David Machin

Zhejiang University | ZJU · Department of Tea Science

Roma communities remain Europe’s most marginalized and disadvantaged population, facing increasing discrimination, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. European media often portrays them as criminals or anti-social, furthering misunderstanding and social exclusion. This article examines Swedish news media’s representation of Roma, which, at a...

At the time of writing, it had become common to find trending social media hashtags where users were expressing their feelings about current social and political issues through a range of symbolic gestures, such as striking a pose, wearing a garment, or changing their personal icon. Scholars had begun to consider such gestures in regard to whether...

Research shows that racism and xenophobia soared during the Covid-19 pandemic and this was certainly the case with the Roma in Romania. In this article, using critical discourse analysis, we analyse comments left below a television news clip posted on YouTube early in the crisis. This gives us valuable access to the way racism and xenophobia are li...

It has been argued that more research is needed on the role of humor in the expression of racism. One reason is that, in the ‘post racial’ society, overt racism has become publicly unacceptable and, therefore, tends to appear in more concealed forms. In this paper, as part of a larger project on media representations of the Roma, we look at the rol...

Background: In this article we review randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing palatal surgery at different ages to examine their design features and quantify their conclusions. Method: A literature search of RCTs comparing surgical timings for cleft palate and/or lip repair from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2013 was undertaken. This supplem...

Research shows that news media around the world carry negative representations of ethnic minorities which incite violence, hatred or lead to more marginalisation and social exclusion [Bhatia, M., Poynting, S., & Tufail, W. (2018). Media, crime and racism. Springer; Elias, A., Mansouri, F., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Media, public discourse and racism....

Twitter campaigns attacking those who make racist or xenophobic statements are valuable, raising the public profile of opinions that will not tolerate racism in any form. They also indicate how our major institutions are failing to address important matters of social justice. But there is concern that social media, such as Twitter, tends to extreme...

This chapter describes the composition and remit for such a committee and the situations which they may address when called on to give a view on the progress of the ongoing trial. Apart from the safety aspects, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) may be asked to review the accumulating efficacy data with respect to whether the initial plans...

Conducting randomised clinical trials (RCT) of whatever design and complexity will always involve the investigating teams planning them very carefully. A feasibility study is concerned with practicability and pilot studies with subject numbers although the terms are often regarded as interchangeable. This chapter describes the general nature of fea...

This chapter introduces designs in which, in the case of two interventions, each participant in the trial receives both. The comparison in the matched‐pair design is made by utilising the difference in outcome between the two eyes. The split‐mouth design is of particular relevance to dental studies. Using this design one part of the mouth, for exam...

This chapter describes trial design options which have the potential to reduce the numbers of participants required either by adopting sequential recruitment or adaptive strategies. It describes Bayesian statistical methodology and its potential for use in aiding the design, and explores interim analysis of ongoing trials and conducting very small...

An extension to the cluster trial design is one in which the clusters are maintained and assessed repeatedly over successive periods of time. The determination of an appropriate trial size involves multiplying the sample size obtained from the calculation for an independent, parallel, two‐group trial by a modifying design effect. A key feature of a...

This chapter outlines in general terms the basic components required for trial size determination. The approach to sample size calculation requires the concepts of the null and alternative hypotheses, significance level, power and, for the majority of situations, the anticipated difference between groups or effect size. The history of clinical tria...

This chapter considers the important procedures to follow when presenting the results from a clinical trial. The first rule after completing a clinical trial is to report the results – whether they are positive, negative or equivocal. Guidelines for reporting give hints on what seemingly extraneous detail information needs to be collected and docum...

The method of choosing which intervention is assigned to a particular subject is an essential feature for maximising the useful information from a clinical trial. This chapter provides the rationale for why a random element to the choice is desirable and describe how random numbers may be used to assist the implementation of this. It describes how...

This chapter describes situations where there may be a priori evidence of how well a particular patient responds to a specific therapy that is dependent on their genetic make‐up. In this context, what is termed a predictive marker is identified and patients with a particular condition can be tested for its presence. Genomic Medicine leads to differ...

This chapter provides an overview of the general structure of a randomised clinical trial. Of fundamental importance before embarking on a clinical trial is to identify the research question(s) of interest. The question(s) posed must have important consequences in that the answer should inform research and/or influence clinical practice in a meanin...

This chapter describes randomised parallel‐group designs with repeated measures of the main outcome assessed over time in the individuals recruited to the trial. These longitudinal designs may include repeated pre‐intervention as well as repeated postrandomisation assessments over time. Design options for the investigator include one or more repeat...

The distinctive characteristic of a cluster trial is that specific groups or blocks of subjects are first identified, and these units are assigned at random to the interventions. Although the basic design structure of a parallel two‐group design may be retained, issues of informed consent, trial size and analysis are somewhat unique. The method of...

Although the mechanisms to run a successful clinical trial should be in place before the launch, it will only be when the trial has started that these will be tested. This chapter provides practical hints on how problems might be dealt with or avoided. Once the protocol is approved and all the implementation procedures are complete, a trial opening...

This chapter describes some of the necessary prerequisites that need to be established to ensure the trial is successfully launched, conducted, completed and reported. Developing a randomised clinical trial is usually an evolutionary process, beginning with the germ of an idea and gradually expanding over time to become a reality. The necessary arr...

The chapter focuses on the content common to all trial protocols such as the background to the trial, the type and number potential subjects to recruit, informed consent, details of the intervention options, and other practicalities including the forms required for recording the data. The object of the background section within the trial protocol i...

The main outcome of concern for a comparative trial is some measure of the difference between the various intervention groups with respect to the trial endpoint of interest. The focus of the analysis of a clinical trial is to estimate the difference between the intervention groups and to provide some measure of the uncertainty expressed through the...

This chapter considers extensions of the basic parallel two‐group randomised trial. These include parallel designs of three or more groups, including those comparing each of several interventions with a standard which may be a placebo, those comprising different doses of the same compound, and those with no structure in the groups to be compared. I...

This chapter emphasises for all trials the essential requirement of taking appropriate measurements. In every clinical trial information will have to be collected on the subjects included as they progress through the trial until the endpoint(s) is determined. In many disease areas, survival is the most obvious and most important endpoint, and this...

Contrasts are made between trials designed to detect superiority, with those to demonstrate Non‐inferiority or equivalence. Methods of analysis and for estimating the numbers of participants to be recruited to such trials are given. Such trial types are termed as Non‐inferiority trials and although the basic design may appear to be the same as for...

It is now common for public institutions, and other organizations, to be administrated and managed through digital systems. Such systems are aligned with a discourse of positivity, of doing things better, more effectively. In this paper, using multimodal critical discourse analysis, we analyze one digital system used in Swedish preschools called Un...

How nation anthems can be analysed, understood in contexts.

It has become common to find diagrams and flow-charts used in our organizations to illustrate the nature of processes, what is involved and how it happens, or to show how parts of the organization interrelate to each other and work together. Such diagrams are used as they are thought to help visualization and simplify things in order to represent t...

Among the categories of the telecom and internet frauds, the online romance scam is of particular concern for its sharp rise of victim numbers and the huge amount of cost. A social semiotic approach could be used to investigate the victim identity of the online romance scam from the aspects of the (re)construction and interpretation of discursive p...

CDA is a particular strand of discourse analysis which has been interested in the role of language in the functioning of society and political processes. It has tended to target texts produced by elites and powerful institutions, such as news and political speeches, with a view to revealing the kinds of discourses used to maintain power and sustain...

In the Swedish news-media we find sporadic critical, or reflective, reporting on the production conditions of Swedish ‘sweat-shop’ factories in the Global South, used to supply Transnational Corporations (TNCs). In this paper we carry out a critical discourse analysis, in particular using Van Leeuwen’s social actor and social action analysis, to lo...

Research shows that news media around the world tend to represent ethnic minorities in ways which nurture distorted views and invite negative attitudes. Scholars have also emphasised that, in contemporary societies, a political climate has emerged which has made overt racism unacceptable and social taboos leading to racist statements are increasing...

Purpose Age, MYCN status, stage, and histology have been used as neuroblastoma (NB) risk factors for decades. Serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and serum ferritin are reproducible, easily obtained, and prognostic, though never used in risk stratification, except one German trial. We analyzed the prognostic strength of LDH and ferritin, overall, wit...

In many societies, governments have become concerned about diet related illnesses and the huge economic costs of managing them, disseminating information about things like eating, balanced diets and the foods we should avoid in excess. At the same time in our shops and cafes there have been a proliferation of products which carry possibilities for...

Introduction to Multimodal Analysis is a unique and accessible textbook that critically explains this ground-breaking approach to visual analysis. Now thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition reflects the most recent developments in theory and shifts in communication, outlining the tools for analysis and providing a clear model that stud...

There has been criticism of how Fair-Trade products represent workers in remote parts of the world where packaging offers an encounter with distant others which romanticizes and homogenizes them as a pre-modern form of ethnicity. Such workers are shown as always engaged in authentic, simple, honest decontextualized manual labor. And they are depict...

This chapter presents different semiotic approaches to analyzing photographs, drawing attention to the choices made in the act of photographing, in terms of who and what are represented and how. It considers sign theory and emotions of Peircean semiotics. The chapter is concerned with how photographic images in general communicate the broader kinds...

There has been an increase in food products marketed through buzzwords like 'organic', 'local', 'recyclable', 'Fairtrade'. These have been described as part of a newer kind of ethical or emotional capitalism, where consumers can align with political issues through shopping. In this paper, we look at the brand Oatly, a Swedish milk alternative that...

There has been an increase of food products marketed through buzzwords like organic, ‘local’, ‘recyclable’, ‘Fair-trade’. These have been described as part of a newer kind of ethical or emotional capitalism, where consumers can align with political issues through acts of shopping. The problem is that such acts replace or shape what we know about, a...

The final reply in the debate on multimodality and critical discourse studies.

This article carries out a multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of a Romanian Facebook page where comments are made in response to a shared news-clip showing a Roma wedding which clearly invites ridicule. It has been documented that there are well-established discourses representing the Roma as criminal, uneducated, dirty, immoral, and as...

Background: There is a lack of reliable information on outcomes following cleft surgery. Options for timing and choice of primary cleft surgery have not been compared in randomised trials. Methods: Non-syndromic infants, aged six months, with isolated cleft of the secondary palate without associated lip deformity, were included in this prospective...

Background The European Neuroblastoma Study Group 5 (ENSG5) trial showed that time‐intensive “rapid” induction chemotherapy (COJEC) was superior to “standard” 3‐weekly chemotherapy for children with high‐risk metastatic neuroblastoma. Long‐term outcomes of the ENSG5 trial were analysed. Procedure Patients with metastatic neuroblastoma aged ≥12 mont...

This essential textbook provides a clear and authoritative introduction to qualitative and quantitative methods for studying media and communication. Written by two highly experienced researchers, the book draws on a wide range of media and communication research to introduce students to the relative strengths of the different research approaches....

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a particular strand of discourse analysis that focuses on the role of language in society and in political processes, traditionally targeting texts produced by elites and powerful institutions, such as news and political speeches. The aim is to reveal discourses buried in language used to maintain power and sust...

This chapter describes the general nature of feasibility studies and, amongst these, what distinguishes pilot studies. Two specific types of pilot study are described. One type is an Internal‐Pilot, which is designed mainly to enable a reassessment of the sample size within an ongoing (Main) study and in which the data of the pilot is to be regarde...

The majority of clinical trials involve a simple comparison between two interventions or treatments. When there are more than two treatments, the situation is much more complicated. One problem arising at the time of analysis is that such situations may lead to multiple significance tests, resulting in misleading p‐values. Various solutions have be...

This chapter considers sample‐size calculations for comparisons between two groups where the outcome of concern is a count which is expressed as a rate per unit of time. The anticipated effect size between groups is expressed either as a difference between the two rates or by the risk ratio. The chapter presents the sample size expressions for some...

The Sample Size Software implements many of the sample size computation methods discussed in this book. The primary function of Sample Size Software is as a sample size calculator, which can be accessed under Sample Size Calculator in the main menu, to compute sample sizes corresponding to various choices of input values. The calculator takes the f...

The strength of the linear association between two continuous or ranked variables assessed in the same individuals is estimated by the Pearson or Spearmen correlation coefficients respectively. This chapter describes the formula for sample sizes to detect a correlation of a pre‐specified magnitude. The approach to identifying a lack of association,...

This chapter describes aspects of how the groups to compare are identified, situations where more than two groups are concerned, some of which may involve identifying systematic trends across the groups, and also factorial designs which can simultaneously investigate different questions within one study. It examines the role of covariates and the f...

An important part of the process of examining a patient is to check clinical measures taken from the patient against a 'normal' or 'reference' range of values. Evidence of the measure lying outside these values may be taken as indicative of the need for further investigation. This chapter describes sample sizes for establishing such reference inter...

If the null hypothesis is rejected in a comparative two‐group clinical trial, then superiority is claimed for one of the groups. In contrast, the concern in this chapter is with situations in which the aim is to claim either therapeutic non‐inferiority for the Test as compared to the Standard or, in appropriate circumstances, therapeutic equivalenc...

This chapter discusses Therapeutic Exploratory trials which include the Case‐Morgan design, which concerns survival time endpoints, and the Bryant‐Day design, which involves the simultaneous consideration of the dual endpoints of response and toxicity. To determine the Expected Total Study Length (ETSL) design, the same procedures are followed as f...

A common clinical trial design is one which measures the outcome variable of concern repeatedly over time. In any event, the sample size calculation requires a specific model known as the random intercepts model for the analysis to be identified. The model estimates the common intercept using only post‐randomisation observations whereas in equation...

Among many of the sample size approaches, and within clinical trials, different designs are available. This chapter gives an overview of the sample size approaches for two types of clinical trials—those involving drugs for a specific genomic target and those determining an appropriate dose of a new drug to be given in the first trials involving pat...

One type of cluster trial is that in which the clusters are maintained over successive periods of time during which, for example, all will commence on the standard intervention for the condition concerned and, as periods go by, more of the clusters will receive the test intervention. Such trials have what is termed a stepped wedge design (SWD). The...

This chapter describes methods for calculating sample sizes for studies which yield paired data for the situations where the outcomes are binary, ordered categorical or continuous. For binary and ordered categorical data, the components required for sample size determination comprise a measure related to the odds ratio and information on the number...

This chapter explores the sample‐size calculations for comparisons between groups where the outcome of concern is binary to when the outcome is an ordered categorical variable. The corresponding summary for a single group will be the proportion of subjects falling into each of the categories. When planning a comparative two‐group study, the anticip...

This chapter describes methods for calculating sample sizes for studies in which the outcome of primary concern is assessed by the period between a specific time‐point and the subsequent occurrence of a particular event. The reliability of a 'time‐to‐event' study depends on the total number of events that are eventually observed. In certain types o...

This chapter considers sample‐size calculations for comparisons between means of groups where the outcome of concern is continuous. It describes the situations when the data can be assumed to have a Normal distribution form, and when they do not. The chapter also describes the problem of comparing an estimated mean from one group with an assumed kn...

This chapter describes sample size calculations for observer agreement studies, with respect to the degree of either self‐agreement of a single observer assessing the same material twice or agreement between two observers both independently assessing the same specimens to make a decision with respect to a definitive diagnosis. In these situations,...

This chapter considers sample‐size calculations for comparisons between two groups where the outcome of concern is binary. The anticipated effect size between groups is expressed either as a difference between two proportions or by the odds ratio. The situation in which one of the proportions can be assumed known is described. Attention is drawn to...

Cluster randomised trial designs are growing in popularity in many clinical areas, and parallel statistical developments are numerous. When the randomised allocation applies to the clusters, the basic principles for sample size calculation still apply, although modifications are required. Cluster trials consume considerable logistical and other res...

This chapter describes single‐ and two‐stage designs for Therapeutic Exploratory (TE) clinical trials involving a single arm and where the outcome of interest is binary in nature. It discusses the single‐stage Fleming‐A'Hern design as well as two‐stage designs such as the Simon‐Optimal and the Simon‐Minimax designs. The designs by Tan‐Machin and Ma...

This chapter describes how sample sizes may be derived by pre‐specifying the width or relative width of the confidence interval (CI) the investigator wishes to obtain at the end of the study. It presents the formulae for both binary and continuous outcome measures for a single group, for the comparison between two independent groups and for paired...

In Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and in other linguistics oriented scholarly journals we now see more research which draws upon multimodality as part of carrying out analyses of how texts make meaning, in order to draw out the ideologies which they carry. However, much of multimodality is itself based closely on one theory of language called Sys...

This article uses a social semiotic approach to look at the representations and designs of kitchens in the IKEA catalogue from 1975 until 2016. The authors find a shift from function to lifestyle of the order observed by scholars of advertising. But using Fairclough’s concepts of ‘technologization’ in Discourse and Social Change (1992) and Van Leeu...

This article uses a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach to look at the communication of kitchens in the IKEA catalogue from 1975 until 2016, where we see a predictable shift from function to lifestyle. Using Fairclough’s (1992) concept of ‘technologization’ and van Leeuwen’s (2008) concept of ‘New Writing’, we are able to dig deeper to...

In this article, we carry out a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of a sample from a larger corpus of Romanian news articles that covered the controversial camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and continue to the time of writing in 2017. These French government policies have been highl...

Knowledge and information are today exchanged ty increasingly visual means. This book enables you to see beyond the image, and to consider the 'stuff' of visual communication- From the texture of the paper on which a restaurant menu is printed to the shape chosen for a shampoo bottle, Doing Visual Analysis shows you how to think about and analyse v...

Background: The use of chemotherapy to manage newly diagnosed low grade glioma (LGG) was first introduced in the 1980s. One randomised trial has studied two- versus four-drug regimens with a duration of 12 months of treatment after resection. Methods: Within the European comprehensive treatment strategy for childhood LGG, the International Socie...

This paper carries out a social semiotic analysis of an IKEA commercial to show how their contemporary kitchens, despite being market for those on a more modest budget, present an aspirational form of elite space, constructed on the basis of ideas, values and priorities favored by a neoliberal ideology. Using the notions of new writing and technolo...

We communicate multimodally. Everyday communication involves not only words, but gestures, images, videos, sounds and of course, music. Music has traditionally been viewed as a separate object that we can isolate, discuss, perform and listen to. However, much of music’s power lies in its use as multimodal communication. It is not just lyrics which...

Studies in CDA have revealed the nature of the marketized language that now infuses universities and other public institutions, but there is no comprehensive study as to how this language enters the everyday practices of the university through different levels of steering documents and meetings. In this paper, taking one example from a corpus of da...

Figure S1. Competing cumulative incidences of cardiovascular (CV) and non‐CV death in the first 30 days and for up to 12 years after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Figure S2. Competing cumulative incidence of death from subcauses of cardiovascular (CV) deaths and from subcauses of non‐CV death after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). CHD indic...

Influence of Ethnicity, Age, and Time on Sex Disparities in Long-Term Cause-Specific Mortality After Acute Myocardial Infarction

The aim of this paper is to open a discussion about multimodal work in the area of gender, language and discourse, and propose the kinds of multimodal approaches that are most appropriate for this task. Multimodality, we claim, is a rather fragmented and unconsolidated field where many of the tools and concepts applied by different researchers are...

In everyday life it is now common to find our actions linked to sound, especially using technology, such as when we use mobile devices, or operate more recently manufactured cars, technology in the workplace or simply in an elevator. While we may attend little to these noises, like any semiotic resource, they can communicate very specific meanings...

This journal’s editorial statement is clear that political discourse should be studied not only as regards parliamentary type politics. In this introduction we argue precisely for the need to pay increasing attention to the way that political ideologies are infused into culture more widely, in entertainments media, software, administrative processe...