Media Artifacts Research Articles

Curating Everyday Life: Approaches to Documenting Everyday Soundscapes

Curating Everyday Life: Approaches to Documenting Everyday Soundscapes

Digital Narrating for Contentious Politics: Social Media Content Curation at Movement Protests

Digital Narrating for Contentious Politics: Social Media Content Curation at Movement Protests

Mobile augmented-reality artifact creation as a component of mobile computer-supported collaborative learning

This exploratory study examined the effectiveness of smartphone-based, AR artifact creation and other mobile collaborative learning activities in reinforcing the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of pre-service teachers. Adopting a mixed-method research design, the study indicated that mobile AR artifact creation with peer discussion tended to better promote the componential competencies of technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) and the integrative development of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), whereas mobile media artifact viewing with peer discussion seemed to better support the content knowledge (CK) development.

The Hybrid Breeding of Nanomedia

The Hybrid Breeding of Nanomedia

Constructing Media Artifacts in a Social Constructivist Environment to Enhance Students’ Environmental Awareness and Activism

Current science education reforms and policy documents highlight the importance of environmental awareness and perceived need for activism. As “environmental problems are socially constructed in terms of their conceptualized effects on individuals, groups, other living things and systems research based on constructivist principles provides not only a coherent framework in which to theorize about learning, but also a context for understanding socially constructed issues” (Palmer and Suggate in Res Pap Educ 19(2), 2004, p. 208). This research study investigated the impacts of the learning processes structured based on the theories of constructionism and social constructivism on students’ environmental awareness and perceived need for activism. Students constructed multimedia artifacts expressing their knowledge, attitudes, awareness, and activism about environmental issues through a constructionist design process. In addition, a social networking site was designed and used to promote social interaction among students. Twenty-two high school environmental science students participated in this study. A convergent mixed methods design was implemented to allow for the triangulation of methods by directly comparing and contrasting quantitative results with qualitative findings for corroboration and validation purposes. Using a mixed method approach, quantitative findings are supported with qualitative data (student video projects, writing prompts, blog entries, video projects of the students, observational field notes, and reflective journals) including spontaneous responses in both synchronous and asynchronous conversations on the social network to provide a better understanding of the change in students’ environmental awareness and perceived need for activism. The findings of the study indicated that students’ environmental awareness and perceived need for activism were improved at different scales (personal, community, global) throughout the constructionist and social constructivist learning processes.

Feature: Writing beyond the Page: Reflective Essay as Box Composition

This article presents a digital, multimodal reflective essay assignment based on Geoffrey Sirc’s “box logic” that asks students to fill a series of boxes with images, found text, and their own commentary as they critically and creatively engage with their writing experiences through media artifacts, digital technology, and design decisions.

Managing innovation at the centre for Digital Media

This article provides an overview of a professional graduate degree, the Master of Digital Media (MDM). The MDM is a unique joint venture of four institutions of higher learning in Vancouver, Canada (UBC, SFU, ECUAD, BCIT). Created with the support of the regional government, the program employs a collaborative project-based learning design model. The students learn innovation management by constructing digital media artifacts that attempt to solve real-world problems proposed by an industry partner. We describe the origins, academic structure and project-based course outlines, and emphasize the importance of remaining relevant to the changing landscape of the digital media industry while iteratively creating programs that provide our students with the opportunity to succeed upon graduation.JEL codes: O31, I23

Biodigital Publics: Personal Genomes as Digital Media Artefacts

The recent proliferation of personal genomics and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics has attracted much attention and publicity. Concern around these developments has mainly focused on issues of biomedical regulation and hinged on questions of how people understand genomic information as biomedical and what meaning they make of it. However, this publicity amplifies genome sequences which are also made as internet texts and, as such, they generate new reading publics. The practices around the generation, circulation and reading of genome scans do not just raise questions about biomedical regulation, they also provide the focus for an exploration of how contemporary public participation in genomics works. These issues around the public features of DTC genomic testing can be pursued through a close examination of the modes of one of the best known providers—23andMe. In fact, genome sequences circulate as digital artefacts and, hence, people are addressed by them. They are read as texts, annotated and written about in browsers, blogs and wikis. This activity also yields content for media coverage which addresses an indefinite public in line with Michael Warner's conceptualisation of publics. Digital genomic texts promise empowerment, personalisation and community, but this promise may obscure the compliance and proscription associated with these forms. The kinds of interaction here can be compared to those analysed by Andrew Barry. Direct-to-consumer genetics companies are part of a network providing an infrastructure for genomic reading publics and this network can be mapped and examined to demonstrate the ways in which this formation both exacerbates inequalities and offers possibilities for participation in biodigital culture.

Combining Cultural Analytics and Networks Analysis: Studying a Social Network Site with User-Generated Content

Humanities and social sciences require new research approaches to deal with and to benefit from the explosion of digital media. Thanks to large scale data storage and processing, close reading of individual items can be supplemented with analysis of broader trends from massive amounts of data. Cultural Analytics (CA) is a recently developed methodology for the exploration of content and visual form in large image and video collections. It has already been applied to a variety of media types, including TV programs, feature films, newspapers, and video games. However, until now these applications did not take into account the social context of media. In many cases, media artifacts under scrutiny are generated or used by people in a social setting, either in forms of (digital) communities, or in terms of social relations, which can be also analyzed as a valuable source of information. Social network analysis (SNA) is a set of methods for the analysis of human networks, including massive online social networks. In this article, we argue that CA and SNA can be combined synergistically, using data and images from deviantArt, the leading online network of user-created art, as a case study.

Slashing Smallville: The Interplay of Text, Audience and Production on Viewer Interpretations of Homoeroticism

This essay examines the slash community surrounding the television series Smallville. Utilizing textual data, audience survey responses, and fan ethnography, I locate the performance of homoeroticism in Smallville and highlight important (sub)textual moments of the series as recounted by participants. These observations reveal important implications concerning the performative capabilities of narrative, the cultural significance of this particular Superman retelling, and the influence of textual intent on subcultural practices related to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. In essence, slash fans create an alternative vision of television narrative by marking each characters’ actions as homoerotic, which is rearticulated by the writers, directors and actors of the series. This interplay illustrates the changing nature of television narrative, where text, audience and production are inseparable when analyzing media artifacts.

A Rhetorical Forecast

This article considers the future of our discipline. The author imagines how emerging media artifacts, discourses, and environments will affect the practices of communication scholarship and change the shape of our scholarly community. By tracing and reflecting upon some of the key disciplinary debates over object, method, and purpose, the author argues that the future of our field is moving toward more relational, locally-inflected “texts,” more ethnographically-minded methods, and more social-justice-oriented goals.

Spoof trailers, hyperlinked spectators & the web

Spoof trailers are trailers for a non-existent film that typically has a parodic tone, changing the genre of the source film or films. They may combine materials from different films in the form of mash-ups or re-order scenes or shots of a single film, altering the original title cards and voiceover narration. They may also incorporate images and sound bites from popular media artefacts. Spoof trailers have also become one of the key manners through which Internet users inscribe their creativity on the Web, defy copyright laws and re-contextualize previously existing cultural material to challenge the distinction between producers and consumers. I seek to analyse what are the aesthetic characteristics of spoof trailers, the viewing environments in which they exist and the dominant logics at work within the Internet to account for this emerging, Web-specific, form of film culture.

Conceptualizing perceived affordances in social media interaction design

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to theoretically develop the concept of perceived affordance based on the existing studies, and to construct a conceptual framework to show how perceived affordances can facilitate the interaction design of social media.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides a review of the relevant literature on affordance and perceived affordance, and conceptually proposes a typology of perceived affordances in social media and an integrative framework for interaction design from sociomateriality perspective. Furthermore, a brief empirical example on the interaction design of crowdsourcing systems is used to ground and illustrate the authors' conceptual framework.FindingsThe paper shows that the perceived affordances may have multi‐facet characteristics and the interaction design of social media should reflect the multi‐dimensional perceived affordances. The perceived affordances can support or facilitate the design of basic elements of social media, such as content and form, to enhance both usability (human‐computer interaction) and sociability (human‐human interaction). A position of constitutive entanglement does not privilege either users or social media artifacts, nor does it provide a rigid triangle among these three components. Instead, the perceived affordances play a critical role in integrating the key components in social media interaction design as an ensemble.Originality/valueThe paper attempts to explore and develop the concept of perceived affordance and employ it as a theoretical lens to underpin interaction design of social media. Overall, the authors' study contributes to the design science literature in the information management field by elaborating a new theoretical perspective and providing a conceptual framework for the researchers and designers.

Media analysis as critical reflexology in exploring adult learning theories

Examining media artifacts as a learning method has received little attention in human resource development (HRD) despite it being a predominate form of information and influence in popular culture. As Giroux (2002) opines, media functions as a form of public pedagogy by offering situations and contexts through which viewers can vicariously experience, critique, reflect, and learn about individual and group differences. Although adult education has a long history of using popular culture to examine and teach critical pedagogical practices, its focus within the HRD literature and practice has been limited. Our summary article will synthesize the student-authored articles' results using themes found in Wright and Sandlin's (2010) review of adult education and media analysis literature. We then discuss the student-author experiences of interacting with their media artifact and the relative implications for instructional practice and furthering research on critical HRD, adult learning, and media analysis.

Learning against the clock: Examining learning and development concepts in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Media and popular culture reach broad audiences and have the potential to be an invaluable teaching resource in terms of promoting adult education and learning. Human resource development instructors can use media artifacts (e.g., films, television, novels, and cartoons) as useful methods to demonstrate learning theory and adult development concepts. In this article, we review The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to identify how learning theories and adult development concepts are represented in the story of a man who ages in reverse. Results indicate multiple adult learning and development concepts are represented in the film, thus making it a useful method for instructors to use in course that explores learning theory. We offer suggestions and discuss implications for using media and popular culture for HRD teaching and practice.

Girlhoods in the Golden Age of U.S. Radio: Music, Shared Popular Culture, and Memory

Memory and storytelling can provide valuable tools for media scholars aiming to better understand popular media audiences from a historical perspective. Girls' stories are particularly important because they have been absent from most official recorded history and archived documents. In this study, we interview 30 U.S. women born 1918–1948 in order to uncover their girlhood experiences with mid-20th Century media. Their narratives reveal 1) a shared experience of radio listening; 2) an emphasis on the “experience” of using media artifacts rather than on the content; and 3) the appeal of music and dance as a girlhood pastimes.

Believers and Non-Believers: How Potential Users Respond to the Prospect of an Onscreen Learning Assistant

Studies have shown (e.g. Reeves and Nass, 1996; Veletsianos and Miller, 2008; Turkle, 2010) that humans are willing to treat electronic media artefacts of various kinds as real in certain situations. This study looks at this phenomenon with respect to interactions between human subjects and an onscreen embodied conversational agent (ECA), known as the Learning Companion, in order to explore the views of these people as to the viability of engaging in conversations about learning with such a device. 20 older adults, mostly retired, participated in this study where they engaged in experimental conversations with the Learning Companion about their interests, and about using the Internet. Findings suggest that there was a marked division within the sample, between those who did and those who did not consider the Learning Companion to be personable and credible as a conversation partner. There was a strong correlation in this respect between the educational backgrounds of the subjects, with the more academically self-confident being more resistant to the Learning Companion’s attempts to engage them in conversation than the less academically self-confident participants.

Respeitem meus cabelos, brancos: música, política e identidade negra

A música popular é um artefato midiático através do qual são negociados socialmente pensamentos, valores, ações e estratégias de identidade individual e coletiva. Neste artigo, analisaremos as nuances discursivas que integram a canção Respeitem meus cabelos, brancos, de Chico César. Parte-se da hipótese de que por trás de um discurso militante e acusatório revelam-se diversas ambiguidades discursivas que integram a posição do autor sobre identidade negra. Os debates atuais sobre racismo acionam um posicionamento dicotômico (brancos x negros), presente na letra, mas relativizado pela ironia do uso não ortodoxo do reggae, pela ambiguidade da capa do CD, pela indefinição tonal e pelo criativo uso da vírgula, que condensa toda uma gama de deslocamentos interpretativos, contribuindo densa e criticamente para o pensamento atual sobre negritude no Brasil. **************************************************** ABSTRACT Popular music is a media artifact through which thoughts, values, actions and collective and individual strategies of identity can be socially negotiated. In this article, we’ll analyze the discursive nuances in the song Respeitem meus cabelos, brancos (Have some respect for my hair, whites), by Chico César. We start of from the assumption that behind a militant and accusatory discourse, ambiguities are showed in the author’s stand on black identity. Current debates on racism trigger a dichotomous position (blacks vs. whites), in the lyrics, second guessed by the irony in the unorthodox usage of reggae, by the ambiguity of the record cover image, by the undefined tone and the creative use of the comma, that condenses a range of interpretational misplaces, contributing largely and critically for the current thought on blackness in Brazil.

Youth identities as remixers in an online community of storytellers: Attitudes, strategies, and values

AbstractIn today's media‐rich world, youths are not merely consumers, but also active creators of information. Digital tools allow authors to more easily remix and copy previous works. These new media practices have brought issues of appropriation, copyright, privacy, information behavior, and information literacy to the forefront. In this paper, we present a case study of a hybrid online and offline community of middle school students designed to help them develop identities as scientists through storytelling. The case illuminates the complex issues of appropriation and remix that arise when youths create, share, copy, and adapt their peers' media artifacts. Our analysis then highlights how youths, who are evolving as information literate individuals, identify with (a) attitudes towards information appropriation, (b) strategies of remix, and (c) the underlying values that motivate their ideas about remix practices.

Social Science, Media Effects & The Supreme Court: Is Communication Research Relevant After <em>Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association</em>?

This article examines the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association for the future use of social science evidence and communication research to supply legislative facts supporting laws that target harms allegedly caused by media artifacts. The Brown majority set the bar for the relevance of social science evidence exceedingly high - perhaps too high, the article suggests - while Justice Stephen Breyer, in contrast, adopted a much more deferential approach in a dissent that embraced the evidence proffered by California. The article also reveals an apparent inconsistency in Justice Antonin Scalia's approach to social evidence when comparing his majority opinion in Brown against his opinion just two years earlier in Federal Communications Commissionv. Fox Television Stations, Inc. Ultimately, the article asserts that communication scientists hoping to influence both legislative bodies and jurists should view Brown as a wake-up call to do two things: 1) educate lawmakers and jurists about whether and when social science research can adequately resolve complex questions about media-caused harms; and 2) jettison research that lacks real-world generalizability and legal relevance.