This thesis aims to understand the everyday use of digital media by Chinese ordinary citizens as new forms of civic engagement under strict online censorship and CCP’s authoritarian control. With the announcement of the Third-child Policy as the analytical background, I adopted a qualitative research method and conducted digitally mediated ethnography on Sina Weibo users. Specifically, I took a close look at their strategic usage of social media practices, memes, as means to participate in the discussion of third-child policy on the platform. My theoretical framework builds off on James Scott’s (1989) theory of everyday forms of resistance and Flinders & Wood’s (2018) notions on everyday political participation, supplementing with concepts of connective action and collective identity. This paper shows how participants used low-key, tactical, and mundane memes to criticize third-child policy, the motivations, and intentions behind their acts, how meme expressions are organized, sustained, and what makes these acts politically effective. By doing this, I highlight how participants’ everyday self- determined online practices result in the formation of collective identities that eventually lead to the emergence of underground centrality among ordinary Chinese people and challenge CCP authority and legitimacy. As such, it will contribute to a deeper insight into the collective nature of and resistance power of participants' individual online actions and enrich our understanding of the active agency of Chinese actors and their civic engagement under censorship regimes.

The development of digital technology has changed people's relationship patterns and interactions, and the Internet has enabled people to interact beyond the limits of time and space. In this context, more and more people are meeting on the Internet according to their personal subcultures, exchanging symbols and emotions, which means the medium is subtly influencing people's interactive behaviors. So how does the medium influence people's interactive behavior in a digital setting? The interactive behavior of a subcultural group on the Chinese social media Douban, the group Introducing the 985 Loser Programme, provides an example for us to consider this question. Taking this online subcultural group as an example, this thesis applies Collins' theory of interaction ritual chains, combines the concepts of disembedding and reembedding, and comprehensively analyzes the interaction rituals of members within this group on Douban through online observation, in-depth interviews, and content analysis, and analyzes from which aspects these interaction rituals are influenced by the medium. This study concluded that the online interaction rituals influenced by the medium were influenced by the real-life factors that the participants faced and also shaped their offline lives in terms of both perceptions and actions.

This paper aims to examine the various practices employed by libraries in the city ofUmeå in regards to the collection development of their video game selection.In addition to directly examining this process, it will also seek to develop anunderstanding of how different factors impact it, such as technical aspects, ageratings, genres, and game platforms. The study was conducted using both aqualitative and quantitative method, using interviews to gather insights fromlibrarians and a variety of statistical sources to build an image of the contents of thelibrary. The results indicated that the collection development endeavors were bothless frequent and needed compared to the book collections, in great part due to thelimited size of the selection. It was also found that the collections that did exist weregreatly influenced by the library patrons that engaged with them, with the cataloguemostly mirroring the demand in proportion, with the outlier of Nintendo Switchgames. Finally, a potential issue regarding the future of video game acquisition wasraised due to the evolving digital market potentially rendering library servicesobsolete or too expensive. In conclusion, this study found that unless the videogame market drastically shifts course from its digitalization the services librariesprovide in regards to this medium has to adapt to stay relevant to public interests

Public writing evolved from the social turn in composition pedagogy as scholars sought to determine which practices would be most effective in utilizing writing instruction to help fulfill the civic mission of the university and educate not just for vocational training, but to train students as better citizens as well. Based on the scholarship of Susan Wells, Elizabeth Ervin, and Rosa Eberly (among others), public writing scholars strove to distance the theory from old, generic forms, like letters to the editor, and create new arenas where students could be genuinely involved in civic acts and public discourse. As these scholars sought out new venues for their students, they proclaimed the Internet might offer better opportunities for public writing. This article discusses the effect new media, specifically blogging, has had on public writing, and how the promises of blogging in the classroom fall short of our expectations of public writing.

As the strict lockdowns during the global COVID-19 pandemic made the world more digital, nearly every industry was affected. The music industry in particular had already been going through many changes, though maybe none of them as big so far—musicians were restricted from performing "in real life" and had to think out of the box. Thus, coming to life virtual concerts and festivals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the transition to a digital live scene has been handled in the live music industry during the pandemic, and what the experiences of Generation Z and Millennials have been with specific video streaming platforms. To find the answers to these questions, a mixed-methods approach was taken, combining semi-structured qualitative interviews and an online questionnaire. The study provides an insight into what approaches music industry professionals took in handling different aspects of the changing world of concerts, both in terms of technical aspects and in the general shift that the music community experiences. Moreover, it provides an insight into users' preferences for streaming platforms, together with their respective advantages and flaws. More generally, a deeper understanding of what people perceive as gains and losses from the digitization of live events is also provided, with a look into the potential future of concerts.

This research synthesis investigates the effects that popular culture and new forms of mediation have had on the teaching and learning of English. Further, it examines some key aspects worth consideration when applying these types of texts in an educational context. The English syllabus for upper secondary school advises teachers to make use of the outside world for resources, and teach the students how to access, gather, analyze and use information found in different types of texts. After initial struggles, due to teachers’ reluctance, popular culture and modern media has found its way in to most classrooms and studies have shown different effects that the introduction of these texts have had on teaching and learning of English. Firstly, there has been a shift in how many teachers approach texts by letting students take more responsibility by participating in the selection process of different texts. Moreover, some studies have shown the effects popular culture and digital media have had on the acquisition of literacy skills. Study results suggest that primarily, students critical skills have developed, and that “out of school literacies” have helped students develop more traditional literacy skills such as reading and writing. However, this research synthesis concludes by saying that more research measuring the acquisition of traditional English using popular culture and digital media skills over longer periods of time involving more students would allow one to answer more accurately what effects they have had.

Do two people, coming from different cultural backgrounds, see the same image the same way? Do we employ technologies of seeing that embed visuality within relentless cultural and ideological frames? And, if so, when does visual difference become a tool for inclusion and exclusion? When does it become an instrument of war? I argue that we‘re always implicated in visuality as a form of confirmation bias, and that what we see is shaped by preexisting socioideological frames that can only be liberated through an active and critical relationship with the image. The image itself, albeit ubiquitous, is never unimplicated - at once violated and violating; with both its creator and its perceiver self-positioned as its ultimate subject. I follow a trace of the image within the context of a supposed Islam versus the West dichotomy; its construction, instrumentalization, betrayals, and incriminations. This trace sometimes forks into multiple paths, and at times loops unto itself, but eventually moves towards a traversal of a visual divide. I apply the trace as my methodology in the sense suggested by Derrida, but also as a technology for finding my way into and out of an epistemological labyrinth. The Visual Divide comprises five chapters: Chapter One presents some of the major themes of this work while attempting a theoretical account of image perception within philosophical and cross-cultural settings. I use this account to understand and undermine contemporary rhetoric (as in the works of Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis) that seems intent on theorizing a supposed cultural and historical dichotomies between Islam and the West. In Chapter Two, I account for slogan chants heard at Tahrir Square during the January 25 Egyptian revolution as tools to discovering a mix of technology, language and revolution that could be characterized as hybrid, plural and present at the center of which lies the human body as subject to public peril. Chapter Three analyzes a state of visual divide where photographic evidence is posited against ethnographic reality as found in postcards of nude and semi-nude Algerian Muslim women in the 19th century. I connect this state to a chain of visual oppositions that place Western superiority as its subject and which continues to our present day with the Abu Ghraib photographs and the Mohammed cartoons, etc. Chapter Four deploys the image of Mohamed al-Durra, a 3rd grader who was shot dead, on video, at a crossroads in Gaza, and the ensuing attempts to reinterpret, recreate, falsify and litigate the meaning of the video images of his death in order to propagate certain political doxa. I relate the violence against the image, by the image, and despite the image, to a state of pure war that is steeped in visuality, and which transforms the act of seeing into an act of targeting. In Chapter Five, I integrate the concept of visuality with that of the human body under peril in order to identify conditions that lead to comparative suffering or a division that views humanity as something other than unitary and of equal value. I connect the figures of der Muselmann, Shylock, Othello, the suicide bomber, and others to subvert a narrative that claims that one‘s suffering is deeper than another‘s, or that life could be valued differently depending on the place of your birth, the color of your skin, or the thickness of your accent. v Finally, in the Epilogue: Tabbouleh Deterritorialized, I look at the interconnected states of perception and remembering within diasporic contexts. Cultural identity (invoked by an encounter with tabbouleh on a restaurant menu in Orlando) is both questioned and transformed and becomes the subject of perception and negotiation.

The purpose of this thesis is to look at the potential for interactive devices to enhance the story of future theme park attractions. The most common interactive theme park rides are about game-based interaction, competition, and scoring, rather than about story, character, and plot. Research into cognitive science, interactivity, narrative, immersion, user interface, theming and other fields of study illuminated some potentially useful guidelines for creating compelling experiences for park guests. In order to test some of these ideas, an interactive device was constructed and tested with study subjects. Each study subject watched a video recording of an existing theme park ride while using the device, and then filled out a survey concerning their experience. The results revealed how subjects view character-driven interactive devices, how a device should be blended into a ride sequence, how subjects think interactivity and responsiveness should be structured in regards to themselves and the ride, and begins to hint at their motivations for using interactive devices.

My thesis explores the relationship between the human psyche and the perception of reality through the use of computer generated media. In a society in which we are bombarded with multimedia technology, we must look inside our selves for a true understanding of our past and memories. Rather than it acting as an escape from reality, my art becomes an opening for truth in reality.

Writing center directors (WCDs) often situate their programs in physical and virtual spaces without fully studying the pedagogical and political implications of their decisions. Without intense study, writing centers risk building programs within spaces that undermine their missions and philosophies. In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre argues that "From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of its space" (38). The study of space also reveals important political and financial priorities within the institution. Furthermore, the positioning of buildings and the spatial layout of a campus display the institution's priorities and attitudes toward writing center work. Theorizing the Online Writing Lab (OWL) through the lens of cultural and political geographies, it becomes apparent that the physical spaces of many writing centers are not as sustainable as WCDs might like, and in many ways, they are marginalized within the larger institution. This dissertation prompts a rearticulation of place and space in the writing center. In this dissertation, I argue that in an attempt to rethink current practices, the virtual space of the writing center should perpetuate, extend, and improve the social practices employed in our physical spaces. I draw from mapping exercises to inform my critique in an attempt to advance our understanding of writing center physical and virtual spaces. The changing geographical and cultural landscape of the institution demands that writing centers pay close attention to spatial implications as they employ technology to create dynamic virtual resources and more sustainable spaces. I rearticulate writing center spaces through cognitive and digital mapping, urban planning, and architectural theories. I make several contributions through this work: theoretical, to rearticulate the physical and virtual space of writing center work; political, to understand the constructions of the writing center's pedagogical spaces; and pedagogical, to understand best practices for creating virtual spaces that enhance learning, unlike those we have seen before or have had available in the writing center.