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Simply by reading data and statistics of the charting positions of popular songs on global and national music charts, it is hard to understand how the popularity of songs, albums, or artists within pop music truly behave over time. However, analyzing the data using visualizations as means of communication might provide us with new points of view and new insights into how the popularity of contemporary popular music behaves over a longer period. This is the hypothesis that we intend to investigate in this thesis. An interactive visualization application (presented as a website) has been developed based on data from “Daily Top 200” lists provided by Spotify. A survey was then used to evaluate the application, with the results suggesting that new and interesting insights into the trends in the popularity of music can be gained from the proposed prototype.

This dissertation research examines the Korean Wave phenomenon as a social practice of globalization, in which state actors have promoted the transnational expansion of Korean popular culture through creating trans-local hybridization in popular content and intra-regional connections in the production system. This research focused on how three agencies – the government, public broadcasting, and the culture industry – have negotiated their relationships in the process of globalization, and how the power dynamics of these three production sectors have been influenced by Korean society’s politics, economy, geography, and culture. The importance of the national media system was identified in the (re)production of the Korean Wave phenomenon by examining how public broadcasting-centered media ecology has control over the development of the popular music culture within Korean society. The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS)’s weekly show, Music Bank, was the subject of analysis regarding changes in the culture of media production in the phase of globalization. In-depth interviews with media professionals and consumers who became involved in the show production were conducted in order to grasp the patterns that Korean television has generated in the global expansion of local cultural practices. In conclusion, the Korean Wave has rekindled national forces in spreading local popular content globally in three ways: 1) by deconstructing a binary approach of West vs. non-West, and Global vs. Local in order to understand media cultures and practices; 2) by understanding the rise of Northeast Asian media connections as part of a global culture; and 3) by decolonizing non-US/UK state actors to perceive their actions, which hinges on the ongoing centrality of nation-states in the global media sphere. / Media & Communication

Over the past fifty years, Christian contemporary music has joined hymnody and psalmody as a major form of evangelical liturgical and devotional song. While the production and content of this genre have been explored by scholars, few studies have attended to the devotional use of the genre and its role in shaping the religious lives of American evangelicals. This project draws from several sets of data to address this matter: analysis of church-created worship music albums, listener testimonials on Christian radio websites, and focus group interviews of laity and clergy at four South Carolina churches. The data revealed that music is significant to their religious lives outside of church as a means of encountering God, managing emotions, and displaying spiritual capital. Inside churches, the music is used to create a sense of corporate identity that reinforces social bonds within the community and attracts newcomers. Drawing on the methodological framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his work on social distinction, I argue that American evangelicals who listen to Christian contemporary music are engaged in aural piety, a set of practices, attitudes, and ideas invested in music that structure and evoke the experience of the sacred. / Religion

CONK is a collection that explores the absurdist irony located at the intersection between horror and humor. The events are predicated upon the characters' fundamental misunderstandings of the world around them, their doom arising from their inability to differentiate between the indecipherable and the incorrect ("Bird Kill"). Some are more reflexive, revolving around the difficulty of telling a story at all ("What a Story''), or exploring the dissolution of self that results from the act of artmaking (the eponymous "CONK"), or even indulging in the joy of said dissolution ("Celebration"). Other times, the pieces mix esoteric language and pop culture referents with the goal of defamiliarizing them ("Will That Be All?"). The resulting destabilization, this breakdown of heuristic methodology, creates situations that resist understanding and renders uncanny previously mundane images. / Master of Fine Arts / CONK is a collection of short fiction.

K-pop is a music phenomenon with a global fanbase that often is portrayed as only consisting of hysterical teenage girls, but that is not the case since it includes diversity in both age and gender. This qualitative study highlights the online portrayal of masculinity of K-pop fans by exploring the men in this female dominated subculture and their fan expression and portrayed masculinity on TikTok. Relying on prior research on the relationship between masculinity and femininity and Connells view of hegemonic masculinity, the new radical masculinities displayed on TikTok, trends of masculinity such as metrosexuality and the Korean wave (Hallyu) and other hybrid masculinities as well as parallels to the Brony community. The study´s theoretical approach is based in gender as a phenomenon of socialization and thereby performative in connection to Anderson´s (2012) concepts of orthodox and inclusive masculinity. TikTok videos with hashtags related to K-pop groups is the primary data that is thematically analyzed. The result show that the male K-pop fans embraced their fan identity and are influenced by their idols, even though their fan belonging is perceived as female coded to their surroundings leaving them to defend it online. The men express inclusive masculinity in their lack of homohysteria, in the admiration of male idols, support for others and adapting female coded behavior. In its opposite orthodox masculinity is displayed in the need to claim heterosexuality or social hierarchy to not loose masculine capital. Further, the discussion will highlight issues that occurred during the process of this study, problematize its concepts and cultural context, give suggestions on how to build on this study for further research as well as emphasize TikTok’s algorithms effect on the result. / K-pop är ett musikfenomen med fans världen över som ofta framställs enbart bestå av hysteriska tonårstjejer, men som har bredd i både kön och ålder. Denna kvalitativa studie belyser hur maskulinitet framställs av K-pop-fans genom att utforska männen i denna kvinnodominerade subkultur och deras fanuttryck, porträtterade av maskulinitet på TikTok. Studien bygger på tidigare forskning om förhållandet mellan maskulinitet och femininitet, Connells syn på hegemonisk maskulinitet, de nya radikala maskuliniteterna som visas på TikTok, maskulinitetstrender som metrosexualitet och den koreanska vågen (Hallyu) och andra hybridmaskuliniteter samt paralleller till Brony fans. Den teoretiska referensramen utgår från genus som en socialiseringsprocess och är därmed performativ i anslutning till Andersons (2012) begrepp om ortodox och inkluderande maskulinitet. Den primära datan består av TikTok-videor med hashtags relaterade till K-pop-grupper som analyseras tematiskt. Resultatet visar att de manliga K-pop-fansen omfamnade sin fanidentitet och influerades av sina idoler, även om deras fantillhörighet uppfattas som kvinnligt kodad för deras omgivning och leder till ett behov att försvara den online. Männen uttrycker inkluderande maskulinitet i sin avsaknad av homohysteri, i beundran av manliga idoler, stöd för andra och anpassning av kvinnligt kodat beteende. I dess motsats visas ortodox maskulinitet i behovet att uttrycka heterosexualitet eller social hierarki för att inte tappa maskulint kapital. Vidare kommer diskussionen att belysa frågor som uppstod under processens gång, problematisera begrepp och kulturellt sammanhang, ge förslag på hur man kan bygga vidare för fortsatt forskning samt betona TikToks algoritms effekt på resultatet.

With the rise of Hallyu, or the global export of Korean culture also commonly known as ‘The Korean Wave’, South Korea has become a big trendsetter in recent years: whether it be within fashion and K-Beauty skincare or Korean movies and drama series, to Korean popular music, also known under the umbrella term K-pop. What these categories have in common are their strong ties to visual aesthetics and K-pop is known for its very colourful and maximalist design, which is also a key characteristic to why K-pop as a phenomenon has been particularly attractive and has managed to captivate fans all over the world. In the marvelling K-pop universe, the goal is to engage all the senses for a complete and interactive sensory experience, making the visual just as important as the auditory, and this can also be applied to the physical album design. Physical K-pop albums sell better than ever despite the digital streaming services dominating our digital age. A visual analysis was conducted on selected contemporary K-pop albums together with a survey on Swedish K-pop fans, in order to discuss how packaging design of K-pop albums can influence consumer behavior. The study showed that interactive packaging design and extra album inclusions like photocards, photo books, postcards etc. makes the fans more likely to want to collect albums and merchandise, which on its own can be viewed as a collectible item. The packaging design both facilitates and encourages fans to interact with the design not only visually, but also in a tactile way, by engaging in participatory behavior such as filming unboxing videos and posting them on social media, and it can also be associated with identity making, i.e. how they identify themselves as fans in relation to their favorite artists or towards other fans. Lastly, it is interesting to discuss how K-pop design can be heavily influenced by American and Western concepts despite being marketed as a Korean phenomena and innovation; from the visual analysis it could also be concluded that contemporary design trends draw inspiration from Western concepts such as the y2k millennium bug, retro and technology.

Cette mémoire est une analyse du subtexte immanent dans le roman « 1979 » (2001) de Christian Kracht, auteur suisse, qui est le plus connu pour son début « Faserland » (1995). Ces oeuvres sont situées dans le mouvement de la littérature Pop allemande des années 1990 et en résultent en même temps. Dans ce contexte, le climat socio-politique après la réunification, notamment le Literaturstreit, jouera un rôle important dans mon interprétation comme fond de la poésie de Kracht. J’exposerai les difficultés que le discours de la littérature Pop porte en ce qui concerne l’œuvre de cet auteur, qui, même s’il est vu en général comme fondateur de ce genre littéraire en Allemagne, ne considère pas ses textes comme littérature Pop dans ses déclarations notoirement problématiques. Je devrais objecter que Kracht est en combat avec la littérature Pop d’une façon stylistique et pas rarement ironique, ce qui traverse la définition étroite dominante. Il fait cela en adoptant sur l’un côté le trait le plus signifiant du genre, à savoir le caractère superficiel extrêmement descriptif et en transmettant sur l’autre côté un message moral profond, ce qui rend impossible la classification de ses textes comme Pop, signifiant seulement le divertissement ou l’archivisme de Moritz Bassler. En fait, la fréquence de signifiants de Pop dans les textes de Kracht créent par leur arrangement un réseau de sens qui, dans le paradigme post- moderne, peut être décrit le mieux avec le terme « rhizome » de Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari. En faisant ça, Kracht suit une autre tradition qui traverse les limites de la littérature Pop, comme il se sert de la décadence, de l’esthétisme et du symbolisme du fin-du-siècle d’un Hugo von Hofmannsthal, d’un Stefan George et d’un Joris-Karl Huysmans avec leurs pointes de mise en garde contre les déficits du modernisme, du libéralisme et du capitalisme, d’une façon nommée « fondamentalisme esthétique » par le sociologiste Stefan Breuer. Cette recherche se référera aux interprétations originales des textes source, aux évaluations de littérature d’accompagnement, à savoir des manuels scolaires en critique littéraire, en sociologie et en histoire allemande, aux comptes rendu, dissertations et entrevues et aux textes philosophiques. Cette mémoire est écrit en allemand. / This master's thesis is an analysis of the subtext immanent in the novel "1979" (2001) by Swiss author, Christian Kracht, who is best known for his debut, "Faserland" (1995). These works are situated in and result from the 1990's movement of German pop literature. In that context, the socio-political climate after the re-unification, most notably the Literaturstreit, plays an important role in my interpretation as the background to Kracht's poetics. I delineate the difficulties that the pop literature discourse carries both, as a literary category and in regard to this author's work, taking into consideration his notoriously problematic statements to the effect that he does not consider his texts to be pop literature, in spite of being commonly regarded as the founder of this literary form in Germany. I shall argue that Kracht engages in a stylistic and more often than not ironic play with pop literature, which transgresses the dominant narrow definition of it. He does so by adopting on the one hand its most-defining feature of extreme descriptive superficiality, yet by conveying on the other hand a moral message of profound dimensions, which renders impossible the classification of his texts as pop, neither in the sense of mere entertainment nor in the sense of Moritz Bassler’s archivism. In fact, the very arsenal of pop signifiers present in Kracht's texts create through their arrangement a web of meaning, which in the post-modern paradigm can be best described with Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's term “rhizome." By doing so Kracht follows in the footsteps of another tradition which transgresses the boundaries of pop literature, as he reaches back to the aestheticistic décadence and symbolism at the fin-de-siècle of a Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a Stefan George, and a Joris-Karl Huysmans, with their strong undertones of warnings against the shortfalls of modernism, liberalism, and capitalism, in a fashion that is termed “aesthetic fundamentalism” by Stefan Breuer. This research draws on original interpretations of the source texts, on evaluations of secondary literature such as scholarly works in German literary criticism, sociology and history, on book reviews, essays and interviews, and on philosophical texts. The thesis is written in German. / Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist der narrative Subtext im Roman 1979 (2001) des Schweizer Autoren Christian Kracht, der vor allem mit seinem Romandebüt Faserland (1995) bekannt wurde. Seine Texte stehen im Zusammenhang mit der Neuen Deutschen Popliteratur der 90er Jahre. In diesem Kontext hat auch das soziokulturelle Klima nach der Wiedervereinigung eine wichtige Rolle, das sich am prägnantesten im Literaturstreit äußerte, weshalb dieser in der hier vorgenommenen Intepretation von Krachts Poetik seinen Platz findet. Außerdem soll aufgezeigt werden, inwieweit die Neue Deutsche Popliteratur sowohl als gattungstechnische Kategorie als auch im Bezug auf Krachts Werk problematisch ist. Dies entspricht den Beteuerungen des Autors, dass er keine Popliteratur schreibe, obwohl er als ihr Gründer gilt. Das Argument dieser Arbeit ist, dass Kracht auf stilistische und oft ironische Weise mit Popliteratur spielt, wodurch er die bestehende enge Definition dieser transgressiert. Da er einerseits das bezeichnenste Merkmal von Popliteratur, nämlich die Oberflächenbeschreibung, übernimmt, andererseits aber dadurch eine tiefe moralische Aussage macht, lassen sich seine Texte nicht als Pop verorten,weder als Unterhaltung, noch im Sinne von Moritz Baßlers Archivismus. Vielmehr ergeben die von Kracht versammelten Pop-Signifikanten in ihrer Vernetzung ein Sinngebäude, das in postmoderner Parlanz mit Gilles Deleuze und Félix Guattari als „Rhizom“ bezeichnet werden kann. Indem Kracht so verfährt, knüpft er ebenfalls an eine Tradition jenseits von Popliteratur an, und zwar an die ästhetizistische décadence und den Symbolismus des fin de siècle eines Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Stefan George und Joris-Karl Huysmans, sowie deren Warnungen vor den Mängeln des Modernismus, Liberalismus und Kapitalismus, wobei diese Einstellung von Stefan Breuer als ästhetischer Fundamentalismus bezeichnet wird.

Le pop-in est un phénomène d’instabilité de propagation de fissure observé lors d’essais de ténacité sur certains matériaux. Ce phénomène a été observé sur l’alliage d’aluminium 6061-T6 qui a été identifié pour constituer des éléments de structure essentiels du cœur du réacteur de recherche Jules Horowitz. Cette thèse a été initiée pour comprendre l’origine de ce phénomène sur l’aluminium 6061-T6 et en proposer une modélisation à bases physiques qui pourra être utilisée pour l’exploitation et l’interprétation des essais de ténacité, notamment à l’état irradié.Les différentes pistes identifiées dans la littérature ont été testées expérimentalement. Des revenus (4/8/12/16 h) ont été appliqués afin d’obtenir différents comportements mécaniques. Des essais de traction avec corrélation d’images ont montré que les pop-ins observés ne sont pas dus à un effet PLC. Ils ne correspondent pas non plus à une hétérogénéité microstructurale ; ils ne sont pas liés à des mécanismes d’endommagement, car la rupture est typiquement ductile, qu’un pop-in soit intervenu ou non. Ces mécanismes et les différentes microstructures ont été comparés par le biais de plusieurs techniques (MEB, EBSD, EDS, Sonde Atomique Tomographique, tomographie, laminographie et nanolaminographie par rayonnement synchrotron). Les pop-ins sont donc uniquement le résultat d’une accélération de la rupture ductile.En réalité, ils sont dus à une interaction entre deux paramètres : une résistance réduite du matériau à la propagation de fissure (i.e. un faible module de déchirement) et une complaisance importante du dispositif d’essai (i.e. une faible raideur). Afin d’investiguer ce deuxième paramètre, un dispositif innovant a été conçu, permettant de faire varier la raideur de la machine d’essai lors d’essais de ténacité. Deux critères analytiques, l’un basé sur la courbe force-ouverture, l’autre sur l’intégrale J, ont été établis, permettant de quantifier les conditions d’amorçage et d’arrêt de pop-in de façon fiable.Pour prendre en compte le rôle central du durcissement vis-à-vis de la propagation ductile, un nouveau critère de germination piloté par les contraintes a été introduit dans un unique modèle GTN. Cela permet de simuler et de reproduire par éléments finis les différentes courbes de ténacité J-Δa en modifiant uniquement la loi élastoplastique. En rajoutant des ressorts dans les modélisations et avec un pilotage adapté, les pop-ins sont simulés avec succès, et restent exploitables avec les critères analytiques.Des études sur éprouvettes irradiées réalisées dans des enceintes blindées ont montré que l’augmentation des pop-ins avec l’irradiation résultait de la diminution du module de déchirement, elle-même due au durcissement. De même qu’à l’état non irradié, les pop-ins apparaissent donc à cause de l’interaction du module de déchirement avec le dispositif d’essai, et non pas à cause d’une gamme d’élaboration industrielle non maitrisée. / Pop-in is a phenomenon of crack propagation instability observed during toughness tests on some materials. This phenomenon has been observed on the 6061-T6 aluminum alloy, which has been identified as an essential structural element of the core of the Jules Horowitz research reactor. This thesis was initiated to understand the origin of this phenomenon on 6061-T6 aluminum and to propose a physics-based modeling, usable for the exploitation and interpretation of toughness tests, especially in the irradiated state.The different origins identified in the literature have been experimentally tested. Different aging times (4/8/12/16h) were applied to obtain different mechanical behaviors. Tensile tests with image correlation have shown that the observed pop-ins are not due to a PLC effect. Nor do they correspond to microstructural heterogeneity; they are not linked to different fracture mechanisms, because the rupture is typically ductile, whether a pop-in is involved or not. These mechanisms and the different microstructures were compared using several techniques (SEM, EBSD, EDS, Atom Probe Tomography, tomography, synchrotron laminography and nanolaminography). Pop-ins are therefore only the result of an acceleration of the ductile fracture.In fact, they are due to an interaction between two parameters: the reduced material crack growth toughness (i.e. the low tearing modulus), and the significant compliance of the test device (i.e. the low stiffness). In order to investigate this second parameter, an innovative setup has been designed to vary the machine stiffness during toughness tests. Two analytical criteria, one based on the load-opening curve, the other on the J-integral, have been established, making it possible to reliably quantify the conditions for initiation and arrest of pop-in.To take into account the central role of hardening for ductile propagation, a new stress-controlled nucleation criterion has been introduced into a single GTN model. This makes it possible to simulate and capture by finite elements the various J-Δa toughness curves by modifying only the elastoplastic law. By adding springs in the models and with an adapted control, the pop-ins are successfully simulated, and remain exploitable with the analytical criteria.Studies on irradiated specimens carried out in hot cells have shown that the increase in pop-ins with irradiation results from the decrease in the tearing modulus, itself due to hardening. As in the non-irradiated state, pop-ins thus appear solely because of the interaction between the tearing modulus and the test device stiffness, and not because of a range of industrial development not mastered.

90年代後，中國大陸的文化政策逐步鬆綁，流行音樂市場呈現百家爭鳴。其中，台灣流行音樂的市占率超過80%，傳播其所承載的意識型態，伴隨著一代又一代的中國大陸青年成長，對中國大陸社會的影響不曾間斷。在文化政策的宏觀調控下，中共官方對台灣流行音樂持續施展政治性的運用，運用黨國機器的管制與特殊的演出場域收編轉喻台灣流行音樂；而台灣歌手在「政治正確，商演不斷」市場的考量下，也樂於登上黨國控管的演出場域。這也使得中國大陸市場上的台灣流行音樂，鑲嵌於中共官方政策意識型態中。 / Since the 90s, cultural policy of the Chinese mainland has deregulation.The music market is more divers, and Taiwan's pop music market share over 80%. Chinese government tries to Metaphor and Metonymy Taiwanese pop music, Taiwanese singer to move closer Party-state field to market incentives.