Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Canadians Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing Of Drake, Justin Bieber, And Jessie Reyez, Amara Pope Ms.

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a country that long failed to accept, include, and institutionalize R&B music as part of Canadian culture, musical artists Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez have successfully broken-down barriers by having successful careers as racially diverse Canadian R&B artists. This qualitative study surveys the literature on classifications of the R&B genre and of Canadian identities in popular media. The theoretical framework of discourse analysis is used to conduct a brief episodic history of Canadian R&B and to evaluate how the music genre “R&B,” is traditionally associated with people who have "Black" and "American" identities, and how a “Canadian” identity …

A Descriptive Analysis Of Sport Nationalism, Digital Media, And Fandom To Launch The Canadian Premier League, Farzan Mirzazadeh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In April 2019, the Canadian Premier League (CPL), a professional domestic soccer league, launched in Canada, making it the first top-tier league in North America to begin operations in the modern digital era. The CPL represents a unique and timely opportunity to examine how a new professional sports league cultivates ties with fan-consumers via sport nationalism, digital media, and fandom. As yet, there are very few academic works on the CPL, and there is also a paucity of scholarly publications on the launch of new professional sports leagues in the 21st century. For this study, two types of qualitative data …

Alighting: A Phenomenology And Ethics Of Sight And Touch In The Videocall, Liam Morantz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis investigates from a phenomenological perspective how it is that I am able to share a space with my brother, Kyle, by way of the videocalling application FaceTime. While the thesis uses the personal as a starting point, it then draws on Merleau-Ponty, the tradition of critical phenomenology, and Media Studies to argue that the one and the other can share a ‘space’ through the screen, despite that they ostensibly only have mutual access to their auditory and visual environments. Drawing heavily on Merleau-Ponty and other contemporary phenomenologists, the thesis takes space and communication to be two different sides …

Una Visión Holística De La Memoria Digital Sobre El Conflicto Armado En Las Narrativas Digitales Del Centro Nacional De Memoria Histórica De Colombia, Talia Mendez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The connective turn marks the contemporary memory boom. The omnipresence of digital media is a provocation that makes us wonder about the relationships and connections of memory with the past, present and future in the digital world (Hoskins 9).

Using a conceptual analysis based on the idea of the connective turn, this thesis shows how the National Center of Historical Memory of Colombia has been addressing the message of memory of the armed conflict through the case study of the digital narratives of the "Digital Specials", and how the message is transmitted in their Instagram profile.

The study reflects the …

Heavy Metal Fundraisers: Entrepreneurial Recording Artists In Platform Capitalism, Jason Netherton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

How do cultural producers square customary understandings of what it means to be authentic and autonomous creators in new contexts characterized by digital-era entrepreneurial pressures and online platform-mediated financial opportunities? This study examines how heavy metal recording artists experience these pressures; how some of them engage in platform-based crowdfunding, argue over its legitimacy, and rationalize varying degrees of acceptance and dependence. First, my analysis centers on a case study which follows the experiences of a progressive metal band as they navigate a new financial relation in conjunction first with the fundraising platform Pozible and then the patronage-based crowdfunding platform …

"Dance Like Nobody's Paying": Spotify And Surveillance As The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, T. Andrew Braun

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, and its usage of music as a data extraction tool. I position Spotify as a surveillance capitalist firm that puts music at the centre of an enclosed environment designed to condition users’ affective responses and behaviors and reorient production of music. I analyze three features of the platform: a campaign in which Spotify invites users and producers to share the data it collects about them, the arrangement of the platform’s architecture into mood-based playlists, and its penchant for music that is “Chill.” I show how each serves the surveillance …

Resignation Or Resistance? Examining The Digital Privacy Attitudes And Behaviours Of East Yorkers, Kaitlyn Cavacas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Digital technologies have become enmeshed in everyday life causing the public to become exposed to potential privacy risks through data collection and aggregation practices. Further, the upsurge in use of social networking platforms has also created opportunities for privacy violations through institutional and social surveillance. Employing a qualitative thematic analysis, this study explores how adults (N=101) living in East York, Toronto, navigate privacy through their use of the internet and digital services. Participants expressed feelings of mistrust, loss of control, resignation, and perceived self-unimportance with regards to their digital data. Importantly, others noted their desire and attempts to …

A Geology Of The General Intellect, Dillon Douglas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

We can no longer be certain whether the central terms and conceptual matrix that the Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition richly develops and draws on--the common, the general intellect, immaterial labour, psychopolitics, cognitariat--are able to survive unscathed the theoretical problems that the epoch of the Anthropocene poses. In an attempt to push this conceptual matrix to its political and ontological limits, I expose a series of “ecological deficits” at the core of Autonomist thought and make the argument that semiocapitalism is a geological operator just as much it is a cognitive, financial or linguistic one. …

Appropriating Play: Examining Twitch.Tv As A Commercial Platform, Charlotte Panneton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis critically analyzes Twitch.tv, a gaming-oriented, online live-streaming site. Viewing the site as a ‘lean platform’ (Srnicek, 2017), it analyzes many aspects of Twitch’s business operations, including ownership structure, video game industry affiliations, use of data, and the monetization of user activity. This analysis then identifies three major areas of concern arising from these operations: the tendency toward monopolization in the gaming industry and its peripheral activities; the intensification of audience commodification; and, the tendency to turn professional streamers into precarious creative labourers. All of these implications point to a growing need for concerted labour organization. The goal of …

Glocalization In China: An Analysis Of Coca-Cola’S Brand Co-Creation Process With Consumers In China, Yinuo Shi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In contemporary marketing, corporations often work to induce consumers to participate in co-creating their brand value. Consumers, therefore, can be considered marketers, who are then used by marketing managers to create competitive advantage and market opportunities. Through processes of co-creation, companies also obtain valuable information about consumer preferences and values, which, in turn, can lower production costs. This thesis uses Coca-Cola as a case study to explore the ways international companies work to incorporate elements of Chinese culture and employ Chinese social media platforms in their promotional messages and activities in order to encourage Chinese consumers to co-create their brand …

Cyber-Psychopathy: Examining The Relationship Between Dark E-Personality And Online Misconduct, Andrew D. Nevin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Currently, there is a lack of research investigating how the unique structural conditions of cyberspace may influence the expression of ‘dark’ personality and the role of such e-personality in explaining instances of online misconduct. Using a theoretical framework of context-dependent personality, this study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by using self-report survey data to explore whether the internet may decrease, increase, or intensify the expression of psychopathy. Quantitative data analysis in this study shows that when controlling for social context, internet users exhibit higher levels of psychopathy online than offline, which is especially pronounced in male subsamples. …

Human-Machinic Assemblages: Technologies, Bodies, And The Recuperation Of Social Reproduction In The Crisis Era, Elise D. Thorburn

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation argues that class composition, as defined and theorised by Operaismo and Autonomist thinkers, has had both a major and a minoritarian form. In fact class composition in its major form has always been subtended by a minor current. I examine both historical (the 1905 Russian Soviets, the 1919 Turin factory councils, the Italian social movements of the 1970s) and contemporary examples (the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt, the Indignados movement in Spain, and Occupy Wall Street in 2011, as well as the 2012 Quebec student strike) of class composition. From these examples I then argue that the …

Navigating The Social Landscape: An Exploration Of Social Networking Site Usage Among Emerging Adults, Kristen Colbeck

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explores how emerging adults (Arnett, 2000) in their first- and second-year of undergraduate study make use of social networking sites (SNSs) for their day-to-day sociality. This study compares emerging adults’ use of Facebook, which is the most popular and widely used SNS among this particular demographic, to increasingly popular SNSs Twitter and Instagram. This project seeks to discover how the use of different SNSs supplements, changes, or replaces the use of Facebook, considering social capital exists on each platform, and if and how each sites’ uses and gratifications differ. This study employs face-to-face semi-structured interviews to pursue the …

The Promise And Problematic Of The Virtual Eucharist Mass According To The Roman Catholic Church’S Position In “The Church And The Internet”, Andrew W. Labenek

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study is concerned with articulating a valid community-building role that the virtual Eucharistic Mass could play within the Roman Catholic Church. I undertake this task in view of those unable to attend a real world Mass because of physical and geographical impediments or for fear of violence. According to the Pontifical Council of Social Communications’ document, “The Church and the Internet,” Eucharistic Mass celebrated through the internet is invalid. The first chapter of this study contextualizes and explains the Church’s stance in this document. The remaining two chapters are framed by the Pontifical study’s two main objections to virtual …

Anonymous: Polemics And Non-Identity, Samuel Chiang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The hacktivist collective Anonymous has been known to follow nonhierarchical, amorphous and sometimes contradictory strategies for online activism. This may weaken their potential to become a populist movement, as out-group members may find Anonymous’s politics obscure and out of reach. Anonymous’s communiqués compensate for this by enabling direct communication with the public. But as a critical discourse analysis finds, the communicative strategies employed deviate from logics of difference and non-identity. They express rigid beliefs, even at times under the banner of universal truth.

However, these findings do not suggest Anonymous inevitably embraces identity. By adopting a Deleuzian concept of minor …

Money, Morals, And Human Rights: Commercial Influences In The Marketing, Branding, And Fundraising Of Amnesty International And Human Rights Watch, Danielle Morgan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the marketing, branding, and fundraising activities of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and critically examines promotional texts used to communicate with the public. This thesis is multidisciplinary, combining scholarly work on the topics of history, humanitarianism, marketing, branding, commercialization, representation, and consumer culture. By adopting market logic and corporate strategies from the private sector, both organizations have increased revenue and created a strong identifiable brand. Each organization attempts to balance between the moral foundation or grassroots origins of the organization and the need to raise immediate revenue to sustain operations. This money-morals dilemma is also at …

Professional Athlete Self-Presentation On Twitter, Katie Lebel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the digital self-presentation of professional athletes. Central to this purpose was the application of Goffman’s (1959) self-presentation theory to the social media landscape in order to further our understanding of online athlete behavior through a theoretical lens.

Study 1 established how professional athletes are presenting themselves on Twitter through the identification of ten focused self-presentation strategies and explored differences in athlete strategy based upon gender. Content analyses compared male and female athlete tweets relayed by all professional tennis players with a verified Twitter account. The analysis suggested that while athlete image construction …

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

It's Complicated: Romantic Breakups And Their Aftermath On Facebook, Veronika A. Lukacs

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Little research examines the ways in which Facebook affects breakups. This exploratory study aimed to determine the prevalence of breakup practices unique to Facebook; to gain an understanding of the relationship between Facebook use and distress following a breakup; and to determine what strategies people use to cope with romantic breakups in the Facebook era. This topic was examined using a mixed methods approach that included a survey and semi-structured interviews. Findings show that content on Facebook can be a source of distress for individuals who have recently experienced a romantic breakup. People who engaged in high levels of interpersonal …