Cette thèse a pour objectif de créer et évaluer un modèle narratif pour les jeux vidéo émergents dont une part importante du contenu est générée de façon procédurale. Elle propose pour cela une application dans le jeu vidéo Minecraft. L'approche classique de la narration dans les jeux vidéo s'adaptant difficilement à des expériences de jeu plus libres nous proposons de donner au joueur les moyens de transformer le récit en temps réel et de manière explicite grâce à une forme narrative modulaire et adaptative au contexte de jeu courant. Dans un premier temps, la thèse explore les liens entre narration et interaction par le biais de l'étude des rôles de la narration dans les jeux vidéo. Puis, dans un deuxième temps, nous identifions les propriétés qui caractérisent les jeux vidéo émergents afin d'exposer les enjeux narratifs de ce type d'expérience de jeu. Dans un troisième temps, nous détaillons notre proposition d'un modèle narratif adapté aux jeux vidéo émergents ainsi que l'architecture logiciel permettant au joueur de transformer le récit en temps réel. Finalement, nous présentons deux expérimentations visant à vérifier nos hypothèses et à évaluer notre modèle narratif. / This thesis aims to create and evaluate a narrative model for emergent videogames that make extensive use of procedurally generated content. As such, an application of this model is presented within the videogame Minecraft. The usual approach to narratives in videogames can hardly be applied to experiences of play that involve more freedom from the player's perspective, such as what offer emergents videogames. Thus, we aim to provide players with the means to explicitly alter the story in real time, thanks to a context sensitive and modular narrative form. First, we explore the relationship betweenstorytelling and interactivity by studying the various roles held by narratives in videogames. Then, we identify the properties that define emergent videogames to better expose the narrative challenges they represent. Next, we detail our proposal of a narrative model suitable for emergent games as well as the architecture allowing players to transform the story in real time. Finally, we present an experiment in which we evaluate the validity of our narrative model in the context of emergent videogames.

Lerncontentmodelle beschreiben den modularen Aufbau von Lernmaterialien auf verschiedenen Komplexitätsebenen von Assets bis hin zu fertigen Kursmaterialien. In Autorenwerkzeugen wird diese Untergliederung oft unterstützt, bspw. durch Mediendatenbanken, modularisierte Inhaltsstrukturen oder pädagogische Metadaten zum unterstützten Lernszenario. User Generated Content in Social-Software-Anwendungen entsteht nicht auf diesem strukturierten Weg, sondern spontan und abhängig von den bereitgestellten Funktionen. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass sie sich aber weiterhin bezüglich ihrer Abhängigkeit vom Lernkontext klassifizieren lassen. Als Abstufungen ergeben sich Assets, Informations- und Lernobjekte, zielgruppenbasierte Zusammenstellungen und Kursunterlagen. Damit soll einerseits eine taxonomische Grundlage geschaffen werden, um User Generated Content als Lernmaterialien einzuordnen, es ist aber vornehmlich ein erster Schritt hin zur deren systematischer Re-Integration in institutionelle Lernmaterialien.

Yes / This study aims to explore how marketers can use text mining to analyze actors, actions and performance effects of service encounters by building on the role theory. This enables hotel managers to use introduced methodology to measure and monitor frontline employees’ role behavior and optimize their service. Design/methodology/approach: The authors’ approach links text mining and importance-performance analysis with role theory’s conceptual foundations taking into account the hotel industry’s specifics to assess the effect of frontline hotel employees’ actions on consumer satisfaction and to derive specific management implications for the hospitality sector. Findings: This study identifies different actors involved in hotel frontline interactions revealing distinct role behaviors that characterize consumers’ perspectives of service encounters with different role types associated with front-office employees. This research also identifies role performance related to role behavior to improve service encounters. Practical implications: Customer–employee interactions can be assessed by user-generated contents (UGC). Performance evaluations relate to frontline employee roles associated with distinct role scripts, whereby different hotel segments require tailored role designs. Insights of this study can be used for service optimization, market positioning as well as for improving human resource management practices in the hotel industry. Originality/value: This study contributes to the service encounter literature by applying role theory in the text mining of UGC to assess frontline employees as actors and the effects of their actions on service quality delivery. / Science Foundation of Ministry of Education, PR China (Grant No. 21YJA630031)

This study investigates how tagging is being used in a new way when members of a Swedish dating site get to tag themselves in an act of self-presentation with the aim of meeting new people. In the study seven members of the dating site Mazily were interviewed about their self-presentation, tagging and identity formation there. The questions concerned how they formed their own tags, but also how they interpret and use other members' tags in their search for a potential partner. I have been using queer theories for this study, in order to find out what kind of norms and structures that lie behind and affect the members' behaviour on the website. My study finds that the interviewed members to a high degree reflect about both their own and other members tagging and self-presentations. Although they spend quite some time trying to analyse other people on the website they have a great sense of understanding that a person may give two very different impressions on the site and offline. Another finding is that although tagging is a very free way to present yourself, there still are structures and norms about gender, sexuality and culture that will affect members actions on the dating site. This is a study in Library and Information Science.

The After August Museum collects and exhibits an open, user-generated body of content. Its primary objective is to help heal the post-Katrina Lower Ninth Ward community. It is respectful and considerate of the area's established traditions, present concerns, and future goals. The museum assumes multiple shapes and plays multiple roles as it acts as the center of the transitioning community.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Thomas Gould / The consumer value of user generated content was investigated between culture groups. Two groups of survey participants and three groups of interview respondents were utilized to identify the culture value’s influence on people’s reliance and preference in consumption-related UGC information. The behavior pattern of Chinese students and American students on UGC were identified and connected with dimensions of culture value. Some difference in preference and attitude between Chinese users and American users were found in this research. Power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance are considered important cultural factors that influence the consumer-value of UGC in each culture group. Several potential areas for future quantitative and qualitative study as well as suggestions for UGC platform providers were also identified.

The following study aims to give a first look into the process of when tourists searches for information before a trip and to understand how they reflect over the reliability in different kinds of information. Internet has an important meaning for information research, especially within the tourism business and experience economy. The value of reviews has grown increasingly bigger for customers when they are about to look for information, decide which product that suits them the most and to make their decision. While positive reviews have become yet more important for a product/experience to get chosen by the customer, false reviews have started to take their places at the websites of reviews. The reasons behind may be to raise a certain product’s ratings or simply to give another product or company a bad reputation.The following essay put light on the problem with the phenomena of false reviews and how these can harm the tourism industry in several ways. The study will highlight how different segments of tourists searches information, what value reviews have to them and what makes a review seem trustworthy or faked. The segments that were asked to participate in the survey were chosen based on their age and life situation. Through this we created the following three groups: students, parents from a family with children, and people who are retired.The result of the study shows that many of the respondents within the segment Students use online reviews to gather information and to boost their motives for consumption. The respondents within the other two groups mainly use the tourism companies’ own websites when they are about to consume. An important result of the study is that, although many respondents gave the answer that they mainly search information on websites, they still put greater trust in rumors and comments from friends, especially the respondents within the segment parents from a family with children. It has also been proved that the use of internet increases the risk of getting a negative experience.

For applications that rely on User-Generated Content (UGC), there is a need to find what may motivate the applications user base to consistently contribute with quality content. One category of such applications is Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) traffic applications, which serve a specific goal; providing useful traffic-oriented content. By implementing useful incentives into Intelligent Transportation System traffic applications, the applications can better serve their purposes, and at the same time, improve their user's experience. Incentives are intrinsic or extrinsic, i.e., the motivation comes from internal- or external stimuli, which can motivate users in different ways and produce different incentive outcomes. To find the most useful incentives, and gain a better understanding of how to best stimulate active application participation, the research question addressed by this thesis is: Which incentives are useful for increasing quality content in the field of ITS traffic applications? The main method employed to address the research question was a survey. The survey was carried out to investigate what people thought was motivating in ITS traffic applications. In addition to the survey, an interview with the project manager of a Swedish ITS traffic application was done. Previous research concludes that the gain and the incentive for people or organizations hosting UGC are apparent, but the gain for the creators is not as clearly recognized and varies in which area the content is created. The findings of this study showed, from a user perspective, an interest in helping others and monetary gain, as potential incentives for implementation. The authors concluded that intrinsic inclined incentives should work better in-line with the goal of functionality and user long-term engagement, which the authors believe would be preferable for UGC based ITS traffic applications. These findings will be useful for understanding the optimal way to increase motivation for adequate quality UGC in ITS traffic applications.

O sucesso da mineração de opiniões para processar automaticamente grandes quantidades de conteúdo opinativo disponíveis na Internet tem sido demonstrado como uma solução de baixa latência e mais barata para a análise de opinião pública. No presente trabalho foi investigado se é possível prever variações de intenção de voto com base em séries temporais de sentimento extraídas de comentários de notícias, utilizando três eleições brasileiras como estudo de caso. As contribuições deste estudo de caso são: a) a comparação de duas abordagens para a mineração de opiniões em conteúdo gerado por usuários em português do Brasil; b) a proposta de dois tipos de atributos discriminantes para representar o sentimento em relação a candidatos políticos a serem usados para a previsão, c) uma abordagem para prever variações de intenção de voto que é adequada para cenários de dados esparsos. Foram desenvolvidos experimentos para avaliar a influência dos atributos discriminantes propostos em relação a acurácia da previsão, e suas respectivas preparações. Os resultados mostraram uma acurácia de 70% na previsão de variações de intenção de voto positivas e negativas. Estas contribuições são importantes passos em direção a um framework que é capaz de combinar opiniões de diversas fontes para encontrar a representatividade de uma população alvo, de modo que se possa obter previsões mais confiáveis. / The success of opinion mining for automatically processing vast amounts of opinionated content available on the Internet has been demonstrated as a less expensive and lower latency solution for gathering public opinion. In this work, we investigate whether it is possible to predict variations in vote intention based on sentiment time series extracted from news comments, using three Brazilian elections as case study. The contributions of this case study are: a) the comparison of two approaches for opinion mining in user-generated content in Brazilian Portuguese; b) the proposition of two types of features to represent sentiment behavior towards political candidates that can be used for prediction, c) an approach to predict polls vote intention variations that is adequate for scenarios of sparse data. We developed experiments to assess the influence on the forecasting accuracy of the proposed features, and their respective preparation. Our results display an accuracy of 70% in predicting positive and negative variations. These are important contributions towards a more general framework that is able to blend opinions from several different sources to find representativeness of the target population, and make more reliable predictions.

MCom (Marketing) in the School of Economic and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg / With the increasing development of new technologies, organisations are encouraged to integrate these new technologies into their business model in order to be competitive and respond to consumers’ quick adaptation. Today, consumers drive organisations’ strategies across most industries including electronics. The electronic sector is a fast-paced industry and has been steadily growing in South Africa. Businesses need to consider the consumer voice in order to be successful and take into account that consumers are more influenced by their peers rather than a business advertising campaign. The internet has facilitated the communication between businesses and consumers who are using the internet more and more as a tool to seek information about a product or share information about a brand or a product; thus creating content. Therefore, businesses are no longer the sole content generators online. The aim of this study is to explain the importance of user-generated content in making sales and creating long lasting relationships with consumers. In addition, this study will highlight the factors that will enhance the positive attitude of internet users toward the use of user-generated content (UGC). For the purpose of this study, six variables were identified. Subjective norm, information quality and source credibility are the predictor variables of the study. Attitude towards UGC use, followed by brand trust, are both mediator variables and, finally, purchase intention is the depend variable in this study. The nature of the survey was quantitative research and the survey was administered to 400 individuals. Both self-administered and online surveys were distributed to women and men from 18 years to 55 years and older. Findings reveal that there is a positive relationship between the use of UGC, brand trust and purchase intention. However, it was also found that subjective norms, information quality and sour credibility were affecting the use of UGC for decision making. To improve the relationships amongst the different variables, the study suggests few recommendations that marketers need to apply for the benefit of the brand and the satisfaction of the consumers. Main recommendation is firstly that marketers get to know online audience and learn to engage consumers as well as find an opinion leader or influencers to endorse the brand. This will contribute to improving quality of the information, drive individuals to share information with each other and increase the perceived credibility of the source. Secondly, the firm platforms such as the website and social media pages need to be up to date, regularly assessed, measured and promoted through different tools in order to build brand trust and lead eventually to purchase intention. Overall, this study will assist marketers in understanding the factors leading to brand trust and purchase intention through the influence of UGC and the factors affecting it. / MT2017