Using Sustainable Web Design Practices: Website Redesign for The ClimateMusic Project

Sustainable practices go beyond reducing, reusing, and recycling in the physical world. In the digital world, design has a high environmental impact, so the choices designers make can eat up electricity and raise their carbon footprint. Therefore, designing low-carbon sites through UX, imagery, and color, and using a sustainability host is very beneficial for both usability and the environment. The ClimateMusic Project is a non-profit organization that aims to raise climate change awareness through music. This organization seeks to reduce their carbon footprint as well as help raise awareness through their Take Action web page. For my senior project I will help them reach this goal by redesigning their website to be more sustainable and user friendly. This will also come with a branding guide to be used across all their platforms. I will also work to increase the activity on their Take Action page by redesigning it and creating an animated logo to generate brand awareness. To check the results, I plan to track the insights and activity on these pages as well as run the new website through an ecograder/ carbon emitter for websites

Assessing Student Interest in Hybrid Course Delivery at the MBA Level

The development of online learning has boomed in recent years. The most recent trend has been in the area of hybrid courses, those which replace some face-to-face time with online time. This exploratory study assessed learners’ perceptions about and preferences regarding their experience with collaborative technology in hybrid MBA courses. Students enrolled in hybrid courses, who previously had completed program courses face-to-face, were asked whether or not they wanted more hybrid courses, how and where they accessed the online portion of their classes, and how they felt about the discussion board. Students indicated they strongly supported the use of online discussion boards and both groups desired more hybrid courses in the future. The study also found students most commonly accessed the online portion of their courses from home, supporting the idea that hybrid classes enhance students’ flexibility in taking classes

The Local TV News Experience: How to Win Viewers by Focusing on Engagement

Offers television stations insights to help them engage their audiences, stimulate strategic thinking about their position and role in the market, and connect with viewers in ways that could lead to improved civic involvement

Local Newspapers’ Transition to Online Publishing and Video Use: Experiences from Norway

This paper traces convergence and innovation processes in five local newspapers in the Inland Norway region. It is an explorative bottomup study of how local legacy newspapers’ use of digital technology relates to organisational factors and business models, as well as their journalism. Based on interviews with chief editors and video journalists, the paper shows that these local newspapers adapted in specific ways, sometimes differ from their national counterparts. Each newspaper established a web-edition and later implemented a paywall. This change of business model relates to a change of focus from clicks to subscribers. The change is also reflected in their journalism, focussing on certain topics and more in-depth reporting. While attempts at video reporting turned out to be expensive, streaming local sports became an important element in attracting new subscribers. However, it was easier for those newspapers integrated in larger conglomerates to use these innovations as the parent company provided competence in analysing viewer figures, and because innovations could spread from one local newspaper in the company to the others.publishedVersio

Media-Rich Input Application Liability

Until recently, media-rich online interactions were mostly unidirectional: multimedia content was delivered by the service provider to the user. Input from the user came almost exclusively in the form of text. Even when searching the Internet for images or audio, a user typically entered text into a search engine. In addition, search engines indexed multimedia content by analyzing not the content itself but the text surrounding it. This is rapidly changing. With the rise of multimedia-capable smartphones and wireless broadband, applications that allow users to search using non-textual inputs are quickly becoming popular. These applications go much further than simply allowing content to be uploaded and shared, which is already common to Web 2.0 applications; they actually respond to the user based on the input media.[...] These applications represent a new and growing category that I term media-rich input applications (MRIAs).[...] There are three unique attributes of MRIAs that differentiate them from legacy web behavior and therefore require new analysis. First, unlike legacy search applications in which the service provider makes a copy and presents it to the user, MRIA behavior requires the user to make a copy and present it to the service provider. Thus, the image of the book cover in the previous example is digitized by the user and sent to Google; it is not copied by Google and sent to the user in response to a search. Second, the copied content is not necessarily from the Internet; in our example it is from a physical book. Third, some of these technologies create derivative works in a way that simple web searching and indexing does not. This Essay examines how these unique features of MRIAs interact with current copyright doctrine and how the lack of protection for users may discourage innovation by developers of this new and exciting technology. This Essay also proposes a new user safe harbor that balances the interests of users in using MRIAs with the interests of copyright owners in protecting their exclusive rights

Ethical and privacy concerns involved in Ghanaians using the internet

Thesis submitted to the Department of Business Administration/Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, April 2014The internet has become an unavoidable tool for development and communication in Ghana and so it is ignorant to avoid the increasing disregard for ethics and privacy on the internet and the lack of awareness of how our data and personal information are protected. This thesis research is aimed at gathering information on the awareness of Ghanaian internet users on these issues and making recommendations for software and application developers and policy makers on these issues.Ashesi University Colleg

Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence

This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos)

Sports Television Programming: Content Selection, Strategies and Decision Making. A comparative study of the UK and Greek markets.

This thesis looks at the subject of sports television programming in two European markets, the UK, one of the biggest and most developed in the continent, and the Greek, one of the smallest in Europe. With the help of case studies over a period of eight years and qualitative interviews of television executives and professionals who are involved in sports television rights agreements, it analyses and compares the strategies and decision making of television organisations, the factors that affect their decisions and their success within the chosen markets. A distinction will be made between public service, commercial and pay-TV and the reasons why different sports may suit different channels and at different points in their development. The findings should help to appreciate that there is not one strategy that works universally better than another. Its outcome depends on the value of the content, the particular characteristics of the organisation and the external environment where it operates. Most importantly, the thesis highlights the importance and limitations of the TV sports content, its crucial role in the decision making process and the necessity of more academic research into the area of sports television by people in content-driven disciplines, i.e. journalism and the media

Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence

This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos)