User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Framing the Dark Web: A study in portrayal of the Dark Web in documentary films

Through its name, the Dark Web is often associated with activities that are generally illegal and unethical, but why is this? Through the different services that make up the Dark Web, it stands as a technology that inherently exists to protect people's privacy and free speech. This thesis aims to examine how media portrays the Dark Web and how its association is so negatively loaded through the lens of documentary film. This thesis applies a theoretical framework of rhetoric and documentary film from Bill Nichols and Carl Plantinga in a comparative study of the two films "Inside the Dark Web" by BBC and "Down the Deep, Dark Web" by Zygote Films and Upian. The comparative study explores how these documentaries apply various techniques and thematic focuses to portray the Dark Web. It is shown that there is a commonality in what they communicate. However, how they apply techniques to communicate; reveal a distinctive difference. The thesis argues that both documentaries give more explicit and detailed depictions of negative aspects and focus on the negatives from the Dark Web, thus reinforcing the association and narrative that the Dark Web is not a place for everyone

Framing the Dark Web: A study in portrayal of the Dark Web in documentary films

Through its name, the Dark Web is often associated with activities that are generally illegal and unethical, but why is this? Through the different services that make up the Dark Web, it stands as a technology that inherently exists to protect people's privacy and free speech. This thesis aims to examine how media portrays the Dark Web and how its association is so negatively loaded through the lens of documentary film. This thesis applies a theoretical framework of rhetoric and documentary film from Bill Nichols and Carl Plantinga in a comparative study of the two films "Inside the Dark Web" by BBC and "Down the Deep, Dark Web" by Zygote Films and Upian. The comparative study explores how these documentaries apply various techniques and thematic focuses to portray the Dark Web. It is shown that there is a commonality in what they communicate. However, how they apply techniques to communicate; reveal a distinctive difference. The thesis argues that both documentaries give more explicit and detailed depictions of negative aspects and focus on the negatives from the Dark Web, thus reinforcing the association and narrative that the Dark Web is not a place for everyone

Producing a Documentary Film on Dish-ability, a Local Organization, to Examine the Conversation Surrounding Empowering People with Disabilities in Butte, Montana

People with disabilities are underrepresented, both in media and real life. Historically, they haven’t always been portrayed accurately and ethically on screen. In everyday life, they are sometimes overlooked, especially when it comes to the workforce. This project employs the core competencies of Technical Communication and uses documentary filmmaking to examine the conversation surrounding people with disabilities. This document serves as a meta-text that accompanies the film, Food for Good, created and produced by myself. It details how I used a lens of communication to follow a local organization in Butte, Montana that empowers individuals with disabilities to prepare for today’s work environment. From writing interview questions to post-production work, it discusses the rhetorical, technological, and methodological processes used to research and complete this documentary film

The Visual Guidance of Dance Images in Humanities Documentaries

Do communicators' emotional expressions in dance-themed visual expressions in humanities documentaries depend on the visual guidance of dance camera language? There is limited information related to humanities documentaries with dance as a theme in the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the creator's visual guidance on an audience's perception of dance images. Based on a humanities documentary’s overall tone, the communicator selected appropriate dance sequences and dance clips and recorded them from a dancer's point of view to capture an image's moral expression and bring the humanities documentary to a climax. The study explored whether an audience’s perspective of visual information from a dance in which the dance body language is guided by a video varies from that perceived when watching the dance in the past. This analysis opens up new avenues for video display and dance representation for the expression of dance video, to satisfy an audience's sense of observation and communicate an emotional expression

Classified by Genre: Rhetorical Genrefication in Cinema

This dissertation argues for a rethinking and expansion of film genre theory. As the variety of media exhibition platforms expands and as discourse about films permeates a greater number of communication media, the use of generic terms has never been more multiform or observable. Fundamental problems in the very conception of film genre have yet to be addressed adequately, and film genre study has carried on despite its untenable theoretical footing. Synthesizing pragmatic genre theory, constructivist film theory, Bourdieusian fan studies, and rhetorical genre studies, the dissertation aims to work through the radical implications of pragmatic genre theory and account for genres role in interpretation, evaluation, and rhetorical framing as part of broader, recurring social activities. This model rejects textualist and realist foundations for film genre; only pragmatic genre use can serve as a foundation for understanding film genres. From this perspective, the concept of genre is reconstructed according to its interpretive and rhetorical functions rather than a priori assumptions about the text or transtextual structures. Genres are not independent structures or relations among texts but performative speech acts about textual relationships and are functions of the rhetorical conditions of their use. This use is not only denotative, but connotative, as well, insofar as certain genre labels evoke aesthetic or moral judgments for certain users. This dissertation proposes the concept of meta-genres, or the sum total of textual and extra-textual attributes plus the evaluative valances a given user associates with a generic label. Meta-genres help guide interpretation and serve as a shorthand for evaluative judgments about certain kinds of films, and are thus central to the kinds of taste politics negotiated through film texts. The rhetorical conditions of genre use can be typified, and this dissertation adapts concepts and methods from the field of rhetorical genre studies to show that the film genre use is most readily observable through its uptake rhetorical genres. These rhetorical genres, in turn, index the social groups and recurring situations that they are called upon to meet. By studying examples like academic writing, popular press reviews, filmmaker interviews, internet message board comments, and digital media recommendation systems, one can identify how specific deployments of generic terms serve as a nexus of text, user, group, and social activities, and can develop a methodology for studying genre as use relative to those dimensions

The climate change sublime: Leveraging the immense awe of the planetary threat of climate change

Environmental communication scholarship has not significantly advanced the fundamental theories of sublime discourse since their introduction with John Muir and his advocacy for Yosemite National Park. Such a lacuna is problematic, as humanity is entering the age of the Anthropocene where vast ecological destruction is becoming increasingly relevant, and audience engagement is essential if we are to mitigate the worst to come. This essay seeks to remedy the lack of inquiry into how sublime discourse is used to engage audiences with elements of the Anthropocene, in particular, climate change. Based on the analysis of two documentaries, Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, I find that the sublime response to the Anthropocene and the films’ modifications to the sublime rhetoric pattern are novel and uniquely engage audiences with climate change, to varying degrees of success. Ultimately, I argue that such sublime rhetoric is capable of overcoming the constraints associated with communicating the diffuse and overwhelming threat of climate change, demonstrating its viability in this instance of the Anthropocene