The Role of Public Service Journalism and Television in Fostering Public Voice and the Capacity to Consent: an Analysis of Spanish Viewers’ Discourses

This paper explores the relevance of voice, recognition and consent as central attributes of the subject of participatory journalism. On the understanding that in democracy the design of political and social organisation ought to favour a process that develops the public voice of citizens, it explores the role that journalism, above all the public service kind, plays in meeting this objective. From this perspective, an analysis is performed on the discourses of the viewers of the newscasts of the Spanish public TV channel TVE, with a view to determining to what extent public recognition is based on the following three elements: (1) the recognition of citizens as such, and (2) their capacity to give or withhold their consent and (3) to develop a voice capable of vindicating participation. The discussion and results aim to contribute to the debate on the ‘critical juncture’ (McChesney, 2007) of media history, at which the information ecosystem is undergoing far-reaching changes

The body as inhabitant of built space : the contribution of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Don Ihde

This study explores the problem of how we perceive built space and relate to its abstract representations. In 1897, Poincaré presented the problem of space for the 20th century in his essay ‘The Relativity of Space’, in which the human body and technics in our spatial experiences were already implied. Merleau-Ponty and Don Ihde's work is based on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and has been influenced to different degrees by Martin Heidegger. The study is presented as a comparative historical-thematic textual study. For Merleau-Ponty, our primordial perception is general, pre-self-conscious and ambiguous. It is only in reflecting on our lived experiences that we can adequately describe our perceptions. One's own body is the means of having a world that is already intersubjective. Merleau-Ponty explicates the fusion of body and soul, as well as our irreducible relation to the world by referring to studies of behavioural pathologies. From these studies the motility and spatiality of one's body, as well as habit acquisition are already informative on general spatial experiences, the syntheses of our perceptions and the unity of the world. The body-subject is the nexus of all levels of perceptions. Merleau-Ponty describes the constitution of embodiment relations (by means of habit acquisition) with artefacts that mediate our interaction and perceptions in the world. Ihde extends this aspect of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Building on Merleau-Ponty's explications of the body, Ihde poses a structure of human-technology relations with different variations: embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, background and horizonal relations that transform our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Ihde's 'body one' and 'body two' are based on the notion that perception is meaningful and culturally informed. Ihde (after Husserl), shows that geometry and Euclidean space are instances of cultural habitus as an abstraction from the lifeworld. The different human-technology relations are present in our lifeworld-experiences of which built space is constantly part in the background or foreground of our projects and actions. By comparing both philosophers' work in a phenomenological explication of built space, new light is thrown on our experiences and perceptions thereof which have implications on architectural education.Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011.Philosophyunrestricte

Crafting the wearable computer: Design process and user experience

The purpose of the research described in this thesis was to develop a design methodology for Wearable Computing concepts that could potentially embody authenticity. The Wearables community, still firmly rooted in the disciplines of engineering and ergonomics, had made clear its aspirations to the mainstream market (DeVaul et al 2001). However, at this point, there was a distinct lack of qualitative studies on user perceptions of Wearable products. A review of the market research literature revealed significant consumer demand for authenticity in goods and services, and it was this need that drove the program of research.The researcher’s experience as a contemporary jeweller led her to question the positivist design processes of Wearable Computers. The ‘borg’-like aesthetics that had come to characterise these products reflected their origins in the laboratory, and implicit configurations of the user appeared to be acting as a barrier to wider adoption. The research therefore looked to Craft as a creative process with a fundamentally different working philosophy to begin building a new methodology for Wearables.Literature reviews of authenticity and Craft were conducted to provide the theoretical framework necessary for a practice-led enquiry into the design process. Further empirical work was undertaken in the form of the comfortBlanket, a concept design project, and a small survey of makers to provide a set of protocols for craft informed design processes. Following this, a suite of wirelessly networked jewellery was designed for a friendship group of five retirement aged women, and built in collaboration with the Speckled Computing Consortium, Scotland.The user centred methodology is informed by Actor Network Theory to account for the agency of the researcher and the event of task based analyses, and includes lifeworld analysis techniques drawn from a range of disciplines such as psychology and experimental Interaction Design.Three data sets collected over the course of two years were analysed using Grounded Theory, and a novel visualisation tool was developed to illustrate potential commitment to the novel concept designs. The methodology revealed a story of what the women made of the jewellery, how they enacted these understandings, and where this process took place. It was found that evaluating concept designs for the everyday and for authenticity require different approaches and that the design process does not end with the user, but with a reflexive analysis by the designer or researcher. In many respects the proposed methodology inverts standard design practices, presenting as many questions as it seeks to resolve.The methodology is presented as a contribution to emerging communities of practice around Wearable Computing, and to those developers seeking to position their products in the everyday. It is a challenging process that embodies authenticity in its post-structural treatment of functionality, the user and evaluation. Finally, the implemented wireless jewellery network represented the first application of Speckled Computing, and it is anticipated that the theoretical frameworks arrived at will also be of interest to Interaction Design and Contemporary Craft