Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

Ai-Based Steganography Method To Enhance The Information Security Of Hidden Messages In Digital Images, Nhi Do Ngoc Huynh, Jiajun Jiang, Chung-Hao Chen, Wen-Chao Yang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

With the increasing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI), traditional digital steganography methods face a growing risk of being detected and compromised. Adversarial attacks, in particular, pose a significant threat to the security and robustness of hidden information. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel AI-based steganography framework designed to enhance the security of concealed messages within digital images. Our approach introduces a multi-stage embedding process that utilizes a sequence of encoder models, including a base encoder, a residual encoder, and a dense encoder, to create a more complex and secure hiding environment. To further improve robustness, we integrate …

Co-Creation, Interpretations And Engagement With A Movement-Based Symbol For Climate Justice: A Qualitative Inquiry, Kai Reimer-Watts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The climate crisis demonstrates with complete clarity the need for massive systems-level changes towards far more sustainable societies. Global and local emissions need to decline rapidly to mitigate intensifying climate breakdown, accompanied by climate and sustainability solutions, to secure a far more stable, safe, and just future for all people and all life. Within these changes, engaging in our communities is essential to support and co-create broader solutions to help advance more sustainable societies, reduce negative impacts of a changing climate, and to move towards cultures and systems that recognize natural limits and centre care for people and planet.

‘Climate …

A Systematic Review Of The Effects Of Ai-Assisted Moderation On Individuals And Groups, Zehui Yu, Lukas Otto, Dennis Assenmacher, Claudia Wagner

Human-Machine Communication

This review paper provides a conceptualization of AI-assisted content moderation with various degrees of autonomy and summarizes experimental evidence for how different levels of automation in content moderation and related losses of autonomy affect individuals and groups. Our results show that current research predominantly focuses on individuallevel effects, necessitating a shift toward understanding the impact on groups. The study highlights gaps in exploring different levels of AI-assisted moderation interventions and misalignments of different conceptualizations that make comparing research results difficult. The discussion underscores the prevailing emphasis on harmful content removal and advocates for investigating more constructive moderation techniques, emphasizing the …

Hell You Talmbout: Mixtapes As Method For Online Environmental Justice Pedagogy, Elspeth Iralu, Caitlin Grann

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper takes on the mixtape as a pedagogical method for approaching urgent and critical topics within the undergraduate online classroom. Drawing on two case studies from different sections of an introductory course on environmental and social justice taught in an American studies department, we demonstrate how mixtape-inspired assignments offer a method for theorizing and enacting the connections between popular culture and critical scholarship around injustice in the humanities and social sciences while also altering the space of the classroom to promote deeper student engagement, comprehension, and reflection. We argue that introducing popular culture as both content and method within …

Digital India, Rajendra Srivastava, Vijay Shankar S, Aman Rajeev Kulkarni

Asian Management Insights

At the heart of India’s ongoing digital transformation lies a ‘perfect storm’ of pivotal elements: a robust telecom industry, groundbreaking digital technologies, an evolving payments ecosystem, and widespread smartphone adoption. Together, these elements have redefined connectivity, communication, and financial transactions, positioning India as a leader in the digital age.

The Psychological Impacts Of Algorithmic And Ai-Driven Social Media On Teenagers: A Call To Action, Sunil Arora, Sahil Arora, John Hastings

Research & Publications

This study investigates the meta-issues surrounding social media, which, while theoretically designed to enhance social interactions and improve our social lives by facilitating the sharing of personal experiences and life events, often results in adverse psychological impacts. Our investigation reveals a paradoxical outcome: rather than fostering closer relationships and improving social lives, the algorithms and structures that underlie social media platforms inadvertently contribute to a profound psychological impact on individuals, influencing them in unforeseen ways. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced among teenagers, who are disproportionately affected by curated online personas, peer pressure to present a perfect digital image, and the …

Architecting Standards: Leveraging Ia To Drive Emerging Technology Standards​, Noreen Y. Whysel

Publications and Research

In this talk for the annual meeting of the W3C Information Architecture Community Group, I discuss how standards bodies can learn from the Information Architecture field to improve accessibility and usability. By adopting user-centered design principles and engaging in iterative feedback loops, standards organizations can create more relevant and practical standards that align with real-world applications. Emphasizing collaboration with industry experts and end-users will help ensure that standards evolve along with technological advancements.

In the meantime, key standards are examined, such as ISO 9241, which provides guidelines for usability and user-centered design, and the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), …

Comparing A Narrative And Didactic Approach To An Invasive Species Education Video, Tim Campbell, Bret Shaw, Amulya Rao, Jenna Klink, Feiran Chen

Journal of Extension

Video is a common tool for engaging audiences in Extension topics, yet evaluation of the different video production approaches is lacking. We compared learning and emotional outcomes after boaters in the Great Lakes watched either a narrative or didactic video focused on how to prevent the spread of an aquatic invasive species. There were differences in how each approach affected viewers, indicating that there can be utility in both approaches to video production. Extension staff that are creating videos should have these outcomes in mind to promote desired behaviors.

Further Developing Drought Early Warning Information Systems Using Mixed-Methods And Multiple Streams Of Data, Caily Claire Schwartz

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Drought is a complex phenomenon with varying degrees of impacts and monitoring methods. No drought is alike, creating a challenge for both water managers and communities. No area is immune to a drought. Due to the cyclical nature of drought events, clear information to those impacted is necessary to reduce risk and move towards proactive responses, as opposed to reactive responses. To better provide communication and mitigation tools, Drought Early Warning Information Systems (DEWIS) have been developed in various regions and contexts. To improve early warning, an understanding of the end user’s perceptions of risk, and the applicability of data …

Reachability-Aware Fair Influence Maximization, Wenyue Ma, Maximilian K. Egger, Andreas Pavlogiannis, Yuchen Li, Panagiotis Karras

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

How can we ensure that an information dissemination campaign reaches every corner of society and also achieves high overall reach? The problem of maximizing the spread of influence over a social network has commonly been considered with an aggregate objective. Less attention has been paid to achieving equality of opportunity, reducing information barriers, and ensuring that everyone in the network has a fair chance to be reached. To that end, the fairness objective aims to maximize the minimum probability of reaching an individual. To address this inapproximable problem, past research has proposed heuristics, which, however, perform less well when the …

Memetic Memory As Vital Conduits Of Troublemakers In Digital Culture, Alexander O. Smith, Jordan Loewen-Colón

School of Information Studies - Post-doc and Student Scholarship

Recent fears of data capitalism and colonialism often argue using implicit assumptions about cybernetic technology’s ability to automate data about culture. As such, the level of data granularity made possible by cybernetic engineering can be used to dominate society and culture. Here we unpack these implicit assumptions about the datafication of culture through memes, which both act as cultural data and cultural memory. Using Alexander Galloway’s critical method of protocological analysis and descriptions of media tactics, we respond to fears of cybernetic domination. Protocols – the source by which cybernetic technologies enable automated datafication – enables us to respond to …

Ocular Gene Transfer In The Spotlight: Implications Of Newspaper Content For Clinical Communications, Shelly Benjaminy, Tania M. Bubela

Office of the Provost

Background: Ocular gene transfer clinical trials are raising hopes for blindness treatments and attracting media attention. News media provide an accessible health information source for patients and the public, but are often criticized for overemphasizing benefits and underplaying risks of novel biomedical interventions. Overly optimistic portrayals of unproven interventions may influence public and patient expectations; the latter may cause patients to downplay risks and over-emphasize benefits, with implications for informed consent for clinical trials. We analyze the news media communications landscape about ocular gene transfer and make recommendations for improving communications between clinicians and potential trial participants in light of …

Understanding And Fighting Scams: Media, Language, Appeals And Effects, Shuhua Zhou, Xiao Fan Liu, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, S. Harrison, X. Zhang, S. Zhen, D. Yeung, J. Hsiao, R. Lc, A. Chan, X. Wang, C. Jiang, F. Lin, J. Li, A. Wong, L. Chan, B. George, P. Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Scams are fraudulent activities aiming to deceive individuals into relinquishing money, property, or rights, and they have proliferated in the context of widespread misinformation and disinformation. In this paper, we propose strategies and a research plan to address key questions about the exploitation of new communication technologies by scammers, the prevalence and nature of different scam types, and the language characteristics and appeals used in scamming content. We aim to develop a comprehensive taxonomy of scams and identify factors that contribute to their persuasiveness. Additionally, we propose the use of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, physiological measures, and brain mapping, …

Do You Say Please Or Thank You To Chatgpt? The Subtle Influence Of Prompt Engineering On Digital Civility, Essraa Nawar

Library Articles and Research

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In the dynamic and rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, tools like ChatGPT have become integral to our daily digital interactions. These advanced AI systems assist us with a myriad of tasks, from generating text and answering complex questions to providing creative solutions. However, as we engage more frequently with these non-human entities, an intriguing question arises: Are we inadvertently becoming ruder in our digital communications, or are we consciously maintaining our ingrained habits of politeness?"

Ai And Advocacy: Maximizing Potential, Minimizing Risk, Matthew Salzano, Nicholas Fung, Ada Lin, Sofia Marchetta, Faith Colombo, Kaylah Davis, John Flynn, Carlos Fuentes, Fion Li, Malar Paavi Muthukumaran, Angelica Paramoshin, Chrisanne Pearce, Vianney Ramos, Charles St. Hilaire, Xi Zheng, Wei Zhuang

School of Communication and Journalism Faculty Publications

New Generative AI tools are revolutionizing writing and communication. This report focuses on AI and advocacy, the act of influencing public policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions. This report identifies three major opportunities and accompanying risks, plus one strong recommendation for advocates considering using AI. We argue that AI can be useful for advocates, but they must be careful to center human judgment and avoid risks that could distract from their important work or even contribute to societal harms.

Artificial Sociality, Simone Natale, Iliana Depounti

Human-Machine Communication

This article proposes the notion of Artificial Sociality to describe communicative AI technologies that create the impression of social behavior. Existing tools that activate Artificial Sociality include, among others, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, voice assistants, virtual influencers, socialbots and companion chatbots such as Replika. The article highlights three key issues that are likely to shape present and future debates about these technologies, as well as design practices and regulation efforts: the modelling of human sociality that foregrounds it, the problem of deception and the issue of control from the part of the users. Ethical, social and cultural …

Does The Use Of Media And Other Information Sources Cause The Perceived Experience Of Climate Change Or Is It The Other Way Around?, Sonny Rosenthal, Pengya Ai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The perceived experience of climate change can be an important motivator of individual climate action. Recent scholarship argued that the use of media and other information sources is a basis of perceived experience. The current study analyzed a cross-lagged panel model to know if the use of information causes perceived experience or vice versa. Analysis of longitudinal data from a sample of Singapore residents (N = 466) showed that the use of traditional media, but not social media or interpersonal sources, explained change in perceived experience. In contrast, perceived experience explained change in the use of traditional media and interpersonal …

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus: Dyadic Collaboration In The Metaverse, Shu Schiller, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Andy Luse, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Purpose: The gender composition of teams remains an important yet complex element in unlocking the success of collaboration and performance in the metaverse. In this study, the authors examined the collaborations of same- and mixed-gender dyads to investigate how gender composition influences perceptions of the dyadic collaboration process and outcomes at both the individual and team levels in the metaverse. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on expectation states theory and social role theory, the authors hypothesized differences between dyads of different gender compositions. A blocked design was utilized where 432 subjects were randomly assigned to teams of different gender compositions: 101 male dyads, …

Identifying Accessibility Improvement Opportunities For Global Environmental Communication Websites, Alicia Mason, Josh Compton, Sakshi Bhati

Faculty Submissions

Digital environmental information presented with low web accessibility reduces parti-cipation in environmental advocacy and information seeking behaviors for many people with disabilities, creating a consequential digital divide. We use WEB AIM computer automated analysis of web accessibility to assess the general accessibility of online environmental communication messages. Results show 95.3% of the popular websites in our sample had indicators of potentially critical accessibility errors. Our findings highlight the importance of addressing digital environmental information accessibility shortcomings so that educational, informational and persuasive environ-mental messages can increase environmental literacy of vulnerable populations and help to bridge the digital divide.

Fairness And Fair Use In Generative Ai, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Although we are still a long way from the science fiction version of “artificial general intelligence” that thinks, feels, and refuses to “open the pod bay doors,” recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have captured the public’s imagination and lawmakers’ interest. We now have large language models (LLMs) that can pass the bar exam, carry on (what passes for) a conversation about almost any topic, create new music, and create new visual art. These artifacts are often indistinguishable from their human-authored counterparts and yet can be produced at a speed and scale surpassing human ability.

“Generative AI” …

Listening To The Voices Of America, Kathryn J. Edin, Corey D. Fields, David B. Grusky, Jure Leskovec, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Kristen M. Olson, Charles Varner

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We make the case for building a permanent public-use platform for conducting and analyzing immersive interviews on the everyday lives of Americans. The American Voices Project (AVP)—a widely watched experiment with this new platform—provides important early evidence on its promise. The articles in this issue reveal that, although public-use interview datasets obviously cannot meet all research needs, they do provide new opportunities to study small or hidden populations, new or emerging social problems, reactions to ongoing social crises, submerged values and attitudes, and many other aspects of American life. We conclude that a permanent AVP platform would help build an …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Triple Helix: Ai-Artist-Audience Collaboration In A Performative Art Experience, Xuedan Zou

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Imagine an art exhibition that morphs its content according to the audience’s experience like a chameleon, reflecting the audience’s mind and culture and turning the artist’s exhibition into the viewer’s. But when the viewers leave, the work fades back to the creator’s original work and waits for the next audience. In this project, my team introduced an interactive exhibition called "Triple Helix," where audience members were provided the opportunity to alter the artworks created by the artist, thus imbuing them with their own perspectives. This interactive exhibition was held at three physical-locations and online, and a comprehensive user study was …

The How And Why Of Visual Practice At Un Climate Negotiations, Stéphanie Heckman

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article Stéphanie Heckman examines the process and outcomes of her graphic recording work and other forms of visual practice in the context of UN climate negotiations, reflecting on three years of collaboration with the UN Climate Change Secretariat, particularly during the eighteen-month Global Stocktake process. After a review of the history and science behind visual storytelling, she analyses one of the graphic recordings made for the third meeting of the Technical Dialogue of the Global Stocktake through the lens of Kelvy Bird’s ‘Levels of Scribing’ model. Drawing on comments from delegates at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and …

Ai In The College Classroom: From Communication To Animation, Stefanie Powers, Erika Grodzki, Gary Carlin, Hung Chum Kao

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.