5,865 research outputs found

    Mobile heritage practices. Implications for scholarly research, user experience design, and evaluation methods using mobile apps.

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    Mobile heritage apps have become one of the most popular means for audience engagement and curation of museum collections and heritage contexts. This raises practical and ethical questions for both researchers and practitioners, such as: what kind of audience engagement can be built using mobile apps? what are the current approaches? how can audience engagement with these experience be evaluated? how can those experiences be made more resilient, and in turn sustainable? In this thesis I explore experience design scholarships together with personal professional insights to analyse digital heritage practices with a view to accelerating thinking about and critique of mobile apps in particular. As a result, the chapters that follow here look at the evolution of digital heritage practices, examining the cultural, societal, and technological contexts in which mobile heritage apps are developed by the creative media industry, the academic institutions, and how these forces are shaping the user experience design methods. Drawing from studies in digital (critical) heritage, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and design thinking, this thesis provides a critical analysis of the development and use of mobile practices for the heritage. Furthermore, through an empirical and embedded approach to research, the thesis also presents auto-ethnographic case studies in order to show evidence that mobile experiences conceptualised by more organic design approaches, can result in more resilient and sustainable heritage practices. By doing so, this thesis encourages a renewed understanding of the pivotal role of these practices in the broader sociocultural, political and environmental changes.AHRC REAC

    Southern Adventist University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024

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    Southern Adventist University\u27s undergraduate catalog for the academic year 2023-2024.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/undergrad_catalog/1123/thumbnail.jp

    Indie encounters: exploring indie music socialising in China

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    Indie music, a genre deeply rooted in rock and punk music, is renowned for its independence from major commercial record labels. It has emerged as a choice for music consumers seeking alternatives to mainstream popular music, catering to a niche music preference. The minority nature of indie music not only provides its lovers with a profound space for individual expression and a sense of collective belonging but also introduces other challenges into their social lives. Recently, the field of music sociology has proposed a more diverse perspective to observe and analyse the intricate role of music for individuals and society. In this context, regarding Chinese indie music lovers with niche music preferences, how their indie music practices integrate into their social lives and how they navigate their niche music tastes have become worthwhile topics of exploration. Drawing on interviews with 31 Chinese indie music lovers and extensive online ethnography, this thesis investigates how Chinese indie music lovers comprehend and engage with indie music, and how the power of indie music shapes them and their social behaviours. I employ the theoretical framework of ‘music in action’ (Hennion, 2001; DeNora, 2011, 2016) and symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934; Goffman, 1959; Blumer, 1969) to examine the dynamic and multifaceted roles of indie music in the social lives of Chinese indie music lovers. I develop a concept of ‘music socialising’ to delve into several key aspects of music lovers’ social practices. I contend that through various forms of musical activities such as music selection, live music attendance, and digital practices, indie music lovers exhibit strategic and reflexive characteristics in their music practices. These practices actively contribute to constructing and maintaining self and identity, negotiating social ties, and forming and mediating collectivity within a broader social landscape. It is through these processes that the music practices of Chinese indie music lovers are endowed with meanings, thereby shaping their social reality. This thesis presents a rich and nuanced picture of the social experiences of Chinese indie music lovers, uncovering the transformative power of their indie music practices. It presents a compelling argument for the significance of music as a social agency, highlighting the complex interactions between music, individuals, and society. By bridging theoretical insights with rich empirical data, this thesis contributes to our understanding of the socio-cultural dimensions of music, offering fresh perspectives on the role of indie music in contemporary Chinese society

    Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present

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    This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordThis is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos Ancient Present)This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground - from architects and urban planners to artists - and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations - hence, manifestos - not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging

    Inovação na diplomacia cultural: o caso da China

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    This study focuses on the innovation of China’s cultural diplomacy (CCD) by means of the Confucius Institute (CI). The main contents revolve around the following research goals: 1) to understand the strategic framework and practical path of CCD, and to clarify the context of its inheritance and innovation; 2) to analyze whether the CI, epitomized as a crucial innovation of CCD, has improved China’s national image in Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs) and enhanced the attraction and international competitiveness of Chinese culture; and 3) to explore how China can better formulate its CD strategy in line with the exigencies of the modern era. The study combines the methods of literature review, case study, and questionnaire research to explore the topics from different perspectives to strengthen the scientific nature of the research results. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the connotation and value of CD. Chapter 2 expounds the development and innovation of CCD. Chapter 3 systematically summarizes China’s cultural interaction in its diplomatic process with PSCs. Chapter 4 elaborates on the CI in terms of its operation mode and diplomatic means. Chapter 5 forms the core of the study and involves empirical analysis of case-study and questionnaire data. It aims to investigate the functions, public image, influence, and practical means of CIs in the process of CD. Major findings indicate that CIs in PSCs have achieved ideal social feedback and play a positive role in shaping the image of China. However, according to the different continents where CIs are located, the survey results show distinct characteristics which are closely related to China’s different foreign policies towards Latin America, Europe, and Africa and are determined by the historical experiences and national conditions of the various countries. The future task for CCD is to clarify China’s institutional roots and the cultural genes behind its development by using cultural exchanges and China’s fluid culture to convey a message of China’s pursuit of peace, development, and cooperation.Este estudo tem como foco a inovação da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC) atravĂ©s do Instituto ConfĂșcio (IC). Os principais conteĂșdos giram em torno dos seguintes objetivos de investigação: 1) compreender o enquadramento estratĂ©gico e o percurso prĂĄtico da Diplomacia Cultural da China e clarificar o contexto da sua herança e inovação; 2) analisar se o IC, exemplo de inovação crucial da Diplomacia Cultural da China, melhorou a imagem nacional da China nos PaĂ­ses de LĂ­ngua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP) e aumentou a atração e competitividade internacional da cultura chinesa; e 3) explorar como a China pode formular melhor a sua estratĂ©gia de Diplomacia Cultural, de acordo com as exigĂȘncias da era moderna. O estudo combina os mĂ©todos de revisĂŁo de literatura, estudo de caso e pesquisa de questionĂĄrio para explorar os tĂłpicos de diferentes perspetivas com o objetivo de fortalecer a natureza cientĂ­fica dos resultados de investigação. AlĂ©m da introdução e da conclusĂŁo, a tese estĂĄ dividida em cinco capĂ­tulos. O CapĂ­tulo 1 discute a conotação e o valor de Diplomacia Cultural (DC). O CapĂ­tulo 2 expĂ”e o desenvolvimento e a inovação da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC). O CapĂ­tulo 3 resume sistematicamente a interação cultural da China no seu processo diplomĂĄtico com os PaĂ­ses de LĂ­ngua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP). O CapĂ­tulo 4 discorre sobre o papel do IC em termos do seu modo de operar e dos seus meios diplomĂĄticos. O CapĂ­tulo 5 constitui o nĂșcleo da tese e envolve a anĂĄlise empĂ­rica dos dados do estudo de caso e do questionĂĄrio. Tem como objetivo investigar as funçÔes, a imagem pĂșblica, a influĂȘncia e os meios prĂĄticos dos IC no processo de Diplomacia Cultural (DC). As principais descobertas indicam que os IC nos PALOP alcançaram o feedback social ideal e desempenham um papel positivo na formação da imagem da China. No entanto, de acordo com os diferentes continentes onde os IC estĂŁo situados, os resultados da pesquisa apresentam caraterĂ­sticas distintas que estĂŁo intimamente relacionadas com as diferentes polĂ­ticas externas da China para a AmĂ©rica Latina, a Europa e a África e sĂŁo determinadas pelas experiĂȘncias histĂłricas e pelas condiçÔes nacionais dos vĂĄrios paĂ­ses. A futura tarefa da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC) serĂĄ a de esclarecer as raĂ­zes institucionais da China e os genes culturais por trĂĄs do seu desenvolvimento, usando intercĂąmbios culturais e a cultura fluida da China para transmitir uma mensagem de busca de paz, de desenvolvimento e de cooperação por parte da China.Programa Doutoral em PolĂ­ticas PĂșblica

    FARC musicians' musical identities and political identities through their music: analysis of their narratives, musical practices and songs in the Colombian peace post-agreement

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    The Colombia Revolutionary Army Forces (FARC) was the largest and most important guerrilla movement in the long and persistent Colombian internal armed conflict. In November 2016, after overcoming significant difficulties, the Colombian government and FARC signed and ratified a Final Peace Agreement; nowadays, FARC has become a lawful political party: Los Comunes. For over fifty years, the movement stimulated cultural and musical activities; FARC's musicians created, composed, arranged, recorded, performed and distributed thousands of songs, initially as part of a guerrilla and now as political party members. This research studies the musical identities of FARC musicians and their political identities as constructed through their music, based on social and cultural perspectives from the field of musical identities, the music and social movements theoretical framework and the transformation of conflict approach. This study observes how musical identities are negotiated as a force for transformative political and cultural changes at the personal and collective levels. The FARC musicians' narratives are a primary source for analysing the sociocultural transformation of identities and how they negotiate their musical and political identities. Based on a phenomenological perspective and qualitative methods, this research applied an ethnographic approach and narrative analysis based on the Listening Guide Method (LGM) to undertake a qualitative study of two narratives: life histories and songs-as-narratives. The life histories and the songs-as-narratives can be understood as sociocultural performances with multiple and continuous constructions of selfhood. The analysis of (5) FARC musicians' musical biographies (life histories), obtained through three in-depth semi-structured interviews each, and four (4) songs-as-narratives, based on music video material, allows us to observe the relationship between their music and the social movement and the role of their music in the conflict transformation process. The analysis reveals how the negotiation of musical and political identities interacts mutually and intertwined during conflict transformation experiences involving personal and collective changes. The life histories and song-as-narratives analysis provide evidence about the relationship between Identities in Music (IIM) and their Music in Identities (MII). The IIM and MII are inseparable dimensions of the self. The former is narrated through ex-combatant musicians' experiences as songwriters, singers, instrumentalists, producers, and music teachers committed to their political ideas. The latter emerges in ideological terms, but mainly through personal and collective experiences, emotionally significant, expressing their belonging to the peasantry, indigenous and popular musical cultures. At individual and collective levels, their musical knowledge, interactions and experiences construct new social roles, particularly in transitioning from guerrilla combatants to political party members. The results reveal that music is a sociocultural resource developed by musicians and the entire movement throughout the decades. The ex-combatant musicians' narratives reveal how they employ their musical experiences to explore the possibilities of the moral imagination, changing lyrics, musical production and distribution processes. Exploring new musical genres or affirming their belonging to some of them, they build different social (political) and cultural (musical) realities in their contexts. The transformation of the conflict is a profound identity negotiation process. During the transformation of the conflict, musical and political identities support each other based on ex-combatant musicians' emotional competence or emotional capital, their different uses of "I" and "we", their personal and collective relationships and connections with broader socioeconomic, political and cultural structures

    Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Literary and Cultural Perspectives on a Legal Concept

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    In the early twenty-first century, the concept of citizenship is more contested than ever. As refugees set out to cross the Mediterranean, European nation-states refer to "cultural integrity" and "immigrant inassimilability," revealing citizenship to be much more than a legal concept. The contributors to this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to considering how cultures of citizenship are being envisioned and interrogated in literary and cultural (con)texts. Through this framework, they attend to the tension between the citizen and its spectral others - a tension determined by how a country defines difference at a given moment

    Fictocritical Cyberfeminism: A Paralogical Model for Post-Internet Communication

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    This dissertation positions the understudied and experimental writing practice of fictocriticism as an analog for the convergent and indeterminate nature of “post-Internet” communication as well a cyberfeminist technology for interfering and in-tervening in metanarratives of technoscience and technocapitalism that structure contemporary media. Significant theoretical valences are established between twen-tieth century literary works of fictocriticism and the hybrid and ephemeral modes of writing endemic to emergent, twenty-first century forms of networked communica-tion such as social media. Through a critical theoretical understanding of paralogy, or that countercultural logic of deploying language outside legitimate discourses, in-volving various tactics of multivocity, mimesis and metagraphy, fictocriticism is ex-plored as a self-referencing linguistic machine which exists intentionally to occupy those liminal territories “somewhere in among/between criticism, autobiography and fiction” (Hunter qtd. in Kerr 1996). Additionally, as a writing practice that orig-inated in Canada and yet remains marginal to national and international literary scholarship, this dissertation elevates the origins and ongoing relevance of fictocriti-cism by mapping its shared aims and concerns onto proximal discourses of post-structuralism, cyberfeminism, network ecology, media art, the avant-garde, glitch feminism, and radical self-authorship in online environments. Theorized in such a matrix, I argue that fictocriticism represents a capacious framework for writing and reading media that embodies the self-reflexive politics of second-order cybernetic theory while disrupting the rhetoric of technoscientific and neoliberal economic forc-es with speech acts of calculated incoherence. Additionally, through the inclusion of my own fictocritical writing as works of research-creation that interpolate the more traditional chapters and subchapters, I theorize and demonstrate praxis of this dis-tinctively indeterminate form of criticism to empirically and meaningfully juxtapose different modes of knowing and speaking about entangled matters of language, bod-ies, and technologies. In its conclusion, this dissertation contends that the “creative paranoia” engendered by fictocritical cyberfeminism in both print and digital media environments offers a pathway towards a more paralogical media literacy that can transform the terms and expectations of our future media ecology

    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

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    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods
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