Imagining virtual community: online media fandom and the construction of virtual collectivity

This thesis uses ethnographic research into online media fandom, focusing on self-reflexive analytical documents that fans call meta, to investigate longstanding questions about the nature of virtual community. It argues that virtual documents should be seen as complete and complex interactions in their original form and as social contexts in their own right, and presents a new approach to ethnographic methodology and ethics suited to working in this context. Fans have incorporated various technologies into the infrastructure that constitutes their community, and these have had various effects on the structure and substance of fannish documents and interactions – and on the character of the community as a whole. The stability and visibility of the digital archive is an important feature of virtual community – one that makes fandom more visible, accessible, and historically grounded for both old and new members. This research also deals with conflict, not as a necessarily divisive force but as a natural and important part of how communities evolve and how members negotiate and articulate what their community should be. It discusses fanfiction as a controversial and sometimes problematic genre, and considers trigger warnings as the solution fans have developed to protect vulnerable members of their community from potentially harmful content (such as rape). It also examines conflict with outside authorities, like creators and the administrators who control the virtual spaces that fans inhabit. These conflicts illuminate creativity and feminism as fannish values, presenting fandom as a community that embraces sex-positive female sexuality. More importantly, they suggest that the creation and maintenance of a ‘safe space’ where all members feel respected and comfortable is a key feature of online community. In addition, fannish storytelling (particularly the creation of what fans call fanon) is part of the production of local knowledge, of boundary mechanisms that mark and separate members of the community from outsiders. These stories as part of the process by which fans position themselves within the broader community – and in so doing, locate themselves within smaller cohorts of fans who affirm and support aspects of their personal experiences and marginalised identities (e.g. as women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, or people of colour) through the reorientation and appropriation of story

Tentative Criteria for Evaluating High School Literature Curriculum Outlines

A thesis presented to the Members of the Graduate Committee of Morehead State Teachers College by Paul Clay Burns in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in August of 1947

Library websites popularity: does Facebook really matter?

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the utilization of social media (Facebook) is an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library site usage in Malaysian public universities. Nine top ranked Malaysian public universities involved in this research and number of Facebook followers for each library website is listed. Alexa software was used as the approach to study the issue of visibility. Alexa is able to determine web site usage, by showing the percentage of visitors of library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for each University website (domain) over a month. It is found that Universiti Utara Malaysia library website scored the highest percentage of visitors based on the library related subdomain(s) as listed in the top subdomains for the University website in Alexa. To check such irregularities in access, this paper use EvalAccess 2.0 and it is found that Universiti Sains Malaysia’s library website scored higher irregularities. In term of number of Facebook followers, Univesity of Malaya library has the highest score. It is showed that the utilization of social media (Facebook) is not yet an important factor in increasing the visibility of the library websites. However, expectedly, top ranked universities’ library web sites, are more visible and popular. This research is limited to the situation in Malaysia where public universities are more noticeable and seldom face financial constraints rather than private universities. It is highly important for those universities’ library web sites that are not highly visible to initiate the necessary measures in improving the development of their web sites as the usage of the website is an indicator of online quality

Contributi Italiani al XV Congresso Internazionale degli Slavisti

This volume contains Italian contributions to the XV Slavists’ International Congress (Minsk, 20-27 August 2013). In the wake of the best Italian Slavic tradition, the lecturers present a wide range of themes in different languages, ranging from the Cyril-Methodian question to the critical reflection on contemporary authors. Despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches - from paleography to textual analysis, from literary comparative studies to sociolinguistics - these contributions show that Italian Slavistic studies maintains their roots, critically developing previous studies and opening up new perspectives for research, while a new generation of scholars is born. As in the past, Italian studies on Slavistics are playing a significant role not only in Italy's cultural relations with the Slavic countries, but more generally on the perspective of a vast and complex process of integration of the various European cultures, which goes further beyond the borders of the European Union; a process in which the Slavic world, with its variety of languages and cultures, is one of the main actors

Major Total Conversion in English: The Question of Directionality

This research investigates the directionality of major total conversion in English, where major total conversion is defined as the process and at the same time as the result of deriving a new lexical item by altering the part of speech of the base without marking the alteration overtly, as in the presumed pair dry – to dry. The question is whether there is a reliable strategy for deciding which member of a pair is the base and which member is the converted counterpart. Various attempts had been made to resolve the controversial directional issue, but the results have been inconsistent. The investigation aims to discover whether or not there exists a coherent notion about how to decide directionality by considering four factors assumed in the literature to reflect directionality. A large corpus of potential examples of major total conversion was collected to act as test materials. The four factors were compared for each major total conversion pair to see to what extent there was agreement among them. Results showed the factors did not agree to the expected extent. The findings are discussed in detail and it is claimed the inconsistencies can often be explained with recourse to a few general principles. In conclusion, on the whole the four factors considered are consistent with one another. In other words, the notion about how to determine directionality in major total conversion is coherent and can be maintained for English

Aeronautical Engineering - A special bibliography with indexes /supplement 1/

Annotated reference bibliography on aeronautical engineering document

General Index to Research Notes for: A History of Blacks in Kentucky, Part II

This index, general in nature, is organized under seventeen larger topics: Camp Nelson Slavery Slave Hiring Free Blacks Underground Railroad - Fugitives Post-Civil War Living Conditions Society & Culture - Medical Care Professions - Employment Freedmen\u27s Bureau Civil Rights Politics Recreation Population Segregation- Changes in the 1890s Civil War Education Religion Under these general headings, there are numerous subtopics. The research notes are numbered and presented in numerical order, and they are searchable by note numbers, names, dates, events, and topics (occasional hand-written numbers may not appear in searches). There are no missing notes, but there are occasional missing numbers, especially near the end of the research notes. The areas of missing numbers are between notes 4099 and 5000 (the largest group), between 6325-A and 6412, between 7148-D and 7158, and between 7328-B and 7379. My hope is that historians at all levels interested in African American history will find my research notes helpful in their research. Part I contains introduction, index and cards 1 to 1676 - http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/hist_ky/1/ Part II contains cards 1677 to 3737 - http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/hist_ky/2 Part III contains cards 3738 to 6155-B - http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/hist_ky/3 Part IV contains cards 6155-C to 7429-B - http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/hist_ky/