Renaissance Web TV: New Media Promoting Sphere Participation & Information Society Increasing Innovative Business Practices

New media have emerged over the last decade and are increasingly changing business practices within the media industry. Specifically this creative project addresses some of the challenges the television market is encountering, and how it is currently in the process of migrating to the World Wide Web. During this transitional moment in technology, this creative project introduces the proposal for Renaissance Web TV, an interactive Web platform that creates and produces its own original broadcast quality programming for the Web. This is an opportune moment to enter into the television market through Web video. This creative project explores how a Webchannel could use the art of storytelling with informative, cultural and entertaining shows, to engage viewers in social responsibility and activism

Pretend that it is real!: Convergence Culture in Practice

Media convergence has mainly been defined and explained as a technological and industrial phenomenon; as the process where new technologies are accommodated by existing media and communication industries and their cultures of production. One consequence of convergence in today’s hybrid media landscape is that the previously distinct borders between production and consumption have become blurred. This means that convergence also takes place as a bottom-up social process initiated by media users that move almost anywhere and everywhere in search of entertainment experiences of their liking. This thesis sheds light on the different types of media convergence that took place in the process of making the transmedia storytelling production Sanningen om Marika. The Swedish public service provider, SVT, and the pervasive games upstart company, The company P, combined their expertise in broadcasting and games development to craft this ‘participation drama’. During five months in 2007, the production offered Swedes nationwide rich possibilities to interact and participate, or just to watch or lurk on the production’s various platforms. Using an ethnographic approach, field studies were conducted throughout the design, implementation and production phases. The analysis shows that even if instances of convergence could be identified, the collaboration did not proceed smoothly. The companies’ different media logics with their differing cultures of production created tensions and frictions. The different logics of television, internet and games - different in quality demands and with different audience participation models - made it difficult to create a hybrid production. Television genres blurred fiction and facts, and the ordinary was blurred with activities of games and play in the production, making the audience reception and interpretations differ extensively. Lastly, the designed audience participation did not remove the asymmetrical relationship between producers and users in media, but instead highlighted issues of hierarchies, lack of participant empowerment and inequality between participants

Inviting the Audience – Interactive, Participatory, and Social Television in Finland

The television and the ways it has invited the audience to take part have been changing during the last decade. Today’s interaction, or rather participation, comes from multiplatform formats, such as TV spectacles that combine TV and web platforms in order to create a wider TV experience. Multiplatform phenomena have spread television consumption and traditional coffee table discussions to several different devices and environments. Television has become a part of the bigger puzzle of interconnected devices that operates on several platforms instead of just one. This thesis examines the Finnish television (2004–2014) through the notion of audience participation and introduces the technical, thematic, and social linkages as three different phases, interactive, participatory, social, and their most characteristic features in terms of audience participation. The aim of the study is also to focus on the idea of a possible change by addressing the possible and subtler variations that have taken place through the concept of digital television. Firstly, Finnish television history has gone through numerous trials, exploring the interactive potential of television formats. Finnish SMS-based iTV had its golden era around 2005, when nearly 50% of the television formats were to some extent interactive. Nowadays, interactive television formats have vanished due to their negative reputation and this important part of recent history is mainly been neglected in the academic scope. The dissertation focuses also on the present situation and the ways television content invites the audience to take part. “TV meets the Internet” is a global expression that characterises digital TV, and the use of the Web combined with television content is also examined. Also the linkages between television and social media are identified. Since television can nowadays be described multifaceted, the research approaches are also versatile. The research is based on qualitative content analysis, media observation, and Internet inquiry. The research material also varies. It consists of primary data: taped iTV formats, website material, and social media traces both from Twitter and Facebook and secondary data: discussion forums, observations from the media and Internet inquiry data. To sum up the results, the iTV phase represented, through its content, a new possibility for audiences to take part in a TV show (through gameful and textual features) in real-time. In participatory phase, the most characteristic features from TV-related content view, is the fact that online platform(s) were used to immerse the audience with additional material and, due to this, to extend the TV watching enjoyment beyond the actual broadcast. During the Social (media) phase, both of these features, real-timeness, and extended enjoyment through additional material, are combined and Facebook & Twitter, for example, are used to immerse people in live events (in real-time) via broadcast-related tweets and extra-material offered on a Facebook page. This thesis fills in the gap in Finnish television research by examining the rapid changes taken place on the field within the last ten years. The main results is that the development of Finnish digital television has been much more diverse and subtle than has been anticipated by following only the news, media, and contemporary discourses on the subject of television. The results will benefit both practitioners and academics by identifying the recent history of Finnish television.Yleisö mukaan – interaktiivinen, osallistava ja sosiaalinen televisio Suomessa 2004–2014 Television sanotaan läpikäyneen useita muutoksia 2000-luvulle tultaessa, erityisesti digitaalisuuden näkökulmasta.Tutkimus esittelee, miten televisio on aktivoinut ja kutsunut ihmisiä ottamaan osaa TV-tarjontaan – niin teknologian, temaattisen sisällön kuin sosiaalisuudenkin kautta. Suomalaisen TV:n lähihistoriaan kuuluu olennaisena osana interaktiivisen TV-viihteen aikakausi. iTV-viihteellä oli kulta-aikansa v. 2005, jolloin peruskanavien tarjonnasta lähes 50% oli jollakin tasolla interaktiivista. Se piti sisällään SMS-pohjaiset TV-chatit, TV-mobiilipelit sekä interaktiiviset soittovisat. Nykyään lähes kaikki ITV-viihteen muodot ovat hävinneet ruudusta. Kattavaa akateemista tutkimusta ei TV:n viimeisten 10 vuoden ajalta kuitenkaan ole - väitöstyö vastaa tähän tarpeeseen. Tutkimus keskittyy kuitenkin myös TV:n nykytilaan. Nykypäivän interaktio/vuorovaikutus tai pikemminkin osallistuminen näyttäytyy erilaisten multiplatform-formaattien (elävät eri alustoilla samanaikaisesti) myötä. TV-spektaakkelit kutsuvat yleisön ottamaan osaa TV-sisältöön, esim. äänestämällä Idolsissa ja Euroviisuissa tai osallistumalla sisältöihin Internetissä/sosiaalisessa mediassa maksutta. Tutkimusaineisto on monipuolista ja se koostuu muun muassa iTV-formaattien nauhoituksista, Internetsivumateriaalista sekä sosiaalisen median, Facebook ja Twitter, taltioinneista. Lisämateriaalina käytetään keskustelupalstamateriaalia, Internetkysely-dataa ja mediassa esillä olleita artikkeleita. Tutkimusote on laadullinen ja työssä on pääosin toteutettu sisällön analyysia sekä havainnoivaa tutkimusta. Työn päätuloksena esitetään, että suomalaisen digitaalisen television aikakausi on huomattavasti monisyisempi ja monipuolisempi kun on aiemmin ajateltu. Tutkimuksessa käsitelty 10 vuoden ajanjakso voidaan jakaa kolmeen: 1) interaktiivisuuden, 2) osallistavuuden ja 3) sosiaalisen median vaiheisiin. On selvää, että aikakaudet limittyvät keskenään, mutta kukin vaihe pitää kuitenkin sisällään piirteitä, jotka ovat erityisiä juuri sille aikakaudelle. Interaktiivisuuden aikakautta määrittävät tekstiviestipohjainen iTV-viihde eli chatit, mobiilipeleineen ja hyperventiloivine juontajineen. Osallistavuuden aikakaudella Internet alkoi toimia yhä enemmän TV-lähetysten vastinparina tarjoamalla extra-materiaalia ja lisäinformaatiota. Sosiaalisen median myötä mm. Internetin ohjelmakohtaisten keskustelupalstojen luoma sosiaalisuus on siirtynyt live-lähetysten ympärille Twitter-tweettien myötä. Ajankohtaisen materiaalin jako taas on siirtynyt Facebookin piiriin jättäen ohjelmakohtaiset nettisivut lähinnä online-arkistoiksi. Väitöskirja suhtautuu kuitenkin televisioon projisoituihin diskursseihin sekä muutoksen käsitteeseen kriittisesti. Nykypäivän television on usein katsottu, osittain utopistisestikin, kehittyvän yhä vuorovaikutteisempaan ja sosiaalistavampaan suuntaan. Interaktiivisen TV:n kokeiluja on kuitenkin nähty jo television alkuajoista asti ja sosiaalisen median mukaan tulo ei automaattisesti tee TV:n kuluttamisesta sosiaalisempaa. Suomalaisen TV:n lähihistoria ja digitaalisen television aikakausi sisältää huomattavasti monisyisempiä kehitysvaiheita, mitä diskurssien pohjalta esittäytyy. Tämä väitöstyö tarjoaa tärkeän, aiemmin puuttuneen, palasen suomalaisen TV-tutkimuksen nykykentälle ja saatuja tuloksia voidaan hyödyntää niin akateemisessa kuin käytännön konteksteissakin.Siirretty Doriast

A turning point in politics: documenting the representation of populist conservative ideologies to college-age students through YouTube Vlogging

This study captures and creates a profile of the ideologies and methodologies used by college-age-centric conservative organizations in their online presence that targets college-aged viewers. This data was gathered from three principal college-age conservative organizations’ YouTube channels over a four-month period in 2020. Data was analyzed for the presence of ideas regarding the notion of individuals, institutions and political institutions. Support was found for the ideas that these channels present themselves as offering alternative knowledge and moral teachings that other outlets supposedly will not offer, as well as a fomenting fear and distrust of those considered to be part of the collective ‘Left’.Thesis (M.A.

Reconceptualizing the Work of a Content Provider for an Online Audience: A Case Study for How Pedagogical Strategies Can Provide Models of Engagement for Producers of Entertainment

With the interconnectivity of the Internet, and the availability of affordable media compositional tools, the proliferation of online media continues to grow exponentially. However, each day is still comprised of a fixed 24 hours, with far fewer hours spent in active media consumption. Considering the global potential for content to be found (Moreville), discovered (Cormier) or spread (Jenkins), content providers are looking for ways to attract, cultivate and hopefully expand their audiences amid all this digital clutter. In the field of entertainment, this challenge is complicated when small content providers are not aligned with an online, curated network such as Netflix or Hulu. Online education has developed practices designed to communicate expectations/objectives and increase engagement. Although the outcomes/objectives between the entertainment industry and those of online education are quite different, it is possible that both industries could find commonality and share mutually beneficial approaches. Conceptualizing the audience as students might offer content providers a quicker path to assessing what their “work” is online and following a cyclical process of evaluation, as in education, offers a logical and almost narrative approach to data collection and assessment. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this project examines several phases of audience activities surrounding three versions of an online animated comedy series on YouTube and a related official web page: (a) the original version created before an eLearning framework was employed; (b) a second version six months later, where some practices were implemented; and (c) a third version six months after the second phase, which employed more changes. Examination phases before and after the series had ended provide additional opportunities for study. The data suggest that modifying entertainment content with an educational framework helped increase audience engagement in that more viewers consumed content and participated in related creative acts. Viewership jumped after the original episode formats and webpage had been modified. However, after the main phases ended, other Internet activities also impacted viewership. This cyclical, educational framework could be useful to other small entertainment providers who struggle with social media and seek to enhance audience engagement in a cluttered social space

(Main)streaming Hate: Analyzing White Supremacist Content and Framing Devices on YouTube

The emboldening of white supremacist groups, as well as their increased mainstream presence in online circles, necessitates the creation of studies that dissect their tactics and rhetoric, while offering platform-specific insights. This study seeks to address these needs by analyzing white supremacist content and framing devices on the video hosting website, YouTube. Data were collected through a multi-stage sampling technique, designed to capture a \u27snapshot\u27 of white supremacist content on the platform during a 45-day period in 2019. After line-by-line coding and qualitative thematic analysis, results showed that sampled channels varied between different levels of color-blindness and overt racialization in their framing. Furthermore, channels containing more color-blind approaches yielded higher subscriber counts than their counterparts. What this indicates is that sampled channels use framing to both activate racial threat and minimize race, attempting to reproduce racism while avoiding coming off as racist in the color-blind, mainstream political climate. Secondary findings also show how sampled channels (a) rhetorically bridge the gap between fascism, nationalism, hegemonic gender roles, and mainstream conservative thought; (b) reconcile the idea of political action within a perilous and conspiratorial worldview; (c) leverage interactive, visual media to engage, manage, and collect funding from their audiences. This study is unique because it unpacks the discursive intricacies of white supremacist messaging, while showing the processes by which a racist society is reproduced in the cosmopolitan, digital hub that is YouTube. It sets precedent and opens doors for future inquiry into how social media platforms are used as tools to mainstream white supremacist ideas

Out of the Shadows: LGBTQ+ representation in the Television Show Shadowhunters

When the Television Show Shadowhunters was cancelled in its third season, it brought about an upheaval in the fandom. Never has a worldwide campaign of this magnitude been seen before. The show included a lot of characters belonging to the LGBTQ+ community; a line-up such as this was very rare at the time. This thesis looks into the effects LGBTQ+ representation might have, using Shadowhunters as an example. It looks at how the fandom made a community centring the show, spreading information about LGBTQ+ not easily found in mainstream society. The thesis also explores how the campaign to save the show spread the LGBTQ+ knowledge to a broader audience, making it a part of changing the world to become a more accepting one

A study on Analysis and Utilization of Crowd-sourced Spatio-temporal Contexts from Social Media

兵庫県立大学大学院201