Online discussions through the lens of interaction patterns

Computer-mediated communication is arguably prevailing over face-to-face. However, many of the subtleties that make in-person communication personal, cues such as an ironic tone of voice or an effortless posture, are inherently impossible to render through a screen. The context vanishes from the conversation - what is left is therefore mostly text, enlivened by occasional multimedia. At least, this seems the dominant opinion of both industry and academia, that recently focused considerable resources on a deeper understanding of natural and visual language. I argue instead that richer cues are missing from online interaction only because current applications do not acknowledge them -- indeed, communication online is already infused with nonverbal codes, and the effort needed to leverage them is well worth the amount of information they carry. This dissertation therefore focuses on what is left out of the traditional definition of content: I refer to these aspects of communication as content-agnostic. Specifically, this dissertation makes three contributions. First, I formalize what constitutes content-agnostic information in computer-mediated communication, and prove content-agnostic information is as personal to each user as its offline counterpart. For this reason, I choose as a venue of research the web forum, a supposedly text-based, impersonal communication environment, and show that it is possible to attribute a message to the corresponding author solely on the basis of its content-agnostic features -- in other words, without looking at the content of the message at all. Next, I display how abundant and how varied is the content-agnostic information that lies untapped in current applications.To this end, I analyze the content-agnostic aspects of one type of interaction, the quote, and draw conclusions on how these may support discussion, signal user status, mark relationships between users, and characterize the discussion forum as a community. One interesting implication is that discussion platforms may not need to introduce new features for supporting social signals, and conversely social networks may better integrate discussion by enhancing its content-agnostic qualities. Finally, I demonstrate how content-agnostic information reveals user behavior. I focus specifically on trolls, malicious users that disrupt communities through deceptive or manipulative actions. In fact, the language of trolls blends in with that of civil users in heated discussions, which makes collecting irrefutable evidence of trolling difficult even for human moderators. Nonetheless, I show that a combination of content-agnostic and linguistic features sets apart discussions that will eventually be trolled, and reactions to trolling posts. This provides evidence of how content-agnostic information can offer a point of view on user behavior that is at the same time different from, and complementary to, that offered by the actual content of the contribution. Popular up and coming platforms, such as Snapchat, Tumblr, or Yik Yak, are increasingly abandoning persistent, threaded, text-based discussion, in favor of ephemeral, loosely structured, mixed-media content. Although the results of this dissertation are mostly drawn from discussion forums, its research frame and methods should apply directly to these other venues, and to a broad range of communication paradigms. Also, this is but a preliminary step towards a fuller understanding of what additional cues can or should complement content to overcome the limitations of computer-mediated communication

A world of difference: media translations of fantasy worlds

The modern consumer has access to a massively complex entertainment world. Many of the products available reveal a visible movement of popular fantasy worlds between different media. This transmedia process creates a strong link between film, merchandising and games; with all of these mediums borrowing from each other. This borrowing takes various forms, from licensed adaptations to unofficial copying of ideas, settings and characters as well as exploiting the different aesthetics and techniques of different media. Much of the scholarship on transmedia concentrates on storytelling, where a single overarching narrative unfolds over several different media. This thesis will move away from storytelling to consider how culture producers borrow the aesthetics, narratives and fantasy worlds from other sources, including computer games. This borrowing happens because it enables them to use transmedia functionality to gain market share from an already established audience who have a vested interested in, and enthusiasm for, an established world. Most of this borrowing happens around specific genres – especially fantasy, science fiction and horror. These genres are particularly wide-ranging and emphasise the possibilities of worldbuilding, making then good sources for multi-media franchises. This thesis will examine examples from these genres to examine what elements are translated to a new medium, and what is discarded. This examination will help explain how and why different media and settings work in the way that they do

Player attitudes to avatar development in digital games: an exploratory study of single-player role-playing games and other genres

Digital games incorporate systems that allow players to customise and develop their controllable in-game representative (avatar) over the course of a game. Avatar customisation systems represent a point at which the goals and values of players interface with the intentions of the game developer forming a dynamic and complex relationship between system and user. With the proliferation of customisable avatars through digital games and the ongoing monetisation of customisation options through digital content delivery platforms it is important to understand the relationship between player and avatar in order to provide a better user experience and to develop an understanding of the cultural impact of the avatar. Previous research on avatar customisation has focused on the users of virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games, leaving single-player avatar experiences. These past studies have also typically focused on one particular aspect of avatar customisation and those that have looked at all factors involved in avatar customisation have done so with a very small sample. This research has aimed to address this gap in the literature by focusing primarily on avatar customisation features in single-player games, aiming to investigate the relationship between player and customisation systems from the perspective of the players of digital games. To fulfill the research aims and objectives, the qualitative approach of interpretative phenomenological analysis was adopted. Thirty participants were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling (the criteria being that participants had played games featuring customisable avatars) and accounts of their experiences were gathered through semi-structured interviews. Through this research, strategies of avatar customisation were explored in order to demonstrate how people use such systems. The shortcomings in game mechanics and user interfaces were highlighted so that future games can improve the avatar customisation experience

Revivifying the Ur-text: a reconstruction of sword-&-sorcery as a literary form

From the early 1980s until the late 1990s the genre or sub-genre known as sword-&-sorcery was largely moribund. The Tolkien-derived high fantasy novel, on the other hand, flourished and mutated into six, eight, ten volume, or open-ended series. Even though the terms high fantasy and sword-&-sorcery are sometimes used interchangeably, sword-&-sorcery came to be viewed as an inferior, cruder form: rougher in style, more limited structurally, stunted in terms of character development, even morally questionable (rather than ambiguous). Revivifying the Ur-text aims to investigate if it is possible to subvert the genre, to create a work that realizes the form s potential to exist as literature . In order to do this it attempts to both analyze and re-vision the form by rendering the genre down to its pristine elements - exemplified but not monopolized by the widely-acknowledged creator of the sword-&-sorcery form, Robert E. Howard. The critical areas of the thesis thus concentrate on Howard, but extend backwards to Beowulf as proto-sword-&-sorcery and forwards to contemporary fantasy writers such as Joe Abercrombie and Steve Erikson. It begins by constructing an account of the creation of the form by Howard, hypothesizing that the conditions for its genesis are a result of the writer s internal emotional and thought processes interacting with external circumstances. This is followed by a study of a set of highly influential anthologies published in the sixties edited by Lyon Sprague de Camp, interrogating de Camp s introductions as well as his selections, sub-categorizing these into the variations on the Howardian model which evolved in the wake of his 1920/30s work, work from which other writers developed a commonly perceived genre. From this the thesis proceeds to a consideration of related forms such as epic fantasy, science fantasy, and grimdark, prefaced by a survey and analysis of what sword-&-sorcery was/is perceived to be by commentators such as de Camp, Brian Attebery and Peter Nicholls. These sections are followed and augmented by a refocusing on Robert E. Howard. A consideration of the crucial relationship between violence and the numinous in his fantasy is central to this thesis. This is done both through research into published texts, mainly fictional but also non-fictional, and is discussed both generally and through in-depth case studies of two stories, attempting to identify the particular elements of his writing which contributed to the birth and definition of sword-&-sorcery in order to establish Howard s output as an Ur-text . The creative heart of this research is my sword-&-sorcery fiction, The Shadow Cycles. Here I have attempted to write a narrative in the form which innovates narrative techniques, modifying or abandoning the generic scaffolding of situations, and methods of characterization, and developing a style of language appropriate to my aim of revisioning Howard s Ur-text for the 21st century. This is followed by a concluding afterthesis which draws on all the preceding sections to explicate the relationship between the critical and creative elements of the thesis. As with earlier critical sections, these recruit a synthesis of literary history, influence studies, genre theory, narratology, and practical criticism. By so doing they touch on conceptions of the literary such as those of Bakhtin, Eagleton, Todorov, and Katherine Hume