Persuasive Intelligence: On the Construction of Rhetor-Ethical Cognitive Machines

This work concerns the rhetorical and moral agency of machines, offering paths forward in machine ethics as well as problematizing the issue through the development and use of an interdisciplinary framework informed by rhetoric, philosophy of mind, media studies and historical narrative. I argue that cognitive machines of the past as well as those today, such as rapidly improving autonomous vehicles, are unable to make moral decisions themselves foremost because a moral agent must first be a rhetorical agent, capable of persuading and of being persuaded. I show that current machines, artificially intelligent or otherwise, and especially digital computers, are primarily concerned with control, whereas persuasive behavior requires an understanding of possibility. Further, this dissertation connects rhetorical agency and moral agency (what I call a rhetor-ethical constitution) by way of the Heraclitean notion of syllapsis ( grasping ), a mode of cognition that requires an agent to practice analysis and synthesis at once, cognizing the whole and its parts simultaneously. This argument does not, however, indicate that machines are devoid of ethical or rhetorical activity or future agency. To the contrary, the larger purpose of developing this theoretical framework is to provide avenues of research, exploration and experimentation in machine ethics and persuasion that have been overlooked or ignored thus far by adhering to restricted disciplinary programs; and, given the ontological nature of the ephemeral binary that drives digital computation, I show that at least in principle, computers share the syllaptic operating principle required for rhetor-ethical decisions and action

Whistleblowing for Change

The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within

PERFORMANCE IN ONES AND ZEROS: NO-BUDGET CINEMA IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Narrative feature filmmaking has traditionally been an elite art form practiced by moneyed, culturally powerful individuals through institutions in specific locations around the world. With the worldwide dissemination of the digital camera, however, non-professional self-financed, no budget, outsider filmmakers worldwide now practice the art form. This community of digital filmmakers numbers in the hundreds-of-thousands. They show their work in festivals ranging from fringe, smaller venues in places such as Jakarta and Milan, to massive international festivals in Cannes or Sundance. The dissertation examines the world of the no-budget DIY digital filmmaker and the festivals that display their work. I utilize the tools of the ethnographer to explore the meaning of film festival, to record red carpet performativity, and to track the accumulation of stature by digital filmmakers. The methodology blends practice-based research, surveys both quantitative and qualitative, archival database research, and an examination of the mediated with the embodied, looking at both the filmmaker and the digital film in festival space. The artists studied are building processes that stand apart from traditional “Hollywood” systems. Like the subjects of my ethnography, I work outside of Hollywood with little money, making digital films while I build my own performative and off-camera identity in festival spaces. The embodied performance of Filmmaker on the red carpet at international festivals, small and large, is a powerful and unique vehicle for identity creation. The digital camera allows outsiders—middle income, excluded, non-western, or non-professional artists—to perform identities once exclusively controlled by powerful institutions and by the individuals inside those organizations. This research project examines the performativity of film festival spaces, the archiving of these moments for purposes of building new identities and socio-cultural status, and the assertion of power outside of traditional structures. It is concerned with identity creation through the process of filmmaking (capture, representation, reinterpretation, revision, assertion) and the formation of a self-made, artistic sense of self

Whistleblowing for Change

The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within

Towards a new transaesthetics: rap music in Germany and the United States

Diese Doktorarbeit vergleicht HipHop in Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten und konzentriert sich dabei auf Interpret*innen, die mindestens auf zwei oder mehreren Sprachen rappen. Beginnend mit der Behauptung, dass zwei- oder mehrsprachige Rapmusik ein transkulturelles Phänomen sei, kehrt Kumpf zunächst zu der Theorie von Fernando Ortiz, kubanischer Anthropologe und Erfinder des Konzepts des Transkulturalismus, zurück, um zu klären, inwiefern dieser Begriff Ortiz relevant ist. Diese ersten Schritte sind insofern von hoher Wichtigkeit, als Akademiker*innen, die bisher HipHop als transkulturelles Phänomen betrachtet haben, nicht auf das Konzept von Ortiz rekurriert haben. Diese Doktorarbeit trägt das Denken von Ortiz klar und deutlich an HipHop-Studien heran. Basierend auf dem Verständnis, dass der Einsatz von und das Zusammenspiel zwischen Musik und Sprachen einen erheblichen Einfluss auf die Zuhörenden hat, erklärt Kumpf die ästhetischen Dimensionen von Songs, die nach bestimmten Themen organisiert sind. Um die musikalische und sprachliche Ästhetik zu verstehen, setzt Kumpf das Konzept „transaesthetics“ des französischen Philosophen Jean Baudrillard ein und fragt, inwiefern dieses hilfreich ist, um Rapmusik zu verstehen. Erstens argumentiert Kumpf, dass Baudrillards Begriff nutzbar ist und zweitens, dass es einer Erweiterung des Konzeptes bedarf. Kumpf versucht neue Inhalte und Bedeutungen von „transaesthetics“ zu implementieren und erläutern. Mit Winfried Flucks Idee von ästhetischer Erfahrung („aesthetic experience“) betrachtet Kumpf Rapmusik als Beispiel populärer Literatur. Kumpf argumentiert, dass die Songtexte von Rapliedern eine transkulturelle ästhetische Erfahrung („transcultural aesthetic experience“) der Zuhörenden bewirken, welche in der Folge zu einer Selbsterweiterung („self extension“) führen könnte: Bringen Songs Zuhörende mit mehreren Kulturen enger in Kontakt, so ermöglichen sie diesen, ihren Horizont zu erweitern. Das Ergebnis, so Kumpf, ist die Möglichkeit, sich selbst als transkulturelle Figur zu verstehen. Das könnte eine Auswirkung auf Identitäten, z.B. nationale, ethnische und andere politische sowie auf sexuelle und Geschlechtsidentitäten haben. Kumpf stützt diese Behauptung mit Theorien von Stuart Hall („new ethnicities“), Floya Anthias („translocational positionality“) und Irina Schmitt (Jugendliche als ein „transcultural avant-garde“). Diese Wirkung jedoch nur theoretisch erklärt, nicht jedoch mit soziologistischen Methoden überprüft. Am Ende seiner Dissertation schlägt Kumpf vor, welche weitere Forschung durchgeführt werden könnte, hauptsächlich soziologische Forschung wie die der US-Amerikanerin Lucila Vargas, um herauszufinden, wie Zuhörende diese Lieder rezipieren. Die Dissertation entfaltet sich über sechs Kapital, von denen und jedes nach bestimmten Themen organisiert ist, um eine sensible Vergleichsstudie zu ermöglichen. Kapitel 1 behandelt relevante kulturelle Theorien und den Stand der Forschung in Deutschland und in den Vereinigten Staaten. Kapitel 2 untersucht den Ursprung von zwei- und mehrsprachiger Rapmusik in beiden Ländern. In Kapitel 3 geht es um das Thema Migration und Aktivismus. In dem vierten Kapitel werden Sexualität und Gender diskutiert. Kapitel 5 beschäftigt sich mit Geistigkeit (Befreiung und Erhabenheit). Das letzte Kapitel diskutiert den Holocaust und Antifaschismus. Das Fazit thematisiert erstens die Wichtigkeit, Rapmusik als Form von populärer Musik und Literatur zu verstehen und zweitens, was man darunter in Deutschland und in den USA versteht. Diese Dissertation gilt als erste Vergleichsstudie von Rapmusik in Deutschland und der USA in englischer Sprache. Nach der Begutachtung und der erfolgreichen Verteidigung könnte diese Doktorarbeit ein Loch in dem Forschungsstand beider Länder füllen

Contested Kingdom: The role of online media in the relationship between Disney and fans over Disneyland

Over the past 30 years, the Disney corporation and fans in Southern California have vied online and in the park over the meaning and purpose of Disneyland. The arrival of online social platforms in the 1990s combined with the park annual pass program to enable Southern California passholders, who number approximately one million today, to show a strong sense of place attachment to Disneyland with visits on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis. This thesis reveals how the nature of each online social platform, as well as social and cultural factors, have shaped the relationship between local Disneyland fans and the Disney corporation. In the 1990s, the characteristics of Usenet newsgroups afforded fans the cultural and social capital to build a discourse online to resist the directions of the corporation. In the 2000s, the characteristics of fan owned website discussion boards enabled the corporation to gain control of discourse online by bestowing cultural capital on fan owners with high transaction costs in exchange for positive coverage. In the 2010s, the characteristics of social network media, particularly Facebook, and the mass diffusion of smartphones, cemented corporate control of the discourse due to the co-option of influencers and fragmentation of online fandom. However, the low transaction costs of the new platforms led to a proliferation of online fan groups that established a multitude of new social formations in the park. Disney also co-opted fan media, practices, and events to produce its own social and economic capital. The 30-year arc examined in this study illustrates the gradual subsiding of the early democratic promise of many-to-many communication online in favor predominantly of the corporate controlled model endemic to legacy media technologies. The early democratic promise of many-to-many communication online subsided in favor predominantly of the corporate controlled model endemic to legacy media technologies. The mixed methods of qualitative (interviews, participant observation, and data documents) and quantitative (online survey) tools, and grounded theory were used to establish a framework to analyze the interplay of corporation, fans, and online social platforms around a fandom object as a physical place using medium theory (Meyrowitz, 1994), Van Dijck’s (2013) platform analysis model, Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of capital, Foucault’s (1980) power-knowledge, and place attachment theory (Manzo & Perkins, 2006).Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 201

Exploring Culture and Gender through Film: An OER Textbook

This book is an Open Educational Resource (OER) designed specifically for the course Exploring Culture and Gender through Film, which I teach every semester at the University of Colorado Boulder. The course began as an introduction to cultural anthropology that used films to illustrate key concepts, but it has evolved over the years to become much more than that. Films can do things that written texts cannot; they can convey knowledge that cannot be conveyed in writing or any other medium. In the course, written texts and films now inform each other. The key concepts in cultural anthropology still provide context for the films, but just as importantly, the films convey a kind of cinematic knowledge that provides context for the key concepts. Together, they offer unique and compelling insights into the human condition. This book introduces the key concepts, but at the end of each chapter, there are sections that begin to connect them to the films. "Now Showing" briefly describes a film that pairs well with the key concepts in the chapter and includes a list of suggested reading. "Thinking Critically" is a question that encourages the reader to connect the key concepts to the film.</p

Changing Priorities. 3rd VIBRArch

In order to warrant a good present and future for people around the planet and to safe the care of the planet itself, research in architecture has to release all its potential. Therefore, the aims of the 3rd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture are: - To focus on the most relevant needs of humanity and the planet and what architectural research can do for solving them. - To assess the evolution of architectural research in traditionally matters of interest and the current state of these popular and widespread topics. - To deepen in the current state and findings of architectural research on subjects akin to post-capitalism and frequently related to equal opportunities and the universal right to personal development and happiness. - To showcase all kinds of research related to the new and holistic concept of sustainability and to climate emergency. - To place in the spotlight those ongoing works or available proposals developed by architectural researchers in order to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. - To underline the capacity of architectural research to develop resiliency and abilities to adapt itself to changing priorities. - To highlight architecture's multidisciplinarity as a melting pot of multiple approaches, points of view and expertise. - To open new perspectives for architectural research by promoting the development of multidisciplinary and inter-university networks and research groups. For all that, the 3rd Valencia International Biennial of Research in Architecture is open not only to architects, but also for any academic, practitioner, professional or student with a determination to develop research in architecture or neighboring fields.Cabrera Fausto, I. (2023). Changing Priorities. 3rd VIBRArch. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/VIBRArch2022.2022.1686

Changing the Core: Redefining Gaming Culture from a Female-Centered Perspective.

In the mid-2000s, the spread of casual, social, and mobile games led researchers, journalists, and players to believe that video gaming was opening up to previously marginalized audiences, especially women. At the same time, game culture has seen a significant increase in incidents of sexism and misogyny. This dissertation uses a critical exploration of industry texts and practices, as well as interviews with thirty-seven female gamers, to explain how these conflicting narratives can co-exist and how women navigate their contradictions. The dissertation posits that industrial changes and the broadening of gaming audiences have motivated a Gramscian crisis of authority, where previously hegemonic male gamers fear losing their privileged position in this space. As a protective measure, they have reacted with both overtly and implicitly sexist forces, such as gender-based harassment, that marginalize non-male gamers, barring them from cultural power. This works to maintain what this project describes as a “core” of gaming culture that is exclusionary and misogynistic. At the same time, women and other marginalized audiences express deep pleasure in gaming and have developed nuanced strategies for managing their exclusion, pursuing positive gaming experiences, and competing with men on their own turf. In doing so, they put themselves in a complicated position, often simultaneously enjoying their identity as gamers while being told they should not possess that identity. By embodying their conflicting identities in diverse and negotiated ways, however, they work to break down the idea of “women” as an essentialized group and instead outline new ways of being female. This performs feminist action not only by diversifying ideas of who women can be, but also in demonstrating how they are already deeply connected to technologies like games despite their historic masculinization. Women are barred from gaming identity in many ways, but they are also still already part of its “core”. In addition, their management of conflicted identities illustrates pathways along which players could build networks of affinity across gendered lines, encouraging the development of a more equitable power structure in gaming, and perhaps in other masculinized and sexist spaces as well.PhDCommunication StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133417/1/accote_1.pd

The conduct and justification of responsible research

Within the last couple of decades, a range of new concepts that all propose that science should be done ‘more responsibly’ has emerged within science governance literature as well as in science government in both the USA and across Europe. Terms such as ‘Responsible Innovation’ (Owen et al. 2013) and ‘socially robust science’ (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001) have gained momentum within science governance. Generally speaking, the calls share the view that there is a need for more external governing of science as a vital supplement to the internal professional ethics that also guide scientific conduct (Braun et al. 2010; Jasanoff 2011). Moreover, they agree that there is a need to enhance scientists’ abilities to reflect upon the ‘outcomes’ of their inventions – that is, the social, environmental and ethical consequences of introducing new scientific knowledge and technologies into society. Though the calls for ‘Responsible Science’ are plentiful, few have actually studied how ‘Responsible Science’ is done in practice and how the demands affect the scientific work, i.e. the organisation of science, the scientists’ professional identities and their wellbeing at work. This dissertation examines how public scientists relate to current demands for ‘Responsible Science’. Based on a Foucauldian-inspired document study of scientific journal papers as well as an STS-inspired ethnographic study of two laboratories, it answers the research questions: How is ‘Responsible Science’ conducted and justified by public scientists – and what are the consequences of these responsibilities in their daily work