Lysychansk
Fear and Loathing on the Frontline: Decoding the Language of Othering by Russia-Ukraine War Bloggers
Gerard, Patrick, Theisen, William, Weninger, Tim, Lerman, Kristina
Othering, the act of portraying outgroups as fundamentally different from the ingroup, often escalates into framing them as existential threats--fueling intergroup conflict and justifying exclusion and violence. These dynamics are alarmingly pervasive, spanning from the extreme historical examples of genocides against minorities in Germany and Rwanda to the ongoing violence and rhetoric targeting migrants in the US and Europe. While concepts like hate speech and fear speech have been explored in existing literature, they capture only part of this broader and more nuanced dynamic which can often be harder to detect, particularly in online speech and propaganda. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel computational framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) to quantify othering across diverse contexts, extending beyond traditional linguistic indicators of hostility. Applying the model to real-world data from Telegram war bloggers and political discussions on Gab reveals how othering escalates during conflicts, interacts with moral language, and garners significant attention, particularly during periods of crisis. Our framework, designed to offer deeper insights into othering dynamics, combines with a rapid adaptation process to provide essential tools for mitigating othering's adverse impacts on social cohesion.
For Ukraine's defence industry ambitions, the sky's the limit
As Ukraine approaches the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, it plans to produce more if its own ammunition and key weapons systems. The goal of greater self-sufficiency comes as Ukraine's Western allies meet increasing political resistance to military aid and Russia ramps up weapons production. Last month, Ukraine's prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said the country plans to increase its domestic weapons production sixfold this year. Ukraine's defence industry has already begun to expand. Strategic industries minister Oleksandr Kamyshin said Ukraine last year doubled its ammunition production for NATO-calibre artillery systems.
- Asia > Russia (1.00)
- Europe > Russia (0.75)
- North America > United States (0.69)
- (15 more...)
- Government > Military > Army (0.71)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (0.47)
Unveiling Global Narratives: A Multilingual Twitter Dataset of News Media on the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict
Hakimov, Sherzod, Cheema, Gullal S.
The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict has been a subject of intense media coverage worldwide. Understanding the global narrative surrounding this topic is crucial for researchers that aim to gain insights into its multifaceted dimensions. In this paper, we present a novel dataset that focuses on this topic by collecting and processing tweets posted by news or media companies on social media across the globe. We collected tweets from February 2022 to May 2023 to acquire approximately 1.5 million tweets in 60 different languages. Each tweet in the dataset is accompanied by processed tags, allowing for the identification of entities, stances, concepts, and sentiments expressed. The availability of the dataset serves as a valuable resource for researchers aiming to investigate the global narrative surrounding the ongoing conflict from various aspects such as who are the prominent entities involved, what stances are taken, where do these stances originate, and how are the different concepts related to the event portrayed.
NELA-GT-2022: A Large Multi-Labelled News Dataset for The Study of Misinformation in News Articles
Gruppi, Maurício, Horne, Benjamin D., Adalı, Sibel
In this paper, we present the fifth installment of the NELA-GT datasets, NELA-GT-2022. The dataset contains 1,778,361 articles from 361 outlets between January 1st, 2022 and December 31st, 2022. Just as in past releases of the dataset, NELA-GT-2022 includes outlet-level veracity labels from Media Bias/Fact Check and tweets embedded in collected news articles. The NELA-GT-2022 dataset can be found at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AMCV2H
- Asia > Russia (0.29)
- Europe > Russia (0.05)
- North America > United States > Tennessee > Knox County > Knoxville (0.04)
- (3 more...)
- Media > News (1.00)
- Government (1.00)
- Health & Medicine > Therapeutic Area > Obstetrics/Gynecology (0.31)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence (0.47)
- Information Technology > Data Science (0.47)
Behind the Idea: Tensorflight
Tensorflight provides structured property data for the insurance industry by instantly analysing aerial, satellite and street view imagery. Robert Kozikowski is the company's co-founder and CPO; he has over a decade's worth of experience in the tech field and is now using his expertise to accelerate the digitisation of insurance. Tensorflight is an AI imaging-based insurtech automating commercial property inspections and claims processing. Our mission is to make high-quality data available to the insurance industry to enable informed, timely and accurate decisions. We use three sources of imagery – satellite, aerial and ground level – to automate the slow and expensive process of in-person property inspections.
- Europe > Ukraine > Kyiv Oblast > Kyiv (0.06)
- Europe > Ukraine > Donetsk Oblast > Mariupol (0.06)
- Oceania > Australia (0.05)
- (4 more...)
Eerie image of parasitic 'zombie' fungus erupting from a fly wins ecology photo competition
Images of lounging elephants, treefrog embryos and a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly have all won prizes at an ecology photo competition. The doomed fly was captured by evolutionary biologist Roberto García-Roa in the Tambopata National Reserve, Peru, and took the overall win at the second ever BMC Ecology and Evolution Image Competition. The contest aims to showcase the wonder of the natural world and emphasise the growing need to protect it from human activity. Mr García-Roa, from the University of Valencia, Spain, said: 'The image depicts a conquest that has been shaped by thousands of years of evolution. 'The spores of the so-called'zombie' fungus have infiltrated the exoskeleton and mind of the fly and compelled it to migrate to a location that is more favourable for the fungus's growth.
- South America > Peru (0.25)
- Europe > Spain > Valencian Community > Valencia Province > Valencia (0.25)
- South America > Brazil > Rio de Janeiro > Rio de Janeiro (0.05)
- (9 more...)
NASA condemns Russian cosmonauts for displaying anti-Ukraine propaganda on ISS
NASA has issued a fierce condemnation of the Russian space agency after three cosmonauts displayed anti-Ukraine propaganda aboard the International Space Station. The trio were seen holding flags of the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic -- two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine that are only recognised as independent states by Moscow and Syria. They also said the capture of the region was'a liberation day to celebrate both on Earth and in space.' In response to the pictures, posted by Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos, NASA said it'strongly rebukes Russia using the International Space Station for political purposes to support its war against Ukraine.' Press secretary Jackie McGuinness added that it was'fundamentally inconsistent with the station's primary function among the 15 international participating countries to advance science and develop technology for peaceful purposes.' Rebuked: NASA has condemned the Russian space agency after three cosmonauts displayed anti-Ukraine propaganda on the International Space Station.
- North America > United States (1.00)
- Asia > Russia (0.82)
- Europe > Ukraine > Luhansk Oblast > Luhansk (0.28)
- (10 more...)
- Government > Space Agency (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)