In this thesis we will discuss the subject of user participation in the development process of products, specifically video games, through a concept called User-generated content. Product development demands speed and flexibility in the development process and it has been suggested that managers should revise the process of product development to become more flexible and integrate the consumer in increasingly more steps of the process. Video games will often be modified after its release. In fact, it has been estimated that between 95% and 100% of the files in most software will be modified after its initial release. User participation, referring to behaviors and activities performed in a system development process, is a definite feature for websites that consider their content user-generated. Customers who participate in online video game UGC are actively changing games, modifying existing content and creating new content related to all aspects of the game bit by bit, while also contributing this content to others, usually over the internet through some sort of video game content sharing site.User participation is determined by a user’s ability to participate and his motivation to do so, the latter of which is the focus of this thesis. Two major branches of study can be distinguished from motivational theory; intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of motivational factors of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and toolkits that motivate customers to participate in UGC for video games. We examine what effects intrinsic motivational factors enjoyment, altruism and continuance commitment, as well as extrinsic motivational factors rewards, future rewards, personal need and reputation have on user participation. The toolkits approach to product development is a common user-oriented product development methods in the video game industry, which allows users to modify and create content for games. We will also study what effects the usefulness and ease of use of these toolkits have on user participation. Conducting a quantitative study, we presented a questionnaire to members of four online video game UGC communities; Steam Workshop, GameBanana, ModDB and MODSonline, in order to assess users’ attitudes of aforementioned concepts in relation to their user participation.We have not found any relevant research that examines both motivational factors’ and toolkits’ effects on user participation in video game UGC. With recent turbulent developments in the video game industry regarding monetary compensation for UGC, we decided to put great weight on this area in this thesis, both through our review of previous literature and regarding the results of our study.Our multiple regression analysis showed that toolkit ease of use, intrinsic motivational factors enjoyment and altruism, as well as extrinsic motivational factor reputation have significant positive effects on user participation, while toolkit usefulness showed a significant negative effect on user participation. We also find trends suggesting the positive effect of continuance commitment on user participation, and, finally, a trend suggesting the negative effect of rewards on user participation.

Certifiers have a crucial role in facilitating effective communication in the online and the traditional world. As a way of generating statistically meaningful information, certification has been adopted in financial statements evaluation and more recently in various online communities as well. This dissertation examines three related issues along this common theme: online reputation market, moderation in user-generated content, and strategic communications in the market for certifications, and consists of three essays. The first essay analyzes the impact of various dispute mechanisms on online identity trading. Online identities with a good reputation profile is a valuable and tradable asset. However, with free identity creation, there is room for low quality sellers to free-ride high quality sellers. When there is a lack of incentive for sellers to maintain a good reputation, identity trading becomes ineffective. This essay focuses on the role of an auditing system, such as eBay dispute center, and shows that even a small amount of objective information from the auditors can reverse the negative result and sustain reliable reputation and identity trading. The second essay investigates the impact of moderation on the quality of information in an user-generated content (UGC) environment. In most UGC communities, content contributors have incentive to publish biased or false information. For example, companies hire people to write positive reviews about themselves. This essay establishes a framework for the mechanism design of moderation, and provides insight on how to optimally allocate moderation resource. The third essay examines a market for certification and certifiers' strategic reporting behaviors. The central question is how to induce certifiers to provide statistically meaningful information to investors when they are paid by their client firms. We provide insights on how certifier competition plays an role in firms' certifier choice, how certifiers degrade their accuracies to achieve maximum profit, and how the legal environment impacts the information quality. / text

The following report defines the concept of conspicuous participation and it demonstrates how it impacts nonprofit marketing efforts through social media. This is accomplished through providing an in-depth theoretical background, a detailed typography describing how conspicuous participation is currently being used to promote interactions with nonprofit organizations, and through two case studies, which offer real-world examples of how nonprofit organizations are utilizing this concept. Conspicuous participation can be defined as The act of publishing original or existing content in an online space that is visible to others, either all members of the general public or members of a private social network, in order to interact with and/or show support for a defined community or organization. / text

The issue of ‘race’ and policing has generated considerable public controversy. I draw the work of Norman Fairclough in analyzing online public comments responding to three Winnipeg incidents from the summer of 2008: the detainment of Robert Wilson, the inquest into the death of Matthew Dumas and the tasering death of Michael Langan. My main research questions are 1) what characterises these discourses? 2) what processes of social struggle are evident? and 3) what can this tell us about power relations and ideology in society? The analysis of 3342 comments demonstrates power dynamics in discursive struggles over the definition of the relationship between racialized group-members and the police. Specifically, a conservative discursive formation was found to have three interrelated ‘stages’: support for the police, denial of racism and mediating discourses of responsibilization/criminalization. The conclusion considers how a transformative discourse of racialized policing might mitigate prevailing justifications of racial privilege and inequality.

The issue of ‘race’ and policing has generated considerable public controversy. I draw the work of Norman Fairclough in analyzing online public comments responding to three Winnipeg incidents from the summer of 2008: the detainment of Robert Wilson, the inquest into the death of Matthew Dumas and the tasering death of Michael Langan. My main research questions are 1) what characterises these discourses? 2) what processes of social struggle are evident? and 3) what can this tell us about power relations and ideology in society? The analysis of 3342 comments demonstrates power dynamics in discursive struggles over the definition of the relationship between racialized group-members and the police. Specifically, a conservative discursive formation was found to have three interrelated ‘stages’: support for the police, denial of racism and mediating discourses of responsibilization/criminalization. The conclusion considers how a transformative discourse of racialized policing might mitigate prevailing justifications of racial privilege and inequality.

Tesla är ett multinationellt företag som tillverkar och säljer elbilar bland många andra produkter och tjänster. Vår studie kommer primärt fokusera på Tesla Motors, den del av företaget som producerar och säljer bilar. Tesla är inte ett traditionellt företag när det gäller reklam och marknadsföring då de aldrig har marknadsfört sig via traditionella mediekanaler som TV-reklam, tidningar eller radio. Istället förlitar de sig på sina fans, och använder deras sociala mediekanaler för marknadsföringsändamål. Eftersom Tesla är ett modernt och tekniskt företag som får stor uppmärksamhet runt om i världen är det inte konstigt att människor finner företaget och deras produkter intressanta, därav har en fan-gemenskap vuxit kring upp företaget. Fandom är en kultur baserad på ett gemensamt intresse kring ett visst ämne eller en specifik sak. Kulturen är byggd på gemenskap och ett gemensamt intresse kring ämnet i fråga där fansen delar samma värden. Syftet med fandomproduktioner är inte att tjäna pengar, utan att dela materialet med andra personer som har samma intresse för ämnet. Tesla är medvetna om att det finns en stark fangemenskap runt företaget, vilket ledde till att de lanserade "Project Loveday" - ett projekt där deras fans fick möjligheten att skapa egna Tesla-reklamfilmer som senare skulle sändas och publiceras på Teslas egna hemsida. Syftet med vår studie är att få fram vad Teslas fans och entusiaster vill kommunicera i sina egenproducerade filmer under kampanjen “Project Loveday”. Detta kommer göras genom att vi besvarar våra frågeställningar som innefattar hur fans och entusiaster framställer Teslas elbilar i sina egenproducerade filmer, samt vilka futuristiska konnotationer, symboler, ideologier, och myter som syns i dessa filmer. Med hjälp av semiotisk analys som metod kommer vi kunna tolka de olika tecken som förekommer i de utvalda filmerna, samt analysera dess innehåll på ett begripligt sätt för att sedan skapa en djupare förståelse kring vad man försöker förmedla. Studiens resultat visade att de föreställningar kring framtiden som förekommer i Project Loveday innefattar associationer till rymden och den teknik den bär med sig, samt att Tesla Motors besitter denna teknik och därmed kan ses som en del av framtiden. / Tesla is a multinational company which manufactures and sells electric cars among many other products and services. However, our study mainly focuses on Tesla Motors – the part of the company which produces and sells automobiles. Tesla is not a traditional company when it comes to advertisement or marketing – they have never advertised themselves through traditional media channels such as TV-commercials, newspapers, or radio. Instead they rely, and use their own fans and consumer’s media channels for marketing purposes. Since Tesla is such a modern and technological company which gets a lot of attention around the world, it is not strange that people find them and their products interesting. Therefore, a fan community has grown around the company. Fandom is a culture based on a mutual interest about a certain or specific matter. The culture is based on community, values and a shared interest in the subject. The purpose is primarily so share material with people with the same interest, not to profit on it. Tesla is aware that they have a strong fan community, which led them to launch “Project Loveday” – a project where their fans got the possibility to create their own Tesla commercials which later would be broadcasted and posted on Teslas own website. The purpose with this study is to obtain what Teslas fans and enthusiasts wants to communicate in their own produced movies in the “Project Loveday” campaign. This will be done by answering our questions of issue, which includes how fans and enthusiasts presents Teslas electric cars in their own produced movies, as well as what kind of futuristic connotations, symbols, ideologies, and myths that can be seen in these movies. By using semiotics as our choice of method we will interpret the different signs which occurs in the chosen movies, and analyze their content in an understandable manner regarding what they try to mediate. The result of the study shows that the perceptions about the future which occurs in “Project Loveday” includes associations to space, and the technique it brings along. It also shows that Tesla possesses this technique and therefore can be seen as a part of the future.

Technological advancements in computing have led to a reality where computational devices are more mobile, connected and context aware than ever before. Several of these devices are primarily designed for or support the creation of digital content via built-in or attachable sensors, e.g. mobile phones. The portability and connectivity of mobile devices make them suitable tools to support learning experiences; their features can be used to generate digital content and metadata related to the particular learning situation. These types of objects, referred to as Emerging Learning Objects (ELOs), introduce challenges in terms of metadata enrichment as their metadata should reflect aspects related to the particular learning situation in which they were created to be properly indexed. A claim made in this thesis is that semantic interoperability of ELO metadata is an integral concern that needs to be explored in order to benefit from these metadata outside custom tailored applications and systems. Therefore, the main research question explored in this thesis focuses on the ability to enrich ELOs with semantically interoperable contextual metadata. This thesis is comprised of a collection of five peer-reviewed articles that describe interrelated stages of research in pursuit of an answer to the main research question. The overall research process consisted of three main stages: a literature review; the development a system artefact; and the exploration of the technological solution (Linked Data) applied in the system artefact. An instantiation of the Unified Process guided the development of the system artefact. The outcomes of these activities provide insights on how to perceive the relationship between context and contextual metadata, as well as properties related to a particular technological solution, namely data distribution, flexibility and expressivity. In order to decouple the findings from a particular instance of technology, a generalization effort in the analysis identified two generic factors that affect the semantic interoperability of metadata: the level of ontological consensus and the level of metadata expressivity. The main conclusion of this thesis is that until the constituent parts of context are agreed upon, metadata expressivity is an important feature for promoting semantic interoperability of ELO contextual metadata.Technological advancements in computing have led to a reality where computational devices are more mobile, connected and context aware than ever before. Several of these devices are primarily designed for or support the creation of digital content via built-in or attachable sensors, e.g. mobile phones. The portability and connectivity of mobile devices make them suitable tools to support learning experiences; their features can be used to generate digital content and metadata related to the particular learning situation. These types of objects, referred to as Emerging Learning Objects (ELOs), introduce challenges in terms of metadata enrichment as their metadata should reflect aspects related to the particular learning situation in which they were created to be properly indexed. A claim made in this thesis is that semantic interoperability of ELO metadata is an integral concern that needs to be explored in order to benefit from these metadata outside custom tailored applications and systems. Therefore, the main research question explored in this thesis focuses on the ability to enrich ELOs with semantically interoperable contextual metadata. This thesis is comprised of a collection of five peer-reviewed articles that describe interrelated stages of research in pursuit of an answer to the main research question. The overall research process consisted of three main stages: a literature review; the development a system artefact; and the exploration of the technological solution (Linked Data) applied in the system artefact. An instantiation of the Unified Process guided the development of the system artefact.The outcomes of these activities provide insights on how to perceive the relationship between context and contextual metadata, as well as properties related to a particular technological solution, namely data distribution, flexibility and expressivity. In order to decouple the findings from a particular instance of technology, a generalization effort in the analysis identified two generic factors that affect the semantic interoperability of metadata: the level of ontological consensus and the level of metadata expressivity. The main conclusion of this thesis is that until the constituent parts of context are agreed upon, metadata expressivity is an important feature for promoting semantic interoperability of ELO contextual metadata.

近年来，中国内地市场化报纸纷纷开设"报网互动栏目"来常规性吸纳和利用网络用生成内容。本文试图对这一现象作出描述、分析和解释。本研究从新闻常规和新闻内容两个面向，对作为中国"报网互动栏目"范例的《S报》"网"版进行了考察。考察围绕以下问题展开："报网互动"栏目的新闻常规是什么？它与一般新闻常规有何异同？这些新闻常规是如何形成的，又发挥了怎样的作用？是否帮助"报网互动栏目"突破中国媒体在践行传媒公共性上的局限？为什么会出现这样的情况？以往对用生成内容、新闻常规以及传媒公共性三者关系的研究都主要产生于自由主义传统的社会。本研究将为此提供一个新的参照，其背景是像中国内地这样的非自由主义传统的社会。 / 本研究通过对《S报》"网"版的考察发现，"网"版在吸纳用生成内容时因应出一定的以公共性为导向的新常规，这些常规主要存在于新闻生产的发现、选择、报道以及撤稿等环节。在这些常规的作用下，"报网互动栏目"重视吸纳与公共利益相关、尤其是与监督公权力相关的用生成内容，并在报道中彰显出鲜明的民间立场。但是，《S报》同时保留了既定的对传媒公共性具有破坏作用的新闻常规。这些新闻常规限制了"报网互动栏目"对传媒公共性追求，使其难以突破过往中国媒体在践行传媒公共性上的局限性。 / 中国内地市场化报纸"报网互动栏目"所展示出的局限的公共性是国家、市场、新闻专业主义和互联网技术等多重因素共同作用的结果。其中，国家、市场、新闻专业主义均不同程度地发挥了促进和破坏传媒公共性的双面作用。因此，尽管互联网科技为传媒提供了提升自身公共性的可能性，但这种可能性在特定的权力结构中被消解。 / In recent years, market-driven newspapers in China have increasingly established the "Press-Internet Interaction Section [Baowang Hudong Lanmu]" to regularly incorporate user-generated content. This dissertation tries to describe, analyze, and explain this phenomenon. The study examines the news routine and news content of one exemplary section, "The Net Section" of S-News. The exploration focuses on the following questions: What is the news routine in this "Press-Internet Interaction Section"? Is it different from established newspaper routines? How is it formed? How does it work? Does the news routine promote the publicness of the news content? And why? So far most existing literature on this topic examines cases in societies with liberal traditions of news-making. This study provides a new point of reference in the contexts of societies outside the liberal traditions such as in China. / This study finds that S-News has established several new public-oriented routines to appropriate the user-generated content. Meanwhile, the newspaper also retains some established routines that threaten the publicness of media. These two types of news routines make the news content of "Press-Internet Interaction Section" only show limited publicness as other Chinese media. / The performance of "Press-Internet Interaction Section" is the result of a confluence of factors. The factors include the state, the market, the journalistic professionalism and the Internet. Except the Internet, all three other factors construct and destruct the publicness of media to varying degrees. As a result, the possibility provided by the Internet to increase the publicness of media has been minimal within established power structures. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / 張偉偉. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-283). / Abstracts also in English. / Zhang Weiwei.

Lerncontentmodelle beschreiben den modularen Aufbau von Lernmaterialien auf verschiedenen Komplexitätsebenen von Assets bis hin zu fertigen Kursmaterialien. In Autorenwerkzeugen wird diese Untergliederung oft unterstützt, bspw. durch Mediendatenbanken, modularisierte Inhaltsstrukturen oder pädagogische Metadaten zum unterstützten Lernszenario. User Generated Content in Social-Software-Anwendungen entsteht nicht auf diesem strukturierten Weg, sondern spontan und abhängig von den bereitgestellten Funktionen. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass sie sich aber weiterhin bezüglich ihrer Abhängigkeit vom Lernkontext klassifizieren lassen. Als Abstufungen ergeben sich Assets, Informations- und Lernobjekte, zielgruppenbasierte Zusammenstellungen und Kursunterlagen. Damit soll einerseits eine taxonomische Grundlage geschaffen werden, um User Generated Content als Lernmaterialien einzuordnen, es ist aber vornehmlich ein erster Schritt hin zur deren systematischer Re-Integration in institutionelle Lernmaterialien.

Social media is a phenomenon that has expanded fast during the recent years and has become a part of people’s everyday lives. Social media has developed to not only deal with updating others about what is happening and uploading pictures. Today social media plays a big part in marketing. Therefore advertising is not only exposed in traditional media such as; TV, radio and newspapers, but also on the internet and the social media platforms. Advertising on social media appears in different forms; sponsored posts (paid ads), User Generated Content (non-paid ads) and Electronic-Word-of-Mouth. These different forms of advertising on social media are experienced differently by consumers and therefore this study aims to gain an understanding to which extent consumers find different forms of advertising on social media credible and useful. A qualitative method has been used for this study. For the collecting of data semi-structured interviews have been conducted. This study has been divided into three themes, namely; advertising on social media, attitude of consumers and perceived credibility and usefulness. It turned out that consumers experienced User Generated Content as the most credible form of advertising on social media. Sponsored posts were seen as the most useful, since this form of advertising was perceived as inspiring and informative. / Sociala medier är ett fenomen som utvecklats väldigt fort och blivit en del av människors vardag. Det har utvecklats till att inte enbart handla om att uppdatera andra personer om vad som försiggår i ens liv och att lägga upp bilder. Idag används sociala medier även av företag och andra profiler i marknadsföringssyfte. Reklam exponeras därmed inte bara i traditionella kanaler såsom TV, radio och tidningar, utan även på internet och de sociala medieplattformarna. Reklam på sociala medier förekommer i olika former; sponsrade inlägg (betald reklam), User Generated Content (icke-betald reklam) och Electronic Word of Mouth. Dessa olika former av reklam i sociala medier tas emot på olika sätt av konsumenter och därför ämnar denna uppsats att få förståelse för i vilken utsträckning konsumenter finner olika former av reklam i sociala medier trovärdiga och användbara. Studien har ett kvalitativt tillvägagångssätt där insamlingen av data skett genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Studien har delats in i tre olika teman nämligen; reklam på sociala medier, attityd hos konsumenter och uppfattad trovärdighet och användbarhet. Det framkom att User Generated Content upplevdes som mest trovärdigt bland de olika formerna av reklam. Däremot ansågs sponsrade inlägg som mest användbart då denna form av reklam uppfattades som inspirerande och informationsrik.