This thesis titled Blog as a phenomenon of online journalism focuses on public perception of blogs, printed media and online versions of printed media. The theoretical part is divided into three chapters, which deal with online journalism, blogs and its history, new media and the last chapter is about possible journalism future. The practical part of my thesis is based on quantitative analysis and qualitative research. The quantitative research applies surveys as a data gathering method with randomly chosen sample of respondents. The qualitative research uses in-depth interviews conducted with students studying New media or Journalism degrees at the Charles University. In the empirical part of my thesis, the study sets out three key hypotheses. After the interpretation of both research methods we found out that women of age 25 or lower prefer to read blogs rather than magazines about beauty. The second hypothesis states that the most trustworthy media type perceived by women is the press. This hypothesis has been proven as well. Furthermore, the results from the survey indicated that a price is not the most important factor for choosing the media type. However, it still belongs among the three most important factors that respondents base their decision on when choosing a media type. Lastly the...

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Hikaru H. Peterson / Aleksan Shanoyan / Nurseries and garden centers face challenges to stay economically viable, particularly in rural areas. Their efforts to advertise horticultural products through traditional methods seem insufficient to increase their sales. Marketing through new media is receiving more attention by businesses across various industries. In order to assess whether this growing interest in new-media is applicable to the green house industry, it is important to determine their impact on business performance and the factors driving its adoption. Few studies report the impact of social media on nurseries and garden centers performance. The literature on technology adoption shows that network and learning effects play a critical role in agricultural technology adoption (Bandiera and Rasul, 2006; Baerenklau, 2005), while perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have been identified as the major factors of adoption of information technology (Davis, 1989; Lorenzo-Romero et al., 2014). This study builds on the known factors of agricultural and information technology adoption to determine the key variables affecting the extent of use of new-media marketing in the green industry. Using a survey, data were collected from 161 nurseries and garden centers across the United States. Results indicate that the network effect had a robustly, positive effect on the extent of use of new-media marketing in the green industry. The estimated network effect was statistically significant in the models using frequency of online marketing use, frequency of social media use and hours of social media use as the respective dependent variables measuring the use of new media. Other statistically significant factors include the percentage of retail sales, the perceived usefulness, and the city population. The study also found that new-media marketing, measured by the number of hours spent on social media, had a positive impact on sales for nurseries and garden centers making more than $200,000 a year. By providing evidence of new-media marketing effectiveness, these results contradict the belief that sales do not increase immediately after a social media campaign, suggesting a low return on investment. Besides this evidence, the magnitude of the network effect and the differences in critical factors driving adoption across firm size are key information to tailor training programs and make informed policy decisions to support marketing efforts.

Aus der Einführung: "Virtuelle Gemeinschaften oder Virtual Communities (VC) sind zu einem Modebegriff aber auch zu einem sowohl quantitativ als auch qualitativ ernstzunehmenden wissenschaftlichen Forschungsfeld avanciert. Innerhalb des breiten Forschungsspektrums geht es aus pädagogischer Sicht vor allem um Lerngemeinschaften. In sowohl zeitlich als auch organisatorisch umfangreichen Projekten im Bereich telematisches bzw. Online-Lernen bilden sich verschiedene Formen von Lerngemeinschaften. Eines der umfangreichsten Projekte im deutschsprachigen Raum ist das Bundesleitprojekt „Virtuelle Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft, Informatik und Technik“ (VFH). An der VFH werden telematische Fachhochschulstudiengänge in Medieninformatik und Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen entwickelt. Projektpartner sind zwölf Fachhochschulen, die Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg und die Medizinische Universität Lübeck sowie weitere Partner aus der Wirtschaft. Nach mehreren Pilotphasen hat im Herbst 2001 der reguläre Studienbetrieb im Bachelor-Studiengang Medieninformatik mit 166 Studierenden begonnen. Dieser wird von einem Teil der kooperierenden Projektpartner in einem bundesländerüberschreitenden Fachhochschulverbund durchgeführt."

Im Zuge sich immer stärker verbreitender Anwendungen und Dienste, die auf Internet- Technologien beruhen, wird eine grundlegende Einschränkung deutlich: Einerseits werden immer vielseitigere und leistungsfähigere Internet-Anwendungen geschaffen, andererseits bauen diese aber auf einer seit langem eingesetzten und bewährten Technologie auf - die des Internet-Protokolls und der darauf aufsetzenden Protokolle, deren Grundlagen vor mehreren Jahrzehnten gelegt wurden. Diese Protokolle entsprechen jedoch nicht mehr allen Anforderungen moderner Kommunikationsanwendungen. Diese teilweise sehr hohen Anforderungen betreffen vor allem die Dienstgüte, die eine Netzwerkinfrastruktur - in unserem Falle das Internet - einer Anwendung individuell zusichem soll. Diese Dienstgüte wird als Quality of Service (QoS) bezeichnet und bezieht sich auf den Durchsatz des Netzwerkes, vor allem aber auf die Antwortzeit, die Schwankungen innerhalb der Antwortzeit und die Fehler- bzw. Verlustrate. Doch im Gegensatz zur neueren Technologien wie ATM1 2 wurde das Internet nicht dazu konzipiert, solche QoS-Merkmale einer Verbindung anzubieten und zuzusichem. Jedweder Verkehr im Internet wird nach dem Prinzip „so gut es geht“ (engl, „best effort“) behandelt, was zu Einschränkungen bei der Benutzbarkeit einiger Anwendungen und Online-Dienste führen kann und auch führt. Ein Beispiel für eine fehlende Ende-zu-Ende-Dienstgüte (d.h. über alle Instanzen des Kommunikationsweges hinweg) ist der Börsengang der Infineon Technologies AG, der große Probleme beim Zugang zu Online-Banking-Diensten verursachte. [... aus dem Text]

Technologischer Fortschritt, das Internet und die fortschreitende Globalisierung der Märkte beschleunigen den Wandel, der alle Unternehmen und Branchen verändert. Insbesondere die Computer- und Elektroindustrie -wird derzeit vom Tornado-Phänomen (Abbildung 1) erfasst. Unternehmen mit Flexibilität und Schnelligkeit haben die esten Chancen, diese Veränderungen erfolgreich zu meistern, sich neue Geschäftspotentiale zu erschließen und bestehende Geschäftsprozesse den Anforderungen anzupassen. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit sollen im Folgenden betrachtet werden. [... aus dem Text]

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The purpose of this work is to bring better understanding into the problematic of negotiation of veiling behaviour among young Muslim women. In the current world they face many challenges caused by stereotypical images that are being spread about them through various media platforms. One of those stereotypes is the misuse of the veil as a symbol and taking it out of the context. Main goal of this work is therefore to observe the role of media, new media in particular, within diverse socio-political contexts in the lives of young Muslim women, especially on the negotiation of their veiling behaviour. Misinterpretation and misuse of the symbol of the veil by the media within diverse socio-political contexts will be investigated from the perception of these young women, with help of the qualitative approach, namely in-depth interviews with the sample of seven Muslim women between the ages of 22 and 36 living in Czechia, Lebanon, Netherlands and Switzerland. To put this issue into perspective of the researcher's home country, Czechia, additional and supportive data was collected among 100 respondents from Czech non-Muslim public. This survey investigated the perception of Islam and veiled women by the Czech public to prove or disprove the hypothesis that the Islamic tradition of veiling is perceived...

<div>Online gendered collectivities like the Manosphere (an online collection of blogs, forums, and chat spaces devoted to shedding light on perceived social misandry) have provided opportune spaces for regressive forms of gendered organizing to occur. These spaces offer individuals an online network of safe spaces dedicated to antifeminism, misogyny, and pick-up artistry. While Manosphere networks have gained attention with their connections to the emerging Alt-Right activism online, these spaces have been legitimized in and throughout specific social networking platforms. For instance, sites like Reddit (dubbed the ‘Internet Culture Laboratory’) have become known as a hotbed of misogynist behaviors fostered and shared on comment threads and its subcommunities (known as subreddits).</div><div><br></div><div>Whereas previous scholarship pertaining to the Manosphere and The Red Pill have described the larger technocultural spaces that contribute to an increasingly toxic online world, less studied is how these organizations are organized—particularly with a focus on gendered organizing. SubReddits may adopt and take organizational forms wherein organizing occurs primarily through communicative engagement between users in the spaces (e.g., sharing posts, commenting on posts, and supporting some ideas over others through Reddit’s ‘upvote’ currency system). Over time, spaces like The Red Pill are networked, enacted, and organized. With an aim of understanding how organizational identity is organized and enacted on The Red Pill’s subreddit, this study analyzed the Top 100 posts of all time (over 35,000 comments and roughly 6,000 pages of text data) from The Red Pill to understand how conversations and content enacted a masculine organizational identity.</div><div><br></div><div>Using a multi-level analysis, this dissertation examines members’ text-based engagement, the social network, and types of roles influencers adopt to construct an organizational identity for r/TheRedPill. Using the comment threads from the Top 100 posts of all time, text mining and semantic networks were generated to understand how members of r/TheRedPill construct meanings and concepts focused on the organizational identity of the space. Second, using social network analyses, this dissertation illustrated the networks of influence of central users within r/TheRedPill. With a goal of understanding the roles that central users adopted, the dissertation adopted an online observation of the space to create a typology of leadership roles within r/TheRedPill. The findings uncovered three distinct contradictory themes focused on masculinity, sexual activity, and backlash that were central to organizing in The Red Pill. In addition to these three themes, the social network analysis and observation revealed distinct roles that influencers adopted to promote the organizational identity of r/TheRedPill.</div><div><br></div><div>Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to the Communicative Constitution of Organizing online by showcasing how the interconnections between conversations around gender, sexual activity, and backlash ‘scale up’ to construct a gendered organizational identity. Methodologically, this dissertation utilizes multiple levels of analysis to investigate online organizational activity. Pragmatically, these findings help provide a rich portrait of alternative forms of gendered organizing that occurs online. Future directions include examining the broader Red Pill network on Reddit, as well as examining contrastive spaces (e.g., r/TheBluePill or r/ThePurplePill) to investigate how members’ discursive engagement organizes and constitutes organizational activity as a response to r/TheRedPill.</div>

O trabalho propõe uma análise de relações possíveis entre videogames e construção de sentidos, buscando discutir diferentes abordagens e perspectivas teóricas que possam contribuir no entendimento do videogame enquanto objeto de estudo acadêmico. Indo além de uma perspectiva que possa restringi-lo a um exemplar contemporâneo de uma noção mais abstrata de jogo, abordo-o enquanto um objeto epistêmico (KNORR CETINA 2001) participante de constelações de saberes (SANTOS ET AL 2005) que podem entrar em conflito entre si. Isso, em uma sociedade em que a primazia do prestígio de práticas e conhecimentos científicos é marcante. Para tanto, busco enfatizar mais especificamente ao menos duas outras dimensões do videogame: sua materialidade enquanto mídia contemporânea e sua potencialidade, enquanto artefato cultural, em gerar efeitos sociais e discursivos específicos. Dentro disso, pontuo elementos que ajudam a problematizar como a especificidade técnica, cultural e de linguagem presente no que se entende atualmente como videogame pode dar formas a saberes e sentidos construídos na contingência do uso de tal artefato por seus jogadores. Essa questão mais ampla se efetivou em estudos exploratórios por meio de duas formas de análise: a observação de registros escritos em um fórum de fãs de futebol a respeito, basicamente, de um simulador do esporte (o Football Manager); entrevistas com quatro participantes desse fórum que tinham ou tiveram no uso do videogame em questão uma prática corrente. Isso, tendo como norte, principalmente, os seguintes pontos: i) de que modo a experiência situada e específica com o videogame pode se tornar pública ou manifesta em outros contextos; ii) que relações o jogador pode perceber, defender ou estabelecer contrapondo saberes e sentidos surgidos de uma interação com o videogame com saberes mais canônicos e esperados em contextos públicos e comunitários do qual participa iii) qual a função ou efeito essas experiências com videogames quando compartilhadas em situações concretas, socialmente inseridas, mas que não a de sua prática podem vir a exercer em comunidades mais amplas (ou seja, que envolvam sujeitos que não são jogadores de videogame). Tais estudos indicam que o videogame é percebido e utilizado por seus jogadores como um espaço diferenciado do futebol profissional, que seu uso enquanto fonte de saber na comunidade analisada é concreto embora não seja consensualmente validado e que essa falta de consenso não o impede de ser uma forma de conhecimento defendida e utilizada por diversos membros do grupo, influenciando as opiniões e perspectivas em debate no espaço em questão. Assim, deve-se considerar que videogames podem ter papel na construção das realidades que envolvem o sujeito, o que não resulta em confusão entre a prática de interagir com videogames e a prática social em outros contextos / The aim of this research is to analyze potential connections between videogames and meaningmaking through the discussion of different approaches and theoretical perspectives that might contribute to the understanding of the videogame as an object of academic study. Rather than considering a perspective that restricts the videogame as a contemporary sample of a more abstract notion of a game, I approach it as an epistemic object (KNORR CETINA 2001) participant of constellations of knowledge (SANTOS ET AL 2005) that may conflict with each other; especially in a society where the primacy of scientific practices and knowledge is remarkable. Therefore, I emphasize two dimensions of the videogame: its materiality as contemporary media and its potentiality as a cultural artifact that generates specific social and discursive effects. Within this framework, I point out elements that help to problematize how the specificity of technical, cultural, and linguistic issues regarding the current understanding of videogames can frame knowledges and meanings constructed in the contingency of interaction among players. Exploratory studies were carried out on two forms of analysis: the observation of written records in a forum of football fans mainly regarding a simulator called Football Manager; and interviews with four participants of this forum who used the simulator in a common practice. This research focused mainly on the following points: i) how the situated and specific experience with the videogame can be transformed and presented as a public or manifest knowledge in other contexts; ii) what kind of links a player may recognize, stand up for, or establish among knowledges and meanings when interacting with the videogame, and on the other hand, with those knowledges understood as canonical or expected in this second context; iii) what role (or effect) these experiences play when they are shared in socially embedded concrete situations by people who are not videogame players. The research results showed that: although players and non-players participants of this community share a common sense of separation between experiences from the professional football world and the interaction with Football Manager, and also the practice with the simulator is not consensual, regarding it as a valid source of knowledge, it does not exclude this experience as a form of knowledge held and used by different group members, which influenced opinions and perspectives under discussion in the forum. As a result, it must be considered that videogames play a significant role in the construction of realities that surround players. However, this construction does not represent confusion to the players\' perception between the practice of interacting with videogames and the different social practices in other contexts

O advento das tecnologias digitais e a difusão da "world wide web" (www) expandiram as atividades de comunicação pública em direção a um amplo leque de novos agentes publicadores, muito além do setor midiático tradicional. Nesse contexto, embora exista uma literatura numerosa e recente de estudos diagnosticando o uso dos recursos da nova mídia pelo setor midiático tradicional, tais estudos ainda inexistem para os novos agentes publicadores recém-surgidos, entre os quais o setor bancário brasileiro ocupa uma posição de destaque proporcionada por sua vocação, historicamente demonstrada, para o uso de tecnologia. Dessa forma, a dissertação se propõe a estudar como os bancos no Brasil – e em especial os que operam no mercado de varejo – se desempenham enquanto agentes publicadores de conteúdos na nova mídia. / The advent of digital technologies and the diffusion of the world wide web (www) have expanded the boundaries of massive communication activities towards a wide range of new players, much beyond the traditional media sector. Within this context, despite the existence of a recent, prolific literature diagnosing the use of new media resources by the traditional media sector, such analyses have not been developed yet for the range of newly appeared players, among which the Brazilian banking sector occupies a position of prominence due to its historically demonstrated technological vocation. Therefore, the dissertation is focused on studying how the banking institutions in Brazil, and especially those operating in the retail banking segment, perform their tasks as new media publishers.