Multiple resources currently exist that provide tips, tricks, and hints on gaining greater success, or increasing one’s chances for success, in the field of live content creation. However, these resources often lack depth, detail, large sample size, or significant research on the topic. The purpose of this thesis is twofold: to aggregate and optimize the very best methods for live content creators to employ as they begin a streaming career, and how best to implement these methodologies for maximum success in the current streaming market. Through analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews, popular literature, and existing, ancillary research, repeating patterns will be identified to be used as the basis for a structured plan that achieves the stated objectives. Further research will serve to reinforce as well as optimize the common methodologies identified within the interview corpus.

The increasing capabilities of today’s smartphones enables users to live stream video directly from their mobile device. One increasing concern regarding videos found online is their authenticity and integrity. From a consumer standpoint, it is very hard to distinguish and discern whether or not a video found on online can be trusted, if it was the original version, or if has been taken out of context. This thesis will investigate a method which tries to apply video integrity to live streamed media. The main purpose of this thesis was to design and evaluate a proof of concept prototype which will apply data integrity while simultaneously recording videos through an Android device. Additionally, the prototype has an online verification platform which verifies the integrity of the recorded video. Blockchain is a technology with the inherent ability to store data in a chronological chained link of events: establishing an irrefutable database. Using cryptographic hashes together with blockchain: an Android device can generate cryptographic hashes of the data content from a video recording, and consequently transmit these hashes to a blockchain. The same video is deconstructed in the web client creating hashes that can subsequently be compared with the ones found in the blockchain. A resulting prototype system provides some of the desired functions. However, the prototype is limited in that it does not have the ability to sign the hashes produced. It has also been limited in that it does not employ HTTPS for communication, and the verification process needs to be optimized to make it usable for real applications. / Den ökande funktionaliteten hos dagens smarta mobiltelefoner ger användare möjligheten att direktsända video. Det förekommer en ökande oro när det kommer till videors äkthet och huruvida en video är original eller inte. Ur en konsumentsynpunkt är det nämligen väldigt svårt att bedöma huruvida det går att lita på videon, om det är originalvideon eller om det bara är så att videon är tagen ur sitt sammanhang. Detta examensarbete på Master-nivå kommer att undersöka en metod för att verifiera att direktsänd media är oförändrad. Huvudsyftet med arbetet var att ta fram och utvärdera en prototyp som kan säkerställa oföränderlighet inom direktsänd video samtidigt som videon spelas in på mobilenheten.  Prototypen har dessutom en webbaserad verifieringsplattform som kan verifiera och säkerställa huruvida videon (media) är oförändrad. Blockkedjeteknologin har den inbyggda egenskapen att kunna spara data i en kronologisk sammanlänkad ordning av händelser. Den skapar databas som inte kan ifrågasättas. Genom att använda kryptografisk hashning tillsammans med blockkedjetekniken kan en Android mobilenhet skapa kryptografiska hashar av videodata under tiden som videon spelas in och simultant skicka dessa hashar till en blockkedja. Samma video tas sedan isär i prototypens verifieringsfunktion. Verifieringsfunktionen skapar sedan hashar på samma sätt som i mobilenheten för att kunna jämföra dessa hashar mot de hashar som kan hämtas från blockkedjan. Prototypen är fungerande men saknar viss eftersträvad funktionalitet. Prototypen är begränsad på det sätt att mobilenheten inte kan signera de hashar som genereras. Den saknar även möjligheten att kommunicera över HTTPS protokollet samt att processen för att verifiera videomaterial är alldeles för långsam för att kunna användas i en verklig produkt.

Today TV viewers are exposed to massive amounts of information. Digital TV offers a large number of channels full with different kinds of programs but the information about them is poor. The navigation through the channels can be tiring and often, viewers end up lost, having wasted up to 30 minutes changing channels and not being entertained, which is one of the main purposes of TV. Along with this issue, TV channels have plenty of material they are not using, which is not reachable to viewers who might end up looking for series online and download them illegally. !As a result, viewers are recurring to online TV more and more. They watch specific content through specific TV channel websites. However, the computer or tablet does not allow viewers to certain comforts TV does, and these devices may encourage user isolation since they are normally designed for the usage of one person at a time. The difference between a computer background and a TV background will be discussed further since this aspect became quite important during my research. Viewers enjoyed watching TV while relaxing on the couch, but watching on the computer seemed more efficient, even if it meant sitting down on a chair, because they got instant access to the content they chose. !This thesis will try to design the future of Interactive TV. A TV that will help the user get something worth watching the moment they turn the TV on. After weeks of research and academic reading, I concluded three should be the main characteristics of this design; a Facebook linked profile, implementation of recommender systems and social navigation, plus an adaptive interface. !The results are very promising. A second iteration of the design was made after revising the first concept. It incorporates insights from the concept validation, which I believe completed the design. A design that could work efficiently, and ultimately make the users experience something splendid.

Higher education is still mainly based on traditional face-to-face teaching formats such as lectures. Although known for a long time, the demand for alternative lecture designs has only recently grown significantly due to the present pandemic crisis, which requires a physical separation between the students and also the lecturer. This separation results in challenges of its own: While most solutions already allow the lecture to be held via streaming, it is even more challenging to involve students, or to create interactions with them or between them. Some approaches allow to activate students through simple polls, chats, or collaboration in breakout sessions. However, either the functional scope of these activities is severely limited or they are restricted to small scenarios. The contents of this paper have been under investigation for some time, but in lieu of the current CoViD-19 pandemic, the authors have decided to apply their preliminary findings in actual lectures and present the results here. The main goal is to investigate the addition of more advanced activities that can be adapted to the current scenario. Therefore, an approach is presented that enables lecturers to create custom workflows of interactive activities such as several types of polls, question and answer, instant feedback, or group formations with corresponding interactions. The application in real scenarios is currently being investigated.

<p>The live streaming of child sexual abuse is a serious problem that demands urgent attention from law enforcement, legislature, and the platforms that it occurs on. While child sexual exploitation and abuse crimes have been occurring for decades, the growing number of internet users combined with the recent Covid-19 outbreak has shifted a lot of these crimes online. Crimes that occur over live streams are particularly difficult to investigate. Previous research has highlighted four main types of challenges associated with these types of cases: legislative, social, technical, and investigative. While studies have been conducted that explored these challenges individually, this study fills a research gap by exploring which of these challenges affect law enforcement personnel that work live-streamed child sexual abuse cases post-Covid-19. For this study, an anonymous online survey was sent out to law enforcement individuals and agencies nationwide. The survey was actively distributed for one month. Out of the 29 responses received, 13 participants qualified to take the survey and were asked about the challenges they faced working these types of cases and about any solutions to these challenges. After collecting the data, descriptive statistics identified the challenges, and a thematic analysis was conducted. Following a grounded theory process, the analysis identified five main themes that encompassed multiple types of challenges and solutions. These themes were: a lack of consensus, education, the role of application service providers and platforms, a need for better technology, and out-of-jurisdiction challenges. These themes explored in-depth the participants’ responses and further identified the challenges facing law enforcement that work live-streamed child sexual abuse cases, as well as any current solutions to these challenges. Two main challenges frequently mentioned by the participants were end-to-end encryption and anonymizing services, and one of the main solutions to many of the challenges was the education of parents, children, and legislators. For future research, the author recommends exploration of the following topics: the investigation of the factors that play strong roles in determining the time it takes to investigate live-streamed child sexual abuse cases, research related to how AI could assist law enforcement working these cases, further exploration of a framework for the education of parents and children about social media usage and the risks of live streaming, how social platforms can be used in many ways, and research that examines how often law enforcement encounters live-streamed child sexual abuse cases/whether these cases are common or not. </p>

Continuous live stream analysis applications are increasingly common. Video-based surveillance, emergency response, disaster recovery, and critical infrastructure monitoring are all examples of such applications. These applications are distributed and typically require significant computing resources (like a cluster of workstations) for analysis. In addition to live data, many such applications also require access to historical data that was streamed in the past and is now archived. While distributed programming support for traditional high-performance computing applications is fairly mature, existing solutions for live stream analysis applications are still in their early stages and, in our view, inadequate. We explore the system-level value of recognizing temporal properties -- a critical aspect of the application domain. We present "temporal streams", a programming model supporting a higher-level, domain-targeted programming abstraction for such applications. It provides a simple but expressive stream abstraction encompassing transport, manipulation and storage of streaming data. The semantics of the programming model are tailored to the application domain by explicitly recognizing the temporal aspects of continuous streams, providing a common interface for both time-based retrieval of current streaming data and data persistence. The unifying trait of time enables access to both current streaming data and archived historical data using the same interface; the communication and storage abstraction are the same -- a unified stream data abstraction, uniformly modeling stream data interactions. "Temporal streams" defines how distributed threads of computation interact implicitly via streams, but does not impose a particular model of computation constraining the interactions between distributed actors, targeting loosely coupled distributed systems with no centralized control. In particular, it targets stream analysis scenarios requiring significant signal processing on heavyweight streams such as audio and video. These unstructured streams are data rich but are not directly interpretable until meaningful features are extracted; consequently, feature detection and subsequent analysis are the major computational requirements. We also use the programming model as a vehicle for exploring systems software design issues, realizing "temporal streams" as a distributed runtime in the tradition of loosely coupled distributed systems with strong communication boundaries. We thoroughly examine the concrete software architecture and elements of implementation. We also describe two generations of system implementations, including the broad development philosophy, specific design principles and salient low-level details. The runtime is designed to be relatively lightweight and suitable as a substrate for higher-level, more domain-specific middleware or application functionality. Even with a relatively simple programming model, a carefully designed system architecture can provide a surprisingly rich and flexibly substrate for upper software layers. We also evaluate our system implementation in two ways; first, we present a series of quantitative experimental results designed to assess the performance of key primitives in our architecture in isolation. We also use motivating applications to evaluate "temporal streams" in the context of realistic application scenarios. We develop three motivating applications and provide quantitative and qualitative analyses of these applications in the context of "temporal streams." We show that, although it provides needed higher-level functionality to enable live stream analysis applications, our runtime does not add significant overhead to the stream computation at the core of each application. Finally, we also review the relationship of "temporal streams" (both the programming model and architecture) to other approaches, including database-oriented Stream Data Management Systems (SDMS), various stream processing engines, stream programming languages and parallel batch processing systems, as well as traditional distributed programming systems and communication frameworks.

本文分析近年盛行的電子遊戲實況活動。從分心、不專注於電玩的現象開始，本文以「如何玩」這個提問來引導論證「嬉玩」與「遊戲」這組概念在分析上的效力，藉此，本文論證了電玩實況活動中的心智狀態與活動是游移在電玩活動與嬉鬧互動，在嚴肅遊戲與嬉戲玩耍之間游移，這樣的分神狀態之中也產生了有樂趣、具有實效的遊戲性。 從技術架構的觀點來看，以即時串流的技術為基礎，電玩實況活動結合了即時傳輸與即時互動。使用者所獲致的遊戲聆賞經驗以及互動是即時且與他人同步，便也構成了網路媒介之下的共時經驗，實況中以電玩活動為對象的起鬨也便具共在的實感。本文從聊天室起鬨、技術戲耍挪用等現象中論證了基於遊戲性旨趣的共謀嬉玩。嘲諷、干擾的對抗性是為了製造分神的條件，從中產生張力並獲致遊戲性，而包括實況主在內的所有參與者，皆是在這樣的分神狀態中嬉玩，維繫歡騰的共感情緒。 電子遊戲具有將遊戲性限定在其中的封閉性質，也因此對於電玩的遊戲經驗多有私密、個人的想像，即時串流的電玩實況活動便是打開了這樣的封閉性質。透過網路媒介將人匯聚在遊戲活動周圍，不僅共享了電玩活動本身的樂趣，也在即時串流之下共時的互動跟聆賞經驗中以遊戲為對象群聚嬉戲。這樣的網路活動之所以盛行，顯示了人對遊戲性的需求不僅是來自遊戲中，也來自與他人玩在一起的連結共感，電玩實況便是實現了這樣的需求。 / Taking the prevailing "video game live streaming" activities as research object, this thesis takes "play" and "game" as a set of core concepts, and begins the exploration into their conceptual effect. Setting out the arguments with "How to Play" question, this thesis concludes that the mentality and activities in video game live streaming are in an "in-between" condition. Between video game activity and playful disturbance, seriousness and playfulness, there are gameplay with actual effect. Taking the technical conditions into consideration, video game live streaming consists of live media transportation and live interaction. Users' experiences synchronize with each other, thus contribute to the "togetherness" mediated through the Internet, and also the carnivalistic interactions and disturbance in the live channel. From the fuss and disturbance in the chatroom to the appropriation of streaming "plugins", this thesis argues that these actions conducted by streamer and users contribute to the "distractive" scenario, and the conducts are all based on "the interest of play". Different from serious and immersive mentality which is deemed as the fundamental of playing and gaming, the gameplay in live stream is based on distraction, which is the core condition that brings tension and thus playfulness. All the users in video game live streaming, the streamer included, are connected and forged into a synchronized togetherness by this kind of distractive, carnivalistic playfulness. Digital video games have tributes of enclosure, which require concentration, seriousness and absorption. Video game live streaming opens up this kind of enclosure, and brings people in and around the video game activities. In the live channel, users experience the joy and fun of the game itself together in a synchronized way, and also act on the interest of play, creating distraction and disturbance that bring to playful experiences, and that explains why this kind of Internet activity prevails. This thesis shows that the need of gameplay comes not only from game activities themselves, but also from the desire to "play together". In a digital age, video game live streaming is just the fulfillment of this kind of desire.

Most people are used to recording videos on their mobile phones. However, becoming a streamer is another step further in complexity. This thesis evaluates how a streaming scheduling system can be developed to enhance the usability. It goes from idea to finished system using a design-build-test approach. To accomplish the objective the project uses three phases (research, design-build-test, and final prototype) to investigate how to build a streaming scheduling system for users lacking technical proficiency. A finalized prototype was built in the design-build-test phase, based on findings in the research phase. After the prototype was finalized, it got implemented and tested on Kvix streaming platform. The final hi-fi prototype was tested using an online questionnaire, consisting of a system usability scale and open-ended questions. The final proposed solution had a satisfaction score of 82.81 (grade A) with a probability of 70% on the system usability scale which indicates that it is effective, efficient and satisfactory.

Since the inception of Twitch and the early stages of the growth of live streaming, it has been imperative to maintain interactivity between the broadcaster/streamer and the viewers. Interactivity separates live streaming as a media consumption format from traditional media consumption formats such as television or on-demand videos. But due to the exponential growth of Twitch the number of concurrent viewers on streams have increased as well. This higher viewer count decreases interactivity as the chat gets crowded and it is virtually impossible to get your message across to either the streamer or the other viewers. This study investigates how the interactivity can be increased between viewers by categorizing them into smaller sub-communities. The sub-communities in the context of this study mean temporary sub-chats which have a relatively lower number of viewers. There are various factors upon which the categorization of viewers can be decided. During this study three possible approaches were discussed which include categorization based upon an automated topic identification system, manual creation of sub-communities and geo-location categorization. The results indicate that an automated topic identification system that generates temporary sub-communities is a probable solution to increase inter-viewer interactivity and the best approach to implement this feature is the automated approach. The results also state that the hyperpersonal mode of communication encourages viewers to engage more with other viewers, hence it needs to be maintained even after the implementation of the sub-community feature.

Evenemangen i Sverige drabbades finansiellt, varumärkesmässigt och motivationsmässigt negativt av pandemin. Främst var det på grund av de regleringar som behövde göras för att skydda folkhälsan men mycket berodde också på de osäkerheter och den avsaknad av information som fanns kring viruset. Osäkerheten tillsammans med avsaknad av erfarenheter gjorde det svårt för evenemangsarrangörerna att agera på bästa sätt.  Varumärkesmässigt fallerade många evenemang där marknadsföring var normalt kopplad endast till när ordinarie verksamhet kunde genomföras varför kommunikationsarbetet prioriterades ner i stället för att lyftas upp. Beroende på organisation klarade sig evenemangen i kultursektorn relativt bra i och med de stora stöd som svenska samhället erbjöd. Utan dessa är risken att många mindre evenemang hade gått i konkurs. Hur avsaknaden av arrangemang har påverkat samhället i stort ekonomiskt är svårt att säga då evenemangssektorn involverar många parter och industrier. Organisationerna bakom evenemangen fick stora utmaningar kring motivationen, både bland anställda men framför allt bland ideellt engagerade när det inte längre fanns någon verksamhet att samlas kring eller rollerna och verksamheten förändrades mycket. Här saknade evenemangsarrangörerna kunskap kring exakt vilka de viktigaste motivationsfaktorerna är för engagerade inom evenemang något som hade kunnat mildra de negativa effekterna.  Evenemangen ställdes i hög grad in som svar på krisen och styrdes av externa faktorer. Som regleringar, avtal som behövde brytas innan de fick finansiella konsekvenser eller att andra aktörer gjorde det omöjligt att bedriva verksamheten. Några arrangörer byggde upp scenarion och jobbade med ambidextriöst ledarskap i syftet att kunna aktivt arbeta med nuvarande kris, lära sig längs med vägen samtidigt som framtiden planerades. Detta visade sig vara fördelaktigt även om det fanns stora svårigheter att beräkna sannolikhet enligt de omständigheter som rådde. Vi såg exempel på innovation under krisen i form av fler digitala evenemang, evenemang med sittplatser anpassade efter rådande regleringar till livesändningar som inte hade skett annars. Dessa var dock beroende av pandemins förutsättningar vilka när de inte längre rådde sänkte innovationernas värden. Några av innovationerna var fördelaktiga för arrangörerna och när väl regleringarna försvann drabbades i stället arrangören negativt av att inte kunna genomföra den verksamhet som skapats under pandemin.  Organisationerna har lärt sig mycket och det finns direkta värden att hämta från krisen för evenemangsbranschen. Inte bara i form av lärdomar för hur arrangörerna kan förbättra sina rutiner, krishantering, inkorporera digital teknik och justera det ekonomiska aspekter som biljettpris. Utan också i det att samhället har kunnat se hur viktiga evenemang är genom att de plockats bort. Detta tillsammans med vissa observationer pekar på att evenemangsbranschen kommer växa sig större efter pandemin jämfört med innan. / Festivals and other cultural events in Sweden were financially, brand-wise, and motivationally negatively affected by the pandemic. Mainly it was because of the regulations that needed to be made to protect public health, but a lot also depended on the uncertainties and the lack of information that existed around the virus. This together with a lack of experience made it difficult for the event organizers to act in the best way. In terms of branding, many events used marketing only in combination with when their events could be carried out. During the pandemic they therefore prioritized communication down instead of being lifted which would have been the correct approach. Depending on the organization, the events in the cultural sector did relatively well with the large support that society offered from the Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet) and furlough support. Without these, the risk is that many smaller events would have gone bankrupt. How the lack of events has affected society at large economically is difficult to say as the event sector involves so many parties and industries. The organizations behind the events faced major challenges regarding motivation, both among employees but above all among volunteers when there was no longer any activity to gather around, or the roles and activities changed a lot. Here, the event organizers lacked knowledge about exactly what the most important motivational factors are for those involved in events, something that could have mitigated the negative effects.  The events were largely canceled in response to the crisis and controlled by external factors. Such as regulations, agreements that needed to be cancelled before they had financial consequences or that other actors made it impossible to run the business. Some organizers built scenarios and worked with ambidextrous leadership in order to actively work with the current crisis while planning the future and learning along the way. This proved to be beneficial although there was great difficulty in calculating probability under the circumstances. We saw examples of innovation during the crisis in the form of more digital events, events with seating adapted to existing regulations and live broadcasts, some that would not have happened otherwise. However, these were dependent on the conditions and needs of the pandemic which, when the conditions in society change, lowers their value. Some of the innovations were beneficial for the organizers and once the regulations disappeared, the organizer was instead negatively affected by not being able to carry out the activities created during the pandemic.  The organizations have learned a lot and there are direct values to take from the crisis for the events industry. Not only in the form of lessons for how the organizers can improve their routines, crisis management, incorporate digital technology and adjust financial aspects such as ticket prices. But also, in that society has been able to see how important events are by their being removed. This together with some observations point to the event industry growing larger after the pandemic compared to before.