Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Typ.Ologies: Reframing Ireland's Vernacular Letterform Through The Lens Of Heritage, Deirdre Maher Ring

Articles

Since the late 1800s, vernacular letterforms have been vital components of the traditional shopfronts of Ireland, enlivening, place-making, and inspiring dialogue with streetscapes. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage identifies, records, and evaluates Ireland’s post-1700 architectural heritage. While the state initiative appraises architecturally significant shopfronts, it typically overlooks the critical signage element. This research aims to bridge this gap by documenting, mapping, and interpreting the existing vernacular letterforms in Kilkenny as a paradigm. Through the lens of heritage, the study seeks to construct a case for preserving, promoting, and advocating for vernacular letterforms and the traditional craft of signwriting. Signwriting …

The Quest For Influence: Examining Russia's Public Diplomacy Mechanisms In Africa, Isaac Antwi-Boasiako

Articles

This article examines Russian public diplomacy mechanisms in Africa. These include the intentional use of historical ties, various aid programmes in education and health, the targeted use of international broadcasting and digital media, and the exploitation of anti-Western sentiments on the continent. Russia employs these to win the hearts and minds of African publics for its national interest. The article first explores Moscow’s public diplomacy in general and analyses the challenges Russia faces in Africa, which has become a ‘dumping ground’ for public diplomacy campaigns by the US, the EU and its members, the UK, and China. The article argues …

“Be A Pattern For The World”: The Development Of A Dark Patterns Detection Tool To Prevent Online User Loss, Jordan Donnelly, Alan Downley, Yunpeng Liu, Yufei Su, Quanwei Sun, Lan Zeng, Andrea Curley, Damian Gordon, Paul Kelly, Dympna O'Sullivan, Anna Becevel

Articles

Dark Patterns are designed to trick users into sharing more information or spending more money than they had intended to do, by configuring online interactions to confuse or add pressure to the users. They are highly varied in their form, and are therefore difficult to classify and detect. Therefore, this research is designed to develop a framework for the automated detection of potential instances of web-based dark patterns, and from there to develop a software tool that will provide a highly useful defensive tool that helps detect and highlight these patterns.

An Ethical Discussion About The Responsibility For Protection Of Minors In The Digital Environment: A State-Of-The-Art Review, Charles Alves De Castro, Aiden Carthy, Isobel Oreilly Dr

Articles

Many ethical questions have been raised regarding the use of social media and the internet, mainly related to the protection of young people in the digital environment. In order to critically address the research question "who is responsible for ethically protecting minors in the digital environment?", this paper will review the main literature available to understand the role of parents, the government, and companies in protecting young people within the digital environment. We employed a holistic process that covers a state-of-the-art review and desk research. The article is divided into four sessions; (1) Government Policies from the European Union (EU) …

Ghana's Public Diplomacy Under Kwame Nkrumah, Isaac Antwi-Boasiako

Conference Papers

The concept of public diplomacy is one of the trending approaches in modern international relations and diplomacy. Communicating and engaging effectively with the foreign public in a particular nation by a government to achieve its foreign policy objective is every government’s goal. The field of public diplomacy as an academic discipline in Ghana in particular and Africa has not received much attention compared to the Western World. This article attempts to bridge this gap by opening Ghana’s public diplomacy to academic scrutiny that has, as yet, been underdeveloped. This paper’s principal objective is to bring to light the public diplomacy …

Along The Tevere: A Gastro-Historic Portrait Of The Region, Anke Klitzing

Articles

In June 2009, a group of masters students from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy spent nine days visiting the lands of the Tevere river, travelling from its springs on Monte Fumaiolo in Emilia-Romagna to Rome by way of Umbria and the Lake Trasimeno. This article is a gastro-historic portrait of the lands of the Tevere, linking contemporary social, cultural and economic activities around food and tourism to the rich and long history of the region and highlighting persistent patterns, continuity and change.

Report On The Oxford Symposium On Food And Cookery 2018, Anke Klitzing

Reports

The annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery brings together food scholars from different disciplines, but predominantly in history and humanities. However, while continuing its tradition of more than 30 years in food studies, this international gathering also looks to the future, with several activities in the realm of Digital Humanities linked to the conference and its participants.

Memories Of Television In Ireland: Separating Media History From Nation State, Edward Brennan

Articles

This article emerges from a broader project that explores the history of television in Ireland using audience life story interviews. It argues that a dominant narrative persists in the history of television in the Republic of Ireland. Based in institutional sources this narrative is ideologically narrow although it tells a story of cultural liberation. A key example of its ideological limitation lies in the way that Irish people’s experience of British television transmissions has been forgotten. The reason for this lies in historical methods rather than conscious bias. Nevertheless, historical methods themselves can promote limited visons of reality that promote …

The Evolution Of An Enduring Expertise: Understanding Irish Economists In Irish Public Discourse In The Great Recession, Joe Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Other

This work focuses on the institutional and social contexts of Irish economists’ prominence in public discourse in Ireland during the Great Recession. While examining performative aspects of experts’ legitimacy is important, understanding the wider societal context of how particular professional expertise is recognised is also vital (Collins & Evans 2007). The economics profession generally is characterised by strong hierarchy and dense integration (Fourcade, 2009; Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009; Pautz, 2014), we explore such phenomena in the Irish context. The Irish context is of interest more generally as a prominent PIIGS country in the Eurozone crisis, as a small peripheral state …

Television In Ireland Before Irish Television: 1950s Audiences And British Programming, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

The first television broadcasts in Ireland were watched in the 1950s. These initial programmes were British. This history of these early viewers, however, has been ignored. A dominant narrative has addressed the history of television in Ireland as the history of the public broadcaster Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ). Thus, the history of Irish television often begins in 1961, overlooking Irish people’s experience of the medium in the preceding decade. This paper breaks with traditional historiography by employing life history interviews to explore the uses, rituals and feelings attached to television in the years before RTÉ.

Irish people who watched television …

Television In Ireland: A History From The Mediated Centre, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies and critiques a dominant narrative in the history of Irish television, which is too often passed off for, or accepted as, the history of television in Ireland. The his- tory of television in Ireland has been written within an institutional framework and depends on the cultural binary of tradition and modernity, ‘old Ireland’ and ‘new Ireland’. This dom- inant narrative fails to interrogate television as a medium. It provides an account of the Irish broadcaster RTÉ rather than an account of the arrival of a new medium. Ironically this nar- rative which hinges on the role of …

Why Does Film And Television Sci-Fi Tend To Portray Machines As Being Human?, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies, and attempts to explain, a lack of diversity in the way that cinema and television science fiction represents robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Through a qualitative content analysis of recent film and television portrayals, it is argued, that a limited and limiting vision predominates. This limitation may serve to ideologically reinforce the power of corporate elites. It may also hamper discussion and debate around technological possibilities and their relationship with society.

There has been a slew of entertainment productions since 2013 that represent AI and robotics. This work examines Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Interstellar (2014), Chappie (2015), …

The Production Of Ek Tha Tiger: A Marriage Of Convenience Between Bollywood And The Irish Film And Tourist Industries, Giovanna Rampazzo

Articles

This article examines a collaboration between the Irish and Hindi film industries, adopting the production of Kabir Khan’s Ek Tha Tiger (2012) in Dublin as a case study. It critically narrates the arc of the film’s production, foregrounding the intersecting concerns of Yash Raj Films and Irish creative and cultural institutions. Ek Tha Tiger represents Ireland through constructed idyllic images which proved to be successful in attracting tourists. Tracing the links between the production of the film and the promotion of tourism to Ireland, this article explains how the film was used to construct a ‘tourist gaze’ for audiences in …

Techno-Apocalypse: Technology, Religion, And Ideology In Bryan Singer’S H+, Edward Brennan

Books/Book chapters

This essay critically analyses the digital series H+. In the near future, adults who can afford them, have replaced tablets and cell phones with nanotechnology implants. The H+ implant acts as a medical diagnostic and can overlay the user's senses with a computer interface. The apocalypse comes in the form of a computer virus which infects the H+ network and instantly kills one third of humanity. The series represents the anxiety and religiosity that surrounds the possible social consequences of digital technology. It also explores the tensions and intersections between technology and faith. This essay makes the case, however, that …

Providing Objective Metrics Of Team Communication Skills Via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Finnian Kelly, Alison Kay

Conference Papers

Being able to communicate efficiently has been acknowledged as a vital skill in many different domains. In particular, team communication skills are of key importance in the operation of complex machinery such as aircrafts, maritime vessels and such other, highly-specialized, civilian or military vehicles, as well as the performance of complex tasks in the medical domain. In this paper, we propose to use prosodic accommodation and turn- taking organisation to provide objective metrics of communica- tion skills. To do this, human-factors evaluations, via a coordi- nation Demand Analysis (CDA), were used in conjunction with a dynamic model of prosodic accommodation …

Tv Still Failing To Reflect Our Multicultural Society, Ian Kilroy

Articles

Irish television and media in 2015 still lacks diversity and does not reflect our multicultural society. An Op-Ed (opinion piece) in the Irish Times by a Dublin-based academic and lecturer in Technological University Dublin.

The Western Way: Democracy And The Media Assistance Model, Daire Higgins

Articles

International media assistance took off during a time where the ideological extremes of USA vs. USSR were set to disappear. Following the Cold War, international relations focused on democracy building, and nurturing independent media was embraced as a key part of this strategy. Fukayama called it the ‘End of History’, the fact that all other ideologies had fallen and Western style democracy was set to become the one common ideology. The US and UK led the way in media assistance, with their liberal ideas of a free press, bolstered by free market capitalism. America was the superpower, and forged the …

Rationalizing Creativity—Rationalizing Public Service: Is Scheduling Management Fit For The Digital Era?, Ann-Marie Murray

Articles

In public broadcast organizations across Europe, scheduling has been transformed from a marginal, administrative activity to a highly strategic management tool (Hellman, 1999; Hujanen, 2002; Meier, 2003;Ytreberg, 2000) Ellis (2000)described it as “the locus of power in television,” organizing production and managing budgets (p. 26). The role of scheduling in public broadcast organizations today reflects the demands of increasing competition and political pressure for efficiency and accountability. However, new challenges have emerged in the transition from public service broadcasting to public service media (PSM). PSM providers must redefine their mission for the digital era and find …

Bullying In A New Ground: Cyberbullying Among 9-16 Year Olds In Ireland, Thuy Dinh, Brian O'Neill

Articles

This paper builds on the data collected in Ireland by the cross-national EU Kids Online II project- a large 25 country survey which investigated children’s experiences of the internet, focusing on issues of use, activities, risks, and safetyi . This article explores incidences, forms and consequences of cyberbullying among Irish children, as well as discussing possible prevention and intervention strategies.

Sheridan's Promising Tale Is Half Told, Ian Kilroy

Articles

Review of 'Break a Leg', the memoir by Irish theatre artist Peter Sheridan. First published in the Sunday Business Post Magazine.

Exposing England For Famine Wrongs, Ian Kilroy

Articles

A critical review of The Famine Plot by Tim Pat Coogan. Coogan blames English government policy for the Irish Famline.

Television In Ireland Before Irish Television: Nationalist Rhetoric And International Programming, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

Typical of an international tendency, the history of television in Ireland has been framed by national boundaries. This paper argues that viewing the history of television solely through institutional sources and a nation state-bound perspective obscures transnational influences and homogenises diverse audience experiences. Moreover, such histories may serve to reproduce a limited range of types of nationalist rhetoric. The research presented here explores the history of television in Ireland through life story interviews. This reveals views of the nation, its global context and processes of social change quite different to those discussed in orthodox histories. Arguably, this shift in historical …

Lost In Translation: Interpreting And Presenting Dublin’S Colonial Past, Theresa Ryan, Bernadette Quinn

Conference papers

As Alderman (2010: 90) has recently written, the potential struggle to determine what conception of the past will prevail constitutes the politics of memory. This paper aims to investigate the politics of memory at play in determining how Dublin’s colonial heritage is constructed and represented to tourists. Dublin’s profile as a tourism destination has grown recently. It attracted 5.4 million visitors in 2009 (Fáilte Ireland 2010). Culture and heritage underpin both its touristic appeal and the city’s official efforts to represent itself as a destination. Much of Dublin’s most iconic built heritage is strongly associated with its development as a …

Obtaining Speech Assets For Judgement Analysis On Low-Pass Filtered Emotional Speech, John Snel, Charlie Cullen

Conference papers

Investigating the emotional content in speech from acoustic characteristics requires separating the semantic con- tent from the acoustic channel. For natural emotional speech, a widely used method to separate the two channels is the use of cue masking. Our objective is to investigate the use of cue masking in non-acted emotional speech by analyzing the extent to which filtering impacts the perception of emotional content of the modified speech material. However, obtaining a corpus of emotional speech can be quite difficult whereby verifying the emotional content is an issue thoroughly discussed. Currently, speech research is showing a tendency toward constructing …

Not Seeing The Joke: The Overlooked Role Of Humour In Researching Television Production, Edward Brennan

Articles

This article argues that humour can provide researchers with a unique access point into the professional cultures of media producers. By reconsidering an earlier case study, and reviewing relevant literature, it illustrates how humour can fulfil several functions in media production. Importantly, humour is a central means of performing the ‘emotional labour’ that increasingly precarious media work demands. For production research, the everyday joking and banter of media workers can provide an important and, heretofore, overlooked means of accessing culture, meaning, consensus and conflict in media organizations. The article argues that humour’s organizational role should be considered as a sensitizing …

Media Effects In Context, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

The media effects tradition occupies a hugely influential and dominant role within mainstream communications research. It is unquestionably the longest running tradition within the field of audience studies, spanning nearly its entire history, yet it continues to divide opinion, both methodologically and with regard to its fundamental approach towards the study of media audiences. Its influence extends well beyond the academy, and the powerful influence exerted by its research agenda on public and political understanding of the impact of media is perhaps one of its most significant achievements.

The Future Of Audience Research, Brian O'Neill

Conference Papers

ECREA roundtable The future of audience research IAMCR conference @ BRAGA July 21 14:30-16:00 Convenor: Nico Carpentier Institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation This contribution focuses on institutional and critical perspectives on audience representation, i.e., how audience experience is formally accounted for through institutional processes of research (media literacy indices for instance) or through representative bodies such as Audience Councils. In other words, an area of overlap between audience studies and public policy debates, advocating that researchers should try to make their findings more widely available and understood in professional media environments.

Beyond Europe: Launching Digital Radio In Canada And Australia, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Eureka 147 was, as we have argued throughout this volume, a European technology designed within the very particular context of European public service broadcasting (see also Rudin 2006; O'Neill 2009). At the same time, the consortitum behind DAB technology had the ambition that Eureka 147 would become the world standard for digital radio. DAB was indeed the first such technological system to achieve standardisation at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and be recommended as a global standard for digital terrestrial sound broadcasting by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Radio Broadcasting In Europe: The Search For A Common Digital Future, Brian O'Neill, Helen Shaw

Books/Book chapters

Europe’s radio is also characterised by a long history of being defined and driven by the state, in highly centralized fashion in the case of countries such as France (Meadel 1994), or indeed in former totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe (Paulu 1974), and along more federal or devolved lines in countries such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands (Kuhn 1985). The development of state broadcasting monopolies in most European countries, established in the early years of the twentieth century following the invention of sound broadcasting, has ensured that there is an enduring shared common ideological approach to radio broadcasting, which …

Sounding The Future: Digital Radio And Cd-Quality Audio, Brian O'Neill

Books/Book chapters

Central to the early effort to win acceptance for DAB in the early 1990s was an extensive process of promotion of the many claimed advantages of the new broadcasting technology. Digital radio broadcasting under the Eureka 147 DAB project offered many technical enhancements – more efficient use of the spectrum, improved transmission methods, and lower running costs – features that were attractive to industry professionals, broadcasting organisations, regulators and spectrum planners. But digital radio was also designed as a consumer proposition offering audiences a new and improved listening experience with ease of tuning, reliable reception, text and data services, interactive …