Credibility Theory

actuar is a package providing additional Actuarial Science functionality to the R sta-tistical system. The project was launched in 2005 and the package is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network since February 2006. The current version of the pack-age contains functions for use in the fields of loss distributions modeling, risk theory (including ruin theory), simulation of compound hierarchical models and credibility the-ory. This paper presents in detail but with few technical terms the most recent version of the package.

The article is the first Polish attempt to provide a theoretical framework for a relatively unknown term ‘allotopia’, coined by Umberto Eco in essay Il mondi della fantascienza. However, instead of following rather poststructuralist Eco’s reasoning, the text proceeds with the deconstruction of the underlain dichotomy between real (natural, ordinary, known, empirical, realistic) and unreal (unnatural, extraordinary, unknown, counterempirical, fantastic) world — which is subsequently exposed as fundamental for heretofore fantasy and SF studies. Consequently, the paper encourages postmodern reading of those ‘allotopian’ texts that resign from supporting a colonial, two-world model in favour of philosophy conscious worldbuilding.

This International PhD thesis is in Spanish and with the Intro and Conclusions of each chapter and final conclusions in English.
[ESPAÑOL MÁS ABAJO]


"In this so-called "storytelling society" or exacerbated narrativity we are interested in the analysis of culture and its products, as we understand that it’s there where the most persuasive narratives of neo-liberalism are produced. After all, we are of the opinion that culture is that grand narrative that subsumes today’s politics, economy, religion and philosophy. In lieu of the discredit of the so-called grand narratives and its structures—family, church, parliament, school, university—this cultural capitalism or “corporativist culturalism” has generated a cosmopolitan, multicultural and pragmatic narrative. A narrative that is attractive and persuasive while it pretends to be, above all, credible.

From the field of the visual arts and its capacity to generate critical discourses with relation to the society it takes part in, we are interested in analyzing today’s hyper-narrative society by means of its narratives and cultural products.

This hyper-narrativity has degenerated into what has recently been termed as “infodemic” or informative pandemic. We suggest thus, as filter or counterpower, the concept of “credibility” departing from the research of history painting as a traditional machine for manufacturing stories, as well as from other intra-artistic and extra-artistic media—e.g. photography, television or social media—in order to apprehend in a critical manner the narratives of contemporary society."

Keywords:
Narrativity – Credibility –Art History – Cultural Studies – Visual Studies – History Painting –Post-Truth –Fake News –Anti-History Painting – Charisma – Max Weber –Trust and Confidence – Niklas Luhmann – Media Confidence – Video – Video Games – Film

ESPAÑOL

En esta sociedad del denominado "storytelling" o narratividad exacerbada nos interesa analizar la cultura y sus productos dado que entendemos que es ahí donde se manifiestan los relatos más persuasivos del neo-liberalismo. Al fin y al cabo, pensamos que la cultura es ese gran relato que ha subsumido a la política, la economía, la religión o la filosofía. Ante la disfunción de las denominadas grandes narrativas y sus estructuras –familia, iglesia, parlamento, escuela, universidad– este capitalismo cultural o  “corporativismo culturalista” ha generado un relato cultural cosmopolita, multicultural y pragmático. Un relato atractivo y persuasivo que pretende ser, sobre todo, creíble. Desde nuestro campo de las artes visuales y su capacidad de generar discursos críticos con respecto a las sociedades en las que se hallan incardinados, nos interesa analizar la hiper-narratividad de la sociedad actual a través de sus relatos y productos culturales.

Esta hiper-narratividad ha degenerado en lo que recientemente se ha denominado “infodemia” o pandemia informativa. Proponemos entonces el concepto de “credibilidad”, apoyándonos tanto en el estudio de la pintura de historia como máquina tradicional de manufacturar relatos como en otros medios intra-artísticos y extra-artísticos, como la fotografía, la televisión o los medios sociales, para aprehender de manera crítica los relatos de la sociedad contemporánea.

Palabras clave
Narratividad – Credibilidad – Historia del Arte – Estudios Culturales – Estudios Visuales–Pintura de Historia –Posverdad – Fake News – Anti-pintura de historia – Max Weber – Confianza – Niklas Luhmann – Confianza Mediática – Video – Videojuegos – Cine

Esta dissertação explora a relação entre o design visual de websites de Instituições de Ensino Superior, nomeadamente de Universidades, e a credibilidade que lhes é atribuída pelo público. Os websites deste tipo de organização constituem uma poderosa ferramenta representacional e de comunicação com o exterior, e assumem particular relevância na captação de estudantes, na medida em que constituem a primeira (e muitas vezes a única) interface com potenciais alunos.

No contexto online, e especificamente em relação a websites, identificam-se quatro categorias de credibilidade atribuída: credibilidade presumida (baseada em suposições pessoais); credibilidade reputada (baseada no prestigio e reputação das fontes); credibilidade adquirida (baseada em experiências passadas) e credibilidade superficial (baseada nas características visuais das páginas).

O estudo empírico aqui desenvolvido centra-se no domínio da credibilidade superficial e testa o pressuposto teórico de que páginas web com bom design visual são percecionadas como mais credíveis do que páginas com mau design visual. Identifica os elementos que maior influência têm sobre a credibilidade percecionada e verifica ainda se existem diferenças de avaliação em função do perfil demográfico e competências informáticas dos utilizadores.

Os resultados obtidos demonstram claramente a existência de correlação entre a qualidade do design visual de uma página web e a perceção da sua credibilidade: websites com boa aparência visual são efetivamente percecionados como mais credíveis do que websites com má aparência visual. Para a atribuição de credibilidade concorrem sobretudo a organização e estrutura visual, a imagética, as cores e os padrões.

Este estudo é o primeiro a procurar isolar a componente visual de um website, de modo a que a aferição da credibilidade se realize exclusivamente com base na aparência. É também o primeiro a estudar a relação entre o design visual e a perceção de credibilidade aplicada a websites de Instituições de Ensino Superior, e precursor na identificação das propriedades visuais que mais contribuem para a perceção da credibilidade superficial.

Palavras-chave: “Design Visual”, “Perceção”, “Credibilidade”, “Websites”, “Ensino Superior”, “Universidades”.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, Morocco has made great efforts to consolidate its monetary policy strategy. Going through the strategy of targeted monetary aggregates until the arrival of BAM's autonomous status in 2006. Currently, BAM uses a multi-criteria monetary strategy as a diagnostic framework for inflation risk. For Morocco to use an inflation targeting strategy, it must meet certain operational and institutional conditions. This article will provide a scientific basis for different approaches that can identify the problems of BAM's strategy as a whole and will make a contribution that can be used for applied research purposes.

Wikileaks was launched in 2006 and has shortly become a controversial non-profit media organization aiming to leak information from censored or restricted documents by using anonymous sources. Soon after it was launched, Wikileaks developed partnerships with international media outlets such as New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, so that the leaks would be republished. This phenomenon raises questions concerning the credibility of the source and the double gatekeeping process (through Wikileaks in the first instance and then through the international media publications named above). The existing theoretical body of knowledge and its concepts (Westley & MacLean, 1957; Shoemaker, & Reese, 1996) seem to be unable to explain the Wikileaks phenomenon. Thus, this paper aims to merge the Westley and MacLean model (1957), the credibility theory (Gass & Seiter, 1999; Perloff, 1993; Whitehead, 1968), the news sociology concepts (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) in order to create a new gatekeeping model.

The advent of the 21 st century has brought with it a more complex and contradictory society. The progressive integration of consumer society, mass media, technological innovations in the field of communications, internet and social media has created an extremely visual and hyper-narrative society that can be framed as the storytelling society in the American driven West. This hyper-narrativity has degenerated into what has been termed "infodemic" or informative pandemic, merged with older concepts like fake news, conspiracy theory and post-truth. I suggest, as filter of or counterpower to this hyper-narrativity, the concept of "credibility." Departing from Niklas Luhmann's "trust-confidence" theory, the "credibility" theory reflects our "liquid" 21st-century society-in which modernist concepts like "truth," "fake," "false" and "veracity" have loosened their meanings-by proposing a "credibility factor" that is closely related to the experience of the receiver and defined by its relationship to the sender through the mass and social media sphere.

The Web and its main tools (Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter) deeply raise and renew fundamental questions, that everyone asks almost every day: Is this information or content true? Can I trust this author or source? These questions are not new, they have been the same with books, newspapers, broadcasting and television, and, more fundamentally, in every human interpersonal communication. This paper is focused on two scientific problems on this issue. The first one is theoretical: to address this issue, many concepts have been used in library and information sciences, communication and psychology. The links between these concepts are not clear: sometimes two concepts are considered as synonymous, sometimes as very different. The second one is historical: sources like Wikipedia deeply challenge the epistemic evaluation of information sources, compared to previous modes of information production. This paper proposes an integrated and simple model considering the relation between a user, a document and an author as human communication. It reduces the problem to three concepts: credibility as a characteristic granted to information depending on its truth-value; trust as the ability to produce credible information; authority when the power to influence of an author is accepted, i.e., when readers accept that the source can modify their opinion, knowledge and decisions. The model describes also two kinds of relationships between the three concepts: an upward link and a downward link. The model is confronted with findings of empirical research on Wikipedia in particular.

Approaching image as an audience’s perception of a rhetor, this essay considers the feasibility and efficacy of combining strategies and tactics of an image repair typology with the strategic approach outlined by inoculation theory. The work considers whether inoculation could expand the scope of conventional image repair efforts as a way to not only repair a damaged image, post-hoc, but also to confer resistance to future challenges, preemptively. Directions for future research are proposed, including preemptive image repair and reactive inoculation, and the use of image repair strategies in inoculation messages as a type of image prepare. Risks, challenges, and incidental strengths of an image prepare approach are also raised.

During her fictional 1940 presidential campaign, popular radio star Gracie Allen was the target of criticism after her colleague told a joke referencing First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Allen responded to the criticisms with a public letter. In this analysis, Benoit’s image repair typology is used to study Allen’s letter. A total of 5 implications are drawn, including issues of celebrity roles, the effectiveness of mortification during image repair efforts, and challenges and benefits of humor in an image repair situation, to better understand historical political radio humor—an under-explored focus of image repair scholarship.

The paper sets out why we consider that the legal framework in the EU amplifies what are in reality relatively small differences in thinking around RPM. Primarily, this is because it asks economists, in the name of legal certainty, to draw a false dichotomy between agreements and practices which are harmful and those which are beneficial. We then provide a summary of the literature on RPM and, based on this thinking, set out a few small steps that might be taken towards a more nuanced approach to assessing RPM, within a 'presumed illegality' framework without sacrificing the beneficial legal certainty that the current approach brings.

Understanding how humans evaluate credibility is an important scientific question in the era of fake news. Source credibility is among the most important aspects of credibility evaluations. One of the most direct ways to understand source credibility is to use measurements of brain activity of humans performing credibility evaluations. Nevertheless, source credibility has never been investigated using such a method before. This article reports the results of an experiment during which we have measured brain activity during source credibility evaluation, using EEG. The experiment allowed for identification of brain areas that were active when a participant made positive or negative source credibility evaluations. Based on experimental data, we modeled and predicted human source credibility evaluations using EEG brain activity measurements with F1 score exceeding 0.7 (using 10-fold cross-validation).

The paper sets out why we consider that the legal framework in the EU amplifies what are in reality relatively small differences in thinking around RPM. Primarily, this is because it asks economists, in the name of legal certainty, to draw a false dichotomy between agreements and practices which are harmful and those which are beneficial. We then provide a summary of the literature on RPM and, based on this thinking, set out a few small steps that might be taken towards a more nuanced approach to assessing RPM, within a 'presumed illegality' framework without sacrificing the beneficial legal certainty that the current approach brings.

One of the most intractable debates in IR revolves around the severity and frequency of the security dilemma. Offensive realists argue that states are compelled to make worst-case assumptions about each other's intentions, which yields inexorable competition and conflict even between mutually-benign actors. Yet others have argued that rational benign states should always be able to find cooperative signals that are costly enough to be credible, but not too costly to risk sending. This should alleviate the security dilemma and facilitate cooperation, even under high initial distrust. However, there is little empirical work on interstate reassurance and the conditions under which mutually-benign actors can build trust. We advance this debate using laboratory experiments to test Andrew Kydd's canonical model of the security dilemma. We find strong support for the directional effects of the hypothesized signaling mechanisms. However, the frequency of cooperation is significantly lower than the model predicts, and the feasibility of reassurance is highly sensitive to the degree of prior trust. This implies that although reassurance can mitigate the security dilemma, offensive realism may still capture important psychological mechanisms that impede interstate cooperation.

<<[T]he Greek needed to 'believe' in their gods. Modernity and mass media society showed us that 'credibility' and 'truth' are the mere result of what we 'see' and what we 'hear'; but now 'storytelling' convinces us once again that what only really counts is what you 'want to believe!>>

In the Era of Post-Truth, FakeNews and Hypernarrativity this essay written back in 2012 already codified how Reality is no Longer Relevant, Only a Good and Credible Story...

In a thought-provoking manner I develop this thesis around 4 Conspiracy Theories:

—Conspiracy Theory 1: The Invasion from Mars
—Conspiracy Theory 2: The September 11 Attacks
—Conspiracy Theory 3: The Betrayal of Superman
—Conspiracy Theory 4: The Assassination of Osama bin Laden

As time surpasses, social media is evolving into a platform that serves a variety of purposes aimed to satiate its growing user base. Traditional news is transitioning and finding its place in social media platforms and phone apps. With the expansion of news media, it is important to question which medium is most used by young people in terms of political news. Are these mediums considered credible?

Much has been written about knowledge management and value creation. But a real theoretical framework for the creation and the distribution of knowledge is lacking in much of the work done so far.In fact, with the rise of the knowledge economy, economic value is increasingly seen as relying on intangible assets rather than physical assets. Strategies for managing knowledge thus become of central concern. This is one of the reasons why &quot;knowledge&quot; has been so crucial for economic and management fields over the last two decades. But since &quot;knowledge&quot; is not only bare data, or information, but rather the result of a process involving space and time, the nature of knowledge takes a strategic dimension. Across disciplines and functional borderlines, philosophers, economists, sociologists, organisational theorists as well as managers, have debated the nature of knowledge without a real theoretical consensus.This book is precisely concerned with this issue. It aims at p...

Much has been written about knowledge management and value creation. But a real theoretical framework for the creation and the distribution of knowledge is lacking in much of the work done so far.In fact, with the rise of the knowledge economy, economic value is increasingly seen as relying on intangible assets rather than physical assets. Strategies for managing knowledge thus become of central concern. This is one of the reasons why &quot;knowledge&quot; has been so crucial for economic and management fields over the last two decades. But since &quot;knowledge&quot; is not only bare data, or information, but rather the result of a process involving space and time, the nature of knowledge takes a strategic dimension. Across disciplines and functional borderlines, philosophers, economists, sociologists, organisational theorists as well as managers, have debated the nature of knowledge without a real theoretical consensus.This book is precisely concerned with this issue. It aims at p...

Both advocates and opponents of retrenchment have treated it as an undesirable, last‐ditch strategy for states that have already experienced severe decline. This article presents a formal model that identifies an unrecognized benefit of retrenchment: It can provide declining states with valuable information about rising states' future intentions. By removing constraints over the behavior of rising states in a particular region, a declining state can induce hostile risers to attempt revision of the regional order. This, in turn, makes a riser's cooperative behavior more credible as a signal of benign intentions, allowing the decliner to oppose hostile types while accommodating benign ones. In contrast to the existing focus on retrenchment as a desperate strategy taken from a position of weakness, this article suggests that the informational benefits of retrenchment are greatest when it is undertaken early, from a position of strength.

The UK government claims human rights approach underpins their policies to tackle human trafficking (Home Office, 2007, 2011). The decisions of front-line workers about the eligibility of individuals to access the rights afforded to ‘victim of trafficking’ highlights their role as street-level bureaucrats and moral entrepreneurs as they assess claimant’s credibility (DuBois, 2010). Street-level bureaucrats have the ability, both in technical skill and legal-administrative authority, to make judgements about the people they encounter and their entitlement to rights, protections and services afforded by the UK government (Hupe & Hill, 2007). If an individual claiming the status ‘victim of trafficking’ does not provide a credible performance of their claim, it is likely to be dismissed (McKinnon, 2009).

Adapting a framework for evaluating the credibility of international human rights NGOs (Gourevitch & Lake, 2012), this paper examines the role of credibility at the nexus of individual claims of human trafficking victimhood and public institutional concerns about border security, migration and criminality. The framework critically examines tensions between the priorities and interests of state agencies are discussed; risk and virtue in narratives of victimhood; evidence and the external validation of claims of victimhood; and the necessity of performing the correct steps when making a claim for human rights. Individuals identified as ‘victims of trafficking’ may find the personal troubles narrated in their claims are transformed in the official narrative of their experiences constructed through records of their institutional journey.

Tuned mass dampers are widely adopted passive strategies for vibrations mitigation, in the past years extensively investigated to improve the offered protection level in any mechanical systems in which they are installed. Although different mechanical and energetic optimum ...

Since the 1980s and 1990s, Morocco has made great efforts to consolidate its monetary policy strategy. Going through the strategy of targeted monetary aggregates until the arrival of BAM&#39;s autonomous status in 2006. Currently, BAM uses a multi-criteria monetary strategy as a diagnostic framework for inflation risk. For Morocco to use an inflation targeting strategy, it must meet certain operational and institutional conditions. This article will provide a scientific basis for different approaches that can identify the problems of BAM&#39;s strategy as a whole and will make a contribution that can be used for applied research purposes.