El perfil de un nuevo espectador: cómo la generación Y se ve a sí misma representada en la pantalla

El auge de Internet y la generación que creció rodeada de dispositivos electrónicos ha cambiado radicalmente la percepción y la forma de interactuar con la producción de medios. Especialmente aquellos que nacieron en los años 80 y 90 del siglo XX. Denominados Generación Y, estos jóvenes han sido predominantes en el consumo de series de televisión vía internet. Considerada una generación controvertida, dispersa, pero al mismo tiempo capaz de realizar varias tareas al mismo tiempo, de carácter colaborativo, esta generación creció influenciada por los personajes de los videojuegos y de las series de televisión. Hoy en día, la gran mayoría de los nuevos formatos de consumo de teleseries está dedicada a este público y refleja sus características. En este artículo se analiza el papel de la serie en la constitución de la Generación Y, analizando tres series emitidas en streaming, com el fin de delinear el perfil de esta generación: Sense 8, Daredevil y Penny Dreadful.The rise of the internet and the generation that grew up surrounded by electronic devices has radically changed perception and way of interacting with the media production. Especially of those who were born between the 80s and 90s of the twentieth century. Called the Generation Y, these young adults have predominance in the consumption of television series, which are now migrating to the internet. Considered a controversial, dispersive generation but at the same time, collaborative and capable of performing several tasks, this generation grew up influenced by characters from games and TV series. Today, the new ways of TV series consumption are dedicated mostly to this audience and reflect its characteristics. This article discusses the role of series in the constitution of Generation Y by analyzing three series aired in streaming, which outline the profile of this generation: Sense 8, Daredevil and Penny Dreadful

The Big Bang Theory: Mad Geniuses and the Freak Show of Higher Education

This essay discusses the television comedy series The Big Bang Theory. Through lead characters including physicist Sheldon Cooper, the series portrays higher education as a metaphorical freak show, and academics as geeky mad genius freaks. Implications for constructions of disability in higher education are discussed, with recommendations for future research

Understanding Peer Interactions in Undergraduate Engineering Education

Whether they occur inside or outside the classroom, social interactions between undergraduate students play a key role in student success. As a result, engineering education researchers have sought to understand why students interact with certain peers, and which types of interactions relate to positive student outcomes. While existing studies show promising results for formal group assignments, most have been conducted in a single undergraduate course. Because important student interactions occur outside and inside courses, more research is needed to fully understand (a) why students choose to, or not to, interact with other students, and (b) how these interactions relate to student\u27s academic outcomes within their engineering major. With new understandings, engineering educators will be better able to promote positive and lasting relationships between students. To contribute to this body of research, this dissertation study aimed to identify and analyze interactions occurring between undergraduate engineering students during the first two years of their degree programs. To identify peer interactions, I surveyed all first- and second-year engineering students at the study institution. To quantitatively analyze resultant interaction networks, I applied a method called social network analysis to mathematically describe interactions between individuals. Using social network analysis techniques, I statistically compared student interactions and their academic outcomes of engineering GPA and retention in the major. Along with social network analysis, I conducted focus group interviews and analyzed the resultant qualitative data to understand (a) why students choose to, or not to, interact with their peers, and (b) how these students perceive their interactions impacting their academic outcomes. Each analysis (i.e., quantitative and qualitative) informed the overall conclusion(s) for this dissertation study. Apart from developing methods for future engineering education researchers, results of this study include identifying significant relationships between undergraduate engineering students\u27 interaction network size and outcomes, and a model of undergraduate student peer network formation and evolution. Ultimately, these findings will assist engineering educators in promoting positive and lasting relationships between their students

Judging a Book by Its Cover: The Effect of Facial Perception on Centrality in Social Networks

Facial appearance matters in social networks. Individuals frequently make trait judgments from facial clues. Although these face-based impressions lack the evidence to determine validity, they are of vital importance, because they may relate to human network-based social behavior, such as seeking certain individuals for help, advice, dating, and cooperation, and thus they may relate to centrality in social networks. However, little to no work has investigated the apparent facial traits that influence network centrality, despite the large amount of research on attributions of the central position including personality and behavior. In this paper, we examine whether perceived traits based on facial appearance affect network centrality by exploring the initial stage of social network formation in a first-year college residential area. We took face photos of participants who are freshmen living in the same residential area, and we asked them to nominate community members linking to different networks. We then collected facial perception data by requiring other participants to rate facial images for three main attributions: dominance, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. Meanwhile, we proposed a framework to discover how facial appearance affects social networks. Our results revealed that perceived facial traits were correlated with the network centrality and that they were indicative to predict the centrality of people in different networks. Our findings provide psychological evidence regarding the interaction between faces and network centrality. Our findings also offer insights in to a combination of psychological and social network techniques, and they highlight the function of facial bias in cuing and signaling social traits. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to explore the influence of facial perception on centrality in social networks.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Supporting meaningful social networks

Recent years have seen exponential growth of social network sites (SNSs) such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. SNSs flatten the real-world social network by making personal information and social structure visible to users outside the ego-centric networks. They provide a new basis of trust and credibility upon the Internet and Web infrastructure for users to communicate and share information. For the vast majority of social networks, it takes only a few clicks to befriend other members. People’s dynamic ever-changing real-world connections are translated to static links which, once formed, are permanent – thus entailing zero maintenance. The existence of static links as public exhibition of private connections causes the problem of friendship inflation, which refers to the online practice that users will usually acquire much more “friends” on SNSs than they can actually maintain in the real world. There is mounting evidence both in social science and statistical analysis to support the idea that there has been an inflated number of digital friendship connections on most SNSs. The theory of friendship inflation is also evidenced by our nearly 3-year observation on Facebook users in the University of Southampton. Friendship inflation can devalue the social graph and eventually lead to the decline of a social network site. From Sixdegrees.com to Facebook.com, there have been rise and fall of many social networks. We argue that friendship inflation is one of the main forces driving this move. Despite the gravity of the issue, there is surprisingly little academic research carried out to address the problems. The thesis proposes a novel algorithm, called ActiveLink, to identify meaningful online social connections. The innovation of the algorithm lies in the combination of preferential attachment and assortativity. The algorithm can identify long-range connections which may not be captured by simple reciprocity algorithms. We have tested the key ideas of the algorithms on the data set of 22,553 Facebook users in the network of University of Southampton. To better support the development of SNSs, we discuss an SNS model called RealSpace, a social network architecture based on active links. The system introduces three other algorithms: social connectivity, proximity index and community structure detection. Finally, we look at the problems relating to improving the network model and social network systems

The Cowl - v.82 - n.15 - Feb 1, 2018

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 82, Number 15 - February 1, 2018. 24 pages

An Approach To Artificial Society Generation For Video Games

Since their inception in the 1940s, video games have always had a need for non-player characters (NPCs) driven by some form of artificial intelligence (AI). More recently, researchers and developers have attempted to create believable, or human-like, agents by modeling them after humans by borrowing concepts from the social sciences. This thesis explores an approach to generating a society of such believable agents with human-like attributes and social connections. This approach allows agents to form various kinds of relationships with other agents in the society, and even provides an introductory form of shared or influenced attributes based on their spouse or parents. Our proposed method is a simplified system for generating a society, but shows great potential for future work. As a modularized and parameterized framework, there are many opportunities for adding new layers to the system to improve the realism of the generated society

The Faculty Notebook, April 2017

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost