This dissertation takes as its central topic visual narratives in Death with Dignity Storytelling and posits the author’s ideas of a beautiful death and the heard gaze. Its methodology includes a textual analysis of such images, which in turn leads to a typology, and the use of a digital tool to “sum images” to test the veracity of the typology. What creates the impulse to look at images of pain, suffering the withering body, the compulsion to bear witness to misery? That question is in part answered by Sontag (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others—“we are spectators of calamities” (p. 18)—and is evident in the indefinite pronoun that hangs at the end of the slim volume’s title. Because it is in those others, that we see ourselves. A Beautiful Death: Visual Representation in Death With Dignity Storytelling considers two case studies as examination and proofs of its claims.

Neste estudo propomos uma leitura interdisciplinar, confrontando a trajetória e o encontro de dois olhares, a saber: de um lado, o olhar do escritor belga-argentino Julio Cortázar (1914/1984), e, do outro, o do cineasta italiano Michelangelo Antonioni (1912), e dado às divergências consideráveis que existem entre as duas linguagens, buscaremos encontrar o ponto onde nos parece que acontece o diálogo das poéticas do autor e do diretor. Ao postular a aproximação entre a palavra e a imagem, o olhar é eleito como questão nuclear, transitando ainda pelo erótico e a personagem feminina. / In this study we propose an interdisciplinary interpretation that evaluates the trajectories and convergence of two looks: on the one hand, the view of the Belgian-Argentinean writer Julio Cortazar (1914/1984), and on the other, the view of the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni (1912). Given the considerable incongruities between the two languages, we aim to find a poetical meeting point at which the dialogue between the writer and the director can be established. By postulating a convergence between word and image, the gaze is chosen as the core issue, transiting also through the erotic and the feminine character.

Future warfare concerns information superiority, i.e. supplying decisionmakers with better information than their opponents. Their decisions will be based on information from various sensors such as radars, UAVs, satellites, or any other object that can supply the decision makers with information. A system like this will make use of a huge amount of data, and the decisionmakers may not be able to handle all information that will be presented to them. Because of this, they might make decisions that are not optimal for the task. To enhance tha capability in decision making, the national defence college will create an avatar which will be located in a 3D presentation device, called the Visioscope (tm). If the computer system detects that a person might have made an erroneous decision, the avatar will act and point out the error, i.e. there will be a dialog between the decision makers and the avatar. One important factor when humans communicate with each other is mutual eye gaze. If mutual eye gaze can occur between the users and the avatar, and if the avatar can behave like a human, the communication process will be improved and the users will make less errors. This literature study aims to generate some ideas about how existing technology supports mutual eye gaze between the avatar and the users in the ROLF 2010 environment. The study partly concerns how a computer system can control an avatar so that it behaves like a human.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that characteristically involves an impaired capacity to engage in reciprocal social interaction and to use eye-gaze for social purposes. This collection of conversation analytic studies examines naturally-occurring interactions involving Finnish children diagnosed with autism. The data consist of video-recorded interactions of four children, aged between 9-12 years, each engaged in dyadic or multiparty interactions with a range of familiar co-participants (teachers, parents, and siblings) at home, school, and music club. Comparative data from neurotypical interactions are also considered. The aim is to use conversation analysis to better understand how the children with autism interact in everyday settings. The study examines the organization of interactions as sequences of action, and how eye-gaze and other multimodal resources are involved in the orientation to and production of initiating and responsive actions (e.g. questions and answers). The analyses show (1) competencies with respect to using eye-gaze at relevant sequential environments to mobilise a response from a co-participant, and using smiling as an interactional resource while orienting to the response-implicativeness of eye-gaze; (2) displays of self-consciousness (involving averted gaze and other conduct) can occur when the participants orient to the children's non-production of a response that has been made relevant; (3) child's gaze aversion can become problematic in particular sequential locations, namely, when the child's response is noticeably absent and treated as unforthcoming; (4) how the handling of material objects can provide a resource when eliciting interactional involvement with the child. The findings indicate areas of interactional competence and show how, on some occasions, the direction of eye-gaze and body orientation can become interactionally problematic. The merits of researching naturally occurring interactions, and the prospect of incorporating a conversation analytic component as part of clinical assessments, are discussed.

I denna rapport undersöks samspelet mellan grafiska gränssnitt, huvudrörelser och dess inverkan för användarupplevelsen i virtuell verklighet. Studien begränsas till applicering i fastighetsvisningsapplikationer i virtuell verklighet. Studien och rapportens syfte är att besvara frågeställningen: Vilka aspekter bör tas i åtanke vid utformningen av grafiska gränssnitt för huvudrörelsebaserade inmatningsmetoder till VR-mjukvara. Denna fråga kommer besvaras med designriktlinjer orienterade för virtuell verklighet. I bakgrunden presenteras definitioner och användning av termer som: Virtuell verklighet, grafiska gränssnitt, inmatningsmetoder och huvudrörelseinmatning. I bakgrunden presenteras även företagssamarbetet med Wec360 samt riktlinjer om grafiska gränssnitt i virtuell verklighet som ligger till grund för studiens innehåll. Därefter följer ett metodkapitel som presenterar, definierar samt förklarar användning av de test- och utvärderingsmetoder som används i kommande tester. Dessa tester och utvärderingar är en heuristisk utvärdering för att finna primära problemområden som ligger som bas för kommande användbarhetstest. Men innan dess utfördes en semistrukturerad intervju med fem(5) personer som är utan, eller har mindre erfarenhet av virtuell verklighet. Dessa intervjuer utfördes för att få en grundlig idé om preferens, attityd, beteende, användning, erfarenhet samt preliminära tankar. Med samma fem deltagare utfördes ett användbarhetstest vars primära syfte var att säkerställa eller dementera de problem som uppfattades under den heuristiska utvärderingen. Användbarhetstestet användes även för att upptäcka nya problemområden som ska analyseras. Därefter följde en analys som följde bottom up-metoden för att ta alla delade problem och föra samman till en helhetsbild som studiens resultat därefter baseras på. Därefter följer resultatet – tre riktlinjer med mål att förbättra aspekter för det grafiska gränssnittet och huvudrörelseinmatning med syfte att förbättra användarupplevelsen. De främsta resultaten visas gälla applikationens sämre synlighet av interaktiva grafiska element. Men även en inkräktande upplevelse bildad av grafiska förflyttningselement. Det slutliga resultatet berörde hjälpavsnitt och hur användaren visas var funktioner och element finns i applikationen samt hur de används. Slutligen följer slutsatser och tillhörande diskussion för vidare studier inom området för användarupplevelse och grafiska gränssnitt i virtuell verklighet.

Filmturism är ett relativt nytt fenomen på turistmarknaden, som kort kan beskrivas med när en turist besöker en destination eller attraktion till följd av att destinationen/attraktionen har visats upp på tv eller i film. I Thailand har ett flertal stora filmer spelats in genom åren, bland annat The Beach och James Bond – The Man with the Golden Gun. Syftet med denna studie är att belysa fenomenet filmturism samt undersöka hur lokala aktörer i Thailand använder filmerna Beach och James Bond – Man with the golden gun som redskap för platsmarknadsföring och imageskapande. I studien har det även studerats hur destinationerna har påverkats av filmerna samt hur destinationerna uppfattas av turister som har varit eller är på väg till någon av platserna. Den destinationsimage som skapas genom film behöver inte alltid stämma överens med destinationens verkliga image. Studiens material har samlats in genom kvalitativa intervjuer, observationer och skuggningar samt kvantitativa enkäter och granskning av resesidan Tripadvisor och aktören Maya Bay Tours hemsida. Studiens resultat visar att filmerna har påverkat platsernas image och att Maya Bay inte är lika beroende av filmen i sin marknadsföring som James Bond Island är. Turister som har besökt platserna påpekade att mängden turister är det som förstört upplevelsen och att turismen måste regleras för att deras förväntningar ska uppfyllas.

Everyday face-to-face social interaction is increasingly being supplemented by computer- and video-mediated communication. With mediation, however, comes the potential loss of important non-verbal cues. It is therefore important to attempt to maintain the quality of the mediated interaction, such that it retains as many of the aspects of a real-world interaction as possible. Social presence is a measure of how similar a mediated interaction is to face-to-face, the most socially present situation, in terms of perceptions of and behaviour towards an interlocutor. Social presence can be mediated by many factors, one of which is mutual gaze, and social perceptions of an interlocutor are also thought to be related to task performance. For a successful interaction, therefore, an optimum amount of mutual gaze for maximising social presence and task performance is desirable. This research aims to investigate the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and social presence, in order to discover the ideal conditions under which a successful mediated interaction can occur. Previous gaze research paradigms have involved one conversational partner staring continuously at the other, and the resulting mutual gaze being measured. It is hypothesised that this method may actually suppress mutual gaze, primarily due to social reasons. It is potentially, therefore, not the optimum experimental design for mutual gaze research. The first study in this thesis used eye-tracking to explore this hypothesis and investigate the relationship between mutual gaze and task performance. A suitable paradigm was developed, based on that used in previous research into eye movements and non-verbal communication. Two participants – Instruction Giver (IG) and Instruction Follower (IF) – communicated via avatars in Second Life to solve simple arithmetic tasks. There were two between-participant looking conditions: staring (the IG’s avatar stared continuously at the IF); and notstaring, (IG’s avatar looked at IF and task-relevant objects). Constant staring did, indeed, show evidence of decreasing mutual gaze within the dyad. Mutual gaze was positively correlated with task performance scores, but only in the not-staring condition. When not engaged in mutual gaze, the IF looked more at task-related objects in the not-staring condition than in the staring condition; this suggests that social factors are likely to be driving the gaze aversion in the staring condition. Furthermore, there are no task-related benefits to staring. The second study explored further how much looking by one person at another will maximise both mutual gaze and task performance between the dyad. It also investigated the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and both manipulated and perceived social presence. Individual participants interacted with a virtual agent within the Second Life paradigm previously used in the human-human study. Participants were either told they were interacting with a computer (i.e. an agent) or another human (an avatar). This provided the between-participants manipulated social presence variable, or agency. The virtual agent was programmed to look at the participant during either 0%, 25%, 50% or 75% of the interaction, providing the within-participants variable looking condition. The majority of effects were found in the 75% looking condition, including the highest mutual gaze uptake and the highest social presence ratings (measured via a questionnaire). Although the questionnaire did not detect any differences in social presence between the agent and avatar condition, participants were significantly faster to complete the tasks in the avatar condition than in the agent condition. This suggests that behavioural measures may be more effective at detecting differences in social presence than questionnaires alone. The results are discussed in relation to different theories of social interaction. Implications and limitations of the findings are considered and suggestions for future work are made.

This study explores how the positioning of dialogue interpreters is shaped in mediated interaction through the combined investigation of two main units of analysis, i.e. assessments and gaze. The data used consists of a small corpus of authentic, video-recorded, mediated interactions in English and Italian. These encounters take place in pedagogical settings; in particular, the specific type of institutional talk analysed is that of mediated parent-teacher meetings, which represents uncharted territory for interpreting studies. An interdisciplinary approach encompassing conversation analysis and studies on non-verbal communication is adopted to explore how interactants orient to both verbal and non-verbal activities (mainly gaze) in the production and monitoring of each other's actions, in the initiation and maintenance of social encounters, and in the co-construction of meaning and participatory framework. As for the verbal dimension, this thesis focuses on assessments, given that evaluative talk characterises the interactions under scrutiny. In particular, some tendencies (namely upgrading and downgrading renditions) in the way interpreters handle utterances embedding evaluative assessments have been identified, explored and linked to issues of identity and epistemic authority. One of the most innovative aspects of this work lies in the exploration of how positioning is realised not only verbally, but also nonverbally, by accounting for non-verbal features in the analysis of verbal interaction. Although non-verbal features have been recognised as part and parcel of human social interaction as well as important vectors of meaning and co-ordination (e.g. Goodwin 1981; Kendon 1990), their sequential positioning in relation to the production of the ongoing flow of talk and their use by interpreters to complement/replace specific verbal features is uncharted territory for interpreting studies. Since the groundbreaking work by Lang (1976, 1978), little research has integrated gaze in the analysis of the interpreter’s (and participants) verbal output (e.g. Wadensjö 2001; Bot 2005). To enable its investigation, gaze is systematically encoded alongside specific conversational cues via the ELAN software, which interfaces audio-video input in a user-friendlyhypertextual transcription. A specific gaze-encoding system has been developed for triadic interaction, building on Rossano’s (2012) one for dyadic interaction. These symbols have been mapped onto the verbal transcript of specific sequences, with a view to investigating how gaze is used as an interactional resource in conjunction with verbal behaviour when producing such sequences. Through analysis of the actions performed via talk and gaze, the thesis investigates how displays of knowledge and epistemic authority are achieved and the impact of the interpreter’s shifting positioning on the unfolding interaction. The micro-analysis of transcripts is placed within a macro-analytical framework to explore whether interpreters work as intercultural mediators when they display an engaged behaviour and act as ratified participants. Findings show that the specific moves isolated, although trying to establish a common ground with the mothers, do not seem to contribute to participants’ empowerment and participation, thus suggesting the need for a more nuanced conceptualisation of intercultural mediation.

Ekoturism är ett användbart begrepp dock inte särskilt väldefinierat. Det finns många olika förklaringar om begreppet, från preciserat till koncist. Eftersom turistbranschen är en av världens största industrier är det därför viktigt att utveckla det på ett hållbart sätt som gynnar miljön, lokalbefolkningen och ekonomin. Syftet med studien var att undersöka i vilken utsträckning Palawan arbetar med ekoturism samt vilken uppfattning turisterna har om begreppet. Insamlingsmetoden baserads på kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer med en semistrukturerad ansats. Studien visade på att respondenterna inte hade några kunskaper om begreppet ekoturism och kan därför inte agera på ett hållbart vis. Anledningen till att samtliga respondenter inte hade någon kunskap om ekoturism berodde på kunskapsbrist, däremot hade det ett miljömedvetet beteende. Slutsatsen visar på att det finns ett glapp mellan kunskap och handling inom ekoturism. Att driva ekoturism anses vara mer krävande än vanlig turism av den orsaken att det behövs både mer kunskap men också för att det är en kostnadsfråga, vilket är anledningen till att många destinationer väljer att inte göra det. Lyckligtvis har ekoturism blivit allt mer populärt genom åren och människan är idag betydligt mer medvetna om dagens miljöproblem. / Ecotourism is a useful concept, but not very well defined. As the tourism industry is one of the world's largest industries, it is therefore important to develop it in a sustainable way that benefits the environment, local people and the economy. The purpose with this thesis was to examine in what extent Palawan works with ecotourism and which perception the tourists has about the concept. The collection method was based at qualitative interviews. The thesis result showed that none of the respondents had any knowledge about the concept ecotourism and therefore can’t act in a sustainable manner. The reason why the respondents had no knowledge about the concept depended on lack of knowledge. The conclusion shows that there is a gap between knowledge and action within eco-tourism. Manage ecotourism is more demanding than regular tourism because of the needs for more knowledge, but also because it ́s a cost issue, which is why many destinations choose not to manage ecotourism. Fortunately, ecotourism has become increasingly popular over the years and man is today much more aware of today's environmental problems.

Eye gaze interaction enables users to interact with computers using their eyes. A wide variety of eye gaze interaction techniques have been developed to support this type of interaction. Gaze selection techniques, a class of eye gaze interaction techniques which support target selection, are the subject of this research. Researchers developing these techniques face a number of challenges. The most significant challenge is the limited accuracy of eye tracking equipment (due to the properties of the human eye). The design of gaze selection techniques is dominated by this constraint. Despite decades of research, existing techniques are still significantly less accurate than the mouse. A recently developed technique, EyePoint, represents the state of the art in gaze selection techniques. EyePoint combines gaze input with keyboard input. Evaluation results for this technique are encouraging, but accuracy is still a concern. Early trigger errors, resulting from users triggering a selection before looking at the intended target, were found to be the most commonly occurring errors for this technique. The primary goal of this research was to improve the usability of gaze selection techniques. In order to achieve this goal, novel gaze selection techniques were developed. New techniques were developed by combining elements of existing techniques in novel ways. Seven novel gaze selection techniques were developed. Three of these techniques were selected for evaluation. A software framework was developed for implementing and evaluating gaze selection techniques. This framework was used to implement the gaze selection techniques developed during this research. Implementing and evaluating all of the techniques using a common framework ensured consistency when comparing the techniques. The novel techniques which were developed were evaluated against EyePoint and the mouse using the framework. The three novel techniques evaluated were named TargetPoint, StaggerPoint and ScanPoint. TargetPoint combines motor space expansion with a visual feedback highlight whereas the StaggerPoint and TargetPoint designs explore novel approaches to target selection disambiguation. A usability evaluation of the three novel techniques alongside EyePoint and the mouse revealed some interesting trends. TargetPoint was found to be more usable and accurate than EyePoint. This novel technique also proved more popular with test participants. One aspect of TargetPoint which proved particularly popular was the visual feedback highlight, a feature which was found to be a more effective method of combating early trigger errors than existing approaches. StaggerPoint was more efficient than EyePoint, but was less effective and satisfying. ScanPoint was the least popular technique. The benefits of providing a visual feedback highlight and test participants' positive views thereof contradict views expressed in existing research regarding the usability of visual feedback. These results have implications for the design of future gaze selection techniques. A set of design principles was developed for designing new gaze selection techniques. The designers of gaze selection techniques can benefit from these design principles by applying them to their techniques