The subject of my dissertation is how phenomenology can be used as a tool for understanding the intersection between texts and technology. What I am suggesting here is that, specifically in connection with the focus of our program in Texts and Technology, there are very significant questions concerning how digital communications technology extends our humanity, and more importantly what kind of epistemological and ontological questions are raised because of this. There needs to be a coherent theory for Texts and Technology that will help us to understand this shift, and I feel that this should be the main focus for the program itself. In this dissertation I present an analysis of the different phenomenological aspects of the study of Texts and Technology. For phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, technology, in all of its forms, is the way in which human consciousness is embodied. Through the creation and manipulation of technology, humanity extends itself into the physical world. Therefore, I feel we must try to understand this extension as more than merely a reflection of materialist practices, because first and foremost we are discussing how the human mind uses technology to further its advancement. I will detail some of the theoretical arguments both for and against the study of technology as a function of human consciousness. I will focus on certain issues, such as problems of archiving and copyright, as central to the field. I will further argue how from a phenomenological standpoint we are in the presence of a phenomenological shift from the primacy of print towards a more hybrid system of representing human communications.

The core aim of this research is to explore the communication processes of the Transition movement, a community-led global social movement as it adapted in a local context. The Transition movement facilitates community-led responses to the current global financial and climate crisis via the Transition Network, an online network that began in 2006, and is comprised of more than 2000 initiatives in 35 countries that have used the Transition model to start projects that use small-scale solutions to achieve greater sustainability. This research uses qualitative ethnographic methods and a theoretical framework based on actor network theory to better understand how the movement’s grand narratives of “climate change” and “peak oil” are communicated into local community-based stories, responses, and actions toward sustainability, and secondly, to analyze the multilayered communication processes that facilitate these actions toward sustainable social change. Transition projects address a wide range of issues, including reducing dependency on peak-oil, creating community-based-local economies, supporting sustainable food production and consumption, building efficient transportation, housing, and more diverse and inclusive education. The Transition model provides a participatory communication framework laid out in specific stages for communities to begin this process. The popularity of the model coincides with an increase in the interest in and use of the term “sustainability” by media, academics and policymakers around the world, and an increase in the global use of digital technology as a resource for information gathering and sharing. Thus this study situates itself at the intersections of a global environmental and economic crisis, the popularization of the term “sustainability,” and an increasingly digitized and networked global society in order to better understand how social change is contextualized and facilitated in a local community via a global network. From the findings, I argue that although the model’s rapid growth can be attributed, in part, to an appealing narrative that reframes more traditional environmental movement discourse into solutions-based community-focused actions, the movement would do well to develop more organized communication processes around connecting with and recognizing other people and groups who share similar values and goals, and around defining and creating the space for consistent and efficient leaders. This study also reveals that members of Transition Amherst had mixed feelings about the group’s success and this was attributed to a wide range of interpretations of the model and the purpose it serves, particularly in towns where the ideology of Transition has already, to some extent, been adopted.

No / Advances in computer technology and developments such as the Internet provide a constant momentum to design new techniques and algorithms to support computer graphics. Modelling, animation and rendering remain principal topics in the filed of computer graphics and continue to attract researchers around the world." This volume contains the papers presented at Computer Graphics International 2002, in July, at the University of Bradford, UK. These papers represent original research in computer graphics from around the world

This qualitative case study began with a question: How can interactivity be taught, in particular online interactivity? Additionally, how does the teaching artist’s practice of online interactivity inform their studio teaching of interactive related themes? As such, this study first discloses patterns of the three select digital media artists’ artistic experiences of online interactivity. Then, this study aims to explore the reciprocal relationships between their practices and studio teaching. The three participating artists include: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Martine Neddam. The three selected artists have worked with digital media, with a focus on the Internet and online web browsers since the mid to late-1990s, when the Web was in the early stages of its public access and information deployment. In order to probe into this study’s research theme through the artists’ own voices, this study conducts in-depth interviews via email and Skype meetings. This study also employs In Vivo coding for data analysis in order to closely examine the interview data. The findings present a unit of discovered key concepts in response to the central research question and its sub-questions. In response to the role of online interactivity in the artistic process, four key concepts have emerged: active participation, relationship, freedom, and artistic language. The artists believe that the creation of online interactivity has its roots in critical reflection of digital culture with humanistic views. In regard to pedagogical and instructional strategies related to the participating teaching artists’ practices of online interactivity, the three primary patterns discovered in this study are: artistic experience, problem-solving and dialogue. Surprisingly, the findings show that the artists’ responses to their pedagogies present a general view of studio art reaching, rather than an emphasis on teaching online interactivity in particular. The artists described that their pedagogies are informed by their practices, which deal with different challenges in a problem-solving process. These problems cover technological skills, practical matters, and mindsets. For the artists, their role of the artist-as-teacher is to guide their students in developing the ability to think holistically, and give them problem-solving skills in the students’ individual artistic processes.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Audiences perform as a key factor driving social media nowadays, and there would not be any point to create video content on Youtube if there was nobody to watch it. It is therefore important to study audiences and their behavior in order to find out viewers' preferences and to understand what makes them follow Youtube channels.The purpose of this research is to find out what is audience's behavior on Youtube and its attitude towards lifestyle content on the video platform. Additionally, in the theoretical part of my research I will take a look at the phenomena of fandom and the relationship between advertising and audiences. I will apply social cognitive theory and cultivation theory in order to support my findings from reading materials. Using the method of semi-structured interviews, I will explore users' activity and their watching preferences on Youtube. In the analytical part I will combine both theoretical and practical approaches and figure out the answer to my research statement.To conclude my research, I will discuss my findings together with perspectives for the future studies within selected area.

This project focuses on the interaction between parents and children in their everyday practices as a family.It investigates how interaction design can help to engage both children and parents in shared home-based activities through digital media. The target group involved in this project is limited to boys aged 10-12 and their parents.The project contributions within the field of interaction design research as well as it presents two design suggestions for how this knowledge can be put to use as digital design concepts. It concludes that when designing digital media intended to enhance relations between parents and children, the main focus is face-to-face interaction and creating a space that allows for creativity, communication and physical presence.

This dissertation explores how developed digital media technology influences individuals’ daily lives and their everyday practices. Furthermore, it examines how digital media usage has impacted diasporic members’ identity construction process. With the example of the Korean diaspora in the United States as a case study, this dissertation focuses on the impact of digital media, first, in regard to the ways in which diasporic members communicate with others and respond to the national and social issues of the homeland, and second in regard to their understanding of themselves, as well as their surroundings. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with 35 Korean immigrants and my fieldwork in the New York City, Jersey City, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas from October 2016 to March 2017, this dissertation examines how and to what extent Korean diasporic members have connected to and paid attention to their homeland issues, and how they have responded to them, in tandem with the development of media communication technology throughout the immigration history of the Korean diaspora. This research finds that the advent of digital media has had a significant impact on the Korean diaspora. Despite a generational split in terms of Korean diasporic members’ digital media usage, all of my interviewees use digital media on a daily basis to interact with others, regardless of geographical limitations. As a result, global digital diaspora enables Korean diasporic members to reconfirm the significance of the Korean diaspora. These members recognize the Korean diaspora not as an exclusive community limited to specific local individuals, but rather as a transnational community on a global level. Hence, Korean diasporic members’ self-identification is often based on such an understanding of the Korean diaspora. / Media & Communication