Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 19-23). / Metals mined from the seafloor could support tomorrow's technological and clean energy innovations. Though the mineralogical and geochemical significance of seafloor deposits, which lie thousands of meters below the water's surface in geological formations such as polymetallic nodules, ferromanganese crusts, and seafloor massive sulfides is well-established, the biological and ecological profiles of these sites are still actively developing. As a result, the two scientific disciplines - geochemistry and biology - have advanced at different rates. Regions of the seafloor including the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, the Prime Crust Zone, and inactive or waning hydrothermal vent systems have attracted attention for their unique concentration of metals used in electronics and strong magnets. With commercial mining activities set to commence in 2019 by Canadian company Nautilus Minerals, it is time to assess the paradoxical nature of seafloor mining: to mine the seafloor to support sustainable and efficient technological development on the land above. / by Fatima Husain. / S.M. in Science Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 21-26). / Cabo Pulmo National Park is a 27-square mile protected area in the Gulf of California, near the southern end of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The park surrounds one of the oldest coral reefs on the western coast of North America. Once damaged and depleted by overfishing, the reef has seen an incredible recovery since its protection in 1995. This recovery is due in large part to the efforts of the very people who once fished the reef. The adjacent community of Cabo Pulmo, in collaboration with a group of scientists from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur in La Paz, Mexico, requested the marine protected area, acted as vigilante enforcers for the park's rules, and worked to prevent proposed developments that might damage the ecosystem. As the ecosystem has recovered, they have been able to reap the economic benefits of the park, opening dive shops and restaurants. The story of their struggles and triumphs can provide valuable lessons for community-based conservation efforts around the world. / Laura Castañón. / S.M. in Science Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages [17]). / Before much of America learned to fear atomic energy, towns like Perry, Ohio, learned to love it. For over thirty years the Perry Nuclear Power Plant has been the linchpin of the small Rust Belt community, bringing flush budgets and well-paying jobs to an area with little other industry. But like many nuclear power plants in the U.S., the Perry plant is aging, costly to maintain, and unable to compete with the nearly two-decade run of record-low natural gas prices. On the isolated shores of Lake Erie, Perry is now caught in a global energy shift. In the coming years, more than two-thirds of the nuclear power plants in America are similarly at risk of shut down, the consequences of which will leave deep voids in the diversity of America's energy grid and depleted tax bases in the rural towns that house nuclear power plants. Residents and town officials in Perry, however, are not going quietly into the retrenchment of America's nuclear energy industry. / by Kelsey M. Tsipis. / S.M. in Science Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2021. / The concept of science evokes forward momentum, a steady march of progress as scientists accumulate knowledge, refine hypotheses, and make theoretical leaps. But science, it turns out, can also meander as much as a wandering bird. / Illustrating this concept is research on the European starling, a migratory species whose annual travels have been helping shape the field of bird migration science for the past hundred and twenty years. Starling research, from early bird banding to current satellite tracking efforts, has been marked by moments of controversy and confusion alongside insight and discovery. Following starlings — and the researchers who study them — reveals the hidden twists and turns that characterize the path to scientific understanding. / by Alice D. McBride. / S.M. in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references. / The American daytime serial drama is among the oldest television genres and remains a vital part of the television lineup for ABC and CBS as what this thesis calls an immersive story world. However, many within the television industry are now predicting that the genre will fade into obscurity after two decades of declining ratings. This study outlines how the soap opera industry is and could be further adapting to the technological and social changes of a convergence culture to maintain and revitalize the genre's relevance for viewers and advertisers alike. CBS/Procter and Gamble Productions/TeleVest's As the World Turns will serve as a case study for these changes. This project examines how the existing fan base plays an active role in gaining and maintaining new fans by researching historical and contemporary examples of social relationships that fans form with other fans and the show itself. In addition to looking at how these fan communities operate, this thesis focuses on how soap operas have adapted and might adapt to alternate revenue models such as product placement, capitalize on their vast content archives, and tell stories through multiple media formats. The study concludes that soap operas should be managed as brands and not ephemeral television content because of their permanence in the television landscape, that fans outside the target advertising demographic should be empowered as proselytizers for the show, and that a transgenerational storytelling approach best utilizes the power of the genre to tell its stories. / by Samuel Earl Ford. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 83-104). / This research analyzes the battle of frames in the controversy surrounding rolezinhos- flashmobs organized by low-income youth in Brazilian shopping malls. To analyze the framing of these events, a corpus of 4,523 online articles was compiled. These articles, published between December 7th, 2013, and February 23 rd, 2014, were investigated using Media Cloud-the system for large scale content analysis developed by the Berkman Center at Harvard and the MIT Center for Civic Media. Data from Facebook indicated which articles received more attention on the social network. A framing analysis was performed to describe the conflicting frames in the debate. The 60 most popular texts--those that attracted 55% of the social media attention in the corpus-were content analyzed. They served as an input for a hierarchical cluster analysis algorithm that grouped articles with similar frame elements. The result of the cluster analysis led to the identification of three frames: one that criminalized rolezinhos or at least tried to discourage them (arrastdo frame), another that acquitted the youth and blamed police, government, State, or society for discriminating poor citizens (apartheid frame), and a third frame that criticized both conservatives and progressives for using the controversy to push their particular agendas (middle ground frame). After finding the keywords that singled out each frame, natural language processing methods helped to describe the genesis and evolution of those frames in the overall corpus as well as the framing strategies of the main actors. / by Alexandre A. Goncalves. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies and Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "September 2016." / Includes bibliographical references (pages 93-105). / This thesis considers the ways in which digital game mechanics (interactive inputs) contribute to games' worldbuilding. In particular, this work is concerned with the replication and reinforcement of problematic gender roles through game mechanics that express positive ("warm") interactions between characters, namely healing, protection, and building relationships. The method used has been adapted from structural analysis via literary theory, as informed by game studies, media studies methodologies, and feminist epistemologies. Game mechanics are analyzed both across and within primary texts (consisting of Japanese-developed games from the action and role-playing genres) in relation to characters' representation. Through this analysis, I found that characters who are women and girls are often associated with physical weakness, nature-based magic, and nurturing (or absent) personalities, whereas characters who are men and boys often protect women through physical combat, heal through medical means, and keep an emotional distance from others. Relationships built through game mechanics rely on one-sided agency and potential that renders lovers and friends as characters who exist to support the player character in achieving the primary goals of the game. Through these findings, I conclude that even warm interactions in games carry negative, even potentially violent and oppressive, representations and that there is thusly a need for design interventions on the mechanical level to mitigate violence in game worlds and the reinforcement of negative real world stereotypes. / by Kyrie Eleison Hartsough Caldwell. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies and Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 119-125). / Cultural theorists such as Henry Jenkins¹, Lawrence Lessig², Yochai Benkler³ , Robert Hassan⁴, and Manuel Castells⁵, have written extensively on the role of network communications technologies in reconfiguring contemporary culture. While the penetration of the "information society" is now widespread in U.S. culture⁶, not everyone is an equal participant⁷7. As an extreme case in point, the American prison population, currently at 2.3 million⁸, is institutionally excluded from equal participation in the information society and its network economies⁹ attributed by some scholars as due to the prison's historical logic of highly regulated communication flows¹⁰ Some theorists of network culture argue that one quality of network cultures is their tendency to be all-embracing: their connectivity has a compounding effect that encourages networks to become ever more dense¹¹ . Hassan calls this permeation of networks into culture the "network effect¹²," a compelling social pressure to participate more deeply in the information society. This network effect can be used as a theoretical lens for looking at prisons within society. An analysis of the debates surrounding correctional policy reveals the social forces both internal and external to the prison system pressuring prisons to adopt more liberal networked communication and attendant technologies. This juncture between isolation and networks is the central problematic nexus in contemporary debates about the role of prisons in society, their function and modes of operation. The prison has been historically defined in terms of communication-by the regulation and governance of it-and any attempt to understand or reform the prison must proceed from a communicative, as well as punitive, framework. / by Jason Willis Krider Rockwood. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Keywords: documentary, interactive, live, liveness, ephemerality, interactivity, theater, performance, television, televisuality, database, data, live data, real time Abstract: The field of documentary is undergoing a transformation as it collides with digital technologies. A new arena of Interactive Documentary production is thriving, and critics and scholars are taking note. Within this field, there is less attention to new opportunities and new theoretical challenges for live practices within the documentary sphere. This thesis argues for a fuller conceptualization of Live Documentary practice. First, it questions the current state of assumptions about documentary, as a form related to the 'document,' as a particularly film-leaning form, and as a lasting and historicizing form of discourse. Next, it examines the historical underpinnings of two forms of live documentary practice and exemplar projects of each: Live Performance Documentary and Live Subject Documentary. The former is situated in the media category of live theater and performance, and the second, the author will argue, is an instantiation of television in its earliest configuration as a device for two-way audio-visual communications and not just unidirectional broadcasting. The study concludes by positing a third medium-specific form of live documentary native to the computer, the Live Data Documentary. This final, more speculative form is defined by drawing on the meanings of 'liveness' examined in the previous chapters and the history of real time computing to generate a suggested framing for computer-native live documentary practice. / by Julie Fischer. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

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