American Studies Commons^™

Revenge Of The Nerds: Tech Masculinity And Digital Hegemony, Benjamin M. Latini

Doctoral Dissertations

Revenge of the Nerds provides a cultural history of the evolution of white nerd masculinities in American culture through interpretations of a wide variety of texts and representations using the methods of literary studies and American studies. The dissertation is organized around four overlapping stages of nerd masculinity based on changes in technology and their effects on culture, as well as white male nerds’ efforts to remain culturally relevant and gain the benefits of being close to hegemonic masculinity. The four nerd types are the computer nerd, the gamer, the gatekeeper nerd, and the maladaptive nerd which reflect the following …

Amazon Web Services, The Lacanian Unconscious, And Digital Life, Marshall N. Armintor

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In late 2011, ex-Amazon developer Steve Yegge’s rant about his former company described Amazon’s rapid transformation from an online bookstore to a web-services entity with a ruthlessly unified platform, all guided by the idea that the company’s effort to streamline its internal efficiency could be monetized, and the resultant software products sold through Amazon Web Services. The media consumerism that fed Amazon’s early years funded a surveilling behemoth, one that everyone feared Microsoft would become. As such, AWS has become a manifestation of the internet’s Lacanian unconscious (even providing the services and hosting for Reddit), structured around the optimization of …

Lacan And The Algorithm, Clint Burnham

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Exploring the development of algorithms in Lacanian theory, specifically the "R schema" in the 1950s, I argue that psychoanalysis, read through contemporary debates about the "algorithmic cult" of Netflix and other avatars of popular culture, can be said to reveal the inhuman, machinic essence of subjectivity. The etiology of algorithms, mathemes, and other formulae and diagrams in Lacan’s oeuvre has been under-studied, in part because for some readers they are not as attractive as his more bravura flourishes of word play as exegetical excess, and in part because they derive largely from the ‘hard’ structuralist moment of his work in …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

MSU Graduate Theses

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Mormons And Youtube, Ryan Reeder

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

As the internet’s second-most trafficked site, behind only Google in both the United States and globally, and with 600,000 hours of content uploaded and one billion hours viewed daily by more than one billion monthly users, YouTube’s reach and scope is vast. Growing out of a need to better facilitate the production and distribution of online video, YouTube was able to become dominant through a combination of factors including the implementation of innovative features, an ability to capitalize on popular videos hosted on its site, and good timing in managing to become a key component of the social media revolution. …

Competition, Corporatization And Culture: A Contrast Of Person-To-Person And Online Video Gaming Communities In America, Jeffrey Miles Rossen

Senior Projects Spring 2016

My Senior Project is an exploration of contemporary competitive Video Gaming culture in the United States. Through a comparison of Person-to-Person gaming communities and Online gaming communities, I aim to elucidate the social nuances in these gaming communities and how they have created such vastly contrasting cultures.

Queer Hybridity And Performance In The Multimedia Texts Of Arroyo And Lozada, Ed Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Queer Hybridity and Performance in the Multimedia Texts of Arroyo and Lozada" Ed Chamberlain examines the unconventional writing of Puerto Rican writers Rane Arroyo and Ángel Lozada. Arroyo and Lozada craft texts which can be interpreted as performances and these performative texts blend internet-based writings with more traditional genres including the novel and poetry. Arroyo's and Lozada's stylistic approaches exhibit a queer sensibility which resembles the way in which Latina/o queer people construct and perform their cultural identities. Chamberlain argues that these queer performances suggest we can neither create nor identify absolute truth in matters of identity …

New Challenges For The Archiving Of Digital Writing, Heiko Zimmermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "New Challenges for the Archiving of Digital Writing" Heiko Zimmermann discusses the challenges of the preservation of digital texts. In addition to the problems already at the focus of attention of digital archivists, there are elements in digital literature which need to be taken into consideration when trying to archive them. Zimmermann analyses two works of digital literature, the collaborative writing project A Million Penguins (2006-2007) and Renée Tuner's She… (2008) and shows how the ontology of these texts is bound to elements of performance, to direct social interaction of writers and readers to the uniquely subjective …

Through A Prism Darkly: Surveillance And Speech Suppression In The Post-Democracy Electronic State", David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Through a PRISM Darkly: Surveillance and Speech Suppression in the “Post-Democracy Electronic State” David Barnhizer There is no longer an American democracy. America is changing by the moment into a new political form, the “Post-Democracy Electronic State”. It has “morphed” into competing fragments operating within the physical territory defined as the United States while tenuously holding on to a few of the basic creeds that represent what we long considered an exceptional political experiment. That post-Democracy political order paradoxically consists of a combination of fragmented special interests eager to punish anyone that challenges their desires and a central government that …

The Penetration Of Social Media In Governance,Political Reforms And Building Public Perception, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. While we know that social media can play an important role in publicizing political activities such as protests, do we have evidence that such actions have led to substantive political change? Is it possible to develop a set of indicators to more effectively gauge the impact of new technologies and media on questions of political change? That social media can help coordinate large and discrete activities, such as protests and …

Challenges Before Traditional Media In The Age Of Digital Media-How To Integrate It With Digital Media-The Way Ahead, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

You may have heard of digital media, but you may have no idea what it is and how it can help you out when it comes to marketing. It's definitely important that you get up to speed so you can use this to benefit your business. Basically digital media refers to any type of electronic media out there. Today media can be accessed in many ways, including with hand held devices like mobile phones, laptops, desktops, mp3 players, and more.Digital media must be stored in an electronic way, so there is a lot of digital content on the internet today, …

New Media Photographic Representations Of Women`S Collegiate Volleyball: Game Faces, Action Shots, And Equipment, Alicia Pack

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers consistently find that mainstream media often represent women athletes in stereotypical ways including trivialization, sexualization, infantilization, passivity, and utilization of camera down-angles. However, research on new media's visual representation of women athletes is still in its infancy. This study adds to the growing literature on new media's representation of women athletes and concurs with previous findings suggesting that new media might be an outlet that can counter old media gender stereotypes. This thesis used mixed methods of qualitative content analysis and photovoice in order to better understand how Big East volleyball players are represented in photographs on websites: Instances …

Radical Localism In The Network Society, Edward Russell Cole

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This is an ethnographic study conducted upon third-party sociopolitical movements in American society. The research included participant observation in a Midwestern State Green Party, in addition to the Populist Party of America: a micro-party based in Los Angeles.

Gonzalez, Erik (Fa 466), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 466. Paper: "Parody in the Digital Age" written by Erik Gonzalez for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Politics, Journalism And Web 2.0 In The 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections, Wayne Scott Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The explosion of new political speech in digital formats in the 2008 elections, especially those involving social networking, offered new opportunities and challenges for political journalists, campaign participants and voters alike. This review of new political media in 2008 examines how these new methods of political organizing and communications work and provides insights to further understand how media can best cover and participate in them. The thesis details how 2008 was the first fully Web 2.0 election, exhibiting its characteristics of interactivity, use of databases and the "long tail" of microniche Internet websites. Three new media uses - online, database-driven …

A Multiple Case Study Analysis Of Middle Grades Social Studies Teachers' Instructional Use Of Digital Technology With Academically Talented Students At Three High-Performing Middle Schools, Caroline C. Sheffield

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Appropriate education for academically talented students incorporates the use of complex thinking skills, and encourages the development of interpersonal and leadership skills. One potential tool to achieve these goals is the use of instructional technology. Siegle (2004a, 2005) suggests that it is particularly appropriate to utilize technology with the highly-able because they often possess skills that are effective when using today's technology, specifically abstract thinking and rapid processing.

This mixed methods multiple case study explored middle school social studies teachers' instructional use of digital technology to teach highly-able students. The participant teachers were from three high-performing schools, as identified by …

The First Icomde A Library For The Information Age, Daniel Elias Todd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The library has existed as a repository for knowledge for centuries. However, in spite of the information revolution and its watershed component, the internet, this institution has found itself fundamentally unchanged. Great strides have been taken to adapt the library to this changing world, but these incremental changes are timid and reactionary.

Through the internet the floodgates have opened; individuals are creating and sharing information both personal and academic, in the form of not-so-private journals, works of creative fiction, works of journalism, works of scholarship, and every other form of intellectual (and not so intellectual) propagation imaginable.

Additionally, advances in …

Credibility Perceptions Of Television And Online News, Charmy G. Sabigan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Three major factors influence audience's credibility perception of mediated news on television and on the internet. This study found that reporters' credibility, media credibility, and news credibility had direct influence to the credibility of news presented on both media. Reporters' credibility on both media could be measured by their expertise, intelligence, education, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness. Television and the internet were evaluated differently. Television was measured by its comprehensiveness, concern for the interest of the public, and fairness. The internet was assessed on its trustworthiness, consideration of public interest, and objectivity. News credibility for both media, however, could be evaluated using …

Real Challenges, Virtual Challengers: The Democracy For America Movement, Noah Porter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The project examines the effects of Internet use by the social movement organization (SMO) Dean for America/Democracy for America (DFA). This study describes the relationship between Internet usage and SMO beliefs, organization, causes, reasons for joining, strategies, reactions, and effects. Dean for America started out with few resources or supporters, and was seen as an unlikely contender for the 2004 presidential campaign. From its humble beginnings, it skyrocketed from being virtually unknown to frontrunner status in the span of a year. After Howard Dean withdrew from the race in February 2004, Dean for America transformed itself into Democracy for America, …

Journalism 2.0: How To Survive And Thrive, Mark Briggs

Textbooks Collection

This handbook introduces journalists to the skills necessary to survive and thrive in the digital environment. The content is practical, not conceptual, and readers will be able to perform skills the same day they read about them. The handbook is organized to focus on on discipline at a time, and guides users along the way, breaking down each skill and technology into digestible lessons that will be immediately usable.

Where The Students Do The Grading: A Content Analysis Of Ratemyprofessors.Com, Mlisa A. Manning

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"I would have been better off using the tuition money to heat my apartment last winter."

"Three of my friends got As in his class and my friends are dumb."

"The movies are so bad, even he has to leave the room."

These are just a few of the "Funny Ratings" from a page on RateMyProfessors.com, a web site dedicated to providing information to students so they may make a difference in (their) education (http://www.RateMyProfessors.com/ faq.jsp). The online evaluations differ in origin, use and content from traditional teaching evaluations as they are the result of a virtual atmosphere …

Towards An E-Criture Feminine: Woolf, Duplessis, Cixous, And The Emerging Discursive Tradition In Women’S Online Diaries, Deborah Silverman Bowen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women are drawing together the concepts of space, style,and medium and using these concepts collectively as a foundation for a new discursive tradition in the online autobiography. This dissertation, positioned in postmodern feminism, draws on a variety of disciplines to argue the development or evolution of a new women's discourse.

While a broad base of material exists which acknowledges the presence of women's discourse (formed by combining women's writing and women's genres), very little information explores its evolution, particularly in/on the new medium of the World Wide Web (WWW).

A combination of extant social and literary theories supports the idea …

A Content Analysis Of Activist Group Use Of Dialogic Tools On The World Wide Web, Roberto Mazzini

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is a quantitative content analysis of activist groups' use of dialogic tools on Web sites. The study was done in order to understand how activist groups use the Web to communicate with their publics in comparison to for-profit corporations. The Web is considered a powerful tool for activists and allows them to communicate better with their publics. Use of the Web should allow activist groups to level the field with corporations by enabling them to get their message out and interact better with their public. Dialogic communication is a necessity for activist groups. By measuring the use of …