Kids these days

" Kids these days presents video, photography, and graphic works that draw from the fields of anthropology, psychology and sociology, to examine youth and youth cultures in the Canadian context. The artists document young people—their bodies, expressions, and movements—while investigating their tastes, thoughts, clothing styles, methods of communication, and leisure activities. The resulting artworks suggest an underlying desire on the part of the artists to capture the “essence” of youth or at least to affiliate themselves with the coveted values typically associated with this group: freedom, escape, authenticity, expressivity, creativity, and idealism. " -- Publisher's website

Desire for Data: PornHub and the Platformization of a Culture Industry

That no one pays for their porn anymore has become something of an adage of internet culture, given that seemingly endless porn content now exists on free streaming tubesites. What’s more, the type of pornography content being produced and promoted to users has shifted dramatically in the decade since tubesites first appeared online. In this thesis, I investigate the organizational tactics of one major player in the porn world through the website PornHub.com. As entities like MindGeek (the parent company of PornHub) consolidate media market control in an oligopolistic mode, they also gain influence over what types of pornography can be made profitable. A scarcity of data surrounding privately held porn companies further complicates the study of this supply chain. Using a blend of pornography and platform studies, and by way of a digital walkthrough method, I will overcome the opacity that surrounds PornHub to make their organizational choices clear. By analyzing the operations and strategic choices of the platform, this project will reveal ways in which the platform manages user attention and renders porn media production contingent to their operations

Consuming Transformed Islands: Representing Human Interactions with Mobility Infrastructures with GoPro Cameras in Tahiti Nui, Mā'ohi Nui/French Polynesia

M.A.M.A. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 201

Home Truths?

An academic approach to the popular use of video production technolog

Hip-Hop, Art, and Visual Culture: Connections, Influences, and Critical Discussions

Visual art has been tied to hip-hop culture since its emergence in the 1970s. Commentary on these initial connections often emphasizes the importance of graffiti and fashion during hip-hop’s earliest days. Forty years later, hip-hop music has grown into a billion-dollar global industry, and its influence on visual art and society has also expanded. This book-length printed edition of Arts collects essays by scholars who explore this evolving influence through their work in art education, cultural theory, and visual culture studies. The topics covered by these authors include discussions on identity and cultural appropriation, equity and access as represented in select works of art, creativity and copyright in digital media, and the use of fine art tropes within the sociocultural history of hip-hop. As a collected volume, these essays make potentially important contributions to broadening the narrative on art education and hip-hop beyond the topics of graffiti, fashion, and the use of cyphers in educational contexts

Trolling Aesthetics: The Lulz as Creative Practice

“The LULZ” became common Internet parlance in the mid-2000s to describe a wide array of online phenomena, from childish pranks, to the peculiar discourse of anonymous message boards, to a shadowy and subversive ideology. By the end of the decade, the canon of images and icons associated with the LULZ entered into artistic practice and along with it a certain dark understanding of the “digital condition” of online mediation. “Trolling Aesthetics: the LULZ as Creative Practice” charts how the LULZ began as an aesthetic sense and sensibility on the notorious message board 4chan. Akin to most online content, it quickly morphed into a multitude of new forms, including, for example, the video remix practice YouTube Poop, which takes the aesthetic logic of 4chan but changes its creative systems and output. The result is both a discordant bric-a-brac of absurd digital art and an example of how the LULZ functions, beyond idle message boards, as a purposeful creative work. The final chapter follows this trajectory into direct artistic practices. Unlike many of the earlier iterations that sputter rather than comment fully on what such digital culture means, artist projects like Brad Troemel’s The Jogging mobilizes the LULZ to reflect on a network of technology obsessed with speed, time, identity, and representations. Through a blend of material, expressive, and aesthetic approaches, this dissertation is both a historical analysis of the emergence of the LULZ as well as a socio-historical critique of an online world willing to foster, participate, and partake in such an ethos

Beyond Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: The Integrative Potential of the Internet

Are online audiences today fragmented into echo chambers or filter bubbles? Do users only see what digital platforms (like search engines or social media) let them see? And if so, what are the consequences for the cohesion of a society? Concerns like these abound in recent years. They attest to widely held assumptions about a negative influence of digital media or even the Internet in general on society. Empirical studies on these phenomena are, however, not as unequivocal. To understand why results from previous research are so far inconclusive, this study investigates the role of the Internet for social integration from a more general point of view. The integrative potential of the Internet is assessed to compare it with other media and ultimately better understand to what degree and due to which factors the Internet may or may not help bring society together. Using survey data, clickstream data on actual usage of websites, and data on content structures, the present work investigates how user behavior and structural features of the Internet determine its positive or negative effects on social integration. The results reveal that the Internet in general is not as bad as popular accounts of digital fragmentation may suggest. How much integrative potential can be realized via online offerings, however, depends on numerous factors on the side of the users as well as content and platform providers

Identities and Interactions in a Transcultural Online Collaboration Project

The traditional theoretical frameworks and assumptions about intercultural technical communication are no longer adequate to describe and teach intercultural communication now frequently happening through digital networks. My dissertation proposes to use the theory of cosmopolitanism as it has been recently applied in several social science fields as a framework for pedagogical project design in order to teach intercultural communication skills applicable in the global age. The dissertation describes a transcultural online pedagogical project between Hungarian and U.S. students that I designed according to the principles of cosmopolitan theory. In this project, students were introduced to the basic tenets of cosmopolitanism and were asked to create blogs about themselves and their varied identities and languages. Students were also asked to comment on the blogs written by students in the other country. For this dissertation, I analyzed the blogs and comments created during the project to find out how students represented their identities and interacted with each other in this online learning environment. Students’ identity representations are discussed within the framework of Burke and Stets’ identity theory. The categories of student identity, sports identity, and national identity are examined in detail by applying discourse analysis with the purpose of identifying structures of expectations as delineated by Tannen. In addition, students’ rhetorical strategies in the comment section that follow the principles of cosmopolitan communication are also described. Based on the findings of this research, I conclude the dissertation by proposing a model for the cosmopolitan communication process in this globally networked learning space that is not only applicable to similar projects but can also inform the process of transforming the teaching of transcultural technical communication making it more applicable to the increasingly global and digital workplace