This study examines how a music band can manage to build an image and story using social media platforms after the infamous break of the golden era. To put it further into perspective, the second part of the study focuses on the fans’ connection to the band and how they use social media themselves. The purpose of this study is, through interviews, qualitative content analysis and rhetorical analysis, to explore how a band successfully use social media to keep their fans’ anticipation alive. To explore my purpose, I have conducted and analysed qualitative interviews. In the analysis section, the data has been interpreted in relation to theories of star image, participatory fandom and the live experience as well as compared to previous research while connecting my own analysis to it. The study discusses tendencies shown in the results when analysing posts from Ghost’s official Facebook page, as well as how participatory fandom as we know it may be at risk, as social media giants keep growing and eliminating other forums that have been vital to fans.

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This thesis examines in detail the construct we term the ‘theatre star’. It aims to investigate how transnational theatre stars in Australia and New Zealand in the early-twentieth century validated their professional eminence, social cachet and public adulation through the strategic development and manipulation of their on and off-stage personae and mediated afterlives. Rather than focus on the theatre star as a solitary icon, my theoretical approach examines the star as a valuable partner – social, professional and cultural – within the infrastructure of the theatre industry. While much research has been done to explicate theatre performers’ burgeoning professional status and appeal as charismatic personalities and performance specialists, particularly in British and American contexts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is little investigation on the constructed identity of the star performer of early-twentieth-century Australasian theatre. The conceptual model of ‘imbricated identity’ theorized in this study seeks to mark a shift in the field of theatre historiography. It articulates an intertextuality of performance that reaches beyond that defined by Marvin Carlson as ‘ghosting’ inherent in theatre praxis, and by Jacky Bratton as ‘intertheatricality’. I propose that the validation of ‘personality’ – the mysteriously elusive and ‘uncanny appeal’ or ‘x’ factor – is only one dynamic explanation for the theatre star’s popular success. The term ‘imbricated identity’ is used to describe the cultural accretion of interleaved and overlapping depictions of the star’s identity: theatrical representations, civic persona, private self for public consumption, and posthumous legacy. These delineated images operate coterminously. They strategically coalesce and sometimes conflate, informing discursive framings of the star’s identity as variously invested in by the artiste, and his/her symbiotic partnerships with theatre management, media, spouse/s, family and the public. During the early-twentieth century the theatre star’s constructed identity became necessarily more complex with the advent of modernity’s mass-mediated communications. Printed media, radio and film increasingly revealed information about stars’ public and private lives. Case studies of Nellie Stewart, Ada Reeve, Madge Elliott and Cyril Ritchard are used to explicate how theatre performers fashioned and articulated their distinct star images. All are performers identified as ‘Australian’ at some phase of their careers, who also maintained strong international profiles, particularly in New Zealand, England and America. They performed variously in entertainments such as dance, drama, vaudeville and revue, radio, film and television. The work of these chosen subjects traverses paradigms of high and low culture: boundaries that became increasingly more fragile with modernity’s exchange and fusion of culture and commerce. The star’s image and cultural status are unstable and rely upon contextualization syncretized by the star and theatre management, professional colleagues, journalism, fans and audiences. The public, private, and professional partnerships of my chosen subjects had a significant impact on their acculturation as Australian stars on the transnational stage, and their mediated afterlives continue today to invite multiple readings of star personae.

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Attitude and position determination systems in satellites are absolutely necessary to keep the desired trajectory. A very accurate, reliable and most used sensor for attitude determination is the star tracker, which orient itself in space by observing and comparing star constellations with known star patterns. For on earth tests of movements and docking maneuvers of spacecrafts, the new Spacecraft Maneuvering and Docking (SMD) facility at the chair of Aerospace Information Technology at the University of Würzburg has been built. Air bearing systems on the space ve- hicles help to create micro gravity environment on a smooth surface and simulate an artificial space-like surrounding. A new star tracker based optical sensor for indoor application need to be developed in order to get the attitude and position of the vehicles. The main objective of this thesis is to research on feasible star tracking algorithms for the SMD facility first and later to implement a star detection software framework with new developed voting methods to give the star tracker system its fully autonomous function of attitude determination and position tracking. Furthermore, together with image processing techniques, the software framework is embedded into a controller board. This thesis proposes also a wireless network system for the facility, where all the devices on the vehicles can uniquely communicate within the same network and a devel- opment of a ground station to monitor the star tracker process has also been introduced. Multiple test results with different scenarios on position tracking and attitude determination, discussions and suggestions on improvements complete the entire thesis work.