Thesis (M.F.A.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Online streaming video portal YouTube began life with the slogan "Broadcast Yourself" as its guiding ethos. Those words invite a critical exploration of YouTube’s relationship to broadcast media history and the current economic, social, and technological landscape of television. Precedent for the discourses of medium-specific ideologies circulating around YouTube is found in the alternative television production cultures of the late 1960s-early 1980s and the processes of radio regulation and spectrum allocation in 1927-1934. In the final analysis, YouTube operates as a simulation of the established television industry, pretending to be disruptive while developing itself as an industry according to the same capitalist logics that structure mainstream television. Thus, YouTube should not be thought of as a viable alternative structure to the television industry. Particular consideration is given to the impacts of YouTube’s technological and industrial structures on queer media producers and consumers. / 2031-01-01

Memes are a popular source of online media. As such, they become tools that can distribute racialized and gendered narratives. While memes are often a source of shaming and devaluing Black girls, my research also explores how they can be used as tools to counter and disidentify with narratives. Using Hip-Hop feminism and trap feminism as frameworks, I analyze several memes to not only exemplify the hegemonic narratives of Black girlhood that circulate via memes, but to illuminate the possibilities for resistance and transformation via this technology.

Ethnographic in approach, this dissertation examines trolling, an online subculture devoted to meme creation and social disruption. Rather than framing trolling behaviors as fundamentally aberrant, I argue that trolls are agents of cultural digestion; they scour the landscape, repurpose the most exploitable material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting populace. Within the political and social context of the United States, the region to which I have restricted my focus, I argue that trolls on 4chan/b/ and Facebook perform a grotesque pantomime of a number of pervasive cultural logics, including masculine domination and white privilege. Additionally, I argue that the rhetorical and behavioral tactics used by trolls, including sensationalism, spectacle, and emotional exploitation, are homologous to tactics routinely deployed by American corporate media outlets. In short, trolling operates within existing systems, not in contrast to them, immediately complicating knee-jerk condemnations of trolling behaviors. / 10000-01-01

E-relevant web text sites (EWT sites) are a relatively new phenomenon featuring banal yet remarkable user-generated texts on dedicated websites. This thesis analyses the sociosemiotic dimension of EWT sites in enabling neo-phatic communication: communication based on the relatable nature of EWT content and user-friendly medium, affording communicative acts without the requirement for in-depth discussion. Rather than fostering serious exchange, neo-phatic communication aims to establish a form of contact less brief than a greeting but akin to its purport, developing from banal but shared experiences. Analysis of the signification process involved in EWT sites, through a sociosemiotic framework based on Peirce’s second trichotomy of signs (icon, index, symbol) and the frame analysis of Goffman, shows that the sites’ semiotic structure belongs to a neo-phatic kind of communication unique to computer-mediated communication. This study illustrates how content with minimal substance might be under-valued as a means of understanding modern communication behaviour.

This study examines the dynamics of critical Internet culture after the medium opened to a broader audience in the mid 1990s. The core of the research consists of four case studies of non-profit networks: the Amsterdam community provider, The Digital City (DDS); the early years of the nettime mailinglist community; a history of the European new media arts network Syndicate; and an analysis of the streaming media network Xchange. The research describes the search for sustainable community network models in a climate of hyper growth and increased tensions and conflict concerning moderation and ownership of online communities.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-203)

E-relevant web text sites (EWT sites) are a relatively new phenomenon featuring banal yet remarkable user-generated texts on dedicated websites. This thesis analyses the sociosemiotic dimension of EWT sites in enabling neo-phatic communication: communication based on the relatable nature of EWT content and user-friendly medium, affording communicative acts without the requirement for in-depth discussion. Rather than fostering serious exchange, neo-phatic communication aims to establish a form of contact less brief than a greeting but akin to its purport, developing from banal but shared experiences. Analysis of the signification process involved in EWT sites, through a sociosemiotic framework based on Peirce’s second trichotomy of signs (icon, index, symbol) and the frame analysis of Goffman, shows that the sites’ semiotic structure belongs to a neo-phatic kind of communication unique to computer-mediated communication. This study illustrates how content with minimal substance might be under-valued as a means of understanding modern communication behaviour.

This dissertation project seeks to answer questions at the intersection of performance and new media with special attention to aesthetic practice. Primarily, the central issue at stake is the issue of material relationships between bodies and technologies as put into practice in a variety of aesthetic forms, including net art, staged performance, and internet memes. After an introduction, the second chapter discusses the method of analysis, schizoanalysis, in depth, drawing from the work of both Deleuze and Guattari as collaborators and Guattari’s extensive solo work. The next chapter addresses the new materialist paradigm that acts as the foundational commitment for seeing staged performances and digital performances as overlapping categories of phenomena. From there, the analysis shifts to questions of ontology, including the impact of naming certain behaviors on the understanding of those behaviors as well as the nature of performance itself. Just as Peggy Phelan asserts that performance is ephemeral, immediate, and nonreproducible, one can see encounters with new media under this same framework. The following three chapters act as specific case studies, using screen theory to understand staged performances, sequential art theory to explain the relationships between disparate parts of both new mediated and staged performance, and theories of identity and gender to understand selfies as constructive digital performances. Though this project offers no guarantees or certitudes, certain themes did emerge through the analysis, such as the place of the body in discourses of technology; connections between the audience and the art object, the art object and its environment, and the audience and the environment; and the impact of time, especially immediacy, on the understanding of both staged and mediated works. The hope of this project is necessarily one of offering answer, but instead of point to new questions and offering some starting points for further consideration.

Master thesis called "Users rhetoric of selected asynchronous discussions on the Internet" studies culture of language and rhetorical cultivation in the selected discussion pieces from the three news servers, namely Aktuálně.cz., iDnes.cz and Neviditelný pes. Under many of these virtual newspaper articles there are discussions that are meant to develop read ideas and opinions. This discussion space is accessible for practically everyone who has an access to the Internet, which is one of the characteristics and advantages of network media over traditional ones. However limitations of traditional media anticipated the use of appropriate and cultivated language. Network media have different characteristics and asynchronous discussion make other demands on language in them. Natural language is the basic communication medium, which is the primary content of most mass media. In the practical part there is an examination of users speech behavior in these discussions. The rhetorical analysis is used there, which allows a holistic view of speech including its argumentative construction. The aim is to find out what this type of online dialogues is characteristic from the point of view of rhetoric.

Thesis (B.A. in Visual and Critical Studies) -- School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2010. / Thesis advisor: Maud Lavin. Includes bibliographical references.