WIReDSpace

Welcome to WIReDSpace (Wits Institutional Repository on DSpace)

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Communities in WIReDSpace

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 20

Recent Submissions

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    Factors influencing post-hackathon project continuation in an African corporate setting
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2023-06-30) Ratsoga, Zanele; Primus, Mpho
    This article reports on a study examining the factors influencing post-hackathon project continuation in a company with presence in several African countries. The research was conducted as a case study, and focused on hackathon events held by the company between 2018 and 2020. The study identified three core factors that influenced the potential for project continuation after the corporate hackathons: (1) availability of financing; (2) team skills fit and diversity; and (3) degree of project integration into company operations. Where one or more of these elements was insufficiently present, then project continuation became less likely—and the likelihood of project discontinuation increased. The findings are of potential utility to corporate hackathon organisers seeking to increase the levels of project continuation—and, by, extension, return on investment—from their companies’ hackathon projects.
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    Evaluation of web-based online agricultural information relevant to Tanzanian maize producers
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2023-06-30) Ernest Mnzava, Ester; Jacobs, Lorette
    This study examined the quality of web-based online agricultural information relevant to the maize industry in Tanzania. Selected online sources were evaluated to assess the agricultural information available in terms of four dimensions of quality, namely: authority, completeness, timeliness, and understandability. The study identified a wide variety of web-based online information on maize production, including information on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and grain-handling. It was found that the information was of variable quality. Among the 39 online sites studied, several lacked contact information, had outdated content, and contained information that was missing some important details, and none provided weather information. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on online agricultural information in an African context where the agricultural sector is central to national economic development. The online agriculture information evaluation tool used in the study can potentially be of use, in its current form or adapted, to researchers beyond Tanzania.
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    Exploring COVID-19 public perceptions in South Africa through sentiment analysis and topic modelling of Twitter posts
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2023-06-30) Kekere, Temitope; Marivate, Vukosi; Hattingh, Marié
    The narratives shared on social media during a health crisis such as COVID-19 reflect public perceptions of the crisis. This article provides findings from a study of the perceptions of South African citizens regarding the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from March to May 2020. The study analysed Twitter data from posts by government officials and the public in South Africa to measure the public’s confidence in how the government was handling the pandemic. Results produced by four popular machine-learning classifiers for sentiment analysis— logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)—demonstrated these classifiers’ levels of effectiveness. In addition, the study used, and evaluated the effectiveness of, two topic-modelling algorithms—latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) and non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF)—in the classification of social media discourses in terms of frequently occurring topics. In terms of South African public sentiment towards COVID-19 and the government’s response, it was found that, based on the Twitter data, South Africans held predominantly negative views.
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    China’s digital transformation: Data-empowered state capitalism and social governmentality
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2023-06-30) Wang, Wayne Wei
    The article scrutinises the trajectory of China’s establishment of a digital state, rooted in a “whole-of-nation” system—or aptly termed (party–)state capitalism. The author illustrates the path of formulating and enforcing strategies to digitalise public services—including, importantly, the digital identity infrastructure—via institutional concentration that exemplifies both the positive and the exclusionary nature of social big data in streamlining administrative procedures. Two catalysts are spotlighted in China’s digital transformation: quasi-neoliberal market processes, and technology’s social change spillover effects. The author points to the fact that, since its inception, the contemporary Chinese state has created a cybernetic justification for “social governmentality”, as a means to redress potential informational imbalances in the process of ruling the state polity. For the Chinese administrative hierarchy, data provides the means to execute a top-down correctivist paradigm for steering societal conduct, a paradigm integrated into (but also to some extent in tension with) data- empowered state capitalism.
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    Consistency and interpretation of the LHC dijet excesses
    (American Physical Society, 2023) Crivellin, Andreas; Manzari, Claudio Andrea; Mellado, Bruce; Dahbi, Salah-Eddine
    ATLAS observed a limit for the cross section of dijet resonances, which is weaker than expected for a mass slightly below ≈1 TeV. In addition, CMS reported hints for the (nonresonant) pair production of dijet resonances X via a particle Y at a very similar mass range with a local (global) significance of 3.6σ (2.5σ) at mX ≈ 950 GeV. In this article, we show that, using the preferred range for mX from the ATLAS analysis, one can reinterpret the CMS analysis of didijets in terms of a resonant search with Y → XX, with a significantly reduced look-elsewhere effect, finding an excess for mY ≈ 3.6 TeV with a significance of 4.0σ (3.2σ) locally (globally). We present two possible UV completions capable of explaining the (di)dijet excesses, one containing two scalar diquarks, the other one involving heavy gluons based on an SUð3Þ1 × SUð3Þ2 × SUð3Þ3 gauge symmetry, spontaneously broken to SUð3Þ color. In the latter case, nonperturbative couplings are required, pointing toward a composite or extradimensional framework. In fact, using 5D anti–de Sitter space-time, one obtains the correct mass ratio for mX=mY, assuming the X is the lowest-lying resonance, and predicts a third (di)dijet resonance with a mass around ≈2.2 TeV.