The User Experience of Participation: Tracing the Intersection of Sociotechnical Design and Cultural Practice in Digital Ecosystems

In this dissertation, I combine methods from Technical Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and User Experience Design to trace the social and creative practices of social web participants. Using actor network theory, I explore the concept of participation as social and creative practice that demands coordinative knowledge work enacted within a cultural space. Leveraging the insight gained from this research, I develop the user experience of participation as a research and design methodology that privileges the movement of people and information in order to structure and re-structure social connections. I explore this methodology through three intersections between people and technology. The first is between the practices of digital participants within online cultures and the policies aimed at regulating their social and creative work. Second, participation is defined in the ways that local exigency of participants intersects with the implementation of regulations and policies through technological design. Finally, a third intersection appears when participants work to restructure their relationships to policies and technologies through coordinative knowledge work that uncovers and links information within digital ecosystems

Innovation in symbolic industries: the geography and organisation of knowledge sourcing

This paper deals with geographical and organisational patterns of knowledge flows in the media industry of southern Sweden, an industry that is characterised by a strong ‘symbolic’ knowledge base. Aim is to address the question of the local versus the non-local as the prime arena for knowledge exchange, and to examine the organisational patterns of knowledge sourcing with specific attention paid to the nature of the knowledge sourced. Symbolic industries draw heavily on creative production and a cultural awareness that is strongly embedded in the local context; thus knowledge flows and networks are expected to be most of all locally configured, and firms to rely on informal knowledge sources rather than scientific knowledge or principles. Based on structured and semi-structured interviews with firm representatives, these assumptions are empirically assessed through social network analysis and descriptive statistics. Our findings show that firms rely above all on knowledge that is generated in project work through learning-by-doing and by interaction with other firms in localised networks. The analysis contributes to transcending the binary arguments on the role of geography for knowledge exchange which tend to dominate the innovation studies literature.knowledge base; cultural industry; regional innovation system; network analysis; Sweden

Prizes for innovation

The use of prizes to stimulate innovation in education has dramatically increased in recent years, but, to date, no organization has attempted to critically examine the impact these prizes have had on education. This report attempts to fill this gap by conducting a landscape review of education prizes with a focus on technology innovation. This report critically analyses the diversity of education prizes to gauge the extent to which these new funding mechanisms lead to innovative solutions in this sector. This is supplemented with interviews with sponsors and prize participants to gain the much needed practitioner’s perspective. We address important questions that pervade as prizes are being implemented in this sector: What seems to be working and why? How do prizes compare to other funding mechanisms to stimulate technology innovations? How is sustainability achieved? What can be learned that can inform the design of future prizes? A number of important assumptions are re-examined, namely, that technology innovation is central to educational reform, prizes stimulate innovation, scalability is a proxy for sustainability, and prizes are the most efficient funding mechanism to stimulate innovation. We recalibrate expectations of technology innovation prizes in the educational field against empirical evidence. We reveal key trends through the deploying of prizes in this field and offer case studies as good practices for sponsors to consider when designing future prizes. The report makes recommendations to enhance the impact of prizes, drawing from interdisciplinary sources. The intent of this report is to enable sponsors to distinguish the hype surrounding these prizes and proceed to design prizes that can best serve the education sector

Reframing the Networked Capacities of Ubiquitous Media

International audienceJames J. Gibson's concept of perceptual affordances has a long history, particularly within the field of human computer interaction (HCI) where the concept has been used in various ways to address both the material and cultural requirements of interactive systems. New modes of digital media which look to engage a range of affordances as present in contemporary smartphone platforms offer an opportunity to rethink this critical divide within the use of the concept of affordances. Defining a concordance between Gibson's use of the term and Manuel DeLanda's theory of assemblages, it becomes possible to chart the networks of affordances present in the interaction with and function of these new media forms. Through an analysis of Kate Pullinger's Breathe, a redefined understanding of the possibilities of affordances is developed, one that is concerned with both the materiality of the system itself and the speculative frame that is developed

Creative Transformation and the Knowledge-Based Economy: Intellectual Property and Access to Knowledge under Informational Capitalism

This dissertation contributes to critiques of informational capitalism by analyzing the role intellectual property (IP) law plays in the appropriation and commodification of knowledge. Using an interdisciplinary framework rooted in the critical political economy of communication and critical legal studies, this dissertation focuses on how IP law is used to appropriate knowledge as a commodity and support accumulation in a so-called knowledge-based economy, better understood as informational capitalism. Informational capitalism is legitimated by neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist beliefs, which I demonstrate to be fallacies that support political economic concentrations and inequitable processes of commodification, spatialization, and structuration. International organizations and governance regimes, such as the international trade-based IP system, diffuse these beliefs and thereby legitimize practices that remove knowledge and information from their social contexts. This dissertation propounds the use of a knowledge/information dialectic to highlight the mutually constitutive relationship between knowledge-based resources and informational assets. As I demonstrate, digital and peer-based production alternatives challenge IP law by highlighting the socio-cultural aspects of knowledge/information necessary for commodification to occur. Such alternatives represent an emerging informational politics responding to the inequities of informational capitalism. Using Karl Polanyis double movement thesis, I focus on alternative practices of knowledge production and management as counter-movements to IP seeking to support a greater variety of socio-cultural concerns and more equitable political economic structurations. In particular, through a critical analysis of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Movement (an umbrella term covering various civil society and non-Western approaches to IP), I demonstrate how informational politics simultaneously resist and extend the economically reductionist and technologically determinist fallacies they purport to oppose. By tracing the emergence of the concept of A2K and performing a critical discourse analysis of key primary and secondary Movement texts, I show it to be a counter-movement that concurrently opposes and reinforces key neoliberal, libertarian, and technologically-determinist assumptions. I conclude that human rights-based discourses and human capability approaches to development provide alternative normative frameworks that oppositional movements might use to address the political economic inequities posed by IP-based informational capitalism

An empirical study on the adoption of mobile location-based advertising

Increasing market penetration of smart phones and mobile broadband subscriptions has created new marketing communication avenues that allow interactive and highly targeted advertising based on individuals' location and contextual environment. However, the factors that guide consumers' adoption of such advertising and consumer perceptions of this new advertising channel are not yet fully understood. This research attempts to bridge this gap. Location-based services are smart phone applications that enable this avenue. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that influence consumer acceptance and adoption of one specific type of location-based service, location- based advertising, where advertising messages are customized to individuals' location, personal information and interests. Drawing theories from the fields of technology adoption, social psychology, and mobile marketing, ten constructs are identified and a modified conceptual model and hypotheses are built and tested with survey data from 138 individuals. Structural equation modeling is used to test 10 factors that influence consumer adoption of location-based advertising: (1) attitude, (2) social influence, (3) perceived usefulness, (4) perceived ease of use, (5) perceived enjoyment, (6) compatibility (7) incentives, (8) personal innovativeness, (9) privacy issues, (10) Attitude toward advertising in general. The results indicate that enjoyment - as entertainment, fun, and interactive - is the strongest driver that influence individuals' attitude that in turn, is the strongest determinant of behavioral intention to adopt location-based advertising. A strong indirect influence of compatibility, perceived usefulness and incentives to adoption is also found. The relationship between privacy issues and personal innovativeness toward adoption are not statistically significant and therefore, their importance in guiding consumer adoption of location-based advertising cannot be determined based on this research

Our Health Matters: Promoting the Health of Sexual Minority Women in the New Media Landscape

The shifts occurring in the mediascape and the field of public health offer new opportunities for promoting the health and wellness of sexual minority women. As a population that has historically been underserved by the healthcare system, sexual minority women face multiple barriers to achieving positive health outcomes. They are often less likely to access preventive healthcare services and more likely to engage in risky behaviors that are detrimental to health than heterosexual women. Despite the significant health disparities among sexual minority women, studying this population has not been a priority in health research and there is little research-based evidence to guide patient-provider communication or health interventions. Public health and LGBT advocates have called for further health research on sexual minority women, funding and advocacy to promote their health, and education for healthcare providers on how to provide preventive health services in a way that is sensitive to the unique needs of this population. This research project is situated at the intersections of new media, gender studies, and health communication. A non-probability study of sexual minority women in the U.S. was conducted in order to plan and implement a Web-based health communication campaign in Colorado that encourages preventive health practices among sexual minority women. This paper assesses the ways in which new media can best be leveraged to improve the health outcomes of this population