Exploitation or Empowerment? Women’s Experiences in the Cam Modeling Industry

Sex work and the experiences of women within it have been studied in-depth over the past four decades. However, the majority of studies on sex work focus on women who work in prostitution, overlooking rapidly growing cam modeling industry and its female workers. Over the past ten years cam modeling has become an increasingly popular adult entertainment industry, gradually displacing traditional pornography from the online sex market (Senft 2008). In this study, I used theoretical frameworks of radical and liberal feminists as well as polymorphous paradigm to investigate if the cam modeling industry is either an empowering or an exploitative form of women’s labor or rather if it combines elements from both perspectives. To answer this research question, I conducted ethnographic observations of cam models’ open video sessions on the website LiveJasmin.com and eight in-depth interviews with cam models. In their interviews, cam models described that working in the industry ensures their financial independence and offers a flexible work schedule while providing an opportunity to explore their own sexuality and creativity. My interviewees also revealed that building romantic relationships or lasting friendship within a camming community was an essential factor of working in the industry. On the other hand, all cam models discussed how challenges of dealing with stalkers and customers’ degrading requests, negotiations with “freeloaders,” and body shaming from customers, as well as negative stigma, affected their emotional and psychological well-being. My findings demonstrated that cam models encounter a full spectrum of experiences while working in the industry, ranging from rewarding and liberating to extremely traumatic and life-threatening. I concluded that a cam modeling is neither empowering nor exploitative form of women’s labor; instead, it is marked by uneven levels of agency, subordination, and job satisfaction that can best be understood from the polymorphous perspective. The experiences of cam models are shaped by complex structural conditions and vary across time and place. This study fills the gap in research on sex work by investigating understudied phenomenon of cam modeling and various experiences of its female workers

Simultaneous Exposure of Different Nanoparticles Influences Cell Uptake

Drug delivery using nano-sized carriers holds tremendous potential for curing a range of diseases. The internalisation of nanoparticles by cells, however, remains poorly understood, restricting the possibility for optimising entrance into target cells, avoiding off-target cells and evading clearance. The majority of nanoparticle cell uptake studies have been performed in the presence of only the particle of interest; here, we instead report measurements of uptake when the cells are exposed to two different types of nanoparticles at the same time. We used carboxylated polystyrene nanoparticles of two different sizes as a model system and exposed them to HeLa cells in the presence of a biomolecular corona. Using flow cytometry, we quantify the uptake at both average and individual cell level. Consistent with previous literature, we show that uptake of the larger particles is impeded in the presence of competing smaller particles and, conversely, that uptake of the smaller particles is promoted by competing larger particles. While the mechanism(s) underlying these observations remain(s) undetermined, we are partly able to restrain the likely possibilities. In the future, these effects could conceivably be used to enhance uptake of nano-sized particles used for drug delivery, by administering two different types of particles at the same time

Interpreting “altmetrics": Viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories"

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Surface Treatments to Reduce Leakage Current in Homojunction In0:53Ga0:47As PIN Diodes for TFET Applications

In the field of low power electronics, Tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) are gaining momentum due to aggressive voltage scaling. To enable scaling of power supply while maintaining a high Ion, a steep subthreshold slope and low I0 are required. A TFET operates as a gated PIN diode under reverse bias with the intrinsic region as the channel. This study focuses on minimizing I0 in a III-V homojunction PIN diode. I0 or leakage current is the current owing in a PIN diode under reverse bias, that forms the o-state current (Vgate = 0 V) in a TFET. Various surface treatment combinations were performed to study surface leakage, of which, BCB and HCl were the most eective passivation and clean, respectively. For the first time, in this study, electrical characterization of sub-micron PIN diodes was performed

WhatsApp in Ethnographic Research: Methodological Reflections on New Edges of the Field

The mobile phone and the increasing worldwide use of smartphones with applications such as the instant messenger WhatsApp are revolutionising ethnographic research. Drawing on transnational, ethnographic research in Tanzania, the USA and Oman, this paper shows that WhatsApp constitutes a valuable tool in ethnographic research in three important fields of interaction and communication: first, between researchers and informants simultaneously in different places; secondly, as a tool to exchange with field assistants; and thirdly between researchers. Building on expanding theoretical reflections on transnational networks and practices this paper adds new insights to corresponding methodological consequences. It critically reflects on the usefulness of integrating WhatsApp into ethnographic research. It argues that by incorporating such technologies we can not only keep an actor-centred focus, but also support methodologically the theoretical shift from understanding the field as a ‘location’ to grasping the field as a ‘network’ – or even a transnational social field

Boys\u27 Love and Female Friendships: The Subculture of Yaoi as a Social Bond between Women

In this thesis I argue that the yaoi community addresses a gap in subculture studies through the ways in which women use the genre to socialize. Yaoi is a genre of Japanese animation and comics which focuses on romantic relationships between two men and is directly geared towards women. Through ethnographic research in the United States, I look at how the women I interviewed conceptualize their participation within the community and what yaoi means to them. The women within the yaoi community are not rebelliously opposing the mainstream as many subcultural theories suggest, but are instead carving out a social space for themselves and others who have a distinct taste for the yaoi genre

Multimodality, Makerspaces, and the Making of a Maker Pedagogy for Technical Communication and Rhetoric

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2019. Major: Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication. Advisor: Ann Duin. 1 computer file (PDF); xi, 233 pages.This dissertation investigates how students create multimodal solutions to address complex problems via technology-enhanced maker practices informed by design thinking. It contributes to the ongoing scholarly conversations around multimodality and multimodal composition by understanding the new material affordances of rapid prototyping technology and dedicated spaces for collaborative invention, fondly known as makerspaces. By investigating how students compose and create multimodal artifacts through making and design thinking, this project identifies useful pedagogical intersections between the Maker Movement proper and technical and professional communication (TPC). To do so, I studied the use and operation of three academic makerspaces in the U.S. at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Minnesota. I then conducted a case study of a maker framework based on the findings from the makerspace ethnography. The deployment of the framework––tentatively known as maker pedagogy––occurred in a TPC course. Combining the results from my makerspace ethnography and the pedagogical case study, I discuss the implications of a maker pedagogy for TPC, including the cultivation of a maker mindset, disruption to conventional ideologies, and an exploration of the material dimension of writing. I also discuss ways in which making and design thinking can be assessed in the context of TPC pedagogy

Understanding and modeling of aesthetic response to shape and color in car body design

This study explored the phenomenon that a consumer's preference on color of car body may vary depending on shape of the car body. First, the study attempted to establish a theoretical framework that can account for this phenomenon. This framework is based on the (modern-) Darwinism approach to the so-called evolutionary psychology and aesthetics. It assumes that human's aesthetic sense works like an agent that seeks for environmental patterns that potentially afford to benefit the underlying needs of the agent, and this seeking process is evolutionary fitting. Second, by adopting the framework, a pattern called “fundamental aesthetic dimensions” was developed for identifying and modeling consumer’s aesthetic response to car body shape and color. Next, this study developed an effective tool that is capable in capturing and accommodating consumer’s color preference on a given car body shape. This tool was implemented by incorporating classic color theories and advanced digital technologies; it was named “Color-Shape Synthesizer”. Finally, an experiment was conducted to verify some of the theoretical developments. This study concluded (1) the fundamental aesthetics dimensions can be used for describing aesthetics in terms of shape and color; (2) the Color-Shape Synthesizer tool can be well applied in practicing car body designs; and (3) mapping between semantic representations of aesthetic response to the fundamental aesthetics dimensions can likely be a multiple-network structure