Over the past several years, the economics of the music industry has completely shifted: positive online presence, a widespread fan base, and the celebrity status have overridden high record sales. The music industry isn’t just about the music anymore. Admiration for ones talent has quickly diminished into admiration for ones celebrity status. Those attempting to break the entertainment industry must seek the approval of the harshest critics – the public – before even thinking of success. Through different generations, trends, and eras, boy bands have stood the test of time. The cookie cutter formula for a boy band has always proven successful in the music industry as boyishly good looks, harmonies, and dance moves are a sure winner. Through the case study of Beatlemania and One Direction, this thesis will explore the changes in the music industry and what it takes to become an established artist in this generation.

<p>This project began as an investigation of the way children are depicted, characterized, and represented in adult literature, or in fiction that is not meant for children. In this sort of literature, child characters are typically very complicated. And the ways in which they are complicated say a great deal about the author's assumptions about children and childhood, and about the dominant assumptions of children and childhood that characterize the author's historical period. In order to speak to the ideas which characterize the Romantic period, this project concentrates critical attention on two texts by Mary Shelley, and two of the stranger child-like characters from her historical period.</p> <p>This thesis works through what it means to understand the knowledge of kids in terms of what I call the "extracurricular." "Extracurricular" signals this thesis' particular concern with questions relating to the remainders of education and knowledge. Deborah Britzman's work on queer pedagogy provided the language necessary for examining the theoretical and political implications of child knowledge in Shelley. Britzman's discussion of what she terms "difficult knowledge" provided critical traction for talking about the types of education Shelley theorizes, more specifically, in Frankenstein and Matilda, but was not sufficient for a full analysis of the problems that arise in these texts, and within the critical contexts in which the texts are taken up. Instead of simply applying the concept of difficult knowledge to Shelley, this thesis works to translate the Shelleyean concept of "dangerous knowledge" into a model for understanding the relationship of the political to the pedagogical as it pertains to kids. This thesis, in other words, takes place at the intersection of Shelley's discussions of dangerous knowledge and Britzman's discussion of difficult knowledge.</p> <p>The implications that Shelley's work has for the value of public education, and a less privatized society than the one she witnessed and responded to in her fiction, are still urgent today. While our education system is, ofcourse, profoundly different than the system Shelley was writing about, her demands for a public space (as well as a happy domestic sphere), and a system of public education that is healthy, democratic and keyed towards respecting the knowledge of children represent a politics ofhope in which education is taken seriously because it is understood to have a critical place in the formation of subjectivity.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The Adventures ofMetaMan: The Superhero as a Representation ofModem Western Masculinity (1940-2010) is a practice-based research project. The aim of this research project is to develop interactive works of art that interrogate superhero narratives and representations of male identity, with the potential to relate to the experiences of relevant users in educational environments. At the current stage of the project, young men aged 11-14 in the English school system are a possible target audience. The work of art takes the form of interactive software written in Adobe Flash, with additional visuals created by myself in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe lllustrator and through traditional pen-and-ink drawings. The conceptualisation, development and execution of both software and content took place over a three-year period. While numerous literary and artistic references were employed in order to actualise this work, the software's visuals and words were entirely self-created. The work's original contribution to knowledge is found in the project's form. In combining the platform of digital media with the artistic styles and narrative themes of the superhero genre of comic books, the project explores the subjects of heroes and masculinity and has the potential to help its target audience to understand that the definition of masculinity is always in a state of flux. As evidenced by the historical texts, studies of visual culture, gender, and media representations of heroes and men that were referenced to develop the software, different types of men, ranging from the civil rights activist of the 1960s to the macho action movie star of the 1990s and significant representations of masculinity between these decades have been regarded as hero figures at different points in time. The conc~pt of masculinity is fluid and reliant upon a variety of factors such as current events, cultural trends, politics, economics and popular culture and this is reflected in the evolution of the superhero in Western mass media. The MetaMan project showcases the impact that heroes and role models have and the way that art can echo culture and society. It can provide a fully interactive experience that places modern masculinity into the context of the user's life and circumstances, adapting to each user. The software is accompanied by a written component detailing the reasons for its form and potential audience, the artistic process necessary to create it, an account of a pilot scheme conducted with 120 male students aged 11-14 in the English school system and the further applications and plans for the future stages of the MetaMan project.

Digital media and networks occupy an increasing central position within contemporary societies. This position does not simply involve communicational forms. From the turn of the millennium, phenomena of on- line activism have regularly emerged, bringing novel political forms of resistance to the fore. In academic literature, such phenomena are defined as ‘hacktivism’, putting hacker culture in contact with the politically motivated use of networked media by social movements. However, these scholarly perspectives often fail to deal sufficiently with the original forms of mediation that are at stake in hacktivist ‘deployments’ of media apparatuses. Finding inspiration especially in the work of Félix Guattari, I propose a ‘machinic’ methodology able to deal with the relations and processes with which the act of researching is inescapably involved, overcoming the distances that epistemologically separate the subject from its objects of research. Hence, I originate a ‘method assemblage’ by combining emergent theories in the field of media and culture, and advancing a critical questioning on the same researching procedures. Linking media ecologies and archaeologies, the resulting creative method allows an approach to the case study of ‘Anonymous’ through a novel critical compass. The original creation of the method aims to study without foreclosing the heterogeneous forms of active resistance actualised through media technologies. I suggest that the short-term, transient character of contemporary forms of resistance does not lack political efficacy. Rather hacktivism has to be reconsidered in vital terms beyond representation, within a field that is ‘micro-political’ and materially involves novel processes of subjectivation and disruptiveness.

The following work is a feature length screenplay about Anna Morris, an 18-year-old girl who finds herself faced with a moral dilemma when her estranged father, Robert, contacts her on her 18th birthday. When she learns about Robert’s past involvement in an online child pornography ring Anna must decide if she can forgive him, or -- more importantly -- if he is worthy of forgiveness. However, as the story unfolds we find that it is not just Anna who needs to forgive. This story approaches issues of repentance, growth, and the journey into adulthood as Anna takes on each new challenge.

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Utilizing critical and feminist science and technology studies methods, this thesis offers a new framework, called critical breaking, to allow for reflective and critical examination and analysis of instances of error, breakdown, and failure in digital systems. This framework has three key analytic goals: auditing systems, forging better relationships with systems, and discovering elements of the context in which these systems exist. This framework is further explored by the examination of three case studies of communities of breaking practice: video game speed-runners, software testers, and hacktivists. In each case, critical breaking is further developed in reflection of resonant and dissonant elements of each practice with critical breaking. In addition, artistic productions related to these case studies are also introduced as inflection points and potential alternative expressions of critical breaking analysis. The goal of this thesis is to provide a way to engage with breakdown and error and more than simply the negation of the good or as a sensationalist talking point, and instead use it as a fecund place for reflective, analytic growth. / by Christopher Kerich. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-79). / This thesis develops an intersectional, critical analysis of the field of practice known as Civic Tech and highlights other relevant community-organizing and activist practices that utilize technology as a central component. First, I develop critiques of Civic Tech as a dominant technocratic, neoliberal approach to democracy and bureaucracy and trace the history and intellectual genealogy of this specific movement. I then highlight civic technologies outside of the field of Civic Tech that have resulted in more redistributive and democratic outcomes, especially for Black people and other people of color. Finally, I define a research and design practice called Critical Community Technology Pedagogy that is demystificatory, multi-directional, transferable, and constructive, and draws upon examples from the Civic Lab for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) in Newfoundland, Data DiscoTechs in Detroit, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York City. / by Maya M. Wagoner. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Pursuing threads of my own activity that are discussed or enacted in texts and their related curatorial and publication projects, I put forward a practice that performs curating in the act of doing it. The thesis lays out a context for this approach to curating against a backdrop of how curatorial theory has been moving the practice towards disciplinarity. Through proposing the adoption of the persona of a curator, facilitating a means to play with the conventions of art, I explore how exhibitions and the institutions in which they are staged my be convened as a different form of public space. This stands as a countermove against the formation of curating as a discipline. In this, curating is displayed as a fundamental aspect of the contemporary aesthetic where narratives, both real and fictive, suffused with the a sense of self in a broader cultural landscape. I touch on a shift where veracity in saying and acting out roles has supplanted concrete truths. As a fundamental player in a globalised culture, the curator, and doing curating, is claimed as potentially emancipatory, albeit fraught with tensions. My own work proves illustrative of how these tensions might be generative by adopting rules or conventions as game-like structures. This offers a unique consideration of what lies between critical and practice-based acts – exhibition-making, critical writing and an element of strategically deployed tom-foolery - in an attempt to avoid simple definition and lay out alternative, speculative positions. I illustrate and narrate these moves in the outcomes of a selected number of projects over the past decade, and lay out how my approach may be transferred into a formal museum setting.

The works presented here constitute an examination of the impact of new media technologies (focusing on social media) on the practice of journalism, with an emphasis on integrating empirical and sociological research. The use of a combination of content analysis, interviews and personal reflections and columns by journalists, case studies and observations, serves to verify and triangulate the evidence. The use of a comprehensive model to examine and analyse media products is a substantial contribution to the field of journalism studies. Previous studies that focused on new media technologies tended to either simply describe these technologies and their potential for change, or to analyse them purely in relationship to older technologies and processes, reducing both forms of practice to a tautological definition: each is that which the other is not. Taking a clear snapshot of the current landscape, and examining it without reference to specific technologies or past practices, the model allows for clear examination of relationships and practices, without being limited by the previous analyses. A number of key themes emerge from research: the tension between the potential of new technologies to expand and improve journalistic practice and output is countered by the fear that the technology will render journalists and their practices redundant. The impact of economic forces is also apparent in the research. The economic structures that underpin journalism were undergoing substantial changes as new media was introduced, and have undergone additional changes as a result of the social and usage changes that technology has wrought. Technology cannot be abstracted from society and economics, and this interrelationship is apparent in the development of the model of the new media ecology which we developed. The work expands on ideas of the first wave of sociological research into the practice of journalism, taking the methods and ideas and applying them to current environments. The iterative development of a model for the new media environments, and its application to empirical and observed research is a key contribution to the field.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [176]-185). / The main research question of this thesis is the following: What is the relationship between spaces and innovation in the context of design organizations such as IDEO, the MIT Media Lab and Design Continuum? This thesis explores the relationship between four types of spaces, namely, 1) urban, 2) building 3) workplace and 4) users and innovation and creative practices of these three case studies. Drawing mainly on visual ethnography, the thesis shows how the four organizations' situated spaces-in-use shape their innovation, learning and knowledge sharing practices. The findings are used to complement and expand existing theories, to reflect on the "spacing" of the three design organizations under study and to contribute to the outline of this interdisciplinary emerging field of research. / by Cristobal Garcia Herrera. / S.M.