Reservoir hill and audiences for online interactive drama

This paper analyses the interactive experiences constructed for users of the New Zealand online interactive drama Reservoir Hill (2009, 2010), focusing both on the nature and levels of engagement which the series provided to users and the difficulties of audience research into this kind of media content. The series itself provided tightly prescribed forms of interactivity across multiple platforms, allowing forms of engagement that were greatly appreciated by its audience overall but actively explored only by a small proportion of users. The responses from members of the Reservoir Hill audience suggests that online users themselves are still learning the nature of, and constraints on, their engagements with various forms of online interactive media. This paper also engages with issue of how interactivity itself is defined, the difficulties of both connecting with audience members and securing timely access to online data, and the challenges of undertaking collaborative research with media producers in order to gain access to user data

Blogs of their own: a story of two Malaysian Women Bloggers

Over the last few years, with the introduction of easy-to-use and integrated services such as Windows Live Spaces, blogging has moved into the mainstream in Malaysia, with women making up 64% of bloggers. Blogging has become popular because it provides an outlet for netizens who find blogosphere a liberating place, so unlike Malaysian traditional print which is censored and licensed. This article is an analysis of two blogs written by Malaysian women that show them negotiating in contradictory ways the line between the private and public dimensions of their lives. The idea that the “personal is political” and the importance of experience still retain an important place in feminist contemporary thought. I argue that many seemingly “trivial and personal” issues have produced a politics formed from the bloggers‟ personal experiences and reflections

Youth Activism and Public Space in Egypt

Examines youth activists' use of virtual and physical public spaces before, during, and after the January 25 Revolution. Profiles three organizations and analyzes the power and limitations of social media to spur civic action, as well as the role of art

Vote With Your Purse 2.0: Women's Online Giving, Offline Power

Examines trends in women's online political giving; how they use Web 2.0 tools to engage in, donate for, and network for social change; the characteristics of online donors; and the potential impact on women's political clout among donors

SportsAnno: what do you think?

The automatic summarisation of sports video is of growing importance with the increased availability of on-demand content. Consumers who are unable to view events live often have a desire to watch a summary which allows then to quickly come to terms with all that has happened during a sporting event. Sports forums show that it is not only summaries that are desirable but also the opportunity to share one’s own point of view and discuss the opinions with a community of similar users. In this paper we give an overview of the ways in which annotations have been used to augment existing visual media. We present SportsAnno, a system developed to summarise World Cup 2006 matches and provide a means for open discussion of events within these matches