Over the past several years, the economics of the music industry has completely shifted: positive online presence, a widespread fan base, and the celebrity status have overridden high record sales. The music industry isn’t just about the music anymore. Admiration for ones talent has quickly diminished into admiration for ones celebrity status. Those attempting to break the entertainment industry must seek the approval of the harshest critics – the public – before even thinking of success. Through different generations, trends, and eras, boy bands have stood the test of time. The cookie cutter formula for a boy band has always proven successful in the music industry as boyishly good looks, harmonies, and dance moves are a sure winner. Through the case study of Beatlemania and One Direction, this thesis will explore the changes in the music industry and what it takes to become an established artist in this generation.

<p>This project began as an investigation of the way children are depicted, characterized, and represented in adult literature, or in fiction that is not meant for children. In this sort of literature, child characters are typically very complicated. And the ways in which they are complicated say a great deal about the author's assumptions about children and childhood, and about the dominant assumptions of children and childhood that characterize the author's historical period. In order to speak to the ideas which characterize the Romantic period, this project concentrates critical attention on two texts by Mary Shelley, and two of the stranger child-like characters from her historical period.</p> <p>This thesis works through what it means to understand the knowledge of kids in terms of what I call the "extracurricular." "Extracurricular" signals this thesis' particular concern with questions relating to the remainders of education and knowledge. Deborah Britzman's work on queer pedagogy provided the language necessary for examining the theoretical and political implications of child knowledge in Shelley. Britzman's discussion of what she terms "difficult knowledge" provided critical traction for talking about the types of education Shelley theorizes, more specifically, in Frankenstein and Matilda, but was not sufficient for a full analysis of the problems that arise in these texts, and within the critical contexts in which the texts are taken up. Instead of simply applying the concept of difficult knowledge to Shelley, this thesis works to translate the Shelleyean concept of "dangerous knowledge" into a model for understanding the relationship of the political to the pedagogical as it pertains to kids. This thesis, in other words, takes place at the intersection of Shelley's discussions of dangerous knowledge and Britzman's discussion of difficult knowledge.</p> <p>The implications that Shelley's work has for the value of public education, and a less privatized society than the one she witnessed and responded to in her fiction, are still urgent today. While our education system is, ofcourse, profoundly different than the system Shelley was writing about, her demands for a public space (as well as a happy domestic sphere), and a system of public education that is healthy, democratic and keyed towards respecting the knowledge of children represent a politics ofhope in which education is taken seriously because it is understood to have a critical place in the formation of subjectivity.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The Adventures ofMetaMan: The Superhero as a Representation ofModem Western Masculinity (1940-2010) is a practice-based research project. The aim of this research project is to develop interactive works of art that interrogate superhero narratives and representations of male identity, with the potential to relate to the experiences of relevant users in educational environments. At the current stage of the project, young men aged 11-14 in the English school system are a possible target audience. The work of art takes the form of interactive software written in Adobe Flash, with additional visuals created by myself in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe lllustrator and through traditional pen-and-ink drawings. The conceptualisation, development and execution of both software and content took place over a three-year period. While numerous literary and artistic references were employed in order to actualise this work, the software's visuals and words were entirely self-created. The work's original contribution to knowledge is found in the project's form. In combining the platform of digital media with the artistic styles and narrative themes of the superhero genre of comic books, the project explores the subjects of heroes and masculinity and has the potential to help its target audience to understand that the definition of masculinity is always in a state of flux. As evidenced by the historical texts, studies of visual culture, gender, and media representations of heroes and men that were referenced to develop the software, different types of men, ranging from the civil rights activist of the 1960s to the macho action movie star of the 1990s and significant representations of masculinity between these decades have been regarded as hero figures at different points in time. The conc~pt of masculinity is fluid and reliant upon a variety of factors such as current events, cultural trends, politics, economics and popular culture and this is reflected in the evolution of the superhero in Western mass media. The MetaMan project showcases the impact that heroes and role models have and the way that art can echo culture and society. It can provide a fully interactive experience that places modern masculinity into the context of the user's life and circumstances, adapting to each user. The software is accompanied by a written component detailing the reasons for its form and potential audience, the artistic process necessary to create it, an account of a pilot scheme conducted with 120 male students aged 11-14 in the English school system and the further applications and plans for the future stages of the MetaMan project.

Digital media and networks occupy an increasing central position within contemporary societies. This position does not simply involve communicational forms. From the turn of the millennium, phenomena of on- line activism have regularly emerged, bringing novel political forms of resistance to the fore. In academic literature, such phenomena are defined as ‘hacktivism’, putting hacker culture in contact with the politically motivated use of networked media by social movements. However, these scholarly perspectives often fail to deal sufficiently with the original forms of mediation that are at stake in hacktivist ‘deployments’ of media apparatuses. Finding inspiration especially in the work of Félix Guattari, I propose a ‘machinic’ methodology able to deal with the relations and processes with which the act of researching is inescapably involved, overcoming the distances that epistemologically separate the subject from its objects of research. Hence, I originate a ‘method assemblage’ by combining emergent theories in the field of media and culture, and advancing a critical questioning on the same researching procedures. Linking media ecologies and archaeologies, the resulting creative method allows an approach to the case study of ‘Anonymous’ through a novel critical compass. The original creation of the method aims to study without foreclosing the heterogeneous forms of active resistance actualised through media technologies. I suggest that the short-term, transient character of contemporary forms of resistance does not lack political efficacy. Rather hacktivism has to be reconsidered in vital terms beyond representation, within a field that is ‘micro-political’ and materially involves novel processes of subjectivation and disruptiveness.

The following work is a feature length screenplay about Anna Morris, an 18-year-old girl who finds herself faced with a moral dilemma when her estranged father, Robert, contacts her on her 18th birthday. When she learns about Robert’s past involvement in an online child pornography ring Anna must decide if she can forgive him, or -- more importantly -- if he is worthy of forgiveness. However, as the story unfolds we find that it is not just Anna who needs to forgive. This story approaches issues of repentance, growth, and the journey into adulthood as Anna takes on each new challenge.

The body of marketing is drastically changing, pushing frontiers in numerous of domains, geographically, behaviourally and strategically with much enhanced technology in an increasingly globalized world. As this phenomenon pushes forward on many fronts, it is worthwhile to ask what will happen in the near future in this field. In today’s society ‘Influencer Marketing’ is known to be an incredibly popular and successful marketing tool, where one might be wondering: What is a plausible future in this area? What are the potential threats and challenges (if any) that we may encounter? What drives Influencer Marketing in organizations and what questions do they have about its impacts and measurements? I am hoping to fulfil this gap with the assistance of Critical Future Studies, Inayatullah (1990,1998) Luke Goode, Michael Godhe (2017,2018) in analysing the various facts and information that are being addressed and most importantly critically assess what is being missed. This Master thesis is a critical study, reflecting the future thinking and strategies relating to Emotional Branding, Danny Brown, Sam Fiorella (2013) made by experts in the fields of Public Relations, using a quantitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. The chosen methods demonstrate two distinctive results, the content analysis showing a rather positive overview whereas the semi-structured interviews unpack the complexities and challenges in Influencer Marketing and has a negative stance towards its future. Future Studies, is a rigorous branch of study, where unfortunately no one can know for certain what the future holds, however I believe that it is important that we acknowledge values and invite scholars to join this critical dialogue about possible futures and the way we can imagine and discuss the future. The results in this thesis also further demonstrates the necessity in studying this branch of study due to the contradicting answers that are being addressed in the analysis. This thesis also intends to signify that it will not be closure but an encouragement to consider the impetus for a much larger conversation.

Abstract: While the end of apartheid in South Africa brought the end of state repression and formal apartheid censorship of the press, new mechanisms have come to replace the old. Market-driven English daily newspapers continue, through a series of new filters, to limit, shape, and censor ideas for the benefit of the elite private and public sectors. The manufactured, one-dimensional, pro-market world view that results restricts both freedom and democracy. As South Africa enters its second decade of democracy, with new freedoms and civil liberties, further evaluation of this relationship between the media, the state, and the market becomes increasingly vital. The ‘Propaganda Model’ as laid out by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, in their book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988, updated 2002) represents a significant analysis of media performance in a democracy. The authors question basic premises of democracy and the free press. According to Herman and Chomsky, the US media “serve, and propagandise on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.” This qualitative and quantitative study demonstrates that propaganda and media control continues today within South African English daily newspapers. To prove this argument, this paper examines how three South African newspapers cover forestry, terrorism, and the New African Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) over a two-year period. The quantitative study surveyed 1797 articles and examined the use of sources quoted and revealed censorship of alternative voices. The qualitative analysis examined the vested interests and various players have in a pro-market, censored representation of NEPAD, the forestry industry, and terrorism. The study revealed that capitalism and the resulting interlocking capital of board members, newspaper owners, advertisers, and the government, cause newspapers to engage in self-censorship and exclusion of threatening voices to advance the interests of the elite.

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Utilizing critical and feminist science and technology studies methods, this thesis offers a new framework, called critical breaking, to allow for reflective and critical examination and analysis of instances of error, breakdown, and failure in digital systems. This framework has three key analytic goals: auditing systems, forging better relationships with systems, and discovering elements of the context in which these systems exist. This framework is further explored by the examination of three case studies of communities of breaking practice: video game speed-runners, software testers, and hacktivists. In each case, critical breaking is further developed in reflection of resonant and dissonant elements of each practice with critical breaking. In addition, artistic productions related to these case studies are also introduced as inflection points and potential alternative expressions of critical breaking analysis. The goal of this thesis is to provide a way to engage with breakdown and error and more than simply the negation of the good or as a sensationalist talking point, and instead use it as a fecund place for reflective, analytic growth. / by Christopher Kerich. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-79). / This thesis develops an intersectional, critical analysis of the field of practice known as Civic Tech and highlights other relevant community-organizing and activist practices that utilize technology as a central component. First, I develop critiques of Civic Tech as a dominant technocratic, neoliberal approach to democracy and bureaucracy and trace the history and intellectual genealogy of this specific movement. I then highlight civic technologies outside of the field of Civic Tech that have resulted in more redistributive and democratic outcomes, especially for Black people and other people of color. Finally, I define a research and design practice called Critical Community Technology Pedagogy that is demystificatory, multi-directional, transferable, and constructive, and draws upon examples from the Civic Lab for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) in Newfoundland, Data DiscoTechs in Detroit, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York City. / by Maya M. Wagoner. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies

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