Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 127-133). / In recent years open data initiatives, which make government data publicly available in a machine-readable format for reuse and redistribution, have proliferated, driven by the launch of open-data government initiatives such as data.gov and data.gov.uk. Research on open data has focused on its potential for governance, its implications on transparency, accountability, and service delivery, and its limitations and barriers of use. However, less attention has been focused on the practices of data intermediaries-an emerging configuration of actors that plays an essential role in facilitating the use and reuse of data by aggregating open government data and enhancing it through a range of data practices. This thesis will assess the data practices of open government data intermediaries from three perspectives. First, it will trace the development of open government data initiatives to contend that at a moment when open data policy is seeing global diffusion with the potential of increasing social, political, and economic impact, there is a crucial need to assess the practices of intermediaries to understand how open government data is put to use. Second, it will develop a framework to analyze the role of open government data intermediaries by proposing a definition for "the data intermediary function" constituted by a range of technical, civic, representational, and critical data practices. Third, it will assess the data practices of two open government data intermediaries, 596 Acres and Transparent Chennai, who as urban actors facilitate the conversion of open government data into actionable information for communities to effect changes in the built environment. In describing and assessing the tools, practices, and methods developed by open data intermediaries this thesis will explore the potential and limitations of data intermediaries, and offer recommendations that might inform future open government data initiatives that seek to mediate open government data to facilitate changes in the built environment. / by Suruchi Dumpawar. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 94-100). / In this work, I situate e-sports broadcasting within the larger sports media industrial complex, discuss e-sportscasters, and investigate the economics behind the growing e-sports industry. E-sports, often referred to as competitive or professional gaming, stands as a prime example of the merger of work and play. A growing body of literature has started focusing on this pastime turned profession. As more professionals enter the scene and audiences continue to grow, e-sports broadcasters look towards older models of broadcasting to inform their own style. This reapplication of former conventions stands in contrast to the trends in the larger sports media trajectory. E-sports broadcasting is largely informed by traditional sports broadcasting, yet remains unable to fully capture the success of the global sports industry. On-air talent, once informed solely by traditional sportscasters are now looking to their fellow e-sportscasters to create something new. Revenue streams which form the foundation of the sports industry are making their way into e-sports but not in the way that one might expect. Through a variety of qualitative methods, including historical analysis, interviews, and fieldwork, I have investigated e-sports broadcasting to better evaluate the role traditional sports broadcasting has played in shaping the e-sports industry. This work looks not only to what e-sports broadcasters have borrowed from prior sports media, but also where they have innovated. / by Jesse Sell. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 102-107). / This thesis proposes staged empathy as a new analytical framework to examine how virtual reality work provokes empathic feeling. Virtual reality has seen renewed interest in recent years, and has been hailed by journalists and practitioners as an "empathy machine'. This characterization is informal and assumes that feelings of presence and a first-person perspective alone will drive empathic feeling. A critical method for analyzing how virtual reality work engages with the concept of empathy (specifically defined as "inner imitation for the purpose of gaining knowledge of another") does not exist. This thesis reviews the intellectual history of empathy (prior to the diversification of the term in social psychology to refer to a host of social behaviors) to derive a theoretical foundation to staged empathy A staged empathy framework foregrounds process and reflexivity, innate aspects of empathizing, and introduces an externalized and performed model for empathizing that is facilitated by virtual reality. To construct this framework, a variety of contemporary virtual reality works are studied which suggest the emergence of specific techniques that are referred to in this thesis as "intentional looking" and "direct address". Applying theories of affordances and revealed phantasms from environmental philosophy and cultural computing to these techniques, staged empathy provides a framework for the analysis of virtual reality work that is sensitive to the new potentials of the medium as well as the limitations of empathy. / by Elisabeth Ainsley Sutherland. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-168). / Public interest media organizations are increasingly interested in experimenting with interactive and participatory approaches to documentary storytelling enabled by digital technologies. However, due to the experimental nature of these interactive documentaries, it is not yet clear whether the more active user engagements they require translate into outcomes like sustained attention, greater narrative comprehension, enhanced learning, empathy or civic engagement - never mind larger societal impacts like improved public discourse, behavior change or policy change. The shifting definitions and measures of complex, multi-dimensional concepts like "engagement" and "impact" is a challenge for public interest media organizations migrating to digital platforms - particularly at a time when audience activities have become far more transparent and funders place greater emphasis on "data-driven" impact measurement. This thesis explores the "theories of change" that inform institutional investments in documentary and examines how three public interest media organizations - the National Film Board of Canada, POV and the New York Times - are approaching interactive documentary production, attempting to define what constitutes success or impact - and how to measure it. I argue that we need new theories of change and evaluation frameworks that expand definitions of "impact" and "engagement," balancing public service mission with the strategic goals of audience development and the circuitous processes of artistic and technological innovation. This means looking beyond quantitative mass media era metrics, which fail to account for important qualitative dimensions of the user experience. I propose a new set of qualitative and quantitative measures that might better reflect the social and artistic aspirations of the interactive documentary, test assumptions in ways that can inform project design, and embrace the potentials of technology to transform the methods, ethics and process of documentary storytelling in the digital age. / by Sean Peter Flynn. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-85). / As everyday musical experiences move further into software platforms, an interest among musicians in taking fuller advantage of computational media produces a strand of interactive, software-based musical works I call open mediational music. This phenomenon stands apart from other types of creative work centered on music and interaction by valorizing the listener's responsibility for instantiating musical works. It also advances an agenda of openness with respect to interactivity as a principle of new media. I center four case studies on a set of interactive musical works that exemplify this phenomenon: Reflective by Reiko Yamada, Thicket by Morgan Packard and Joshue Ott, Jazz. Computer by Yotam Mann and Sarah Rothberg, and Baggage Allowance by Pamela Z. Each of these works takes shape out of unique motivations and in different forms and settings. Collectively, they advance a notion of platforms as objects of critical awareness and propose listening as a model for mindful participation in algorithmic environments. Illuminating the distinct claims that sound and software hold on one another as creative domains, open mediational music invites listeners to rehearse a conscientious engagement with the sites and conditions of computationally mediated cultural encounter. / by Andy Kelleher Stuhl. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-224). / This thesis will explore whether live streaming video from public events, which I call civic livestreams, can be more engaging and informative if relevant contextual information is added to the viewing experience. I focus on the continuing emergence of livestreams as a source of news and information, and address questions about the nature of the medium, and the social norms that guide its production and consumption. I address the fundamental question of whether engagement with livestreams can be increased through the opinionated design and deployment of a new online platform, DeepStream.tv, which can be used to curate livestreams by adding contextual information to them. I present ethnographic design research into livestreaming production and consumption, detail the design process, and analyze results of usage of this platform as a way to test several hypotheses about viewer behavior to try to determine whether engagement was increased. I conclude that while there is some evidence for increased engagement, watching a civic livestream may be a cinematic experience, with viewers being less inclined toward interactive or analytical activities, which would disrupt the immersive experience. As part of a critical making process, I also explore three concepts that influenced the design of DeepStream.tv. First, I explore the democratization of live broadcast video by tracing historical changes in infrastructure that have altered the ability to broadcast from one based on scarce resources and high costs, to one based on abundant resources and low costs. Second, I consider historical examples of adding context to video as a way to establish norms of practice that are relevant to using the DeepStream.tv platform. I link these to a larger theoretical question about the epistemology of livestreaming as a way to reconsider the tradeoff between speed of information and depth of information. Third, I analyze curation as an activity performed by people in the specific roles of journalist, fan, and activist. Through these situated activities, I examine potential reasons for, and ethical challenges with, curating livestreams. / by William Gordon Mangum. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 131-134). / Over the past several years, traditional - or legacy - news organizations have faced enormous challenges as a result of financial pressures and the advent of the participatory internet. This paper traces the znew journalistic contenders, new audience behaviors, and new business models that are emerging in participatory news spaces. This thesis situates the most visible form of online news participation - the comments section - within a broader and evolving debate over how news organizations create relationships with audiences. It draws upon existing literature and history as well as interviews with members of audience engagement and community management teams at news organizations, online comment communities, and comment-based startups. The first chapter of this thesis outlines "The Spectrum of Comments", a visual and text-based explanation of four key dimensions along which comments are organized in different online spaces ranging from social media to the New York Times. This section explores how news organizations balance the competing desire for audience participation with an impulse towards maintaining editorial control. The second chapter deals with the rise of "engagement," as both a commercial discourse and a new way to envision audience relationships. It begins by tracing the history of journalistic relationships to audiences, offering a taxonomy for these relationships based on mono logical and dialogical modes of conversation, as well as ritual and transmission views of communication. I introduce the term "multi-logical" to capture the asynchronous and multi-voiced communication that occurs in participatory online spaces. Through this theoretical framework, I then examine a few examples of how news organizations operationalize the nebulous term "engagement." The third chapter focuses on how audience engagement teams encounter and cope with abuse -- particularly bigotry and harassment - online, and compares moderation work to Hochschild's emotional labor. I find that abuse affects workers across the journalistic enterprise, and that one of the key focus areas for news organizations as they move forward with engagement should be to develop policies and internal guidelines for how to handle some of the risks of engagement. / by Anika Gupta. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 113-121). / In academic and activist contexts, "voice" has long served as shorthand for inclusion, empowerment, and the like, occasioning bromides about having or not having a voice, giving voice to the voiceless, breaking the silence, and speaking truth to power. Such metaphysically inflected phrasings often serve to reinforce a binary between sound and silence at the expense of attending to other vocal modulations. This thesis first assembles calls by queer and feminist scholars for such nuanced portrayals of vocality; then, so as to answer those calls, it stages scenes of listening. I examine vocality through technology: by looking at how vocality is structured by enclosing technologies, which in turn structure relations and the reverse. More specifically, my thesis traces the ways in which vocality travels in the world by attending to three particular technologies through which the voice is filtered: the answering machine, Auto-Tune pitch correction software, and the sound spectrograph. This approach enables me to probe the distinct claims that specific sound technologies allow us to hold on one another-claims about mourning and loss, about calling and the promise of response, about the identification of individuals (or oneself) via the voice. Though my investigations span various archives, I center them on two characters: the performer Cher and her son Chaz, who is transgender. I do so to consider the ways in which a sonically inflected media theory can inform queer theory and vice versa, and to consider the particular relational dilemmas made incumbent upon subjects whose vocal trajectories are discontinuous, depart from normative pitch, and/or deemed an invitation to violence. / by Lilia Maud Kilburn. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-131). / Comics studies tends to privilege the visual, and some scholars, like Scott McCloud believe that comics are solely visual. However, as Ian Hague has noted, the idea that comics are a solely visual medium is not only incomplete but does not align with what the sciences of perception and embodied cognition tell us. This paper seeks to build upon Hague's work by calling attention to and analyzing comics which exist without or with little visual imagery. These comics can be sorted into two primary categories, audiocomics and tactile comics. As these comics were created for people who have partial or no sight, existing guidelines and standards for creating aural and tactile imagery for people with partial or no sight are used to analyze the comics' success in achieving an experience that is easy to understand and also utilizes the medium's strengths. The comics are then analyzed as a whole in order to determine areas for improvement and additional experimentation. / by Lacey Lord. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2017. / "June 2017." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 104-115). / Indigenous peoples, Small Island States, the Global South, women, youth, and the global poor, all face disproportionate impacts from climate change, a fact captured in the adage "the least responsible are most vulnerable." Recognising the Global North as the instigators and benefactors of a carbon economy built on the continuing oppression and exploitation of black and brown communities, in this thesis I highlight the on-going colonial violence involved in both extractive industry and the mainstream climate action movements of the Global North. I look at the stories we tell about climate change and how they legitimize a colonial structuring of power: from mainstream media coverage of the London Climate March in 2015 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) newsroom editorials. I investigate how communities and grassroots organisations are using radical media strategies to articulate climate justice as a transformative decolonial intervention from the frontlines of Standing Rock to the financial district of London. I follow the argument of activist groups including The Wretched of the Earth, the UK Tar Sands Network, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Indigenous Environmental Network; that climate action will be unfair and ineffective until it recognises the intersecting systems of power which created and maintain the inequalities of the colonial carbon economy. I argue that radical media strategies, on the streets and on the airwaves, are central to the articulation of climate justice and the contestation of hegemonic meanings of climate action that legitimise colonial violence. / by Katie Arthur. / S.M.