Sociology of Culture Commons^™

The Digital Watchmakers: Playing With The Sacred In Video Games, Anthony Langley

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

With video games establishing itself as a multi-billion dollar industry, academia as a whole has been slowly looking at the medium as an object of study. The field of religious studies has also begun to take notice of it. At face value, this is a great a way to observe concepts of religiosity in a fairly new medium. In spite of this, the same questions are being asked. The first is how are the narrative of games depicting religious motifs? Secondly, what can we learn through the social interactions of people within a digital space about religion? Finally, how are …

Fabricating Freddy Vs. Jason: Understanding A Motion Picture As A Social Encounter Between Fans And Filmmakers, Jason M. Rapelje

Dissertations

The break in the mass communicative chain, which separates producers and receivers from one another in both time and space, impedes researchers from studying motion pictures as social encounters. As with face-to-face encounters, producers and receivers of motion pictures depend upon the use of "rules of relevance" (Goffman, 1961) and "typifactory schemes" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) for their encounters to take place. I examine the social encounter that takes place between some of the filmmakers and fans of Freddy vs Jason through the use of these concepts, as well as a revision of John B. Thompson's (1990) methodological framework of …

“All Things Considered”: A Comparative Case Study Examining The Commercial Presence Within Public Radio, Peter P. Nieckarz Iii

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the commercial presence within public radio. A case study of three NPR affiliate stations was conducted to determine to what extent public radio is being influenced or compromised by increased commercial rationality. It also addresses how they have been able to resist commercialism and remain true to the original ideals of public radio. The research included active interviews, observations, and document analyses of data collected from field research at each o f the three stations in the sample. Analysis of the data indicates that public radio stations have grown more commercial due to declining tax-based subsidies, and …

A Study Of Ideological Change In Reggae Music From 1971 To 1993, William H. Stanley

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to see if the reggae music that became popular in the United States was ideologically different from the reggae that originated in Jamaica. The hypothesized change was derived from a model developed by Humphrey Regis (1994, 1988) labeled “cultural domination by re-exportation”. It was determined that early reggae music and the Rastafarian religion had very similar ideologies. The change within reggae music was measured against the Rastafarian belief system.

A content analysis of twenty-five songs was undertaken. The method of doing ideological analysis of the reggae lyrics was derived from Cormack (1992). The sample …