1,692 research outputs found

    Connecting Narrative Worlds

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    Report on the 6th International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling: “Connecting Narrative Worlds”, BahçeƟehir University Istanbul, November 6-9, 201

    Dissonant Fabulation: Subverting Online Genres to Effect Socio-Cognitive Dissonance

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    “Dissonant fabulation” describes an emerging genre of fictional narratives in online spaces whose generic conventions construct expectations of realism. This genre is defined not as a form but as a mode of written communication that uses its genre’s conventions and expectations even while subverting them to inspire social and political questions and discourse. Two case studies are analyzed for their creation of socio-cognitive dissonance leading to social discourse: Amazon.com reviews of BIC Cristal For Her pens and the faux Target customer service Facebook profile “Ask ForHelp”. The genre of dissonant fabulations is discussed and contextualized within critical digital intertextual discourse and fictional narratives

    To live and die on Tranquility Lane : the participatory narrative and satire of Fallout 3

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    This article focuses on 1950’s American iconography and the player’s participation in Fallout 3’s central storyline to explore the satire of Fallout 3. My approach goes beyond Marcus Schulzke’s argument that Fallout 3 is a morality simulator, which falls into a tradition of non-narrative approaches to studying videogames. Rather than concede that all videogames are a pariah to a traditional media narrative ecology, consisting of novels, movies, and theatre, I claim that Fallout 3 is both simulation and narrative. Under this framework, I investigate a critique on war, in relation to the game’s ridicule of the idea of a 1950’s American golden age. The central story episode, “Tranquility Lane,” where the player is trapped in a simulation of a 1950’s suburbia is the primary focus, and its Rockwellian imagery is explored in relation to the “Fallout universe’s” post-apocalyptic setting to provide a commentary that works in opposition to the radio propaganda of the artificial intelligence John Henry Eden. In relation to this analysis, I consider Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra, Mary Caputi’s analysis of neo-conservatism in America, and the idea of free will for the inhabitants of Tranquility Lane and the player. I show that the narrative requirements constrain the player’s free will in the simulated open world environment and that the player is essentially in the same position as the inhabitants of Tranquility Lane. As such, I argue that behind the simulation of the “Fallout universe” is a critique of war in “our universe.

    A Comparative Cyberconflict Analysis of Digital Activism Across Post-Soviet Countries

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    This article analyses digital activism comparatively in relation to three Post-Soviet regions: Russian/anti-Russian in Crimea and online political deliberation in Belarus, in juxtaposition to Estonia’s digital governance approach. The authors show that in civil societies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, cultural forms of digital activism, such as internet memes, thrive and produce and reproduce effective forms of political deliberation. In contrast to Estonia, in authoritarian regimes actual massive mobilization and protest is forbidden, or is severely punished with activists imprisoned, persecuted or murdered by the state. This is consistent with use of cultural forms of digital activism in countries where protest is illegal and political deliberation is restricted in government-controlled or oligarchic media. Humorous political commentary might be tolerated online to avoid mobilization and decompress dissent and resistance, yet remaining strictly within censorship and surveillance apparatuses. The authors’ research affirms the potential of internet memes in addressing apolitical crowds, infiltrating casual conversations and providing symbolic manifestation to resistant debates. Yet, the virtuality of the protest undermines its consistency and impact on offline political deliberation. Without knowing each other beyond social media, the participants are unlikely to form robust organisational structures and mobilise for activism offline

    Digitizing the American West: Analyzing Rhetoric in Red Dead Redemption 2

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    High-budget, long-form storytelling games offer dozens of hours of content for audiences to explore and learn from. Although far different from sitting and reading a book, there is a distinct connection to be made between how literature is experienced and how audiences can experience a narrative-heavy video game. Based on this connection, there are bridges to be built between video games and literature, understanding how one field can benefit from the other as well as how one field can be informed by the other. An analysis of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 using reader response theory can illustrate the similarities between the experiences gained from reading and the experiences gained from interacting with digital narratives

    The Big Disease with the Little Name: Retelling the Story of HIV & AIDS in an Evolving New Media Landscape

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    Stories shape our social reality. This research explores new ways of storytelling around the topic of HIV and AIDS by using augmented reality (AR) and electronic literature to experiment with the meaning, structure, and form that a story can take. Employing a mixed methodological approach that combines Research through Design, Transmedia Storytelling and Critical Design methodologies, this thesis unpacks the potential of digital technologies in retelling and revisioning the story of HIV and AIDS as a way to give voice to stories that are often left unheard. AR Disclosures is an interactive documentary installation that tells stories about HIV in the form of augmented reality latrinalia. Once Upon A Virus is an interactive dystopian fantasy that subverts fairy-tale motifs in order to explore themes of inequality in relation to the AIDS epidemic. These two exploratory prototypes aim to propose new ways in which storytellers might leverage evolving new media technologies and experimental storytelling techniques to tell the story of HIV and AIDS to a new audience, while contributing to a developing definition of what the practice of storytelling is and looks like today

    POLITICS AND PERFORMATIVE AGENCY IN NIGERIAN SOCIAL MEDIA

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    In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which social media in Nigeria functions through online signifying practices as a strategy of demarginalization and subaltern resistance. I engage with this perspective by framing Web 2.0 platforms as enablers of citizens’ right to public and performative speech. Interested in the ways in which netizens imagine the nation and perform political selves and identities through viral and popular images on social media, my dissertation underpins a reading of social media that is grounded in an expanded conception of speech, visual and/or verbal. This approach enables me to take cognizance of the voices and perspectives secured by the decentralized capacity of digital media for everyday citizens with access to the Internet. Engaging with how social media re-centers alternative perspectives to prevailing orthodoxies, I explore the ways in which marginal groups, mostly relegated to the periphery of governmental power, emerge in performative spaces of public discourses through digital cultural signifiers such as the selfie, viral Internet memes, and humorous political cartoons posted online. I show that despite the limitations of cyberspace and the uneven access to internet technologies in some parts of Nigeria, social media is a discursive, if not contested, space of cultural production from which postcolonial subjects ‘author’ media narratives that revise, resist, and challenge exclusion and marginality. By analyzing the significations of user-generated cultural forms, mostly fictional images (Internet memes) and actual performative representations (the selfie) produced as vectors of digital activism and resistance, the dissertation highlights the varied ways in which social media functions as a rearticulating mechanism for a more inclusive appearance of young people and women in Nigeria’s public sphere. I analyze the production and circulation of these images within a framework that positions them as supplemental performative strategies to digital activism. Extrapolating the economy of meanings inherent in these images begins, for me, by unsettling the postmodern assumption that mediatized culture is futile for resistance. The refutation of such arguments is necessary to consolidate the claim that the capacity for agency and representation, which social media affords excluded or oppressed populations is more pertinent than the positivist and teleological expectations some scholars have of digital articulations of dissent

    2023 Jan Term Course Catalog

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    Immigration: Arts, Culture and Media 2010 - A Creative Change Report

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    In fall 2009 The Opportunity Agenda launched an Immigration Arts and Culture Initiative with the goal of fostering arts, culture, and media activities that promote the inclusion, integration, and human rights of immigrants in the United States. The near-term focus of the initiative is to inform, engage, and inspire the creative community and advocates of immigrant inclusion on how they might effectively collaborate with one another to engage key audiences on the issue of national immigration reform. The longer-term goal is to highlight and develop best practices and effective models for the creative community and immigrant advocacy organizations to build public support for immigrant integration and human rights and a funding base for creative collaboration across immigrant integration and human rights issues
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