Ulaş Başar Gezgin

It might be reasonable to make a distinction about cities with regard to biodiversity: There are cities that are green, and there are greens that are urbanized. The former are highly sophisticated cities with strong economic infrastructure. These cities are not happy with the grey buildings and concrete structures, and they hold green campaigns to reproduce biodiversity. There are some other cities that are built in jungles or wetlands. These cities have literally attacked the biodiversity by unplanned encroachment. These are especially common in Southeast Asia where urbanization is relatively young. The sustainability triangle is very well known in urban planning. It points to the conflict that arises from economic, social and environmental perspectives in regard to urbanization. From the economic perspective, the cities are considered to be the engine of growth as they are the seat of industries, service sectors, and ICT companies. Most of the time, the success of a city government is measured by economic performance indicators such as the increase in foreign direct investment or the number of high rises etc. From the social corner of the triangle, rapid urbanization, informal housing in outskirts, grassroots democratization initiatives, crime rates, access to municipal services etc are hot topics. As the cities are growing formally through projects led by the construction sector and informally through the growth of slum dwellers, various ethical dilemmas emerge that pit urbanites against the urban flora and fauna. After presenting some of these ethical dilemmas, this paper proposes an ethical framework for urban biodiversity including Homo sapiens.

Despite a continued focus exploring the factors related to plagiarism, the relationship between English language ability and plagiarism occurrences is not fully understood. Multiple studies involving student or faculty self-reporting of plagiarism have shown that students often claim English language ability is one of the main reasons why they commit plagiarism offences; however, little research has tested these claims in a rigorous, quantitative manner. This paper presents the findings of an analysis of data collected in a private, international university located in Vietnam, from non-native English speaking students studying business degrees. Analysis of the data builds on previous studies by showing that there are statistically significant differences in the English language abilities of students who have previously committed plagiarism offences, compared to students who have not, suggesting that programmes designed to improve the academic English skills of non-native English speaking students may help reduce incidences of plagiarism.

In this theoretical article, we identify a conceptual error in the notion of ‘global media literacy’ and present and discuss eight typologies of media literacy formed on the basis of the ideological, political and economic dimensions of media and media literacy. While the first four types are past-oriented, they differ in terms of their endorsement or criticism of the government and capitalism. The same holds for the remaining four types except with respect to their future orientations. The time orientation, attitudes towards the government and capitalism determine how media literacy is conceptualized and what type of media literacy is to be promoted. It is proposed that unlike the original sense of literacy which was cognitively based, media literacy is socially constructed, which means that the widespread literacy analogy drawn from reading and writing to media use and interpretation is problematic. Finally, after delineating the eight typologies of media literacy, we discuss whether they apply to the digital world. It is argued that Type 8 media which is future-oriented, anti-government, and anti-capitalist find opportunities in the digital world which they lack due to funding issues in the non-digital world. Another point of the discussion involves the less tribal nature of digital media use since digital media users have access to different views which is not always the case for users of non-digital media. It is hoped that the typology of media literacy presented in this article will be critically discussed and utilized in future studies in the field.

Although there is much discussion exploring the potential causes of plagiarism, there is limited research available which provides evidence as to the academic interventions which may help reduce this. This paper discusses a bespoke English for Academic Purposes programme introduced at the university level, aimed at improving the academic writing standards of students, reducing plagiarism, and detecting cases of contract cheating. Results from 12 semesters of academic misconduct data demonstrate a 37.01% reduction in instances of detected plagiarism following the intervention, but due to limited data, cannot demonstrate a direct impact on reducing detected rates of contract cheating. The results also show a lower than expected proportion of plagiarised assignments among submissions.

How a social science of big data would look like? In this article, we exemplify such a social science through a number of cases. We start our discussion with the epistemic qualities of big data. We point out to the fact that contrary to the big data champions, big data is neither new nor a miracle without any error nor reliable and rigorous as assumed by its cheer leaders. Secondly, we identify three types of big data: natural big data, artificial big data and human big data. We present and discuss in what ways they are similar and in what other ways they differ. The assumption of a homogenous big data in fact misleads the relevant discussions. Thirdly, we extended 3 Vs of the big data and add veracity with reference to other researchers and violability which is the current author’s proposal. We explain why the trinity of Vs is insufficient to characterize big data. Instead, a quintinity is proposed. Fourthly, we develop an economic analogy to discuss the notions of data production, data consumption, data colonialism, data activism, data revolution, etc. In this context, undertaking a Marxist approach, we explain what we mean by data fetishism. Fifthly, we reflect on the implications of growing up with big data, offering a new research area which is called as developmental psychology of big data. Finally, we sketch data resistance and the newly proposed notion of omniresistance, i.e. resisting anywhere at any occasion against the big brother watching us anywhere and everywhere.