Community is created, developed, and produced by CrossFit as an organization through their website mission statement and visual media, and the community of CrossFitters are able to respond in kind on CrossFit social media. CrossFit culture has become a tour-de-force in the health and fitness industry over recent years, where individuals come together from all walks of life to connect to others through a health and fitness-centric focused community. The high- quality promotional media produced by CrossFit HQ offers a glimpse into what the organization promotes and values, and the official webpage is the main starting point for potential new members to engage with CrossFit as an organization. Likewise, the CrossFit Facebook page offers research into how individuals in the CrossFit community engage with promoted material, as well as how they may shape their identity or understanding as a result. Fantasy theme analysis (FTA) is useful for analyzing the way CrossFitters define their identity through their membership in CrossFit culture. FTA can help explain how both the CrossFit website and Facebook posts present the "CrossFit way of life" as an ideal fitness community and its implications for members. Using symbolic convergence theory (SCT) as a lens, research will utilize fantasy theme rhetorical criticism as the methodology with which these CrossFit artifacts (both Facebook posts and corresponding comments) are analyzed in order to develop a better understanding of the fantasy themes found within the CrossFit community as well as how members develop a sense of shared reality and identity through their membership in the organization. / Master of Arts / Community is created, developed, and produced by CrossFit as an organization through their website mission statement and visual media, and the community of CrossFitters are able to respond in kind on CrossFit social media. CrossFit culture has become a tour-de-force in the health and fitness industry over recent years, where individuals come together from all walks of life to connect to others through a health and fitness-centric focused community. The high-quality promotional media produced by CrossFit HQ offers a glimpse into what the organization promotes and values, and the official webpage is the main starting point for potential new members to engage with CrossFit as an organization. Likewise, the CrossFit Facebook page offers research into how individuals in the CrossFit community engage with promoted material, as well as how they may shape their identity or understanding as a result. Using symbolic convergence theory (SCT) as a lens, research will look at CrossFit website content, Facebook posts, and corresponding content to develop a better understanding of the CrossFit community as well as how members develop a sense of shared reality and identity through their membership in the organization.

No / The University of Bradford has recently pioneered a radical approach to engaging children and young people in learning about technology and the arts, thanks to funding provided by the English Arts Council. Young people engaged with youth services in the Bradford area were invited to take part in innovative performance art and digital media sessions held at the University. The sessions had a tangible output for the young people. The result was four one-minute ¿motion-captured¿ animations containing original music and dance ¿ produced by the participants themselves, with the help of experienced workshop leaders. This was packaged on a DVD which also contained a video documentary about the workshops, filmed as they were taking place by local film-maker and lecturer, David Robison. The participants were also able to take away their work on their mobile phones, video phones and portable Play-stations.

This dissertation theorizes the food blog as an instance of “habitual new media” (Chun, Habitual New Media). A familiar Web 2.0 genre, food blogs have played a prominent role in rendering the Internet as a source of always-available culinary know-how. At the same time, they have long been and continue to be components of a broader “food-related media convergence” (Lofgren), as bloggers engage with other media formats and industries—cookbooks, television, photography, journalism—and rework their content to meet the demands of a “platformized creative economy” (Duffy et al. 1). Engaging with food blogging’s simultaneous persistence and transformation within a post-digital and post-foodie media landscape, I consider how the unfolding relationality of home cooking is “stabilized” (Kember and Zylinska 75) into demonstrable, shareable, and archivable food knowledges—a process I term culinary experience. While digital modalities provide an important “automedial” (Smith and Watson 168) venue for putting home cooking “on the record” (Couser 181), food blogs are never ‘just’ digital but instead speak to the entanglement of digital technologies, platforms, and discourses with legacy media forms, food and plant matter, and the agential ‘stuff’ and spaces of everyday life. I argue that culinary experience is enacted with, and complexified by, these overlapping materialities. My analysis is organized into three substantial chapters, which trace the materialization of culinary experience throughout the photographic practices of the blogging studio-kitchen, the blog-to-(cook)book pipeline of the 2010s, and the everyday soundscapes of short-form recipe videos. Calling for a deeper dialogue between food studies and feminist media studies in the wake of the material turn, I demonstrate that an attention to food blogging assemblages opens up questions about how certain food stories, and certain culinary agencies, come to “matter” (Poletti, Stories 7)—and explore how we might reorient the workings of culinary experience toward more equitable digital food futures. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / First emerging in the early Internet cultures of the new millennium, food blogs have developed into a familiar online genre and a reliable source of culinary knowledge. This dissertation argues that, to understand the food blog’s embeddedness in everyday digital food cultures, we must account for the manifold technical and material agencies with which food stories and recipes are shared, circulated, and stored. Turning my attention to bloggers’ home photography studios, the relationship between blogs and cookbooks, and the soundscapes of recipe videos found across social media platforms, I position food blogs as a key mechanism by which culinary experiences are formed and understood, but also reformed and contested. In their dual function as autobiographical and archival media, food blogs contribute to a culinary public record which, I argue, is as shaped by analogue media and ‘IRL’ kitchens as it is by digital norms and infrastructures.

<p>Media extenders or digital media receivers are network devices that are used to retrieve digital media files (such as music, pictures, or video) from a media server and play or show them on a TV or home theater system. A technology that is often associated with these devices is the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology. This technology enables network devices to be used without requiring the user to do network configuration on it. This thesis demonstrates how a device that is normally used for receiving digital television broadcasts can be enhanced to support media extender functionality. The thesis describes the design and implementation of the technologies that are needed to accomplish this functionality. The main topics are centered around on how UPnP awareness and media rendering (decoding) are incorporated into the device.</p>

Media extenders or digital media receivers are network devices that are used to retrieve digital media files (such as music, pictures, or video) from a media server and play or show them on a TV or home theater system. A technology that is often associated with these devices is the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology. This technology enables network devices to be used without requiring the user to do network configuration on it. This thesis demonstrates how a device that is normally used for receiving digital television broadcasts can be enhanced to support media extender functionality. The thesis describes the design and implementation of the technologies that are needed to accomplish this functionality. The main topics are centered around on how UPnP awareness and media rendering (decoding) are incorporated into the device.

This study explores the possible use of digital media as an effective psychotherapeutic aid in art psychotherapy, specifically in addressing the effects of trauma experienced by adolescents. A literature review provides evidence on what exactly can be understood under the concepts 'art psychotherapy' and 'digital media'. The literature study further investigates trauma, its treatment and how art psychotherapy can be used as a psychotherapeutic tool with adolescents who have been exposed to trauma. An empirical study including six participants, chosen through a specific sampling process, and whose background information regulates the appropriate methods of intervention demonstrates the practicality of digital media in art psychotherapy. Data gathered from pre-assessment activities, art psychotherapy sessions and post-assessment activities are analysed, interpreted, and reduced through a systematic process. The empirical findings are then presented in a detailed, concise manner From the empirical investigation, it is determined that digital media can be used as a successful tool in art psychotherapy, specifically with adolescents who have experienced trauma. The researcher gained experience in the implementation of digital media in art psychotherapy and was able to provide valuable information about this practice, specifically for professionals interested in the field of art psychotherapy. The researcher was also able to identify limitations and further areas for research in this field. / Psychology of Education / M. A. (Guidance and Counselling)--University of South Africa --2013

This study explores the possible use of digital media as an effective psychotherapeutic aid in art psychotherapy, specifically in addressing the effects of trauma experienced by adolescents. A literature review provides evidence on what exactly can be understood under the concepts 'art psychotherapy' and 'digital media'. The literature study further investigates trauma, its treatment and how art psychotherapy can be used as a psychotherapeutic tool with adolescents who have been exposed to trauma. An empirical study including six participants, chosen through a specific sampling process, and whose background information regulates the appropriate methods of intervention demonstrates the practicality of digital media in art psychotherapy. Data gathered from pre-assessment activities, art psychotherapy sessions and post-assessment activities are analysed, interpreted, and reduced through a systematic process. The empirical findings are then presented in a detailed, concise manner From the empirical investigation, it is determined that digital media can be used as a successful tool in art psychotherapy, specifically with adolescents who have experienced trauma. The researcher gained experience in the implementation of digital media in art psychotherapy and was able to provide valuable information about this practice, specifically for professionals interested in the field of art psychotherapy. The researcher was also able to identify limitations and further areas for research in this field. / Psychology of Education / M. A. (Guidance and Counselling)

The Internet has been lauded as an open and free platform from which one is able to engage with, and share large amounts of information (Stallman, 1997). As one witnesses the shift from analogue media to digitalism, so too is it possible to note a change in cultural practices of media consumers. Users of the media can now be viewed as “prosumers”, producing as well as consuming media products (Marshall, 2004). Digital media users have been given the ability to engineer their own unique media experiences, especially within the realms of the Internet. However, this process has seemingly led to mass copyright infringement as Internet users appropriate various movies, music, television programmes, photographs and animations in order to create such an experience. The art of digital mashing in particular, has been deemed an explicit exploitation of intellectual property rights as it re-cuts, re-mixes and re-broadcasts popular media in a number of alternative ways. YouTube especially has been at the forefront of the copyright furore surrounding digital mash-ups because it allows online users the facility to post and share these video clips freely with other online users. While YouTube claims that they do not promote the illegal use of copyrighted material, they simultaneously acknowledge that they do not actively patrol that which is posted on their website. As such, copyright infringement appears seemingly rife as users share their own versions of popular media through the art of digital mashing. This dissertation however, explores the concept that the creation of mash-ups is not undermining intellectual property rights, but instead produces a new avenue from which culture can emerge. It highlights how Internet users are utilising the culture which surrounds them in an attempt to navigate the new social structures of the online, subsequently arguing that mash-ups are an important element of defining a new postmodern culture, and that the traditional copyright laws of analogue need to be modified in order to secure the development of new and emerging societal structures. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

Anonymous signatures pose a significant threat to the legitimacy of the online petition as a persuasive form of political communication. While anonymous signatures address some privacy concerns for online petitioners, they often fail to identify petitioners as numerically distinct and socially relevant persons, Since anonymous signatures often fail to personally identify online petitioners, they often fail to provide sufficient reason for targeted political authorities to review and respond to their grievances. To recover the personal rhetoric of the online petition in a way that strikes a balance between the publicity and privacy concerns of petitioners, we should reformat online petitions as pseudonymous social networks of personal testimony between petitioners and targeted political authorities. To this end, the pseudonymous signatures of online petitions should incorporate social frames, co-authored complaints and demands, multimedia voice, and revisable support.

Digital media används av miljontals människor dagligen för att använda olika tjänster. Den digitala utvecklingen är något som universitet kan utnyttja för att på ett smidigare sätt nå ut till sökande studenter samt redan studerande på universitetet. I studien undersöks sambandet av Business Intelligence (BI) och digital teknik på digital marknadsföring inom universitets olika informationssystem. Resultatet visade att digital marknadsföring är en viktig del av universitets informationssystem eftersom det ger möjlighet att nå ut till målgrupperna på ett effektivt sätt. Resultatet indikerade även att BI hjälper universiteten att få insikt i hur deras marknadsföringskanaler presterar och att identifiera de mest effektiva marknadsföringskanalerna. Vilket ger universitetet möjlighet att fokusera på de bästa kanalerna och justera marknadsföringen för att öka effektiviteten. Respondenterna använde olika kanaler, inklusive sociala medier, sökordsannonsering och webben för att nå sin målgrupp och justerade sin marknadsföring till specifika kulturella behov hos målgruppen. Digital teknik var avgörande för att samla in och analysera data från olika kanaler vilket bidrog till att förbättra marknadsföringen och attrahera fler studerande. Undersökningen indikerade på att vissa universitet delar stora mängder data som samlas in från marknadsföring/kommunikationsavdelningen på lärosätet till andra delar av universitets olika informationssystem och avdelningar, för att effektivisera samarbetet mellan områdena på lärosätet. Å andra sidan ansåg vissa universitets avdelningar att de inte hade lika stor nytta av den typen av insamlade data. Lagar som exempelvis GDPR indikerade en betydande påverkan på universitetens användning av BI och hur de får marknadsföra, samla in samt kommunicera sitt lärosäte. / Digital media is used by millions of people daily to access various services. This digital development is something that universities can take advantage of to more easily reach out to prospective students and already enrolled students at the university. This study investigates the effects of business intelligence (BI) on the work of digital marketing in connection with a university's information system. The result indicated that digital marketing is an important part of the university's information system as it provides the opportunity to reach target groups effectively. The results also indicated that BI tools can help universities gain insights into the performance of different marketing channels and identify the most effective ones. This gives the universities the opportunity to focus on the best channels and adjust their marketing efforts to increase efficiency. The respondents chose to use various channels including social media, search word advertising and the web to reach their target group and tailored their marketing to specific cultural and moral needs of the target group. Digital technology was pivotal in collecting the necessary data from various channels, which helped to improve marketing and attract more students. The study indicated that some universities share large amounts of data collected from the marketing/communications department at the institution with other parts of the university's information system and departments. This is to streamline cooperation between these areas at the institution. However, some university departments do not consider this type of collected data to be as useful. Laws such as GDPR have a significant impact on universities use of BI and how they can market, collect, and communicate with their institution.