This project summary presents the details of a podcast project conducted from April to December of 2006. The project consisted of the creation of a new Internet-based audio interview show entitled Spirit In The Law. The interviews were delivered to listeners who requested the shows via the Internet, and were available to a targeted audience of law students in the United States and abroad. The show featured interviews with 20 notable attorneys and professionals who answered questions regarding spiritual values in their professional practice. The project was informed by two theoretical frameworks: New Media theory and Situational Theory of Publics. The results, when applying both theoretical frameworks, were mixed. While podcasting did demonstrate universality, it was hindered by the complexity of traditional radio production roles. Similarly, it was useful to use the Situational Theory of Publics to help to conceptualize audiences in groups, but the goals of moving the groups into activity were not completely achieved. The main objective for the project was to understand more about the opportunities and obstacles of the new communication technology of podcasting.

This thesis seeks to understand further the effectiveness and profit potential of podcasting. The study combines the theories of uses and gratifications and subjective theory of value to create a model for podcasting's value. The model is put to the test using the Manager Tools podcast as the subject. Data suggest the three main drivers behind perceived podcast effectiveness are pleasure, habit, and information gathering. Relaxation proved to have a negative influence on perceived effectiveness. The audience's willingness to pay was determined by perceived effectiveness, scarcity, and habit. Though not a generalizable study, the conclusion discusses the findings' implications on the podcasting community.

Public spheres theories provide purpose and direction to composition instruction: the teaching of writing within this context empowers our students to participate in public discourse and make a difference in communities. New media has been celebrated for its democratic nature, and composition instructors have begun to use public spheres theories as they incorporate new media in the classroom to create a protopublic space. Yet most composition instructors have ignored the wealth of evidence that shows that the Internet is not as democratic as it seems. As such, our new media teaching practices should account for both the democratic opportunities and failures of the Internet. By using examples from my own classroom, I demonstrate how blogs can be used within the composition classroom by focusing on public spheres oriented teaching practices and methods. Four specific pedagogical approaches which instructors can incorporate are discussed: embracing the small-scale, counterpublic, and private potential of the blog; teaching students rhetorical skills which enable them to contribute more meaningfully to online conversations; teaching aspects of online infrastructure and distribution; and consciously using Habermas' criteria of public spheres to construct an online public community of class members. By using new media in the composition classroom, teachers can promote civic virtues within our students, support democracy, and positively transform the Internet's public space.

Everyone can agree that microblogging service Twitter makes a terrible first impression. Many will agree that this impression is an accurate assessment of many microblogging media, especially considering the narcissistic and egotistical bent that so often dominates the genre. Rhetoricians are justifiably skeptical of microblogging, especially of its rhetorical value (or lack thereof). While many rhetorical scholars have contributed to the field of digital rhetoric, the field of microblogging rhetoric is still undefined. This article examines a new kind of rhetoric exhibited by Twitter, attempting to both start the discussion about Twitter rhetoric and enter the ongoing discussion about theories of rhetoric. As Aristotelian proofs of ethos, pathos, and logos provide the foundation for modern understanding of traditional rhetoric, they will also provide the framework for this analysis of Twitter's iteration of "potential" rhetoric.

This qualitative research project describes the experiences of students in BYU's Hands on a Camera Project as they were introduced to co-learning pedagogies. Hands on a Camera is a media literacy service-learning project where university students are placed in public schools to teach K-12 students documentary production and media literacy. The project consists of a preparation phase and a teaching phase. In the research project, students were required to complete peer-learning and peer-teaching assignments during the preparation phase as in order to prepare for the teaching phase. This ethnographic study describes student experiences—positive and negative—with peer learning during both phases of the project.

Social media has been used in a variety of contexts to connect people of varying backgrounds and as a method of teaching. This thesis collaborated with the Utah County Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) department to develop an online course management system that facilitated research to evaluate the effectiveness of social media on nutrition behavior and attitude changes among WIC clients. We created a toddler themed Facebook page in conjunction with the online nutrition classes and provided the opportunity for clients to use them. Previous social media research used individuals that had agreed to participate in the social media experiment whereas this research let them choose whether or not to participate. The Facebook intervention proved ineffective. In response, we developed surveys to gather the criteria and strategies from WIC clients and existing WIC themed Facebook pages that could be used for a best-case social media intervention.

The Name is a Guest of the Substance brings together works of video, installation, live performance, sculpture, and print to investigate the constructions of kinship that organize us into the world as historical, ecological, and political subjects. Herter Gallery’s 1600 sq. ft space is utilized in full for this project. The work in both galleries evaluates systems of categorization in light of their power to foster or discourage kinship within overlapping local, global and ecological communities. While the West Gallery uses my own multi-racial American genealogy to challenge the authority of historical and autobiographical origins, the East gallery uses manipulations of scale to emphasize the overlooked and ungovernable ways non-human forms of life frustrate our constant attempts at establishing a stable hierarchy of biological relations.

As our consumption behaviours of media and entertainment change in the age of new media technologies, the means of production change with them. Filmmaking usually follows a set procedure (often with clear hierarchy and specialised roles in the crew) and the flow of the narration has traditionally followed a one-way direction, from the producing part (the producer/director) to the receiving part (the audience). But since the arrival of the internet, its disruption of the industry has opened up for an increased dialogue between the two, turning the receiving part to a contributing one. This has resulted in a wider democratisation of the medium, where the once passive audience now becomes more involved in the creative production process. Crowdsourcing, already used frequently in service industries and product design processes, has become an alternative method of creative content creation. Made possible through the use of social media channels, entire films are now being created with material submitted by its audience. This study aims to answer the research questions: “What is required in order to use crowdsourcing successfully in filmmaking?”, as well as the sub-questions “What role has social media played in the making of crowdsourced films?” and “Is there a future in crowdsourcing within filmmaking?” Six cases of film and series productions, each of different formats, were analysed; two documentary films, three web series and one TV show. In this study, the production approach for each case has been investigated, in order to see how they have used crowdsourcing in their processes. Five qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted and each interviewee had held key positions in the making of their respective production. The findings showed the strong need for having an already well-established community in place before undertaking a crowdsourced endeavour. The use of social media also appears to be one of the fundamentally enabling factors for these types of projects, since it provides a platform for an immediate dialogue between the two parties. Using crowdsourcing in film will presumably continue, but the method has still considerable unexplored potential. Because of it’s ingrained dependence on social media, future research could benefit from exploring interdisciplinary collaboration between filmmaking and interactive media technologies. / Samtidigt som att våra beteendemönster i hur vi konsumerar media förändras i takt med att nya medieteknologier uppstår, förändras också sättet media produceras. Filmskapande följer många gånger en särskild process (ofta med en tydlig hierarki av specialister inom produktionsgruppen) och berättelsen har traditionellt sett berättats från en part till den andre – från producenten/regissören till publiken. Men internets intåg har i många avseenden förändrat filmindustrin, vilket har öppnat upp för en ökad dialog mellan dessa två parter, vilket har omformat publikens position till en mer medskapande sådan. Detta har resulterat i enstörre demokratisering av filmmediet, där den en gång passiva publiken nu involverar sig mer i den kreativa filmskapandeprocessen. Crowdsourcing, som redan är vanligt förekommande inom exempelvis produktdesign och serviceindustrier, har blivit en alternativ metod för att skapa kreativt innehåll. Med sociala medier som en möjliggörande faktor skapas hela filmer endast med hjälp av material inskickat från den framtida publiken. Denna studie ämnar svara på problemformuleringarna: "Vad krävs för att framgångsrikt använda crowdsourcing inom filmproduktion?", samt delfrågorna "Vilken roll har sociala medier spelat i skapandet av crowdsourcadefilmer?" och "Finns det någon framtid för crowdsourcing inom filmskapande?" Sex stycken film- och serie-produktioner av olika format har analyserats: två dokumentärer, tre webbserier och en TV-show. Denna studie har undersökt hur varje produktion har använt sig av crowdsourcing i dess produktionsprocess. Utöver det har en kvalitativ undersökning genom fem semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförts, där varje intervjuobjekt har haft nyckelpositioner inom respektive produktion. Resultaten visade på ett starkt behov av att ha en redan väletablerad skara av följare eller ambassadörer innan man startar en crowdsourcing-kampanj. Sociala medier visade sig också vara en fundamental beståndsdel i möjliggörandet av detta, eftersom de skapar en omedelbar tvåvägskommunikation mellan producenten och publiken. Användandet av crowdsourcing kommer förmodligen att fortsätta, och metoden har fortfarande en ansenlig outforskad potential. Med anledning av metodens beroende av sociala medier, kommer fortsatt forskning inom området troligtvis att gynnas av att utforska samarbeten mellan filmskapande och interaktiva medier.

Do two people, coming from different cultural backgrounds, see the same image the same way? Do we employ technologies of seeing that embed visuality within relentless cultural and ideological frames? And, if so, when does visual difference become a tool for inclusion and exclusion? When does it become an instrument of war? I argue that we‘re always implicated in visuality as a form of confirmation bias, and that what we see is shaped by preexisting socioideological frames that can only be liberated through an active and critical relationship with the image. The image itself, albeit ubiquitous, is never unimplicated - at once violated and violating; with both its creator and its perceiver self-positioned as its ultimate subject. I follow a trace of the image within the context of a supposed Islam versus the West dichotomy; its construction, instrumentalization, betrayals, and incriminations. This trace sometimes forks into multiple paths, and at times loops unto itself, but eventually moves towards a traversal of a visual divide. I apply the trace as my methodology in the sense suggested by Derrida, but also as a technology for finding my way into and out of an epistemological labyrinth. The Visual Divide comprises five chapters: Chapter One presents some of the major themes of this work while attempting a theoretical account of image perception within philosophical and cross-cultural settings. I use this account to understand and undermine contemporary rhetoric (as in the works of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis) that seems intent on theorizing a supposed cultural and historical dichotomies between Islam and the West. In Chapter Two, I account for slogan chants heard at Tahrir Square during the January 25 Egyptian revolution as tools to discovering a mix of technology, language and revolution that could be characterized as hybrid, plural and present at the center of which lies the human body as subject to public peril. Chapter Three analyzes a state of visual divide where photographic evidence is posited against ethnographic reality as found in postcards of nude and semi-nude Algerian Muslim women in the 19th century. I connect this state to a chain of visual oppositions that place Western superiority as its subject and which continues to our present day with the Abu Ghraib photographs and the Mohammed cartoons, etc. Chapter Four deploys the image of Mohamed al-Durra, a 3rd grader who was shot dead, on video, at a crossroads in Gaza, and the ensuing attempts to reinterpret, recreate, falsify and litigate the meaning of the video images of his death in order to propagate certain political doxa. I relate the violence against the image, by the image, and despite the image, to a state of pure war that is steeped in visuality, and which transforms the act of seeing into an act of targeting. In Chapter Five, I integrate the concept of visuality with that of the human body under peril in order to identify conditions that lead to comparative suffering or a division that views humanity as something other than unitary and of equal value. I connect the figures of der Muselmann, Shylock, Othello, the suicide bomber, and others to subvert a narrative that claims that one‘s suffering is deeper than another‘s, or that life could be valued differently depending on the place of your birth, the color of your skin, or the thickness of your accent. v Finally, in the Epilogue: Tabbouleh Deterritorialized, I look at the interconnected states of perception and remembering within diasporic contexts. Cultural identity (invoked by an encounter with tabbouleh on a restaurant menu in Orlando) is both questioned and transformed and becomes the subject of perception and negotiation.

Writing center directors (WCDs) often situate their programs in physical and virtual spaces without fully studying the pedagogical and political implications of their decisions. Without intense study, writing centers risk building programs within spaces that undermine their missions and philosophies. In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre argues that "From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of its space" (38). The study of space also reveals important political and financial priorities within the institution. Furthermore, the positioning of buildings and the spatial layout of a campus display the institution's priorities and attitudes toward writing center work. Theorizing the Online Writing Lab (OWL) through the lens of cultural and political geographies, it becomes apparent that the physical spaces of many writing centers are not as sustainable as WCDs might like, and in many ways, they are marginalized within the larger institution. This dissertation prompts a rearticulation of place and space in the writing center. In this dissertation, I argue that in an attempt to rethink current practices, the virtual space of the writing center should perpetuate, extend, and improve the social practices employed in our physical spaces. I draw from mapping exercises to inform my critique in an attempt to advance our understanding of writing center physical and virtual spaces. The changing geographical and cultural landscape of the institution demands that writing centers pay close attention to spatial implications as they employ technology to create dynamic virtual resources and more sustainable spaces. I rearticulate writing center spaces through cognitive and digital mapping, urban planning, and architectural theories. I make several contributions through this work: theoretical, to rearticulate the physical and virtual space of writing center work; political, to understand the constructions of the writing center's pedagogical spaces; and pedagogical, to understand best practices for creating virtual spaces that enhance learning, unlike those we have seen before or have had available in the writing center.