Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Looking Into The Effects Of The Age Of The Internet, Sarah Schaefer

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The internet has grown to play a large part in our society in the past couple decades, but with the rapid change in technology we have been ill prepared for the effects of our reliance on digital content. Looking into how different demographics and age groups are affected, we come to a conclusion that the general population needs to work to better educate themselves on the impact caused from an overuse of the internet.

Australia And A Wire Through The Heart, Addison E. Lomax

Student Publications

Throughout a period of exploration in the colony of Australia, the development of the Overland Telegraph, as discovered by Charles Todd, increased Australian interaction on a global scale. Although the documentary A Wire Through the Heart does not depict all of the complex struggles English colonizers faced when settling Australia, the film accurately reflects the technological advancements, the significance of explorers, and environmental difficulties many colonizers encountered in Australia throughout the early 1800s. Alongside the increase in communication with the rest of the world, the Overland Telegraph assisted in the development of a unique, Australian culture separate from its original …

A Virtual Life: The Nijisanji Project And The Risks Of Online Content Creation, Cayden Hernandez

Scholars Week

There are several security and privacy risks within the realm of social media and the lifestyles of social media influencers. Some YouTubers and other content creators, however, are under contract with certain agencies and sponsors, giving access to assistance in case of privacy breaches, such as information doxing. However, Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) and content creators are in a different category, as they are typically represented by a virtual avatar, which suggests that they are more protected; similar to typical content creators, though, VTubers are also at risk. If their information were leaked, the outcome could be more severe than that …

Digital Literacy Competence Of Indonesian Lecturers On Analysis Hoax In Social Media, Yanti Dwi Astuti

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Hoax in social media is increasingly flooding all types of social media. The ease with which people consume and produce information on social media provides freedom for citizens to express themselves and their attitudes regardless of whether the information is true or a hoax. ironically, this phenomenon is also affecting academics who are highly educated and work as lecturers. This article attempts to explore the digital literacy competencies of lecturers in Indonesia by taking samples of lecturers in two big cities, namely Medan and Bandung. The research was conducted using a digital ethnographic method that allows the author to be …

Art And Internet Infrastructure, Liat Berdugo

Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Scholarship

In her essay Art and Internet Infrastructure, multimedia artist, curator, and professor Liat Berdugo contemplates and complicates our overreliance and relationship with networks and technology especially during shelter-in-place.

The Myth & Legend Of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial On The Atari 2600: The Fan’S Quick Start And Strategy Guide, Miguel Ramlatchan, William I. Ramlatchan

Distance Learning Faculty & Staff Books

As an instructional designer and technologist, my goal with this book is remarkably simple, to consolidate and create a job aid for a complex and often frustrating/misunderstood quest. Rather than hunting all over the Internet, the map, tips, and information about the game are all gathered and summarized here. Also, rather than being an obscure Easter Egg in Amazon (like an Earnest Cline/James Halliday egg, especially on the hidden Pacman arcade game), I want to make this guide easier to find. Along with the nostalgia, classic video games and the technology and applied message design behind their creation are fascinating, …

Pixelated Domes: Cinematic Code Changes Through A Frank Lloyd Wright Lens, William Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Panoramic 360-degree documentary videos continue to saturate the visual landscape. As practitioners' experiment with a new genre, understanding meaning and making awaits the academic and marketplace landscape. The new media journey of 360-degree documentary storytelling is ripe for media archaeologist to explore. New media scholar Lev Manovich (2016) believes "we are witnessing the new emergence of a cultural metalanguage, something that will be at least as significant as the printed word and cinema before it" (p. 49) Considering the meta- development of this new media genre, my dissertation seeks to discuss the historical roots of the panoramic image, define 360-degree …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Not Angry But Angy: The Rhetorical Effects Of Non-Standard Language In Memes, Cailin Rhiannon Wile

Online Theses and Dissertations

The use of non-standard language on the internet has long been a topic of controversy, as some believe its prevalence indicates carelessness or a lack of intelligence in the (mostly) younger generations who use it. Non-standard language can refer to spelling or grammar that deviates from preferred language conventions, and is popular in what are called internet “memes.” Though the definition of a “meme” can vary, the term can be used to refer to pieces of culture that are remixed and disseminated by internet users. This thesis identifies patterns of non-standard language in memes to demonstrate that these changes are …

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

How Interesting Is This To You: Rating The Interestingness Of Auditory Clips, Hanna Zakharenko, James R. Unverricht, Yusuke Yamani

Psychology Faculty Publications

Modern technological environments integrate multiple devices, competing for limited attentional resources of users. This study aimed to validate the auditory stimuli used in Horrey et al. (2017) with a college student population and examine the psychological structure of task engagement. Thirty-nine students listened to thirty-nine auditory stimuli used in Horrey et al. (2017) for their level of engagement. Participants rated how interesting they found the material on a slider from -7 (boring) to 7 (interesting) while listening to each clip. Participants also rated levels of difficulty, entertainment, and likelihood to attend to each clip. Participants who rated high on difficulty, …

Engaging Underserved Voters In West Virginia During The Pandemic Election, Jacob Wasserman

Capstones

This report is the final product of my Social Journalism practicum for the Class of 2020 at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. My community focus for the degree program was underserved voters in West Virginia during the pandemic election. Within this report, I discuss the community that I intended to serve with engagement journalism, the activities and approach that I took to pursue that engagement, and how I evaluated the project with both quantitative and qualitative metrics. I also discuss ideas that I learned during the process of this project, and offer reflections on the philosophy of engagement …

Rapid Shifts In Educators’ Perceptions Of Data Literacy Priorities, Kristin Fontichiaro, Melissa P. Johnston

Journal of Media Literacy Education

To meet the challenges of a data-driven society, high school students need new arrays of literacy skills. In the United States, school librarians, who work across disciplines, are well-positioned to help students improve their data practice, but they first need new domain knowledge. This article presents findings from an evaluating survey and session evaluation data from a virtual data literacy conference, which were part of a federally-funded project to develop data literacy skills among high school librarians and educators. Findings indicated a noticeable shift in participant perceptions of the need and urgency for data literacy instruction across content areas and …

Assessing And Fostering College Students’ Algorithm Awareness Across Online Contexts, Jessica E. Brodsky, Dvora Zomberg, Kasey L. Powers, Patricia J. Brooks

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Internet users may fail to recognize how algorithms filter and personalize information. Two studies explored college students’ algorithm awareness across varying contexts. Study 1 examined Facebook users’ awareness of its algorithms (N = 222). Only about half recognized that Facebook does not show all their friends’ posts. These students more often reported making adjustments to News Feed settings than students lacking algorithm awareness. Study 2 compared students’ (N = 244) algorithm awareness for online shopping and search, and the efficacy of video instruction to increase awareness. Students were more algorithm aware for online shopping. Compared to those who …

Data (Il)Literacy Education As A Hidden Curriculum Of The Datafication Of Education, Pekka Mertala

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This position paper uses the concept of “hidden curriculum” as a heuristic device to analyze everyday data-related practices in formal education. Grounded in a careful reading of the theoretical literature, this paper argues that the everyday data-related practices of contemporary education can be approached as functional forms of data literacy education: deeds with unintentional educational consequences for students’ relationships with data and datafication. More precisely, this paper suggests that everyday data-related practices represent data as cognitive authority and naturalize the routines of all-pervading data collection. These routines lead to what is here referred to as “data (il)literacy” – an uncritical, …

Technology Criticism And Data Literacy: The Case For An Augmented Understanding Of Media Literacy, Thomas Knaus

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Reviewing the history of media literacy education might help us to identify how creating media as an approach can contribute to fostering knowledge, understanding technical issues, and to establishing a critical attitude towards technology and data. In a society where digital devices and services are omnipresent and decisions are increasingly based on data, critical analysis must penetrate beyond the “outer shell” of machines – their interfaces – through the technology itself, and the data, and algorithms, which make these devices and services function. Because technology and data constitute the basis of all communication and collaboration, media literate individuals …

Data Literacy And Education: Introduction And The Challenges For Our Field, Leo Van Audenhove, Wendy Van Den Broeck, Ilse Mariën

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Data literacy is a hot topic, which is currently discussed in many different fields from open data initiatives, statistics, computer societies, coding initiatives, and beyond. The resulting literature is inspiring but not always satisfying from the perspective of the media literacy scholarly field. The goals behind data literacy are often instrumental and utilitarian in the function of job-related skills or open data initiatives. We hope that this special issue will contribute to a broader discussion about data literacy. In this introductory essay we provide an overarching introduction, highlighting some of the main themes, questions, issues, and insights addressed in …

Climate Change Games As Boundary Objects: Fostering Dialogic Communication Within Stakeholder Engagement, Megan L. Mckittrick

English Theses & Dissertations

Rising waters and the increasing devastation of flood events make coastal resilience a significant issue in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, particularly in the city of Norfolk. Enhancing resilience requires ongoing stakeholder engagement designed to invite dialogue while encouraging cross-jurisdictional collaboration and comprehensive problem-solving. Climate change games have been employed to support these endeavors. This dissertation provides a response to the following research questions: 1) What is the origin of the climate change game genre? 2) Why are key stakeholders in coastal resilience using climate change games? And 3) how do these games operate for these key stakeholders? To …

“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …

Accessibility Compliance And Assessments For Gateway Websites In Life Sciences: Toward Inclusive Design, Noreen Y. Whysel, Shari Thurow, Bev Corwin

Publications and Research

One main purpose of information architecture and site navigation is to enhance the effectiveness of user interfaces (UIs) by supporting and enabling task completion, accessibility, and sustainability. This is of particular importance for science gateways given the complexity of information on portal sites.

We examined the accessibility of 50 randomly selected gateway websites in the Life Sciences category in the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) catalog, using both manual and automated methodologies. None of these sites produced an accessible website as per W3C, WCAG 2.1, and Section 508 standards. The most common accessibility success in these websites was URL structure, …

Visualizing Tedx Events: Ten Years Of “Ideas Worth Spreading”, Antonios Liamis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I have always been fascinated by how ideas are spread. Often, ideas are chosen to serve an immediate purpose, and there is an expectation that the choice will matter only insofar as it serves to achieve the desired goal. However, once an idea takes off, it becomes sufficient in itself to disseminate its message. When I first heard about the rubric “Ideas Worth Spreading” in connection with Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conferences, I had an emotional response because I was always trying to get involved in those three categories. My fascination with the question of what makes some ideas …

The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Using episodes from the show Black Mirror as a study tool - a show that features tales that explore techno-paranoia - the course analyzes legal and policy considerations of futuristic or hypothetical case studies. The case studies tap into the collective unease about the modern world and bring up a variety of fascinating key philosophical, legal, and economic-based questions.

Playing On The Threshold: Topological Chronotopes And Video Games, Michael Joseph Piero

English Theses & Dissertations

This study argues that the chronotope—literally “timespace”—is a useful, flexible heuristic for understanding how video game timespace is ideology, often encoding hegemonic norms of heteronormativity, misogyny, sovereign power’s control of bare life, and dualistic thinking. Adapting and reforging Mikhail Bakhtin’s “chronotope of the threshold,” I track the topological movements of threshold chronotopes across a series of games and game genres that reveal threshold experiences of play, ontology, and justice. This work of theory takes into account video game mechanics, interfaces, narratives, iconography, and materiality within the context of a player’s experience as a player-reader given to a bodily-rooted play with …

The Crisis Of Communication In The Information Age: Revisiting C.P. Snow's Two Cultures In The Era Of Fake News, Aaron Green

Irish Communication Review

The purpose of this paper is to revisit C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” lecture in light of the cultural dominance of information technology. The crisis of communication in the information age, whether in fake news, political polarisation or science denial, has come about because both scientific and literary cultures, in seeking a world without entropy, have inadvertently stumbled upon a world without meaning. In order to explain how this has happened, the paper first explores Snow's challenge: to describe the second law of thermodynamics. The paper then provides a description of entropy that is neutral with regard to thermodynamics and information, …

Evaluating Audience Engagement Of An Immersive Performance On A Virtual Stage, Victoria J. Kraj, Thomas Maranzatto, Joe Geigel, Reynold Bailey, Cecillia Ovesdotter Alm

Frameless

Presenting theatrical performances in virtual reality (VR) has been an active area of research since the early 2000's. VR provides a unique form of storytelling, which is made possible through the use of physically and digitally distributed 3D worlds.

We describe a methodology for determining audience engagement in a virtual theatre performance. We use a combination of galvanic skin response (GSR) data, self-reported positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS), post-viewing reflection, and a think aloud method to assess user reaction to the virtual reality experience.

In this study, we combine the implicit physiological data from GSR with explicit user feedback …

Encounter And Counter: Critical Media Literacy In Teacher Education, Rick Marlatt

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This practitioner article describes the recent implementation of critical media literacy (CML) activities in secondary teacher education at a large university in the Southwestern United States. Preservice teachers in a content area literacy course analyzed a variety of media coverage of events that occurred near their university. Using an analytical framework for approaching texts, images, and messages, preservice teachers practiced critical exploration of media sources and motivations while articulating hidden figures of power and authority behind the dissemination of content for public consumption. Highlighting the pursuit of independent media and the cultivation of intellectual self-defense, this “Voices from the Field” …

Interest-Driven Sociopolitical Youth Engagement: Art And Gun Violence Prevention, Janíce Tisha Samuels

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This exploratory case study examines the National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence intervention launched in Chicago in 2017 that used public art and new media creation to engage youth in activism for gun violence prevention. Five African American and Latino youth artists participated in the program; the study focuses on three of the participants’ experiences. The researcher’s goal was to determine whether the unique mix of media and education practices used to develop and deliver the intervention curriculum impacted participants’ art practice, understanding of gun violence, and/or self-concept. A theoretical thematic approach to coding was applied to the audio, …

Early Adolescents' Perceptions And Attitudes Towards Gender Representations In Video Games, Helen Liu

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study investigated adolescents’ perception and attitudes towards gender representation in video game covers, and the degree to which these depictions may influence their notions on gender and identification. Seventeen participants ranging from ages 12 and 13 participated in semi-structured interviews to explore this topic. This study’s conceptual framework encompassed social cognitive theory, gender schema theory, and cultivation theory. Findings suggest that gender representation in video games does influence the majority of participants’ notions of gender. However, there are differences between how males and females’ approach, interpret, and respond to this type of media. Findings also showcased that evidence of …

From Wordsworth’S Poetic Problem To Puzzleless Interactive Fiction, Timothy Wilcox

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Steve Meretzky’s 1985 A Mind Forever Voyaging functions as the first major text-adventure which does not structure its interactions around challenging, often cryptic, puzzles. Instead, the work allows readers to observe and record social change leisurely, requiring one to match wits with one’s imagination more so than the computer. This development of puzzleless interactive fiction has had forward-leaning influence. Chris Klimas’ development of Twine traces back in design philosophy to Meretzky’s innovations here, and autobiographic explorations in the medium develop then from this shift away from puzzles toward more subjective experiences. In addition to this forward influence, however, I trace …

From Ai With Love: Reading Big Data Poetry Through Gilbert Simondon’S Theory Of Transduction, Andrew Klobucar

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Computation initiated a far-reaching re-imagination of language, not just as an information tool, but as a social, bio-physical activity in general. Modern lexicology provides an important overview of the ongoing development of textual documentation and its applications in relation to language and linguistics. At the same time, the evolution of lexical tools from the first dictionaries and graphs to algorithmically generated scatter plots of live online interaction patterns has been surprisingly swift. Modern communication and information studies from Norbert Weiner to the present-day support direct parallels between coding and linguistic systems. However, most theories of computation as a model of …