Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 294-300). / As American professional journalism with its established rules and values transitions to the little-regulated, ever-evolving world of digital news, few of its practitioners, contributors and consumers are giving thought to the moral and intellectual implications that this transition entails. While technologists and innovators have embraced this passage into a hybrid model of skilled and citizen-generated news production, even spearheading its new practices at times, this transition is taking place in a moral and regulatory void: without a strong legislative foundation for cyberspace and revised ethical rules for the journalism profession online, media professionals and independent news producers lack guidance and tools to respond appropriately to new ethical issues not covered by current laws and ethical codes. Some of the key questions facing the profession are: should online journalism and all new forms of news media production be regulated, and if so, to what extent and by whom? What constitutes ethical collaboration? How does current regulation operate? Should or could it be extended to the digital domain? In this thesis I argue that professional and amateur news publishing on the Internet and other digital formats have created new social issues, ethical dilemmas and unanticipated situations for journalists, which are specific to digital media and unaddressed by current laws, standards, and codes of ethics. Following an analysis of these issues and the deficiencies of current ethics codes, using a real-life case study and comments from working journalists on their new professional needs, I then propose my vision for online news media production, arguing for an open-source, participatory model supported by a solid, individual ethical foundation and a revised relationship with sources. The thesis culminates with my proposed code of ethics for collaborative journalism in the digital age, the Open Park Code of Ethics and the Global Media Ethics Forum. Initially conceived as a news-reporting and educational tool for the Open Park project of The MIT Center for Future Civic Media, the OP Code reflects the principles and guidelines of my open-source model and is readily usable and adaptable to the needs of varied news media communities and individual producers. / by Florence H. J. T. Gallez. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies and Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "September 2016." / Includes bibliographical references (pages 93-105). / This thesis considers the ways in which digital game mechanics (interactive inputs) contribute to games' worldbuilding. In particular, this work is concerned with the replication and reinforcement of problematic gender roles through game mechanics that express positive ("warm") interactions between characters, namely healing, protection, and building relationships. The method used has been adapted from structural analysis via literary theory, as informed by game studies, media studies methodologies, and feminist epistemologies. Game mechanics are analyzed both across and within primary texts (consisting of Japanese-developed games from the action and role-playing genres) in relation to characters' representation. Through this analysis, I found that characters who are women and girls are often associated with physical weakness, nature-based magic, and nurturing (or absent) personalities, whereas characters who are men and boys often protect women through physical combat, heal through medical means, and keep an emotional distance from others. Relationships built through game mechanics rely on one-sided agency and potential that renders lovers and friends as characters who exist to support the player character in achieving the primary goals of the game. Through these findings, I conclude that even warm interactions in games carry negative, even potentially violent and oppressive, representations and that there is thusly a need for design interventions on the mechanical level to mitigate violence in game worlds and the reinforcement of negative real world stereotypes. / by Kyrie Eleison Hartsough Caldwell. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies and Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 119-125). / Cultural theorists such as Henry Jenkins¹, Lawrence Lessig², Yochai Benkler³ , Robert Hassan⁴, and Manuel Castells⁵, have written extensively on the role of network communications technologies in reconfiguring contemporary culture. While the penetration of the "information society" is now widespread in U.S. culture⁶, not everyone is an equal participant⁷7. As an extreme case in point, the American prison population, currently at 2.3 million⁸, is institutionally excluded from equal participation in the information society and its network economies⁹ attributed by some scholars as due to the prison's historical logic of highly regulated communication flows¹⁰ Some theorists of network culture argue that one quality of network cultures is their tendency to be all-embracing: their connectivity has a compounding effect that encourages networks to become ever more dense¹¹ . Hassan calls this permeation of networks into culture the "network effect¹²," a compelling social pressure to participate more deeply in the information society. This network effect can be used as a theoretical lens for looking at prisons within society. An analysis of the debates surrounding correctional policy reveals the social forces both internal and external to the prison system pressuring prisons to adopt more liberal networked communication and attendant technologies. This juncture between isolation and networks is the central problematic nexus in contemporary debates about the role of prisons in society, their function and modes of operation. The prison has been historically defined in terms of communication-by the regulation and governance of it-and any attempt to understand or reform the prison must proceed from a communicative, as well as punitive, framework. / by Jason Willis Krider Rockwood. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Keywords: documentary, interactive, live, liveness, ephemerality, interactivity, theater, performance, television, televisuality, database, data, live data, real time Abstract: The field of documentary is undergoing a transformation as it collides with digital technologies. A new arena of Interactive Documentary production is thriving, and critics and scholars are taking note. Within this field, there is less attention to new opportunities and new theoretical challenges for live practices within the documentary sphere. This thesis argues for a fuller conceptualization of Live Documentary practice. First, it questions the current state of assumptions about documentary, as a form related to the 'document,' as a particularly film-leaning form, and as a lasting and historicizing form of discourse. Next, it examines the historical underpinnings of two forms of live documentary practice and exemplar projects of each: Live Performance Documentary and Live Subject Documentary. The former is situated in the media category of live theater and performance, and the second, the author will argue, is an instantiation of television in its earliest configuration as a device for two-way audio-visual communications and not just unidirectional broadcasting. The study concludes by positing a third medium-specific form of live documentary native to the computer, the Live Data Documentary. This final, more speculative form is defined by drawing on the meanings of 'liveness' examined in the previous chapters and the history of real time computing to generate a suggested framing for computer-native live documentary practice. / by Julie Fischer. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies