Number of Posts: 71
Posts 31 - 40
Das Uni-Facebook-Ranking 2016
(The uni Facebook ranking 2016)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 12.12.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | Facebook, research/study, school
Summary | University rankings are usually based on prizes and citations accumulated by the researchers of the institution. An alternative approach is to look at the Facebook reach universities have: the most influential Swiss university on Facebook is ETH Lausanne with over 60'000 likes followed by ETH Zurich with some 40'000 likes. This is all peanuts compared to Harvard University with 4.8 mio likes and Cambridge University with 1.8 mio likes.
Image Description | N/A
E-Mails für verzweifelte Teenager
(Emails for desperate teenagers)
Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 13.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, email, Facebook, youth
Summary | The volunteer project U25 provides peer counseling for suicidal teenagers. All volunteers at U25 are between 17 and 25 years old and they get extensive training before they are given up to three cases at a time. They exchange emails with the suicidal peers trying to counsel them into psychological stability. The volunteer counselors are not allowed to give out their cell phone numbers or befriend clients on Facebook for their own protection.
Image Description | Image of one volunteer counselor with a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, male(s), TV
«Der Hass in den sozialen Medien ist nicht neu. Er ist sichtbarer»
(«The hate in social media is not new. It's just more visible»)
Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 12.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politics, social media, youth
Summary | Pop-philosopher Richard David Precht talks about how hate comments are not a new development of the digital age. Back in the day people would call you on the phone and leave their hate comment or write letters. Today they are forever visible for everyone. Also the perception that young people are not as involved in politics and too preoccupied with social media is wrong, he says. The politically active in previous generations were just as much a minority.
Image Description | N/A
Maschinen sind nicht die besseren Menschen
(Machines are the better people)
Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 14.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, diversity, gender, translation
Summary | One could think that artificial intelligence robots are not racist or sexist but because they learn from information circulating on the internet, they are subject to the biases as most poeple. This is why a beauty contest judged by an AI robot favored white people as more beautiful. Online job listings can also be biased based on gender so that women will not see higher-paying job listings or gender inclusive language gets lost in translation.
Image Description | N/A
Heisse Jobs für Poeten
(Hot jobs for poets)
Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 15.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, misunderstanding
Summary | Linguists might become more important in new industries: chatbots need to be taught how to understand natural human language full of contradictions and unclarities. They have been developed by programmers but they misunderstand colloquial commands. Linguistic expertise is needed to improve artificial intelligence chatbots.
Image Description | Reuters image of a robot.
Staatsmacht trifft Generation Youtube
(The government meets generation Youtube)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 24.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | politics, youth, YouTube
Summary | Russian parliamentarians have invited YouTuber Sasha Spilberg to speak about youth politics. After many corruption scandals, Russian politicians struggle to secure young voters' support. This is why they invited an online influencer - Spilberg has 5 mio subscribers on YouTube.
Image Description | N/A
Von Rubinbergs Super-Duden
(Von Rubinger super dictionary)
Newspaper | die Weltwoche
Date | 13.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | privacy, texting, translation, WhatsApp
Summary | An entrepreneur in Switzerland wants to release a new messaging app called Drotr. It is comparable to WhatsApp in its basic functions but it can translate all messages into over 100 languages. Also the messages are better protected against privacy breaches and the servers are located in Switzerland.
Image Description | N/A
«Jemandem zu sagen, er solle sich ficken, ist ziemlich schlimm»
(«Telling soeone to go fuck himself is pretty bad»)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | anglicisms, language threat, research/study, texting, word/writing
Summary | Linguist Elisabeth Stark is research texting communication with a corpus of 18000 text messages and even more WhatsApp messages. She says that about 2-3% of the words are anglicisms and that their amount does not seem to be rising rapidly - the word "fuck" for instance is still too strong for most German speakers. In German, sex is too taboo for taboo language. Her data also shows that Swiss people choose the local dialect rather than the standard variety when texting. Most people's langugage competencies are not compromised by this informal communication, most can adhere to conventions when a formal register is appropriate.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee and a Keystone image of a protest with a sign reading "fuck".
Image Tags | female(s), text
Ignoranz ist Stärke
(Ignorance is strength)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 3.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, privacy, smartphone, social media, threat
Summary | Kellyanne Conways term "alternative facts" remind of Orwell's fictional language Newspeak which also changes meanings by renaming. Many facts of contemporary life (especially under the Trump administration) remind of dystopian novels "1984" by G. Orwell and "Brave New World" by A. Huxley. We all carry smartphones with us at all times with which we can send information but which also receive and document information about us like our location, who else is in that location, our communications, purchases, and so on. Privacy has become impossible in the digital age.
Image Description | Images and videos of the film "1984" and George Orwell as well as the news clip where Kellyanne Conway mentions "alternative facts".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), TV
Der Computer lernt Mundart
(The computer learns Swiss German)
Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 29.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, translation
Summary | The SBB app should be updated so the users can just speak their destinations and they will verbally receive the transport information. The developers say that the voice recognition software should be able to understand most dialects of Swiss German despite never having been enhanced with a Swiss German vocabulary. Lots of it is similar enough to German so that the software can detect the connection or it otherwise reports words that it does not understand so that they can be manually entered. Users should be pleased because it is just nicer when one does not have to speak Standard German to one's smartphone.
Image Description | Image of a hand holding a smartphone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone
Page 4 of 8
Back |
Next