On November 6, 2012, citizens in three U.S. states will vote on whether to legalize production, distribution, possession, and sale of marijuana for general-not just medical-use. Legalization is typically imagined as an up or down, binary choice. However, a comparison of 17 legalization proposals actively discussed in various U.S. states in 2012 reveals differences that would have important consequences for price, availability, arrest-risk, use, and, hence, health. This paper divides the proposals into three broad categories and assesses their political feasibility. It then addresses the implications of state-level legalization, and possible federal responses to it, for retail price, tax revenues, and spill-over effects in other states where marijuana would remain illegal.
Engaging community residents as experts provided a deeper understanding of the issues around children's asthma in the community, which can contribute to the design of a more effective intervention.
We present a mixed methods study of the online forum r/RoastMe, a comedy-focused subreddit of the parent site reddit.com, wherein members post photos of themselves to be ridiculed by other members; the site generally encourages harsh and offensive forms of humor in these interpersonal exchanges. We conducted semi-structured interviews with sixteen participants (both "roasters" and "roastees") in the online forum to understand their motivations for participating, their experiences in the subreddit, and their perceptions of their and other members' participation. To complement our qualitative analyses, we also analyzed a RoastMe data set of over 9,000 image posts and 230,000 comments from June-August of 2017. From our interviews, we found that, like other deviant online communities, RoastMe relies on a specific set of norms. In RoastMe, roasters rely heavily on perspective-taking rather than dissociation from their targets, roastees highly value the often scathing assessments offered by users on RoastMe, and, despite the salience of norms that enhance feelings of safety, there is lingering concern among participants about the potential for emotional or psychological harm. Our quantitative analyses confirm many of the statements made in our qualitative interviews and provide further insights into the specific nature of interactions on the subreddit. Our study directs us toward different vantage points from which to design online community spaces that account for or leverage users' predilections for baiting behaviors, harsh judgments, and caustic humor.
In this opinion piece, we argue that there is a need for alternative design directions to complement existing AI efforts in narrative and character generation and algorithm development. To make our argument, we a) outline the predominant roles and goals of AI research in storytelling; b) present existing discourse on the benefits and harms of narratives; and c) highlight the pain points in character creation revealed by semi-structured interviews we conducted with 14 individuals deeply involved in some form of character creation. We conclude by proffering several specific design avenues that we believe can seed fruitful research collaborations. In our vision, AI collaborates with humans during creative processes and narrative generation, helps amplify voices and perspectives that are currently marginalized or misrepresented, and engenders experiences of narrative that support spectatorship and listening roles.
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