Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Refigured: Separations In Portraiture, Caroline Myers

All Theses

Utilizing traditional painting techniques embedded with digital syntaxes, Refigured: Separations in Portraiture, serves as a catalog of my experiences with communication in a hyperconnected world. Processing illegible information caused by my hearing loss informs the process of imposing similar boundaries within my paintings. Like a technical glitch, these obstructions create an illegible visual experience, with evidence of my process remaining as a clue for the viewer’s understanding of the image.

Though personal in nature, I expand from my experience with auditory communication to employ pertinent explorations into the sustained unpredictability of today’s ever-expanding medium that is technology. My paintings …

The Problem Of The "Virtual": Virtual Reality, Digital Dualism, And Religious Experience, Jordan Brady Loewen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation uses resources from religious studies to critique the problem of digital dualism haunting notions of the "virtual" in the discourse of contemporary virtual reality technologies (VR). Digital dualism is the idea that digital or "virtual" worlds are fundamentally distinct from the "real" or physical world. Digital dualism is a problem because it mischaracterizes how we experience the spatial and temporal connections to our body in digital-virtual worlds and contributes to a false sense of subjective singularity rather than multiplicity that destabilizes how we relate to ourselves and others. Using the study of religion, philosophy, and aesthetics, we can …

Niche Journalism: Successful Steps In A Saturated, Modern Market, Arianna L. Smith

Honors College Theses

“How-to” articles make up the bulk of an average Google search when initiating research on a new venture—the subject of self-publishing and propagating journalistic content is no exception. In this day and age, self-started publications are almost guaranteed to be niche in nature. With the intent to create a more academic and objectively reliable guide, this literature review takes into account the observations and conclusions of multiple communications professionals, long-and-short standing news organizations of varying success and notoriety, and studies concerned with the trends relating to audience engagement and technology integration to answer the main research questions thus: what is …

Advanced Statistics In Arkansas Sports Reporting, Andrew Lee Epperson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to analyze how Arkansas’ sports journalists are adapting to the recent surge in available advanced statistics that are being used by certain national news organizations. Using in-depth qualitative research that includes in-depth interviews with a number of individuals in the print, broadcast, and athletics side of sports coverage, we discover how journalists and coaches use these next-generation analytics, what they fundamentally mean for the evolution of each respective path, and why so few Arkansas reporters and writers use them at the time of this paper’s defense. We see how budgets and deadlines restrict the use of these …

Transitioning College Media From Print Focused Business Models To Digitally Focused Business Models, Celina Oseguera

Journalism

The noticeable downturn in print advertising indicates a need for change in the news industry business model. College media is not immune to this decline and need for change. A change in business model calls for transitioning to an alternative system that does not primarily rely on print products and advertising — a digitally focused business model. Many college media organizations around the United States have started to pursue this type of model, changing the way they produce and present news in the process. Taking into account the state of print focused business models in the general and collegiate news …

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 …