Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-162). / In an ever-changing present of multiple truths and reconfigured histories, people need to be critical thinkers. Research has suggested the potential for using augmented reality (AR) games- location-based games that use wireless handheld devices to provide virtual game information in a physical environment-as educational tools. I designed "Reliving the Revolution" as a model for using AR games to teach historic inquiry, decision-making, and critical thinking skills. "Reliving the Revolution" takes place in Lexington, MA, the site of the Battle of Lexington (American Revolution) and simulates the activities of a historian, such as evidence collection and interpretation. Participants interact with virtual historic figures and gather virtual testimonials and evidence on the Battle, each triggered by GPS to appear on the handheld devices depending on one's specific location on or around the Lexington Common. The participants collect differing evidence based on their historic role in the game (Minuteman soldier, loyalist, African American/Minuteman soldier, or British soldier) and then collaboratively evaluate who fired the first shot to start the Battle of Lexington. / (cont.) I envision "Reliving the Revolution" not as a standalone educational solution, but as an activity integrated into a broader history curriculum that teaches students how to approach and evaluate complex social problems. This thesis provides a detailed rationale for each of my design choices, as well as an assessment of each choice based on the results of iterative game testing. In my analysis of the game's design, I focus specifically on four game elements: (1) collaborative, (2) role-playing, (3) storytelling or narrative elements; and (4) kinesthetic and mobility. Results of trials of the game suggest that "Reliving the Revolution" and similar AR games can enhance the learning of: (1) historical name, places, and themes; (2) historical methodology and the limits to representations of the past; and (3) alternative perspectives and challenges to "master" historical interpretations. The game motivated participants to gather, evaluate, and interpret historical information, devise hypotheses and counter-arguments, and draw informed conclusions. / (cont.) My trials also suggested that AR games such as "Reliving the Revolution" can enhance learning because it can: 1. Create an authentic "practice field" for solving problems and using real-world contexts and tools. 2. Increase the potential for collaboration among participants, and enhance opportunities for reflection. 3. Enable participants to take on and express new identities through role-playing. 4. Encourage participants to explore more deeply a physical site and to consider interactions between the real and virtual worlds. / by Karen L. Schrier. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-206). / Introduction: Rehoboth, the name of my hometown in southern Massachusetts, comes from the Hebrew work for "crossroads." Indeed there's not much in this rural town besides Route 44 and Route 118, with smatterings of horse farms and single-family homes. These two blue highways intersect at the town's only stoplight. A sign stands at this intersection at the center of town, in front of the Cumberland Farms convenience store, across the street from the new Dunkin Donuts. It reads: Rehoboth, MA: Birthplace of Public Education in North America. I'm a product of these schools, but in this thesis I explore the road not often traveled in education: unschooling, a type of homeschooling with unstructured, child-directed learning. Through an examination of the attitudes, beliefs and practices related to media and technology in the unschooling subculture, I come to a definition of participatory media. / by Vanessa Bertozzi. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2010. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92). / As cultural artifacts, abstract games offer unique challenges to critical interpretation. This is largely due to the fact that such games lack a fictional element: there are no characters, no settings, and no narratives to speak of. In this thesis I propose that understanding the various formal elements of games as metaphors can both serve as an effective critical method and offer insights into designing more expressive games. I begin by addressing the ambiguity surrounding the phrase "abstract game" and offer a definition rooted in Peircean semiotics and Juul's model of games as consisting of both rules and fiction. I next offer a model of games as consisting of three levels: the system, audio-visual, and affective. This is followed by an overview of Lakoff and Johnson's concept of "metaphor" as "understanding one thing in terms of another." I then argue that different types of metaphors have a natural affinity for the system and affective levels of games. From this I develop methods for a critical method wherein games are considered to be metaphors. I conclude with a discussion of this method's implications for game design and future game research. / by Jason Scott Begy. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, June 2001. / "June 2001." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-83). / In the years since its inception, some interpretations of the software program known as "Napster" have been inscribed into laws, business plans, and purchasing decisions while others have been pushed to the fringes. This paper examines how and why certain assumptions about Napster gained consensus value whereas others did not. The analytical approach involves an examination of discourses about Napster in several arenas - legal, economic, social, and cultural - and is informed by a conceptualization of Napster as an ongoing encounter between, rather than the accomplishment of, inventor(s), institution(s), and interest(s). While acknowledging the importance of empirical examinations of Napster's impact on firms and markets, as well as the proscriptive advice which it supports, the focus here is on providing a contextualized understanding of the technology as an object whose meanings were contested and ultimately resolved, or at least stabilized, within, across, and through a broader systems of power and structured interests. / by David Spitz. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-102). / Set in Boston, U.S.A, the overarching goal of this thesis is to develop a theoretical framework and a set of analytical tools that might help us understand how Hindi films are watched in the Indian- American diaspora and what viewers, situated in particular historical, socio-political contexts, bring to bear upon their engagement with these films. In spite of the sheer number of Hindi films released each year (150-200) and the increasing importance of audiences in countries such as the U.S., we know little, if anything, about audience motivations, viewing practices and consumption patterns. Suggesting we take the familiar seriously, this project's primary goal is to serve as an inaugural act that will map key coordinates of the space that Hindi cinema and its transnational audience occupies. This research project is designed to examine viewing practices and interpretations of Hindi films among a small sample of ten Indian immigrant families drawn from two different social positions - (a) the educated, professional and affluent class (doctors, scientists, software professionals, consultants, etc.), and (b) less educated, working class (owners and employees of grocery & convenience stores, gas stations, motels & restaurants, etc.). Given the complexity of the issue of class in general, and especially its intersections with caste, religion, and other variables in the Indian context, the findings in this study will be treated not so much as a class-based comparison of reception, but instead as an attempt to situate reception in a social and historical context that is marked by profound differences in access to privilege at the local, national and transnational levels. In addition, operating with the family as the research site allows this comparative frame to investigate similarities and differences based on gender and generation. Drawing on the tradition of using ethnographic techniques to analyze media reception (in this case, participant-observation and in-depth interviews), this project hopes to establish popular culture as a crucial site for exploring how identities are communicatively constituted in the Indian diaspora. Arguing that cinema viewing constitutes one of the most culturally visible arenas of activity in the Indian diaspora, a topic that is just beginning to attract scholarly attention, this project's larger goal is to serve as a starting point for larger debates and contests over several contentious issues that reveal anxieties of Indian immigrants from diverse social positions. / by Aswin Punathambekar. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, February 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-64). / This text explores three developments pertaining to children and reading in seventeenth-century England. The author aims to show how profoundly death was implicated in the development of thought about children's reading as well as in the emergence of a literature for children in the early modem period. The first chapter discusses the negative reaction to the growing phenomenon of children reading romances and adventures in chapbook form. Escapist literature was believed to make one forget one's mortal lot, which in turn decreased one's motivation for piety. Through a discussion of the threat chapbook romances posed to pious reading, the chapter establishes the historical context for a related development, the creation of a religious or moralizing literature that children would find compelling. In their quest for gripping settings, authors latched on to the deathbed scene for its felicitous blend of inherent theatricality and religious resonance. By early seventeenth century, a few women writers even used the pretext of deathbed advice to pen their own conduct-of-life manuals in an otherwise male-dominated marketplace. The second chapter discusses the prefatory rhetoric used by the two most successful female writers in this genre. The remarkable success of maternal deathbed advice literature suggests that books in Protestant culture absorbed the near-superstitious value of Catholic icons and relics. The genre also implies a Protestant adaptation of the Catholic veneration of the mother. Comfort for the motherless child no longer came from prayer to Mary, but through the reading (and perhaps holding of) a book of advice by a model (and dead) Protestant mother. An analysis of the prefaces enables a close reading of the self-fashioning / of model mother-authors. The third and final chapter discusses the starring role of death in the first English-language children's book, A Token for Children, by James Janeway. The chapter explores the literary interest in the early deaths of ordinary children of extraordinary piety. By reference to the doctrine of predestination, the author speculates that these books had a comforting as well as a preparatory function, allowing parents and children to rehearse (through reading) a model death of a child undoubtedly bound for Heaven. By no means a comprehensive treatment of the connections between death culture and children's reading in the early modern period, the thesis is intended to indicate how pious reading functioned as a reminder of one's mortality and a spur to self-scrutiny. The "looking glass" of the text displayed idealized and heaven-bound children and parents compared to whom the reader may have felt sorely in need of increased vigilance. / by Heather Miller. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-174). / Television is in a period of dramatic change. As the mass audience continues to fragment into ever-smaller niche audiences and communities of interest, and new technologies shift control over the television viewing experience from network programmers into the hands of media consumers, television's traditional business models prove themselves increasingly untenable. In an attempt to preserve these models, television executives are attempting to shed television's long-standing reputation as a passive medium, which emphasized the viewer's role as a consumer of television content, and which critics often decried as vacuous and mindless. The current discourse suggests that television's future now relies on the industry's success recasting it as an active medium, capable of capturing and holding the audience's attention, and effective at generating emotional investment. The single most important concept in this new industrial discourse is that of audience "engagement", a term that has generated a tremendous amount of debate and disagreement, with television and advertising executives alike struggling to understand what engagement is, how it works, and what its practical consequences will be. This thesis argues that television's future as an engagement medium relies not on inventing new methodologies that define engagement in terms of quantifiable audience behaviors and attitudes, but instead in a new conceptual model of television, better suited to a multi platform media environment and the emerging attention and experience economies, which focuses on the development of television programs that extend beyond the television set. / (cont.) Such a model must understand television not as a method for aggregrating audiences that can be sold to advertisers, but as a medium that draws upon media platforms, content, products, activities and social spaces to provide audiences with a range of opportunities to engage with television content. Accordingly, this thesis offers a framework for thinking about viewer engagement as the range of opportunities and activities that become possible when drawing upon an expanded, multi-platform conception of the modern television text. Applying this framework to the innovative and experimental textual extensions developed around ABC's Lost, the thesis indicates both the challenges and opportunities that emerge as television becomes an engagement medium. / by Ivan D. Askwith. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-136). / The recent increase in digital gaming players and platforms does not imply that digital gaming is as inclusive as it could be. There are still gaps in participation that, if left unaddressed, will exclude groups who have been historically marginalized. Women are among those individuals most vulnerable to exclusion from gaming. In order to better understand the motivations and practices of female players, this study focuses on a group of undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who have created a community that plays digital and non-digital games together and includes women. The research was conducted over eight months using interviews and participant observations. The study concludes that there are interrelated factors at the group, game play, and individual levels that influence this particular community's inclusiveness. These factors include how the community values the play process over who wins or loses a game, uses games as facilitators of playful socializing, and negotiates their identities in relation to the "gamer" stereotype. / by Hillary Kolos. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [67]-[74]). / This paper suggests advertisers should experiment with in-game advertising to gain skills that could become vital in the near future. It compiles, arranges and analyzes the existing body of academic and industry knowledge on advertising and product placement in computer game environments. The medium's characteristics are compared to other channels' in terms of their attractiveness to marketers, and the business environment is analyzed to offer recommendations on the relative advantages of in-game advertising. The paper also contains a brief historical review of in-game advertising, and descriptions of currently available and emerging advertising formats. Keywords: Advertising, marketing, branding, product placement, branded entertainment, networks, computer games, video games, virtual worlds. / by Ilya Vedrashko. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-92). / Despite an increasingly complex academic discourse, the videogame medium lacks an agreed-upon definition. Its relationship to previous media is somewhat unclear, and the unique attributes of the medium have not yet been fully catalogued. Drawing on theory suggesting that videogames can convey ideas, I will argue that the videogame medium is capable of modeling and critiquing elements of moral philosophy in a unique manner. To make this argument, I first address a number of questions about the proper definition of videogames, how games in general and videogames specifically convey ideas, and how games can be constructed to form arguments. Having defined my terms, I will conduct case studies on three games (Fable, Command & Conquer: Generals, and The Punisher), clarifying how the design of each could be modified to address a specific philosophical issue. / by Peter E. Rauch. / S.M.