This thesis studies government driven e-participation in the context of Colombia using the case of “Urna de Cristal” (Crystal Ballot box). Making use of three theoretical models it intends to answer the main research question that is: How does the government driven tool of “Urna de Cristal” relate to the concepts of participatory democracy, e-empowerment and sustainable e-participation? This research collects mainly qualitative data, collected from government representatives, civil society organizations and citizens. The findings show that “Urna de Cristal” only reaches to the level of e-engaging in Macintosh model of levels of e-participation. It is not fully sustainable according to the seven-phase model proposed by Islam (2008) since there is a special need to work on the last three phases of sustainable e-participation, which refer to promotion, participation and post-implementation analysis. The fact the “Urna de Cristal” is not e-empowering leads the analyses towards the limitations that block the e-empowerment process. From this analysis it is seen that the Government of Colombia is doing a lot to overcome the existing limitations but it is a challenging task that requires a lot of time and resources since there are entrenched limitations, coming from different stakeholders and that comprise a specific context, structures and mentalities.  Findings also show that “Urna de Cristal” is not likely to survive long after the next election (2018) because it is it is an initiative that was proposed in the electorate campaign of Juan Manuel Santos, hence an alternative design is suggested.

ABSTRACT AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS' PERCEPTION OF BIBLICAL COMMUNITY WITHIN THE ENVIRONMENT OF DIGITAL MEDIA: A MIXED METHODS STUDY Matthew Alan Vander Wiele, Ed.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014 Chair: Dr. Troy W. Temple This study is an examination of teen perception regarding their understanding of biblical community within the environment of digital media. The study also examines the principles, essentials, or characteristics of biblical community regardless of environment. The researcher surveyed a sample of teens that attend classical, open enrollment, and closed enrollment Christian schools of various denominations as well as no denomination. A survey presenting a list of the essential principles of biblical community, regardless of environment, including questions for each objective was sent to the sample. The respondents were asked to participate in a quantitative Lickert-scale survey. An expert panel was utilized to validate and approve the principles of biblical community that were used in the student survey. The validation by the experts regarding the literature review was then used to form objective questions regarding the principles or characteristics of biblical community regardless of environment. Triangulation was utilized as the principles reviewed in the literature review, validated by the expert panel, were formulated into a survey to measure perception. The researcher analyzed the data in light of the principles or essentials of biblical community reviewed in the literature review and validated upon by the experts to demonstrate a need to better measure the effectiveness of biblical community within a particular environment. Also, the research demonstrated a need to educate parents and students alike as to what makes a community biblical. The benefit of the expert panel allowed for the findings to be validated in order to then create an instrument that measures student perception. The researcher sought to answer the question: Do teens, that attend Christian high schools, perceive their online relationships to facilitate the principles or essentials of biblical community? The more commonly asked questions concerning the effects of digital media on one's face-to-face relationships cannot adequately be answered until the above question is answered.

This master’s thesis presents a study on the mediated negotiation between radio broadcasting and digital media. During the last decade, digitalisation has become unanimous with changing media structures, and has fundamentally altered the way radio is mediated by broadcasters and perceived by listeners. This study delves deeper into specialist music radio, more specifically, the London-based UK club music station Rinse FM. The study investigates how developments in digital media have influenced the way Rinse FM is reached and utilised by listeners, and how its implementation of digital media has affected its position as a cultural intermediary within the UK club music community. The investigation was carried out though a survey, and subsequent interviews, with members of Dubstepforum; an online forum, host to a substantial quantity of UK club music listeners. The research provides interesting results on listeners’ contemporary experience of Rinse FM, and outlines pivotal functions of specialist music radio in a digital age of free-flowing music content. The results explore participants’ digital listening habits in relation to Rinse FM; as well as the role of Rinse FM as cultural intermediary and community institution, depicted through the mediated experiences of Dubstepforum members. The study concludes with reflections upon specialist music radio’s continued development, and cultural position in the digital media environment.

Developments in advertising are necessarily tied to shifts in media technology – by this very fact, the industry has changed significantly since the 1960s. In the 21st century, ad men have to contend with an increasingly complex and fractured digital landscape. Big, traditional ad agencies – like those depicted in the popular television series Mad Men – no longer dominate; instead, they are forced to compete with a growing class of digital marketing start-ups for a stake in tomorrow’s adscape. Innovative ad serving technologies, instead of creative-driven campaigns, rule the day. Internet technologies have created an environment in which identifying and engaging consumers on an individual level is entirely possible; in effect, the software engineers and data scientists capable of executing these types of campaigns – the “Math Men” – have become the new industry luminaries. And yet, there is still something to be said about the importance of a sentimental bond between the consumer and product. The type of advertising practiced by Don Draper and his real-life counterparts is based in a fundamental truth about human decision-making: emotions are an integral aspect of information-processing. While there is truth to the Math Men’s core principle that, “Advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time,” There is a good reason that brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and GE – all vestiges of the Mad Men era – remain some of the most valuable and celebrated in the world. The paper will argue that the future of powerful ad content is dependent upon an appreciation of the Mad Men's creative philosophy, emboldened by an understanding of the ways in which media – and by extension ad serving technology – has advanced since the 1960s.

This dissertation explores the aesthetics of contemporary Indigenous identity— its various manifestations, simulations, hybridizations, (dis)appearances, and liminalities. It is a project about the lived experience of ancestry conceived of through narratives of shapeshifting, virtuality, sacrifice, hauntings and possession. This project is representative of a period of time in an on-going journey that began long before these first words were written…and one that I intend will continue long after this book’s completion. The methodological approach to this work is multifaceted, encompassing the fields of Indigenous philosophy, digital media art and cultural studies. It is a project comprised of several interrelated strands of theoretical speculation, philosophical inquiry and creative engagement. This dissertation is in many ways an autobiographical text—a meditation on my own Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) heritage and the spaces I occupy in the world as Onkwehonwe (an Indigenous person). At its core it is about exploring different modes of engagement with my own ancestral ‘territories’, while at the same time it endeavors to ask larger questions about collective memory, community, and cultural inheritance. In being representative of a journey, the interrelated strands of writings in this text are meant to be traversal, and are about surveying and mapping different intellectual and creative territories. This text is about crossing interdisciplinary zones of theoretical inquiry that occur at the intersection and hybridization of Indigenous and Western philosophies, contemporary First Nations performance art and post-structuralist theory. It is a work comprised of ebbs and flows, movements, refrains, and cascades of articulation that interpenetrate and cross over into one another. This text is therefore best thought of as a series of theoretical passageways—a multiplicity of thoughts and critical engagements in motion, translation and conversion. It must be said that the traversals and crossings in this text are not necessarily about establishing a synthesis between differing ideologies, philosophies or cosmologies. It is not intended to be dichotomous, but rather should be read as a remix-theory that passes in-between different fields of critical inquiry. For while on the one hand this text seeks to explore different zones of intellectual and creative proximity, it is also a work that emerges from within a multitude of contradictions and myriad incommensurabilities. / Graduate

This study focuses on the manifestation of mediated experiences in digital media environments in the visual arts, conducted by human-computer interactive technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality, in order to construct a framework for understanding experience through diverse artistic experiments. My inquiry is constructed through analysis of the connections, indications and reflections of mediated experience in various interactive virtual environments, and discusses the profound and related connections among media, technology and experience in the context of digital interactive arts. Further, a number of representative artworks, particularly in the territory of digital interactive arts, are examined in order to map the concept of mediated experience. The study of the philosophical, social and cultural roots of experience is at the center of this project. This research can be considered a trial that brings theoretic discourse into art practices, and vice versa. By situating the discussion through case studies of artworks, readers are better able to read abstract concepts in actual artistic practices and develop a deeper understanding of the topic. These considerations, from a broader point of view, pave the road for the future manipulation and application of interactive digital media in public visual art. Digital interactive art as a complex of technology and conceptual exploration is an ideal vehicle for embarking on the research into the instinctive and emotional feelings generated by human-computer interactive experiences. / Graduate / 0357 / 0326 / 0984 / 0377 / 67865805@qq.com

This thesis explores the application of vision-based augmented reality in formal and informal educational environments. It focuses on the common practices, concerns, and priorities that developers and content creators in each environment frequently encounter, offering insights into how these experiences are changing with the incorporation of new digital media technologies and the hardware platforms that support them. The research outlined in this thesis uses qualitative methods, assembled around a series of twelve hour-long interviews with highly-experienced educators, developers, researchers, and designers, and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This thesis introduces original research about the role of computer vision-based augmented reality as an educational medium, a topical discussion in information studies, museum studies, learning sciences, and a number of other fields, and makes a theoretical commitment to addressing the ways that material and virtual objects come to interact meaningfully in a variety of learning environments.

An ongoing debate surrounds the question of whether digital media can promote participatory democracy. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama’s campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website promotes or discourages participatory democracy. For a rich analysis, the case study drew on various relevant theoretical perspectives, including the concepts of participatory democracy and digital democracy. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study found that my.barackobama.com promoted political knowledge and non-electoral participation, but failed to promote political discussion and community. Consequently, the recommendations highlighted the importance of an online public sphere. The findings of this case study add to the research literature about the political use of digital media, and they also add new information about Barack Obama’s digital media strategies.

Im folgenden Artikel wird dargelegt, was unter dem Konzept des forschenden Lernens zu verstehen ist und welche Einsatzmöglichkeiten sich für das forschende Lernen im Kontext Universität ergeben. Dabei werden speziell diejenigen Merkmale theoretisch herausgearbeitet, die aus Lehrendenperspektive Anknüpfungspunkte für einen prozessbegleitenden Medieneinsatz bieten. Exemplarisch wird eine Lehrveranstaltung angeführt, die auf Fallebene zeigt, wie ein forschungsorientiertes Seminar um digitale Medien angereichert werden kann und welche Chancen und Grenzen sich bei der selbstgesteuerten Verwendung digitaler Medienangebote ergeben. Die Evaluation des Seminars zeigt, dass die Studierenden einen großen Lernzuwachs erleben, jedoch teilweise durch die Offenheit des Lernens überfordert sind. Diese und andere Gründe führen dazu, dass die von Lehrenden vorgeschlagenen Medienangebote selten bis kaum genutzt werden. Zudem sehen Lernende die Qualität virtuell distribuierter Inhalte kritisch, was sich auf die Akzeptanz und die Nutzung der vorhandenen digitalen Medienangebote auswirkt.

Anhand des Beispiels Lehramtsausbildung erörtert dieser Artikel exemplarisch Bedeutung und Reichweite der innerdeutsch als sehr heterogenen zu beschreibenden Integration digitaler Medien in das formale Bildungswesen. Auf Basis einer Fallstudie werden IKT-bezogene Kompetenzen im Kontext der schul- und hochschulbezogenen Ausbildung mit dem Fokus auf die Lehramtsausbildung thematisiert und diskutiert.