The digital public humanities: giving new arguments and new ways to argue

ABSTRACT

In response to the latest “crisis” in the humanities, advocates have marched, rallied, fundraised, and—especially—argued. This essay contends that communication scholars can support the growing “case for the humanities” by analyzing argumentative strategies, and more specifically, by offering ethical argumentative strategies that avoid replicating structures of domination. In particular, we look to Mari Lee Mifsud's theorization of rhetoric as gift, which follows Henry W. Johnstone in conceptualizing argument as something other than winning over an adversary. We place Mifsud's theorization of the gift in conversation with the methods of the digital public humanities (DPH), which acknowledge and offer abundant resources for meaning-making. Through the methods of DPH, we offer a response to the humanities “crisis” that activates the humanities’ already broad constituencies by giving resources for humanistic inquiry rather than seeking to capture adversaries. Our case study is Photogrammar, a DPH project for organizing, searching, and visualizing the New Deal and World War II era photographs funded by the U.S. federal government. The project forefronts visual, nonlinear, and interactive argumentation in order to engage publics in generative humanistic inquiry. By enlisting participants and sharing expertise, Photogrammar shows how humanities advocates can deepen attachments to the humanities and build broad constituencies of collaborators and allies.     

Back to Basics: Legos and Me

Editor's Note: Master Mediator columnist Bob Creo has taken a break in the past two issues of Alternatives from his focus on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution to revisit his past. He has returned to his earliest columns on mediation room techniques and practice issues—some nearly a decade old—and is reprising and updating them for a “Back to Basics” series. The articles are new to these pages, originally having appeared exclusively on the website of Alternatives' publisher, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Last month's column faced “ghostbusting” in mediation—that is, dealing with the specters of “persons with influence over the outcome, but who are not physically present at the mediation session.” The November column covered the concept of satisfactory compromise. This month's column looks at the building blocks of a mediation resolution, literally. Still to come is a back‐to‐basics examination of constructing settlements.     

The Impact of Parents “Friending” Their Young Adult Child on Facebook on Perceptions of Parental Privacy Invasions and Parent–Child Relationship Quality

This study examined whether a parent “friending” his/her child on Facebook.com influenced the parent–child relationship and perceptions of parental privacy invasions. One hundred and eighteen parent–young adult child dyads were randomly assigned to an experimental group where the parent was asked to create a Facebook account, “friend” his/her child, and use the account over 2 months or a control group where the parent did not have a Facebook account. Having a parent on Facebook did not result in perceptions of greater privacy invasions, but was associated with decreased conflict in the parent–child relationship. When the parent and child had a more conflicted relationship prior to the parent joining Facebook, the parent's presence on Facebook also enhanced the child's closeness with the parent.     

Is She “Man Enough”? Women Candidates,Executive Political Offices,and News Coverage

This study analyzes news coverage of 4 female political candidates—Elizabeth Dole, Claire McCaskill, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin—and their male competitors, as each competed in 2 elections between 1999 and 2008. Analysis focused on novelty labeling, and “feminine” and “masculine” political issues and character traits to determine whether the coverage of women and men differed in general, and across the offices of Senator, Governor, Vice President, or President. Overall, women received more news coverage, and the gendered gap in coverage was especially large for novelty, issue, and trait coverage when women sought the “executive” offices of Governor and in the White House. These findings provide insight into the evolving gender dynamics of women running within the masculinized domain of politics.     

It's more than just ‘med arb’: The case for ‘transitional arbitration’

Converting to mediation from arbitration gives most people the willies, even when it's not a new experience. Gerald F. Phillips, of Los Angeles, describes how he embraces his mediator's role in “transitional arbitration,” and how combined processes can work.     

What Lurks in the Unconscious: Influences on Arbitrator Decision Making

As our Master Mediator columnist, Robert A. Creo, takes a break from his extensive, multi‐year coverage of the neuroscience of mediation and goes “back to basics” (see page 156), we have asked New York‐based arbitrator and mediator, Edna Sussman, to summarize for Alternatives her in‐depth research on the brain science of adjudication, particularly in the context of arbitrator decision making.     

The Aggregate Effects of Decentralized Knowledge Production: Financial Bloggers and Information Asymmetries in the Stock Market

New media have markedly enhanced individuals' capacity to produce and disseminate original knowledge; however, the literature has not extensively examined the broad effects of such decentralized production processes. This study thus focuses on a unique context—the stock market—in which it is possible to test the aggregate impact of blog‐based information production. Using data on 150 top financial bloggers and stock returns from the S&P 500, this study supports the hypothesis that financial blogging activity diminishes harmful information asymmetries between key market investors. This study thus adds to the “media effects” literature, highlights the societal relevance of bloggers, and shows how economic concepts and financial market settings can be employed for powerfully testing communication theories.     

Parallel VQ compression using PNN algorithm for PC Grid system

PC Grid is a promising platform to achieve a high performance computing with less construction cost. A kind of parameter sweep applications (PSA) can be efficiently carried out on the PC Grid, but there exist parallel applications are not suitable for it. We focus on PNN (Pairwise Nearest Neighbor) codebook generation algorithm for the VQ compression algorithm and propose a parallel version of the PNN algorithm suitable for the PC Grid, called “One-step Grid PNN”, as well as “multi-step Grid PNN”, which reduces the computation complexity on a master computer. The Grid PNN is a modified version of the PNN algorithm that creates a different codebook than the original PNN does, thus the quality of a codebook created by using the Grid PNN may be worse than that of a codebook by the original PNN. However, our experimental results show that the quality of the codebook is almost same as that of the original one. We also confirm the effectiveness of the one-step and multi-step Grid PNN by the evaluation of the computational complexity of the algorithm and experiments executed on a PC cluster system.     

More New York Convention: U.S. Court Interpretations On Jurisdiction and Venue for Actions and Proceedings

Last month, the author examined U.S. judicial interpretations of primary and secondary jurisdiction considerations under the New York Convention and its U.S. enabling statute, the Federal Arbitration Act's Chapter 2, with respect to awards issued in international arbitrations. In this month's conclusion, the focus is on the effects of the laws on jurisdiction and venue over actions and proceedings falling under the Convention. See “The New York Convention: How Courts Interpret Jurisdiction on Awards—A U.S. Perspective,” 42 Alternatives 9 (January 2024) (available at https://bit.ly/3RXb3tO ).     

A Denotative and Connotative Study in Communication

The purposes of this study were to investigate: (1) the definitions of communication preferred among 150 randomly selected members of the National Society for the Study of Communication; (2) the respondents' “ideal” referent or symbol when naming the dynamics of the interpersonal sending-receiving process. A questionnaire was sent to the above individuals, asking them to; (1) rank-order twelve definitions of communication (from most to least preferred)—this was the denotative phase of the study; (2) rate the concepts “Communication,”“Speech,” and “Persuasion” on three linear-graphic scales (of the Osgood, Suci, Tannenbaum type). The first scale measured the respondents' evaluative feelings of these three concepts (“Good to Bad” continuum). The second scale measured their feelings on the potency of the three concepts (“Strong to Weak” continuum). The third scale measured their orientation of the three concepts as to the complexity or simplicity of the terms when used to describe the process (“Complex to Simple” continuum)—this was the connotative phase of the study. Results were based on a 41% return (62 of 150); no follow-ups were made to contact the non-respondents. (1) Over-all rankings for the denotative phase of the study indicated that respondents preferred the communication definitions of: J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, first; W. Weaver, second; L. Thayer, third; S. Stevens, fourth; C. Hovland, fifth; C. Cherry, sixth; P. Tompkins, seventh; W. C. Redding, eighth; W. Schramm, ninth; T. Newcomb, tenth; E. Sapir, eleventh; and G. Miller, twelfth. Analysis of variance indicated the rankings to be significant at the .001 level. (2) The profile of mean scores in the connotative phase of the study indicated that respondents evaluated the concept “Communication” to be much better than the concepts “Speech” or “Persuasion.” The mean scores of the oriented activity scales indicated that “Communication” was perceived by the subjects to be “extremely complex,” whereas “Speech” and “Persuasion” were both viewed as being only “moderately complex.” Results from both the denotative and connotative phases of this study strongly suggested that there was much disparity among the respondents' rankings of communication definitions and ratings of concepts.     

BACK TO BASICS SERIES: Compromise & Me! Being in Sweden: Lagom – Meeting in The Middle

Editor's Note: The Master Mediator is taking a break from his fascinating, in‐depth series on neuroscience and the psychological factors and cognitive biases that may affect dispute resolution. As Bob Creo's earliest columns, describing and discussing mediation room techniques and practice issues, appeared a number of years ago, and only on the CPR website, Alternatives is delighted that he has agreed to reprise and update them, beginning in this issue, in a new “Back to Basics” series. This column deals with the concept of compromise; future columns in the series will cover “ghostbusting” in mediation, terms of reference, and constructing settlements.     

Responses to 9/11 reveal opportunities— and barriers—for commercial ADR

The fallout for conflict resolution professionals from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, strikes at the core of their existence: What do they do? What do they provide? Maria R. Volpe and Staci Strobl, of New York, have been looking broadly at the question of “deliverables” since 9/11. They discuss the business ADR aspects of that research, and provide lessons the profession should have learned.     

Client Science: Bad News and the Fully Informed ADR Client

Professor Aaron comments that this piece, excerpted from: “Bad News and the Fully Informed Client,” the first chapter of her book, Client Science, addresses the lawyer's challenge when counseling clients where “bad” news—negative, pessimistic or unwelcome developments or analysis—must be conveyed, whether or not within an ADR process. “As a mediator of civil cases, I suspect that mediation involves a higher than average percentage of cases involving ill‐counseled clients or ‘difficult clients’ who may fairly be characterized as ‘counseling‐resistant’ despite the best efforts of skilled lawyers. When the lawyer explains ‘bad news’ about case developments or likely outcomes, he risks the client's suspicion or accusation of less than zealous advocacy. While a mediator can assist with client communication when legal circumstances are grim, counsel are obligated to ensure their clients are well informed of realistic expectations when exercising autonomy and self determination.”     

When Good News Is Bad News: Explicating the Moderated Mediation Dynamic Behind the Reversed Mobilization Effect

This study investigates the mobilizing potential of positive news framing on opponents of a referendum proposal. On the basis of an experiment (N = 470), using bootstrapping as a method to assess conditional indirect effects, mediation analysis showed that positive news framing—endorsing a referendum proposal regarding European Union (EU) integration—was perceived as negative by opponents and mobilized those with higher levels of skepticism toward the EU to turn out and vote because of increased risk perception. This “reversed mobilization” effect was contingent upon existing levels of self‐efficacy, yielding evidence for a “double conditional indirect effect” of positive news framing on turnout intention via risk perception which was strongest among those showing greater levels of EU skepticism as well as stronger self‐efficacy beliefs.     

The Theory of Settlement,in Two Words … With a Little Hollywood Help

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on new concepts and knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices.     

How ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ prevent conflict—and prevent the need for conflict resolution

Jack Falvey, of Londonderry, N.H., discusses two simple steps to preventing business conflict: saying “please” and “thank you.”     

Behind the “bathtub”-curve A new model and its consequences

The hitherto commonly accepted background model for the “bathtub” curve is rejected due to lack of experimental evidence. A new model — the S-curve model — based on bimodal or trimodal failure distribution functions and the concepts of “strong”, “freak” and “infant mortality” components is presented and its fitting with practical experience is demonstrated. The impact of the new model with regard to burn-in of components and systems and the use of reliability indicators to screen for built-in “flaws” in components are described.     

Communication and Life Styles in Appalachia

Studies of communication and change in underdeveloped countries were drawn upon to design a study of what kinds of persons adopted—or refused to adopt—what kinds of practices in the “War on Poverty” in an Appalachian county. The study approaches the individual as an interactive behavioral system whose components are variables defining his “style of life.” Data were gathered on 41 aspects of life style of heads of households and homemakers in two rural Appalachian neighborhoods. Correlation, factor analysis, and weighted rotation of these data matrices produced three individual “types,” as indicated by the items which distinguished among them.     

TFR & the tree of knowledge

If III-Vs Review could be described as the trunk in our growing “tree of knowledge” in the field of compound semiconductors then May saw the culmination of our second “branch”, a conference produced in association with III-Vs Review: LDSD95, Singapore — see initial report in this issue. The first, however, was our “GaAs Electronic Materials & Devices Report” whose second edition is in preparation. No tree has but two branches, however; TFR will bud other successful projects, both “conventional” and “electronic”.     

From the Interactional View—A Conversation with Paul Watzlawick

“Can one not communicate?” and other questions of therapy, politics, and “truth” are explored in this interview.