Browsing by Subject "Digital media"
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Item Alternative Pedagogy : the One Room Schoolhouse and the Trojan Experiment(2012-05) Younse, Dustin Seth; Straubhaar, Joseph D.; Stone, Allucquère Rosanne“We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” -- Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs As we stand beyond the brink of the 21st Century, we are outside of the boundaries where the Ivory Tower approach to education is applicable, particularly in regards to the teaching of practical knowledge and the acquisition of necessary technical skills. We must also, however, address the very real scalability issues inherit in the One Room Schoolhouse approach, as the numbers of students who need education are not likely to shrink anytime soon. We are no longer apes on the savannah and we can no longer afford to act as robotic vessels in search of knowledge from academia’s font of knowledge. Technology is the future of our society and it is only growing in complexity. If we are to efficiently instruct our students in the ever-growing fields of general study and technology they face, we need to find a hybrid, or cyborg, approach, melding the ape and the robot.Item An exercise in resilience(2023-04-21) Freyre Cuza, Alex; Lucas, Kristin, 1968-; Smith, Michael; Perzynski, Bogdan; Garcia, Scherezade; Mccarthy, Kathryn; McMaster, EricThis report reflects on a body of work that discusses the current migratory circumstances of Cubans. It analyzes the socioeconomic, bureaucratic, and emotional realities associated with migration. This research materializes in four interdisciplinary digital media projects that merge stereoscopic videos, interactive applications, and virtual reality. Seen together, the project creates a looping, immersive, interactive landscape that uses contemporary aesthetics and 3D simulations to trigger a psychophysical dialogue about current migratory events related to Cuba.Item Bottom-up technology transmission within families : how children influence their parents in the adoption and use of digital media(2012-12) Correa, Teresa; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; Straubhaar, Joseph D.This dissertation investigated the bottom-up technology transmission process in a country with varied levels of technology diffusion, such as Chile. In particular, I explored how children act as technology brokers within their families by influencing their parents' adoption of and learning about digital media, so as to include older generations in the digital environment. In order to do this, I measured to what extent this process occurs, I proposed a typology of factors that intervene in the process and analyzed the outcomes variables related to the phenomenon. Methodologically, I used a mixed-methods research approach by combining in-depth interviews with a self-administered paper-and-pencil survey taken by dyads of one parent and one child. I analyzed 28 interviews involving one 12 to 18-year-old child and one parent or legal guardian (14 dyads) stratified by socioeconomic background, age, and gender. In addition, I conducted the parent-child survey among school-aged children and their parents in three schools, stratified by socioeconomic status. One class per cohort from 7th to 11th grades was randomly surveyed. In total, 381 students and 251 parents completed the surveys. The analyses showed that bottom-up technology transmission occurs at some degree for all the technologies investigated in this study. However, children's influence should not be overstated because they play only one part among a number of factors involved in the digital inclusion of older generations. It also established a typology of factors related to the process at different levels, including structural influences, family structure, strategies employed by youth, and psychological dispositions of parents. Specifically, the analyses consistently found that this process was more likely to occur among people from a lower socioeconomic status. Also, the transmission was associated with more fluid parent-child interactions and occurred among parents who perceived the technology to be useful. Regarding the outcome variables, it demonstrated that this phenomenon is linked, although weakly, to greater levels of perceived competence among parents and higher esteem among young people. Finally, it suggested that bottom-up technology transmission is associated with the reduction of some socioeconomic gaps in digital media use.Item Creating while Black : digital participation, digital expressions, and cultural capital among Black teens in Austin, Texas(2017-05) Williams, Adam Clark, III; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Straubhaar, Joseph; Kumar, Shanti; Thomas, Kevin; Moore, LeonardAustin is recognized for its plurality of cultures and technology-rich landscape. Thus, it is home to various youth digital literacy programs and resources targeting its socially and economically disadvantaged population. These efforts help to narrow the gap in digital participation between the city’s privileged and disadvantaged classes. My dissertation explores the participatory cultures of Austin’s Black youth within production-based spaces to determine how their digital expressions allow them to accumulate or utilize cultural capital. Cultural capital has been used in different contexts to understand the complexities of wealth amongst marginalized groups. Taking an ethnographic approach, this study draws from focus groups and interviews of Black teens (aged 13 to 19; both male and female) to qualitatively analyze their digital expressions and the perceived benefits of these expressions to their lives, future opportunities, and career paths. I seek a deeper understanding of how and why this youth demographic engages in creating particular digital contents as well as the significance of the cultural capital that they generate and utilize as a resultItem ‘Digital unhu’ in Zimbabwe : critical digital studies from the global south(2017-12) McClune, Caitlin Tappin; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-; Straubhaar, Joseph D; Carrington, Ben; Tyner, KathleenMy dissertation examines how creative organizations in Zimbabwe construct the role of digital media and the African philosophy unhu in their practices and creative artifacts. In this project, I introduce ‘digital unhu,’ a concept that acknowledges the rapid increase in digital connectivity in Zimbabwe. I investigate the particular ways Zimbabwean artistic communities have adopted digital technologies to political, economic and creative life in Harare under conditions of extreme precarity. This framework seeks to highlight the role of labor, specifically, what is known as ‘immaterial labor,’ in the creative products developed by Zimbabweans based in an agriculturally centered economy under increasingly digitally interconnected conditions. Ultimately, I argue that these organizations and artists are responding directly to the unstable political and economic conditions of their country by using these technologies to promote non-hierarchical organizations, emphasizing mobility, collaboration and drawing on the reserves of historical legacies of resistance and survival. The first chapter provides historical background and context for the development of digital unhu in Zimbabwean culture. Chapter two investigates the uses of digital technology, and role of unhu in the Zimbabwean organization Institute for Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust, particularly on its organizational website icapatrust.org. Chapter four compares the experimental documentary Zim.doc to the website Wild Forrest Ranch, in order to point to characteristics unique to the region in uses of open source technology. Chapter five compares the uses of digital media, specifically mobile phones, in the cases of the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, and in the dissolution of the Harare-based arts venue the Book Café. Across these different examples, I locate the characteristics of recalibrating cultural practices with new technologies, an emphasis on collaborative production, and the strategies of mobility.Item From "disentangling the subtle soul" to "ineluctable modality" : James Joyce's transmodal techniques(2011-05) Mulliken, Jasmine Tiffany; Friedman, Alan Warren; Bremen, Brian A.; Hodgson, Justin D.; Staley, Thomas F.; Antokoletz, Elliott M.This study of James Joyce's transmodal techniques explores, first, Joyce's implementation of non-language based media into his works and, second, how digital technologies might assist in identifying and studying these implementations. The first chapter introduces the technique of re-rendering, the artistic practice of drawing out certain characteristics of one medium and, by then depicting those characteristics in a new medium, calling attention to both media and their limitations and potentials. Re-rendering can be content-based or form-based. Joyce employs content-based re-rendering when he alludes to a piece of art in another medium and form-based re-rendering when he superimposes the form of another medium onto his text. The second chapter explores Dubliners as a panoramic catalog of the various aspects involved in re-rendering media. The collection of stories, or the fragmented novel, shows synaesthetic characters, characters engaged in repetition and revision, and characters translating art across media by superimposing the forms, materials, and conventions of one medium onto another. Dubliners culminates in the use of coda, a musical structure that commonly finalizes a multi-movement work. The third chapter analyzes of A Portrait of the artist as a young man, focusing on its protagonist who exhibits synaesthetic qualities and a penchant for repeating phrases. With each repetition he also revises, a practice that foreshadows the form-based re-rendering Joyce employs in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The fourth chapter explores the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses. In this episode, Joyce isolates the structure of the musical medium and transfers it to a literary medium. This technique shows his advanced exploration of the effects of one artistic medium on another and exemplifies his innovative technique of re-rendering art forms. Finally, the fifth chapter explores how we might use digital technologies to visualize Joyce's techniques of re-rendering. Based on these visualizations, we might identify further connections Joyce makes across his works.Item Get @ the vote : using Facebook and email to increase voter turnout(2016-05-05) Haenschen, Katherine Elizabeth; Strover, Sharon; Stroud, Natalie Jomini; Albertson, Bethany; Brundidge, Jennifer; Straubhaar, Joseph; Wilkins, KarinThis dissertation investigates the effects of the two most commonly used forms of digital media – email and Facebook – as mechanisms of voter mobilization. The widespread adoption of digital media in America makes it an idea conduit for voter mobilization, but to date there is minimal research that attempts to use Facebook to increase turnout, and few studies that use email to successfully boost participation. These studies leverage unique affordances of both mediums to increase voter turnout: Facebook increases the visibility of users' behaviors on the platform, and email messages and Facebook advertisements are inexpensive and easy to send to mass audiences. The results engage with existing literature on the power of social norms and how they can be used to drive behavior changes. To explore this topic, I conducted four field experiments designed to leverage Facebook and email messages to increase voter participation during the 2014 general election in Texas. These experiments adapt social pressure messaging, which emphasizes the public nature of voting records and attempts to increase the visibility of voting behaviors, for digital communication platforms. In implementing two of the studies, I developed a new method of conducting field experiments on Facebook randomized at the level of the individual that are implemented with the help of confederates. Results were analyzed using logistic regression. The most effective method – directly shaming people for failing to vote in the ongoing election – produced a statistically significant increase in turnout of 22%, which is much higher than what has been obtained through traditional analog methods. Directly praising friends for past participation was also able to raise turnout by 9%. Additionally, seeing others be praised for voting was able to increase turnout amongst new and infrequent voters. The second two studies build on past research by combining the email messages with Facebook advertisements and sending multiple waves of reminders. They show that multiple rounds of email and social pressure messaging can generate small increases in turnout. The findings demonstrate that Facebook and email can be used to increase voter turnout, and that the effects of mobilization within peer-to-peer networks are much larger than those obtained from unsolicited mass-email messages. This work contributes to existing theory by demonstrating that voting behavior circulates and can be induced through networks. Furthermore, the heightened visibility of user behaviors within online social networks was able to amplify the effects of the treatments beyond what has been produced in an offline context. Overall, the results show that digital media can be used to increase voter turnout, and offer reasons to be optimistic about the future of democracy in our increasingly digital society.Item Hecho con ganas : Latin@ alternative and activist media(2015-05) Rodriguez, Vittoria Nicole; Beltrán, Mary C.The proliferation of independently produced Latin@ media has only intensified with the rise of new media technologies and saliency of online user-generated content in our present media culture. As online platforms become more open and new media technologies and devices make the creation and accessing of information easier, Latin@s and other minorities who have traditionally been marginalized within mainstream media culture and largely excluded from participating in media industries, are turning to the web to launch their own media projects. In more recent years, Latin@s have utilized new media to resist and challenge the mainstream. As a result, we have witnessed the appearance of Latin@-produced, non-commercial and/or activist oriented websites, videos, audio, and blogs that this thesis argues act as alternative and activist media. Latin@ alternative and activist media may be understood as typically small-scale projects that posses little to no budget and that generally critique the marginalization and exclusion of Latin@s in mainstream media and U.S. society. In addition to contesting the mainstream, Latin@ alternative and activist media express and question in-group identity and enact varying degrees of in-group civic participation and empowerment, resulting is the constitution of a multitude of Latinidades and the formation of Latin@ online communities and social media groups. Using Latino Rebels and Dreamers Adrift as case studies, this thesis examines the ways in which these particular examples of Latin@ alternative and activist media express divergent and/or radical perspectives of society through their processes and content while also connecting these media texts to the current social and political realities of Latin@s.Item How political identities are developed and maintained(2021-08-02) Ashokkumar, Ashwini; Swann, William B.; Pennebaker, James W.; Gosling, Samuel D.; Boyd, RyanIn a time of heightened partisanship and political polarization, people’s political identities are increasingly producing detrimental outcomes. To address the dangers of extreme political identities, we need to understand how such identities form and are maintained. My overarching goal is to examine how people’s political identities develop and how people protect such identities from threat. Specifically, after an introductory chapter (Chapter 1), I examine how political identities develop via everyday social interactions with fellow group members (Chapter 2), and how people protect their political identities when they are faced with threat from political opponents (Chapters 3) or from fellow partisans (Chapter 4). The dissertation features several distinct methodological approaches. In Chapter 2, I analyze daily conversations occurring within three large online political groups to understand the processes through which people’s political identities develop over time. Chapter 3 examines how people protect their political identities from identity-threatening content on social media. Chapter 4 examines how people strategically respond to reputational threat caused by the moral transgressions of fellow partisans. Each of these chapters is comprised of an article that either has been published at peer-reviewed journals or is in preparation for submission (Ashokkumar & Pennebaker, in prep; Ashokkumar et al., 2020; Ashokkumar et al., 2019). Bringing together insights from the three sets of studies, the dissertation concludes with a discussion of dynamic processes associated with political identities and argues for taking a multimethod approach to studying identity.Item The influence of audience agency in digital media: A model adjustment in the hierarchy of influences(2015-12) Knight, Lewis Clinton; Coleman, Renita; Lasorsa, Dominic; Royal, Cindy; Chyi, Iris; Johnson, Thomas JThe hierarchy of influences is a theory that models the underlying forces or influences that guide journalists during their decision-making processes as gatekeepers of news and information (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, 2014). As part of this model there are a group of influences originally described as extra-media influences: some are now labeled “social institutions” and others have been moved to the “routines” level that includes competition, advertisers, community leaders and, audiences, which in the treatise now are considered in both levels to some extent. Technological innovation in digital media has changed some of the ways journalists gather, produce, publish, present and disseminate the news. Digital media innovation has also affected the way audiences or users now consume, discuss, debate and share the news. As digital media technological innovation continues to rapidly expand and change, its use by journalists and consumers could have implications that have caused shifts on the forces or influences in this hierarchy, particularly on the levels of social institutions and routines. This study seeks to test the idea that changes in the digital media environment have sufficiently shifted audience agency to a degree that it warrants further examination as it relates to other influences. To date, this has been documented mainly in correlational studies (Lee, 2013; Lee, Lewis, & Powers, 2014; Vu, 2013) or qualitative research (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, 2009) . This study agrees that the hierarchy model needs to account for the greater agency digital media affords audiences. It goes beyond the research to date that primarily uses self-reports to strengthen the case by documenting a cause-and-effect relationship with an experiment. The experiment tests if knowing what storytelling forms audiences want will lead to journalists choosing that storytelling form. This study uses an experiment with 144 professional journalists, by giving them four scenarios that they are likely to encounter in their work – how to cover a story about a dangerous storm, for example. Half of the participants are told which storytelling forms – video, Tweets, in-depth stories, interactive graphics, etc. – are preferred by audiences, advertisers, the competition, and community leaders; half are not. Journalists select the storytelling form that they would use to tell the story. Influence is measured by how often participants choose storytelling forms that are preferred by audiences compared with how often they choose forms preferred by others. If journalists choose audience-preferred storytelling forms significantly more often than the preferred forms of other influences that will provide support for the idea that audiences now have an elevated influence in the decision-making process in the newsroom. One strength of this experiment is that is shows what journalists would actually do when faced with these situations, rather than asking them what they think is the most important influence on their decisions. That is, it gets closer to seeing what journalists do as opposed to what they think they do. Findings show that knowing the storytelling preferences of the different influences matters; participants selected significantly different storytelling forms when they knew which forms were preferred by the influences than when they did not. Furthermore, these journalists chose audience preferred storytelling forms significantly more often than the forms preferred by other influences it was tested against. In a practical sense, however, they did not overwhelmingly choose audience preferred forms – between 48% and 62% of the decisions were for audience preferred story forms. Findings also show that participants think they choose audiences far more often than they actually do. One would have expected far more decisions favoring audiences considering how high participants placed audiences in both their ranking of the influences, where audiences were most important in both online and offline platform decisions, and in their qualitative comments. This cautions about confirming the findings of self-reports with other methods, as people are not always aware of the actual influences on their own behavior. The qualitative comments were instructive in helping explain this attitude-behavior gap as these participants exhibited paternalistic attitudes toward the audience. Participants believed that the audience needed journalistic guidance on what they really wanted because they were not capable of knowing for themselves. They justified this as being in the best interest of the audiences. The platform that the stories are told on also mattered. While participants said audiences were their number one concern for both online and offline platforms, the similarities end there. The competition was more important in online platforms while community leaders were more influential in offline storytelling, for example. The role of influences from other levels, specifically resources and financial influences from the organizational level, were incorporated by having participants make decisions under the real-world conditions as if they were in their own newsrooms, and under ideal conditions, as they were in a perfect world where there were no constraints. This also mattered, as journalists chose audiences’ storytelling forms significantly more often when the conditions were ideal than when they were real. Theoretical contributions of this study include the statement that audiences do deserve stronger consideration in the newsroom decision- making. It is also accurate to say that the audience is much higher in the minds of journalists than in their actions.Item A journalistic chasm? normative perceptions and participatory and gatekeeping roles of organizational and entrepreneurial health journalists(2013-12) Holton, Avery; Coleman, RenitaAn emerging body of media scholarship has examined the changing norms and routines of professional journalists, suggesting they are slowly adapting their practice to meet changes in audience expectations brought on by the widespread adoption of social media. Much of this scholarship has focused on traditional news producers, giving attention to journalists and other news producers who work in newsrooms. However slowly, journalists are beginning to welcome more audience participation in the process of news creation, hinting at a more reciprocal form of journalism and a loosening of traditional gatekeeping practices. In an effort to advance the theoretically conceptual research of the moment, this study considers how the perceived journalistic norms and participatory and gatekeeping roles of an emerging journalistic actor may be aligning with and/or deviating from more traditional journalists. The work of entrepreneurial journalists, or those who are not affiliated with or tied to a single news organization but instead freelance their work, is helping to fill major content gaps left by staff cutbacks that came on the heels of news media’s economic downturn. Most notably, specialized areas of journalism such as health reporting are increasingly calling upon entrepreneurial journalists to work aside more traditional journalists. Against the backdrop of health journalism, this study advances by employing semi-structured interviews with traditional journalists, entrepreneurial journalists, and their editors, analyzing recent changes in their journalistic norms and participatory and gatekeeping roles. The findings suggest an ideological split between organizational and entrepreneurial journalists and indicate that organizational journalists and editors alike may be relying on entrepreneurial journalists as innovators. For their part, entrepreneurial journalists may demonstrating an extension of participatory journalism—reciprocal journalism—that could enhance network connectivity and community building for journalists, news organizations, and other mass media practitioners. Though traditionally perceived as outsiders, these journalists may be serving as intrapreneurials, informing innovation in journalism and beyond. The impact of this and other observations on mass communication theory and practice are explored.Item Monarchies versus Republics in the Arab Spring : a social identity approach for understanding leader fragility and mass mobilization(2020-09-08) Russell, Peter Daniel; Brownlee, Jason, 1974-This report targets a specific pattern in the outcomes related to the Arab uprisings in 2011 and uses them to make a broader argument about the psycho-social dynamics of autocratic rule and resistance. It asks, what explains the broad trend of the 2011 Arab uprisings that saw the leaders of Arab republics pushed out of their positions of power, while monarchies were left largely unscathed? Common institutional, structural, and strategic explanations for the varying stability of Arab regimes across type elide a crucial mechanism of autocratic strength related to legitimacy, affect, and the varying patterns of social identity in the Arab world. Utilizing recent research in psychology, leadership, and identity studies, this report argues that monarchies were largely able to prevent and manage mass opposition because of the affective position they inherited and maintained through a pattern of historical continuity and modern development that better suit the monarchies of the Middle East. Further, I argue that this variation along regime-type reflects a broader shift in the political dynamics of the Middle East, with behavioral and ideational factors taking on a greater relevance to understanding the stability of autocratic regimes.Item Ordinary finance(2022-07-08) Yang, Nel; Stewart, Kathleen, 1953-; Handman, Courtney; Campbell, Craig; Seaver, NickIn the present of late capitalism, “finance” describes all manner of economic activity from the moneyed traders of Wall Street to banal activities of household budgeting and accounting. Financial institutions and, more recently, the wide accessibility of financial technologies like apps for banking, investment, commerce, and payment have made financial practice ubiquitous. The process by which financial logics, behaviors, and knowledges proliferate beyond their native realm of “high finance” (of exchanges, traders, and banks) has been called “financialization.” While financialization and its study has richly explained the development of “low finance” in ordinary life, it is less effective in describing activities that contradict narratives of economic rationality and accumulation. Here, I articulate a finance aesthetics to extend the social studies of finance. To do so, I bring together three fields of sociocultural phenomena: the erotic fetish-practice of financial domination (findom), the massive popularity of Taiwanese claw machines, and the industry and disciplinary field of user experience research. These seemingly disparate sociocultural contexts demonstrate the intricate relations between economic, political, technological, and sexual modes of life. In these in-betweens, value transformations (Munn 1986) occur on a plane of aesthetic and sensory experience. Rather than explaining these “non-rational” behaviors, like winning cute garbage or eroticizing monetary loss, the logic of quantities is coopted and repurposed in the exchange and circulation of qualities. The body of this text is organized in three major parts, each frame by a different mythology about contemporary finance (Barthes 1957): that finance capital is fictitious or speculative, that it requires and extracts modes of human attention, and that the finance industry scams the wider public of resources and value. Borrowing from the social studies of finance, conceptually and thematically, this study describes ordinary finance, not as an ordinary infiltrated by the financial, but as the emergence of aesthetic experiences in productive tension with financialization.Item Relational reinvention : writing, engagement, and mapping as wicked response(2012-08) McCarthy, Seán Ronan; Syverson, Margaret A., 1948-; Davis, Diane; Ferreira-Buckley, Linda; Hodgson, Justin; Selfe, Cynthia LThis multimedia dissertation, situated in Rhetoric and Composition, Digital Media Studies, and Civic Engagement, articulates a sustainable, agile approach to “wicked problems.” These complex, definition-resistant, interlocking problems (such as racism or climate change) aren’t ultimately solvable; rather than wicked problems being “acted upon,” they can only be creatively and rigorously “responded to” by networks of committed individuals and institutions. This dissertation posits that a wicked problem necessitates a “wicked response”: a sustained, emergent, and fluid strategy that focuses on changing relationships – to people, to space, and to knowledge. In order, to make this argument, I present the case of Mart, a small, formerly prosperous town in East Texas that has been in decline over the last half of a century. Throughout this dissertation, I analyze the ongoing efforts of the Mart Community Project (MCP), a cohort of Mart residents, international artists, and students and instructors from a variety of departments at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the past two years, the MCP has engaged in over twenty-five discrete projects, all with the aim of helping the Mart Community reimagine itself in the face of its primary wicked problem: a lack of civic cohesion. In the first chapter I explore how language fails to define or describe a wicked problem, yet is still necessary in order to transform it. I illustrate this contradiction in part through the Chambless Field mural, a successful MCP community arts project that by “writing community” became a productive response. My second chapter examines service learning and demonstrates how university/community partnerships and “participatory engagement” can be part of a nuanced approach to a wicked problem. Using the work of UT students in design-oriented and civic engagement classes, I demonstrate in the third chapter how “mapping” can be both a savvy pedagogical tool and a key element in reinventing the relationships of people to space and to one another. This dissertation offers up these diverse strategies with the sincere hope that the particulars of the MCP’s wicked response might be productively generalized to aid others participating in similarly challenging civic engagement work on wicked problems.Item 'So they can see all we’ve suffered!' : understanding the roles of the citizen witness in the visual economy of crisis images(2019-05) Montiel Valle, Dominique A.; Bock, Mary AngelaThis project examines the various roles of mobile-clad citizen witnesses of crisis as well as how their produced content is used in the news, based on a critical discourse analysis of 140 tweets shared during the first week of Nicaragua’s current socio-political crisis. This corpus was developed through data cleaning to include only those shared by news organizations that showcased citizen visuals. The analysis showed that citizen witnesses enacted four distinguishable roles: that of verifier, watchdog, unifier, and dissenter, and that news organizations tended to incorporate citizen content through re-tweeting with no added contextItem Social and emotional learning through digital media : a systematic review of literature from 2010 to present(2022-11-30) Lu, Xiaoyuan (Ph. D. in curriculum and instruction); Liu, Min, Ed. D.Social and emotional learning (SEL) has been widely regarded as vital in personal development, and digital media can promise a more varied environment and context for students’ SEL growth. Although research in the past decade has shown how digital media-based learning can be effective in some respects of SEL, like relationship, further research is needed to understand how digital media-based learning can enhance learners’ SEL growth in general and thinking skills related to self-awareness and social awareness. This report is a literature review covering a total of 20 peer-reviewed journal articles from 2010 to present. The findings indicate that digital media-based learning can, to some extent, help learners’ SEL development. Features of digital media that help the growth of SEL are analyzed in this report. Implications and recommendations for future studies of SEL through digital media are proposed.Item "Still alive and kicking" : girl bloggers and feminist politics in a "postfeminist" age(2013-05) Keller, Jessalynn Marie; Kearney, Mary Celeste, 1962-This dissertation refutes the notion that contemporary girls are uninterested in feminism by exploring how teenage girls are engaging in feminist activism as bloggers. Using a feminist cultural studies approach I analyze how girl bloggers produce feminist identities and practices that challenge hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal cultural politics. I employ feminist ethnographic methods, including a series of in-depth interviews with U.S. -based girl feminist bloggers and an online collaborative focus group, as well as a discursive and ideological textual analysis of girl-produced feminist blogs. Using these methods, I privilege girls' voices while proposing a model for conducting feminist ethnography online. In doing so, I demonstrate how girls' feminist blogging functions as an activist practice through networked counterpublics, intervening in mainstream and sometimes even commercial public space. I position this activism within a lengthy tradition of American feminism, analyzing how my participants remain in conversation with feminist history while simultaneously responding to their unique cultural climate. Finally, I argue that we must recognize the political importance of girls' feminist blogging by theorizing it as an emergent citizenship practice that makes feminism an accessible discourse to contemporary teenage girls.Item Street cred : are media consumers craving more “authenticity” in the digital age?(2018-06-27) Schulz, George Warren; Brenner, R. B. (Robert B.)Media organizations that provide news have traditionally relied on audience perceptions of truth and credibility to lure more readers, viewers, and listeners. The author explores whether authenticity has emerged in the digital age as an additional ingredient in media consumers’ daily decisions about where to turn – and where to return – for trustworthy information. As it becomes ever-more of a challenge for consumers to distinguish reliable information from “fake news” in the 21st century, audiences may be seeking content from media organizations that feels more authentic, genuine, and personalized. Three case studies drawn from new media, as well as legacy media, help illustrate what traditional and startup media institutions can do to better understand audience attitudes and behaviors: the HBO series “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” the online site Reddit, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold.Item The last place they thought of : Black podcasts and the performance of marginalization(2021-08-12) Barner, Briana Nicole; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Chen, Wenhong; Florini, Sarah; Mallapragada, Madhavi; McClearen, JenniferThis project argues that Blackness is cultivated and performed within the podcast space through the use of Black vernaculars, Black cultural references and the centering of the needs and interests of various Black communities. As a result, podcasts provide a space for the production of a Black sound imaginary, that makes room for the contestation, development and maintenance of the sounds of Black identities. As a medium with unstructured formats and little time restraints, podcasts are not only well-suited for intimate conversations but this kind of performance of difference and marginality. My project looks at how Blackness is negotiated and performed within a group of podcasts primarily hosted by Black and queer women such as womanist pop culture-themed Tea with Queen & J (2014-present), Black feminist political podcast The Black Joy Mixtape (2016-2018), and Black trans-hosted Marsha’s Plate (2016-present). The dissertation uses textual analysis and case studies, along with participant observation, to examine how Black identity is positioned. Using episodes that focus on the brands and identity of Black podcasters, I grapple with what is meant by a ‘Black podcast’--the meaning of the label for the podcast and for the hosts. On a platform that is mainly auditory, how do podcasters signal their own Black and intersecting identities? Next, I use Black feminist case studies to interrogate how Black feminism is performed on podcasts. Within these podcasts, I examine themes of storytelling, community and language, which are crucial elements of the Black feminist standpoints espoused by the podcast hosts and guests. One of the case studies involves several podcasts’ responses to the Surviving R.Kelly (2019) docuseries as they not only hold Black legacy media accountable for the silence around Kelly’s abusive behavior, but more importantly, modeling that accountability by interrogating and disrupting their own complicity. Another case study looks at three episodes of The Black Joy Mixtape to explore the Black feminist principles espoused in the episodes, including the storytelling of a Black woman’s abortion, and the sexual assault of one of the hosts in the context of #MeToo. Together, these case studies push forward a Black feminist sonic argument that centers the voices and experiences of Black and queer women.Item “There’s no guidebook for this” : black freelancers and digital technologies(2019-07-09) Eubanks, Patrick Warren; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); McElroy, KathleenFreelancing has become increasingly common in a variety of industries due to the continued economic restructuring of post-industrial capitalism. While writing has traditionally been a precarious profession characterized by low pay and intermittent work, once secure forms of employment, such as newspaper work, have experienced a precipitous decline within the past few decades. As the number of writers engaged in standard employment contracts has sharply decreased, an increasing number of individuals must engage in freelance work to earn a living as writers. While all freelance writers face precarity at the hands of digital media outlets due to exploitative and unstable labor and business practices, black freelancers experience distinct forms of precarity, such as a lack of access to professional networks and mentors. This report aims to identify the ways in which digital technologies allow black freelancers to insulate themselves from the risks inherent to the digital media ecosystem, ending with recommendations for education systems, digital media organizations and freelancers seeking to promote equity in digital publishing