Redefining the anthology : forms and affordances in digital culture

Alors que le modèle économique de la télévision américaine, longtemps dominant, a été mis au défi de diverses manières par les changements industriels et technologiques de ces dernières années, des formes narratives de plus en plus hétérogènes sont apparues, qui se sont ajoutées aux structures sérielles originaires. La diversité des formes télévisuelles est devenue particulièrement évidente depuis que les paysages télévisuels nationaux et locaux ont commencé à s’ouvrir aux marchés étrangers situés en dehors des États-Unis, pour finalement adopter une perspective transnationale et globale. La transition vers la télévision distribuée sur Internet a joué un rôle central dans cette fragmentation formelle et la nouvelle dynamique de la diffusion en ligne a ouvert une different perspective pour comprendre le flux mondial de contenus télévisuels, qui reflète aujourd'hui un environnement multimédia et numérique hautement interconnecté et mis en réseau. En effet, la multiplication des services de vidéo à la demande oblige la sérialité à s’adapter au paysage médiatique contemporain, donnant naissance à des produits audiovisuels pouvant être transférés en ligne et présentant des spécificités de production, de distribution et de réception. L’un des résultats de tels changements dans les séries télévisées américaines à l’aube du XXIe siècle est la série anthologique divisée en différentes saisons avec des histoires distinctes, et pourtant liées par le ton et le style. Ma recherche se situe dans un tel contexte technologique, industriel et culturel, où le contenu télévisuel est de plus en plus fragmenté. Compte tenu de cette fragmentation des contenus, cette thèse examine la manière dont les contenus télévisuels contemporains sont distribués, dans l'interaction entre les processus de recommandation basés sur des algorithmes et les pratiques éditoriales plus traditionnelles. L’objectif de ce projet est donc d’étudier la manière dont certaines structures narratives typiques de la forme de l’anthologie apparaissent dans le contexte de la sérialité de la télévision nord-américaine, à partir de conditions spécifiques de production, de distribution et de consommation dans l’industrie des médias. En se concentrant sur l'évolution (dimension temporelle et historique) et sur la circulation numérique (dimension spatiale, géographique) des séries d'anthologies américaines, et en observant les particularités de leur production et de leur style, ainsi que leurs réseaux de distribution et les modes de consommation qu'elles favorisent, cette thèse s’inscrit finalement dans une conversation plus vaste sur les études culturelles et numériques. L’objectif final est d’étudier la relation entre les formes anthologiques, les plateformes de distribution et les modèles de consommation, en proposant une approche comparative de l’anthologie qui soit à la fois cross-culturelle, crosshistorique, cross-genre et qui prenne en consideration les pratiques pre- et post-numériques pour l’organisation de contenus culturels.As the longtime dominant U.S. television business model has been challenged in various ways by industrial and technological changes in recent years, more heterogeneous narrative forms have emerged in addition to original serial structures. The diversity of televisual forms became particularly evident since national, local television landscapes started opening up to foreign markets outside of the U.S., finally embracing a transnational, global perspective and tracing alternative value-chains. The transition to internet-distributed television played a pivotal role in this formal fragmentation and new dynamics of online streaming opened up another path for understanding the flow of television content, which today reflects a highly interconnected, networked media and digital environment. Indeed, the proliferation of video-on-demand services is forcing seriality to adapt to the contemporary mediascape, giving rise to audiovisual products that can be transferred online and present specificities in production, distribution and reception. One of the outcomes of such changes in U.S. television series at the dawn of the twenty-first century is the anthology series divided in different seasons with separate stories, yet linked by tone and style. My research positions itself in such a technological, industrial and cultural context, where television content is increasingly fragmented. Given such a fragmentation, this thesis considers the ways contemporary television content is distributed in the interaction between algorithmic-driven recommendation processes and more traditional editorial practices. The aim of the project is to investigate the way certain narrative structures typical of the anthology form emerge in the context of U.S. television seriality, starting from specific conditions of production, distribution and consumption in the media industry. By focusing on the evolution (temporal, historical dimension) and on the digital circulation (spatial, geographic dimension) of U.S. anthology series, and observing the peculiarities in their production and style, as well as their distributional networks and the consumption patterns they foster, this thesis ultimately insert itself into a larger conversation on digital-cultural studies. The final purpose is to examine the relation between anthological forms, distribution platforms and consumption models, by proposing a comparative approach to the anthology that is at the same time cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-genre and accounting for both pre- and post-digital practices for cultural content organization

Towards more Effective Censorship Resistance Systems

Internet censorship resistance systems (CRSs) have so far been designed in an ad-hoc manner. The fundamentals are unclear and the foundations are shaky. Censors are, more and more, able to take advantage of this situation. Future censorship resistance systems ought to be built from strong theoretical underpinnings and be based on empirical evidence. Our approach is based on systematizing the CRS field and its players. Informed by this systematization we develop frameworks that have broad scope, from which we gain general insight as well as answers to specific questions. We develop theoretical and simulation-based analysis tools 1) for learning how to manipulate censor behavior using game-theoretic tactics, 2) for learning about CRS-client activity levels on CRS networks, and finally 3) for evaluating security parameters in CRS designs. We learn that there are gaps in the CRS designer's arsenal: certain censor attacks go unmitigated and the dynamics of the censorship arms race are not modeled. Our game-theoretic analysis highlights how managing the base rate of CRS traffic can cause stable equilibriums where the censor allows some amount of CRS communication to occur. We design and deploy a privacy-preserving data gathering tool, and use it to collect statistics to help answer questions about the prevalence of CRS-related traffic in actual CRS communication networks. Finally, our security evaluation of a popular CRS exposes suboptimal settings, which have since been optimized according to our recommendations. All of these contributions help support the thesis that more formal and empirically driven CRS designs can have better outcomes than the current state of the art

Building on Progress - Expanding the Research Infrastructure for the Social, Economic, and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 1

The publication provides a comprehensive compendium of the current state of Germany's research infrastructure in the social, economic, and behavioural sciences. In addition, the book presents detailed discussions of the current needs of empirical researchers in these fields and opportunities for future development. The book contains 68 advisory reports by more than 100 internationally recognized authors from a wide range of fields and recommendations by the German Data Forum (RatSWD) on how to improve the research infrastructure so as to create conditions ideal for making Germany's social, economic, and behavioral sciences more innovative and internationally competitive. The German Data Forum (RatSWD) has discussed the broad spectrum of issues covered by these advisory reports extensively, and has developed general recommendations on how to expand the research infrastructure to meet the needs of scholars in the social and economic sciences

A production network approach

News publishers in the industrialized world are experiencing a fundamental challenge to their business models because of the changing modes of consumption, competition, and production of their offerings that are associated with the emergence of the networked information society. The erosion of the traditional business models poses an existential threat to news publishing and has given rise to a continuing struggle among news publishers to design digital business models that will be sustainable in the future. This dissertation argues that a central and underresearched aspect of digital news publishing business models concerns the production networks that support the co-production of digital news offerings. To fill this knowledge gap, this dissertation explores the strategic design of the digital news publishing production networks that are associated with HTML-based news offerings on the open Web. In order to do so, a theoretical model is developed that is suited for the analysis of the strategic design of business models, including the production networks that support them, in the sectors of the economy that are affected by networked informatization in general and in digital news publishing specifically. The theoretical model includes a business model construct that enables a detailed analysis of production networks and an integrated strategy theory that combines networked-based approaches to value creation and capture with Emerson’s power-dependence theory in order to conceptualize both collaboration and competition strategies. In addition, a novel method is developed that can be used to collect and analyze very large amounts of data on the resource exchanges that take place between news publishers and their business partners. The method allows for systematic mapping of the flows of resources in digital news publishing ecologies and of the production networks that are associated with the co-production of digital news offerings. The theoretical model and methodology developed in the dissertation are used to explore the American digital news publishing ecology and the strategies that 41 different leading American news publishers use to design their production networks. In the analysis, the activities carried out by and resource flows between a total of 1,356 business partners and news publishers in the American digital news publishing ecology are identified and visualized. In addition, a fundamental architecture that is shared by all digital news publishing production networks and a typology of 9 different types of production networks are identified. Furthermore, it is found that the structure of the American digital news publishing ecology is highly asymmetric and gives rise to a number of specific strategic dilemmas for news publishers. Finally, 9 different types of strategies that news publishers use to design their production networks, each of which mediates the dilemmas they face in different ways, are identified. In the conclusion to the dissertation, the findings of the dissertation are discussed, put into perspective, and connected to the existing research on other elements in digital news publishing business models in order to bring us closer to a holistic theory of the strategic design of digital news publishing business models

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Controversing Datafication through Media Architectures

In this chapter, we discuss a speculative and participatory “media architecture” installation that engages people with the potential impacts of data through speculative future images of the datafied city. The installation was originally conceived as a physical combination of digital media technologies and architectural form—a “media architecture”—that was to be situated in a particular urban setting. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it was produced and tested for an online workshop. It is centered on “design frictions” (Forlano and Mathew, 2014) and processes of controversing (Baibarac-Duignan and de Lange, 2021). Instead of smoothing out tensions through “neutral” data visualizations, controversing centers on opening avenues for meaningful participation around frictions and controversies that arise from the datafication of urban life. The installation represents an instance of how processes of controversing may unfold through digital interfaces. Here, we explore its performative potential to “interface” abstract dimensions of datafication, “translate” them into collective issues of concern, and spark imagination around (un)desirable datafied urban futures

Situating Data

Taking up the challenges of the datafication of culture, as well as of the scholarship of cultural inquiry itself, this collection contributes to the critical debate about data and algorithms. How can we understand the quality and significance of current socio-technical transformations that result from datafication and algorithmization? How can we explore the changing conditions and contours for living within such new and changing frameworks? How can, or should we, think and act within, but also in response to these conditions? This collection brings together various perspectives on the datafication and algorithmization of culture from debates and disciplines within the field of cultural inquiry, specifically (new) media studies, game studies, urban studies, screen studies, and gender and postcolonial studies. It proposes conceptual and methodological directions for exploring where, when, and how data and algorithms (re)shape cultural practices, create (in)justice, and (co)produce knowledge