This study examined how young women audiences may make sense of music videos and how they relate music video messages to their own femininity. Studies of the representation of women in music videos mostly have focused on critiquing content, rather than audience interpretations. This study, using focus groups, looked at how young women interpret music videos featuring women artists and showed that young women perceive sexist and/or stereotypical depictions presented in the videos. During six focus groups, three music videos were reviewed by 49 college students, mostly consisting of young women in their early 20s. The researcher found themes emerging from the discussions recorded during the focus groups. Such themes reaffirmed previous critical scholarship on the content of music videos that women are presented as sex objects and objectified body parts in music videos, that portrayals of women function as unrealistic masculine fantasies, and that the videos contain narratives about cultural expectations for femininity. The results did support prior critical work, but they also uncovered interpretations filled with irony, contradiction, and paradox. This study examined women audience members' interpretations of feminine stereotypes in music videos and found that the women participants felt pressure to meet an impossible standard of an ideal feminine form, as defined by men. The results revealed the participants' concern about their own inadequacies in comparison. Participants generally observed that the women artists in the treatment music videos are not real women, but participants demonstrated a wistful desire to be more like the artists. The present study adds interpretive audience research to the literature on music video content analysis and supports prior conclusions based on content analysis.

"It's not a mask, it's an appendix". Reflections through text and moving image around the Beauty Community as a representative expression of individuality on the internet.  The Essay also contains thoughts around the authors artistical practice. / Documentation Photos of the Master Exam Exhibition "The Compliment Machine". The first edition of the essay was used as an appendix, complementary to the artworks.   Photographer: Jean Baptiste Béranger / Documentation Photo from the Essay Release organised 12 of april 2018 by fellow master students. The photo illustrates the presentation of the second and final edition of the essay. Photographer: Karolina Oxelväg / <p>The master work includes both a written and a performing part. </p><p>Masterarbetet består av en skriftlig och en gestaltande del.</p>

In recent times there has been an explosion of online user-generated video content. This has generated significant research interest in video analytics. Human users understand videos based on high-level semantic concepts. However, most of the current research in video analytics are driven by low-level features and descriptors, which often lack semantic interpretation. Existing attempts in semantic video analytics are specialized and require additional resources like movie scripts, which are not available for most user-generated videos. There are no general purpose approaches to understanding videos through semantic concepts. In this thesis we attempt to bridge this gap. We view videos as collections of entities which are semantic visual concepts like the persons in a movie, or cars in a F1 race video. We focus on two fundamental tasks in Video Understanding, namely summarization and scene- discovery. Entity-driven Video Summarization and Entity-driven Scene discovery are important open problems. They are challenging due to the spatio-temporal nature of videos, and also due to lack of apriori information about entities. We use Bayesian nonparametric methods to solve these problems. In the absence of external resources like scripts we utilize fundamental structural properties like temporal coherence in videos- which means that adjacent frames should contain the same set of entities and have similar visual features. There have been no focussed attempts to model this important property. This thesis makes several contributions in Computer Vision and Bayesian nonparametrics by addressing Entity-driven Video Understanding through temporal coherence modeling. Temporal Coherence in videos is observed across its frames at the level of features/descriptors, as also at semantic level. We start with an attempt to model TC at the level of features/descriptors. A tracklet is a spatio-temporal fragment of a video- a set of spatial regions in a short sequence (5-20) of consecutive frames, each of which enclose a particular entity. We attempt to find a representation of tracklets to aid tracking of entities. We explore region descriptors like Covari- ance Matrices of spatial features in individual frames. Due to temporal coherence, such matrices from corresponding spatial regions in successive frames have nearly identical eigenvectors. We utilize this property to model a tracklet using a covariance matrix, and use it for region-based entity tracking. We propose a new method to estimate such a matrix. Our method is found to be much more efficient and effective than alternative covariance-based methods for entity tracking. Next, we move to modeling temporal coherence at a semantic level, with special emphasis on videos of movies and TV-series episodes. Each tracklet is associated with an entity (say a particular person). Spatio-temporally close but non-overlapping tracklets are likely to belong to the same entity, while tracklets that overlap in time can never belong to the same entity. Our aim is to cluster the tracklets based on the entities associated with them, with the goal of discovering the entities in a video along with all their occurrences. We argue that Bayesian Nonparametrics is the most convenient way for this task. We propose a temporally coherent version of Chinese Restaurant Process (TC-CRP) that can encode such constraints easily, and results in discovery of pure clusters of tracklets, and also filter out tracklets resulting from false detections. TC-CRP shows excellent performance on person discovery from TV-series videos. We also discuss semantic video summarization, based on entity discovery. Next, we consider entity-driven temporal segmentation of a video into scenes, where each scene is characterized by the entities present in it. This is a novel application, as existing work on temporal segmentation have focussed on low-level features of frames, rather than entities. We propose EntScene: a generative model for videos based on entities and scenes, and propose an inference algorithm based on Blocked Gibbs Sampling, for simultaneous entity discovery and scene discovery. We compare it to alternative inference algorithms, and show significant improvements in terms of segmentatio and scene discovery. Video representation by low-rank matrix has gained popularity recently, and has been used for various tasks in Computer Vision. In such a representation, each column corresponds to a frame or a single detection. Such matrices are likely to have contiguous sets of identical columns due to temporal coherence, and hence they should be low-rank. However, we discover that none of the existing low-rank matrix recovery algorithms are able to preserve such structures. We study regularizers to encourage these structures for low-rank matrix recovery through convex optimization, but note that TC-CRP-like Bayesian modeling is better for enforcing them. We then focus our attention on modeling temporal coherence in hierarchically grouped sequential data, such as word-tokens grouped into sentences, paragraphs, documents etc in a text corpus. We attempt Bayesian modeling for such data, with application to multi-layer segmentation. We first make a detailed study of existing models for such data. We present a taxonomy for such models called Degree-of-Sharing (DoS), based on how various mixture components are shared by the groups of data in these models. We come up with Layered Dirichlet Process which generalizes Hierarchical Dirichlet Process to multiple layers, and can also handle sequential information easily through Markovian approach. This is applied to hierarchical co-segmentation of a set of news transcripts- into broad categories (like politics, sports etc) and individual stories. We also propose a explicit-duration (semi-Markov) approach for this purpose, and provide an efficient inference algorithm for this. We also discuss generative processes for distribution matrices, where each column is a probability distribution. For this we discuss an application: to infer the correct answers to questions on online answering forums from opinions provided by different users.

Los videoclips musicales tienen como fin promocionar las canciones del artista mediante contenido audiovisual y crear interés con su audiencia. El presente trabajo busca exponer cinco cortometrajes musicales en los que se registra la representación de la mujer en los videoclips de reggaeton. Por ello, la investigación pretende describir a partir de un proceso de observación cómo es la representación de la mujer según la percepción masculina de los “ninis” sobre los videoclips de Kevin Roldan. Este género musical se ha convertido en un tema de controversia debido a que expone a la mujer como un objeto sexual en los videos musicales y muestra claramente una gran cantidad de calificativos femeninos que enganchan de manera emocional a la audiencia con las protagonistas en este videoclip. El trabajo tiene un enfoque cualitativo, en el cual se aplicará la técnica de análisis de contenido a cinco videoclips del cantante de colombiano Kevin Roldan en los últimos dos años. Para esta investigación, se realizará una entrevista a ocho participantes de género masculinos llamados “ninis” con el propósito de esta recopilación de datos se va a desglosar los criterios de los entrevistados. / The purpose of music video clips is to promote the artist's songs through audiovisual content and to create interest with his audience.the present work seeks to expose five musical short films in which the representation of women in reggaeton video clips is recorded. Therefore, the research aims to describe from an observation process how the representation of women according to the male perception of the "ninis" on the video clips of Kevin Roldan. This musical genre has become a topic of controversy because it exposes women as sexual objects in music videos and clearly shows a large number of female qualifiers that emotionally engage the audience with the protagonists in this video clip. The work has a qualitative approach, in which the technique of content analysis will be applied to five video clips of the Colombian singer Kevin Roldan in the last two years. For this research, interviews will be conducted with eight male participants called "ninis" for the purpose of this data collection will be broken down the criteria of the interviewees. / Trabajo de investigación

The primary goal of this study is to observe how the meaning of nostalgia is negotiated and remediated in Li Ziqi’s short videos, and understand the construction and expression of pastoral images in the video, by examining its social modality of the audiencing site and the compositional and social modalities of the image site through a Critical Visual Approach(CVA). Except for CVA, Remix as a thinking tool helps to frame data selection, mixed methods and theories throughout. To be specific, the aim of this study is to examine Li Ziqi’s communication of nostalgia online via short videos, showcases how the pastoral characteristics are evoked in the videos and the relationship between nostalgia of pastoral life and short videos. Moreover, it is of interest to think about what nostalgia communication on short videos say about society. When it comes to the two sites, firstly, an ethnographic method of thick descriptions is used to study media text and selected comments on the audiencing site. Secondly, on the image site, compositional analysis on selected visual materials is used to examine its compositions and then signs and meanings embedded in them are analyzed through semiotic analysis and interpreted by thick descriptions. As for theories, nostalgia and media, the logic of social acceleration, remediation and new media, and simulacra and simulation are applied to facilitate discussion.

[pt] O desenvolvimento tecnológico, cada vez mais acelerado, possibilitou o aperfeiçoamento das mídias disponíveis em um nível nunca antes visto, contribuindo significativamente para a transmissão de diversos conteúdos aos discentes no âmbito escolar como, por exemplo, os pontos notáveis de um triângulo e a Reta de Euler trazendo vários conceitos como: mediana, baricentro, bissetriz, incentro, ortocentro, mediatriz e o circuncentro, sendo este último o foco deste estudo que busca apresentar a proposta da utilização do vídeo A Comunidade: Circuncentro do triângulo, como forma de aperfeiçoar o conhecimento deste conceito de uma maneira dinâmica, através da solução de um problema prático sobre o local mais ideal para a construção de uma horta, sem que a mesma cause problemas às fazendas vizinhas. O tema se justifica devido à necessidade de desenvolvimento de competências necessárias para que os alunos estejam preparados para superar desafios sobre o conteúdo, sendo este possível através da análise de problemas práticos, como o apresentado no vídeo sugerido, que agrega valor ao processo de ensino aprendizagem desenvolvido em sala de aula. / [en] The increasingly accelerated technological development has enabled the improvement of available media at a level never seen before, significantly contributing to the transmission of various contents to students in the school environment, such as the remarkable points of a triangle and the Euler Line bringing several concepts such as: median, barycenter, bisector, incenter, orthocenter, bisector and circumcenter, the latter being the focus of this study that seeks to present the proposal to use the video The Community: Circumcenter of the triangle as a way to improve the knowledge of this concept in a dynamic way, through the solution of a practical problem about the most ideal place to build a vegetable garden, without causing any problems to neighboring farms. The theme is justified due to the need to develop the skills necessary for students to be prepared to overcome challenges regarding the content, which is possible through the analysis of practical problems, such as the one presented in the suggested video, which adds value to the teaching-learning process developed in the classroom.

<p dir="ltr">Ensuring a high quality of experience for Internet applications is challenging owing to the significant variability (e.g., of traffic patterns) inherent to both cloud data-center networks and wide area networks. This thesis focuses on optimizing application performance by both conducting measurements to characterize traffic variability, and designing applications that can perform well in the face of variability. On the data center side, a key aspect that impacts performance is traffic burstiness at fine granular time scales. Yet, little is know about traffic burstiness and how it impacts application loss. On the wide area side, we focus on video applications as a major traffic driver. While optimizing traditional videos traffic remains a challenge, new forms of video such as 360◦ introduce additional challenges such as respon- siveness in addition to the bandwidth uncertainty challenge. In this thesis, we make three contributions.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>First</b>, for data center networks, we present Millisampler, a lightweight network traffic char- acterization tool for continual monitoring which operates at fine configurable time scales, and deployed across all servers in a large real-world data center networks. Millisampler takes a host-centric perspective to characterize traffic across all servers within a data center rack at the same time. Next, we present data-center-scale joint analysis of burstiness, contention, and loss. Our results show (i) bursts are likely to encounter contention; (ii) contention varies significantly over short timescales; and (iii) higher contention need not lead to more loss, and the interplay with workload and burst properties matters.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Second</b>, we consider challenges with traditional video in wide area networks. We take a step towards understanding the interplay between Content-Delivery-Networks (CDNs), and video performance through end-to-end measurements. Our results show that (i) video traffic in a session can be sourced from multiple CDN layers, and (ii) throughput can vary signifi- cantly based on the traffic source. Next we evaluate the potential benefits of exposing CDN information to the client Adaptive-Bit-Rate (ABR) algorithm. Emulation experiments show the approach has the potential to reduce prediction inaccuracies, and enhance video quality of experience (QoE).</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Third</b>, for 360◦ videos, we argue for a new streaming model which is explicitly designed for continuous, rather than stalling, playback to preserve interactivity. Next, we propose Dragonfly, a new 360° system that leverages the additional degrees of freedom provided by this design point. Dragonfly proactively skips tiles (i.e., spatial segment of the video) using a model that defines an overall utility function that captures factors relevant to user experience. We conduct a user study which shows that majority of interactivity feedback indicating Dragonfly being highly reactive, while the majority of state-of-the-art’s feedback indicates the systems are slow to react. Further, extensive emulations show Dragonfly improves the image quality significantly without stalling playback.</p>

Inom den högre utbildningen är det fortfarande vanligt att använda traditionella undervisningsmetoder även om det finns andra metoder som går att tillämpa. En faktor som påverkar införandet av nya metoder är digitaliseringen. Många lärosäten använder sig idag av en digital plattform för undervisningen, ibland också flera stycken olika plattformar och där dessa då kräver en teknisk kompetens för att kunna användas på ett bra sätt i undervisningen. Speciellt är kurser inom datalogi som har goda förutsättningar för att kunna nyttja nyare metoder. Dock kräver detta kunskap i metoden, hur de tekniska hjälpmedlen går att tillämpa för kursens ändamål och att man vågar pröva nya metoder i kurser. Målet med denna studie är hitta nya sätt som kan mäta en undervisningsmodells effektivitet. Lösningen kommer att bestå i att undersöka existerande forskning inom området, specifikt implementation av metoden, vad gav metod för effekt och hur denna effekt har mätts. Av den existerande forskningen pekar på att detta är en svår fråga att analysera, det är många faktorer som vi behöver ta i anspråk för att kunna komma till konsensus i hur den potentiella lösningen bör skapas. Den gemensamma faktorn är att det finns en positiv inverkan på studenternas resultat baserat på att det har införts en ny undervisningsmodell. Det vi kom fram till är att skapa en mätmetod som använder studenternas lösningar för befintliga uppgifterna i kursen, genom att vi fick göra ett antal antaganden för de problem som ansågs kunna påverka mätmetoden. Av detta kunde vi sedan dra slutsatser av metodens effektivitet. / In higher education, it is still common to use traditional teaching methods, although there are other methods that can be applied. One factor influencing the introduction of new methods is digitalization. Many higher education institutions today use a digital platform for teaching, sometimes also several different platforms and where these then require a technical competence to be used in a good way in teaching. Especially are courses in computer science that have good conditions for being able to use newer methods. However, this requires knowledge of the method, how the technical aids can be applied for the purpose of the course and that you dare to try new methods in courses. The goal of this study is to find new ways that can measure the effectiveness of a teaching model. The solution will consist of investigating existing research in the area, specifically implementation of the method, what gave method for effect and how this effect has been measured. From the existing research indicates that this is a difficult issue to analyze, there are many factors that we need to take into account in order to be able to come to a consensus on how the potential solution should be created. The common factor is that there is a positive impact on student outcomes based on the introduction of a new teaching model. What we came up with is to create a measurement method that uses the students’ solutions for existing tasks in the course, by making several assumptions for the problems that were considered to affect the measurement method. From this we were then able to draw conclusions from the effectiveness of the method

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Wes Wise / Escherichia Coli (E. Coli) contamination has been a long-existing concern for those engaged in cattle production, often causing negative public health and economic consequences. The existence of pre-harvest practices that reduce E. coli contamination creates the opportunity to support human health by focusing on modifying behaviors in cattle production through educational communication. It is vital to consider how the communication can be modified to persuade the audience. This study examined the effects of different sources, such as a veterinarian or a cattle producer, presenting the educational message in a training video. An experimental design was used to examine how the information source used in a video relates to the source’s credibility, as well as testing concepts related to the theory of planned behavior. A link to a video and an online questionnaire were distributed to cattle producers through the weekly news e-mail distributed by several beef industry organizations. The data analysis of 106 complete questionnaires found that no matter how a presenter was described in a training video there was no difference in the perceived credibility of the presenter. Also, no matter how the source was identified there was no difference in the variables related to the theory of planned behavior and possible behavior adoption. In addition to these results, this study found that no matter how the source was labeled, higher perceived credibility correlated with more positive attitudes, perceived norms, perceived behavior control and reported intention to adopt the suggested behaviors. This pattern provides evidence for credibility’s relationship with possible behavior adoption, indicating that credibility of the source is an important consideration when message designers are constructing training videos.

The most important question addresed in this study was whether there is any difference in student learning between a motion group and a non-motion group. The interactive video courseware is currently a part of the curriculum in this district. It was used in its original form with the contrast group. For the experimental group one unit of the courseware was modified to remove the motion video and replace it with photorealistic graphics that served as the non-motion part of the study. Covariates were selected to compensate for any differences in the two groups. A pretest and posttest was administered to both groups. Analysis of the posttest scores indicated that there was no difference in learning if motion in the presentation was the only variable.