoA‐ROCK signaling to maintain an active MRTF/SRF transcriptional program essential for cardiomyocyte identity.
Cardiomyocytes with pathological ARVC mutations leading to desmosome instability convert into brown/beige adipocytes.
RhoA signaling downstream of cell‐cell junctions regulates pathological myocyte‐to‐adipocyte conversion by controlling MRTF‐A cellular localization and PPARγ activation.
PPARγ is the master molecular trigger of the cardiomyocyte‐to‐brown/beige fat switch and WT1 acts as co‐regulator.
Cardiac fat and a subpopulation of CMs share common embryonic Isl1/Wt1 expressing progenitors.
Stable desmosomes prevent pathological myocyte‐to‐adipocyte conversion resulting from MRTF‐A mislocalization and subsequent PPAR activation.
Coordinated release of calcium (Ca2+) from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) through cardiac ryanodine receptor (RYR2) channels is essential for cardiomyocyte function. In catecholaminergic polymorphic ...ventricular tachycardia (CPVT), an inherited disease characterized by stress‐induced ventricular arrhythmias in young patients with structurally normal hearts, autosomal dominant mutations in RYR2 or recessive mutations in calsequestrin lead to aberrant diastolic Ca2+ release from the SR causing arrhythmogenic delayed after depolarizations (DADs). Here, we report the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from a CPVT patient carrying a novel RYR2 S406L mutation. In patient iPSC‐derived cardiomyocytes, catecholaminergic stress led to elevated diastolic Ca2+ concentrations, a reduced SR Ca2+ content and an increased susceptibility to DADs and arrhythmia as compared to control myocytes. This was due to increased frequency and duration of elementary Ca2+ release events (Ca2+ sparks). Dantrolene, a drug effective on malignant hyperthermia, restored normal Ca2+ spark properties and rescued the arrhythmogenic phenotype. This suggests defective inter‐domain interactions within the RYR2 channel as the pathomechanism of the S406L mutation. Our work provides a new in vitro model to study the pathogenesis of human cardiac arrhythmias and develop novel therapies for CPVT.
The epicardium, the mesothelial envelope of the vertebrate heart, is the source of multiple cardiac cell lineages during embryonic development and provides signals that are essential to myocardial ...growth and repair. Here we generate self-organizing human pluripotent stem cell-derived epicardioids that display retinoic acid-dependent morphological, molecular and functional patterning of the epicardium and myocardium typical of the left ventricular wall. By combining lineage tracing, single-cell transcriptomics and chromatin accessibility profiling, we describe the specification and differentiation process of different cell lineages in epicardioids and draw comparisons to human fetal development at the transcriptional and morphological levels. We then use epicardioids to investigate the functional cross-talk between cardiac cell types, gaining new insights into the role of IGF2/IGF1R and NRP2 signaling in human cardiogenesis. Finally, we show that epicardioids mimic the multicellular pathogenesis of congenital or stress-induced hypertrophy and fibrotic remodeling. As such, epicardioids offer a unique testing ground of epicardial activity in heart development, disease and regeneration.
The pro-thrombotic immature or reticulated platelets (RPs) are known to be elevated in high-risk patients and in different pathological settings. It has been shown that RPs correlate with an ...insufficient antiplatelet response to antiplatelet agents. RPs are emerging novel predictors of adverse cardiovascular events in cardiovascular disease. This study, using the totality of existing evidence, evaluated the prognostic role of RPs in patients with coronary artery disease.
We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis including trials of acute and chronic coronary syndrome reporting clinical outcomes according to RPs levels in the peripheral blood. We compared patients with elevated RPs (RPs
) to patients without elevated RPs (RPs
). Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs were used as metric of choice for treatment effects with random-effects models. The primary endpoint was major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events (MACCE). Secondary endpoints were cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, urgent coronary revascularization and bleedings.
A total of 7 studies, including 2213 patients, were included. The risk for MACCE was significantly higher in RPs
compared to RPs
patients (OR 2.67 1.87; 3.81,
= 43.8%). RPs
were associated with cardiovascular death (OR 2.09 1.36; 3.22,
= 40.4%). No associations for RPs
were detected with the other singular components of MACCE: myocardial infarction (OR 1.73 0.89; 3.38
= 60.5%) and stroke (OR 1.72 0.59; 4.96
= 21%). The risk of bleeding did not differ between groups(OR 0.58 0.15; 2.22
= 86.1%).
Elevated RPs are significantly associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events and cardiovascular death.
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