Invocations of feminism: cultural value, gender, and American quality television

This thesis examines the emergence of a trend in American post-millennial television often described in journalistic discourses with the term ‘feminist quality TV’. While the strategic reliance on feminist politics is a historically established method in American television to promote certain programming’s cultural value, the cultural specificities of the early 21st century deem this phenomenon unique enough for an in-depth study. The emergence of ‘feminist quality television’ is governed by the rhetorical subversion of two phenomena simultaneously: the much-debated development of the era’s masculine-coded ‘quality television’ culture on the one hand, and the dominance of ‘postfeminist’ popular culture on the other. Post-millennial ‘quality television’ culture cultivates the idea of aesthetic-generic hierarchies among different types of scripted programming. This category’s development has facilitated academic interest in television texts’ evaluative analysis based on aesthetic merit, an approach that other strands of TV scholarship contest for sidestepping the gendered and classed processes of canonisation informing the phenomenon. By the mid-2010s, the debate between aesthetic versus political analysis had intensified in television studies. The thesis intervenes in this by arguing for a synthesis of approaches that does not further foster already prominent processes of canonisation, but interrogates the cultural forces underlying them. Via detailed analyses of four programmes emerging within the ‘feminist quality TV’ trend, namely 30 Rock (2006-2013), Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), The Good Wife (2009-2016), and Orange Is the New Black (2013-), it seeks to understand how they mediate their cultural significance by negotiating formal-aesthetic exceptionalism and a politicised rhetoric around a ‘problematic’ postfeminism, thus linking ideals of political and aesthetic value. The ultimate purpose of this research is to demonstrate the necessity in television analysis of unpacking both the specific genderedness of television’s cultivation of aesthetic value, and the context of aesthetics and form in which the programmes’ political implications emerge

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

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

StarTroper, a film trope rating optimizer using Deep Learning and Evolutionary Algorithms

Designing a story is widely considered a crafty yet critical task that requires deep specific human knowledge in order to reach a minimum quality and originality. This includes designing at a high level different elements of the film; these high-level elements are called tropes when they become patterns. The present paper proposes and evaluates a methodology to automatically synthesise sets of tropes in a way that they maximize the potential rating of a film that conforms to them. We use deep learning to create a surrogate model mapping film ratings from tropes, trained with the data extracted and processed from huge film databases in Internet, and then we use a Genetic Algorithm that uses that surrogate model as evaluator to optimize the combination of tropes in a film. In order to evaluate the methodology, we analyse the nature of the tropes and their distributions in existing films, the performance of the models and the quality of the sets of tropes synthesised. The results of this proof of concept show that the methodology works and is able to build sets of tropes that maximize the rating and that these sets are genuine. The work has revealed that the methodology and tools developed are directly suitable for assisting in the plots generation as an authoring tool and, ultimately, for supporting the automatic generation of stories, for example, in massively populated videogames

Multimodal Learning from TV Drama using Deep Hypernetworks

학위논문 (석사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 2. 장병탁.최근 인터넷기술의 발전과 딥 러닝 연구의 활성화를 통해 인공지능 연구에 관련된 데이터가 급격히 증가하고 있다. ImageNet, WordNet과 같은 정형화된 단일 모달리티 데이터는 물론, Flickr 8K, Flickr 30K, Microsoft COCO와 같은 대표적인 멀티모달 데이터들도 있다. 이러한 정적 데이터로부터 학습된 인공지능 기술은 이미지 검색, 시각-언어 번역 등 많은 분야에서 성공사례들을 보이고 있다. 하지만 실세계에서 더욱 다양한 문제를 다루기 위해서는 동적 멀티모달 데이터를 효율적으로 학습할 수 있는 인공지능 기술이 필요하다. TV드라마는 인간 사회의 엄청난 지식을 포함하고 있는 대용량 데이터이다. 이러한 비디오 데이터는 자유로운 스토리 전개를 통해 인물들 간의 관계뿐만 아니라 경제, 정치, 문화 등 다양한 지식을 사람들에게 전달해주고 있다. 특히 다양한 장소에서 인간의 대화 습성과 행동 패턴은 사회관계를 분석하는데 있어서 아주 중요한 정보이다. 하지만 TV드라마의 멀티모달과 동적인 특성으로 인해 학습모델이 비디오로부터 자동으로 지식을 습득하기에는 아직 많은 어려움이 있다. 이러한 문제점들을 해결하려면 효과적인 동적 멀티모달 데이터 학습 기술과 다양한 영상처리 기술들이 필요하다. 본 논문에서는 TV드라마의 지식을 자동으로 학습하고 분석하는 딥 하이퍼네트워크(Deep hypernetworks) 기반 멀티모달 학습 방법론을 제안한다. 딥 하이퍼네트워크는 계층적 구조를 이용하여 다양한 단계의 추상화를 통해 데이터로부터 지식을 학습한다. 이러한 특징으로 인해 모델이 복잡한 멀티모달 학습을 효율적으로 진행할 수 있다. 기존의 고정된 신경망 모델의 구조와는 달리 딥 하이퍼네트워크의 구조는 유동적으로 변할 수 있어 동적인 정보를 다루기에 적합하다. 제안된 방법론을 통해 본 논문에서는 TV드라마를 분석하였다. 실험을 위해 183편 에피소드, 총 4400분 분량의 TV드라마 'Friends'를 사용했고 다양한 영상처리 기법을 통해 장소와 등장인물 등 시각 정보를 추출하였다. 본 논문에서는 딥 하이퍼네트워크 모델을 통해 자동으로 소셜 네트워크를 생성하여 TV드라마에서 출현하는 다양한 장면에서의 인물 관계 변화를 분석하였다. 이러한 소셜 네트워크 분석으로부터 제안된 방법이 멀티모달 학습을 할 수 있음을 알 수 있었다. 또한 스토리의 전개에 따른 인물관계 변화로부터 동적 멀티모달 데이터를 학습할 수 있었음을 확인하였다. 모델의 학습정도를 평가하기 위해 본 논문에서는 데이터로부터 학습된 지식을 활용하여 시각-언어 번역 실험을 진행하였다. 실험결과로부터 멀티모달 학습을 통해 추출된 지식이 시각-언어 번역 정확도에 기여하였음을 알 수가 있고 스토리의 축적에 따라 정확도가 높아졌음을 확인하였다.I. 서 론 1 1. 연구 배경 및 목적 1 2. 논문 구성 4 II. 관련 연구 5 1. 딥 네트워크 기반 멀티모달 학습 연구 5 2. 멀티모달 데이터 분석 연구 7 2.1. 소셜 미디어의 정보 추출 7 2.2. 비디오 데이터의 소셜 정보 분석 8 3. 시각-언어 번역 연구 9 III. 딥 하이퍼네트워크 11 1. 하이퍼네트워크 11 1.1. 하이퍼네트워크 구조 11 1.2. 하이퍼네트워크 학습 14 2. 딥 하이퍼네트워크 15 2.1. 딥 하이퍼네트워크 구조 15 2.2. 딥 하이퍼네트워크 학습 18 IV. 데이터 전처리 23 1. TV드라마 시각 정보의 추출 23 1.1. 등장인물 인식 방법 23 1.2. 장소 분류 방법 26 2. 데이터 전처리 및 실험 설정 28 V. 결과 및 논의 30 1. 소셜 네트워크 분석 30 1.1. 인물 중심 네트워크 시각화 기법 30 1.2. 장소 기반 네트워크의 정량적 평가 34 2. 시각-언어 번역 38 VI. 결 론 42 참고문헌 43 영문요약 51Maste

Television fiction and online communities : an analysis of comments on social networks and forums made by female viewers

This article analyses the feeling of communities of female social viewers who watch television fiction and participate in social networks and forums dedicated to the programmes. The sample is made up of 7,849 comments from 157 platforms (49 Facebook pages, 71 Twitter accounts and 37 forums). We describe the characteristics of these communities of fans, which differ significantly from cult fandoms and are based on ICT interweaving between reception and female viewers' daily lives. The results reveal that these active online poster and lurker communities express themselves through their emotional ties with the television series, self-reflection and the manifestation of intimacy. Identification with the group is based on the relationship of the storylines with their own lives, with no attempts at constructing a cultural or political identity

Risky Business: Creative Development in Digital Media

Honors (Bachelor's)Screen Arts and CulturesUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134713/1/nsalka.pd

Early independent production entrepreneurs in UK television: agents of a neo-liberal intervention

This essay focuses on the operation of the UK independent television production sector in the context of the entrepreneurial aspirations of company owners in the 1990s. The calculative practices used running these small and medium sized companies are examined and the experiences in managing them are mapped as they negotiated an evolving fitness landscape. Analysis is provided of the strategies adopted including the need to develop reputation and relational contracts to secure a constant flow of commissions. Conclusions are drawn about this transitional phase of entrepreneurship in this sector ahead of Government intervention in the market through imposing new terms of trade between independent production companies and broadcasters