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Tech Report kmi-01-13 Abstract


Cognitive Coherence Relations and Hypertext: From Cinematic Patterns to Scholarly Discourse
Techreport ID: kmi-01-13
Date: 2001
Author(s): Clara Mancini and Simon Buckingham Shum
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In previous work we argued that cinematic language may provide insights into the construction of narrative coherence in hypertext, and we identified in the shot juxtaposition of rhetorical patterns the source of coherence for cinematic discourse. Here we deepen our analysis, to show how the mechanisms that underpin cinematic rhetorical patterns are the same as those providing coherence in written text. We draw on computational and psycholinguistic analyses of texts which have derived a set of relationships that are termed Cognitive Coherence Relations (CCR). We validate this by re-expressing established cinematic patterns, and relations relevant to scholarly hypertext, in terms of CCR, and with this conceptual bridge in place, present examples to show how cinematic techniques could assist the presentation of scholarly discourse. This theoretical work also informs system design. We describe how an abstract relational layer based on CCR is being implemented as a semantic hypertext system to mediate scholarly discourse.

Publication(s):

Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 2001, Aarhus, Denmark, August 2001 [http://www.HT01.org]
 
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Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.