No one tells you this : Secondary orality and hypertextuality

What follows is a somewhat autophagous essay on secondary orality in the form of a virus or counter-fugue or a list or a (hypertext) (narrative). You may think of it as overlay, as echolalia.Not

Don Quixote, intermediality and remix: Translational shifts in the semiotics of culture

In Yuri Lotman’s terms intertextual relationships as active dialogues among texts and cultures should be the starting point for an analysis of the concepts of intermediality, cross-mediality and transmediality. This article considers adaptations and remakes as intermedial processes and remix practices as transmedial ones. The article demonstrates how the processes of transposition, remake and remix may sometimes be only partial, or in other instances they may shift towards entirely different textual systems/levels. At metasemiotic levels, the strategies that build the narrative worlds may either conceal or emphasize the interdependent relations between source and target texts, as well as between their cultural semiotic systems and their emergent ‘metatexts’ of self-description. In the second half of the article brief semiotic analyses will be presented in order to investigate mechanisms of the intermedial and transmedial networks that start from a literary text, Don Quixote by Cervantes, and continue to cinema and new digital media

A Narrative of Uncertain Intent: Communication Ethics Literacy and FBI Counterterrorism Practices

This project works in the horizon of one driving question: What value does communication ethics bring to counterterrorism practices in this current moment? Following insights of communication ethics scholars that have come before, this work understands communication ethics as practices that yield social literacy about what matters to an other. This work adds to communication ethics scholarship the following finding: When applied to current and future events, communication ethics literacy affords one a lens for opening and sustaining spaces for creative communicative response. Through five chapters—which work in tandem to perform an application of communication ethics literacy to the current and ongoing practices of FBI counterterrorism—this project finds that what one ends up with is not solution-based answers, but reflective communicative practices that sustain counter responses to terrorism. These reflective practices, performed with attentiveness to communication ethics literacy, validate the importance of communications ethics for thinking about and responding to terrorism. Communication ethics literacy affords professionals a lens for exploring the questions that shape counterterrorism. And while this application does not provide answers for the demands that terrorism places on professionals in this historical moment, it provides meaningful assistance for navigating threats in a manner that does justice to the diverse nation it seeks to protect. In this moment where solution-based answers are not an attainable reality, and the demands of terrorism are ongoing, reflective communicative practices offer a space for learning and adapting to challenges in real-time

Wreading, Performing, and Reflecting: The Application of Narrative Hypertext and Virtual World Experiences to Social Work Education

In this dissertation I propose the use of a new media composition of narrative hypertext, performances in a virtual world, and a dialogic process of writing to provide a continuum of learning opportunities in social work education. I suggest that the structure of the hypertext narrative, embedded with hypermedia, mirrors the dissociative aspects of traumatic memory. I argue that work with the multivocality and multisequentiality of narrative hypertext emulates the process of discovery in the clinical interview. The immersive component of work in a virtual world deepens the realism and affective impact of simulations and creates opportunities to practice and demonstrate engagement, assessment, and intervention skills. The writing component of the new media composition actively engages students in a dialogic process that hones the development of self-reflexive practice and a professional social work identity. In developing the project, I enlisted the input of two groups of key informants. Content experts provided background that informed the narrative and scripts. A second group of faculty, students, and practitioners provided input on project design and identified potential barriers to success and anticipated outcomes. Informants suggest that the continuum of media engages students with a variety of learning styles, offers safe ways to practice skills as a precursor to interviews with actual clients, and allows for exploration of diverse identities as an avatar. Potential barriers include the time and resources required to learn new technologies and the potential for students to be triggered by trauma content. Informants offered recommendations to address the barriers. Three changes were immediately incorporated into the structure and content of the project to address these concerns

Complex Feedback Loops of Technoscience, Literature, and Culture: Dynamics of the Complexity Paradigm in Scientific Fiction

This dissertation explores the emergence of the complexity paradigm in our technoscience culture and proposes "scientific fiction" as a genre of cultural studies based on that paradigm. Throughout this dissertation, I use the terms and concepts of complexity theory developed by new science, which revises the reductionism and linearity of classic science. The complexity paradigm signifies a system of all knowledge that conceives the productivity and creativity of the complexity created by interconnective and interactive dynamics among and within systems. As a literary response to the complexity paradigm, scientific fiction emphasizes the productivity and creativity of the complexity, offering the possibility of the human‘s co-evolution with technoscience. These characteristics of scientific fiction help articulate new ontological, ethical, and aesthetic visions for the posthuman. This dissertation ultimately highlights the strong feedback loops of technoscience, literature, and culture, which promote the complexity paradigm. By comparing Pat Cadigan‘s Synners as a scientific fiction novel and William Gibson‘s Neuromancer as a representative postmodern science fiction novel, Chapter II presents the defining characteristics of scientific fiction, reconfiguring humanity in relation to the technoscience environment. Furthermore, analyzing Greg Bear‘s Blood Music, the chapter claims that the human subject is an adaptive, self-organizing, interconnective system. Grounded in such understandings of humanity and subjectivity, the next chapter examines Marge Piercy‘s He, She and It to offer a new ethical perspective, or the complexity ethics, which establishes the interconnective and interactive relationship between the human and the technological as an evolutionary partner. The complexity ethics describes human behaviors and thoughts in our technoscience culture rather than prescribing a moral guideline. Next, in investigating Shelley Jackson‘s Patchwork Girl, a hypertext novel that rewrites Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, Chapter IV explores a new aesthetics appreciating the creativity of the complexity produced by interconnective and interactive dynamics. Finally, through the analyses of the scientific fiction novels, this dissertation suggests that scientific fiction is a transdisciplinary field that can offer new cultural visions

Cinematic Palimpsests: Polysemy and In(ter)dependency in the Spectator Experience

The model of the cinematic palimpsest helps us to critically reevaluate formal aspects of film language, relationships between film texts, and the construction of cinematic meaning in conversation with the spectator. Originating in Medieval Europe, a palimpsest is traditionally defined as a book or similar physical text “created by a process of layering whereby the existing text was erased, using various chemical methods, and the new text was written over the old one” again and again (Dillon 2005). Palimpsests rely on the core principle of in(ter)dependency, wherein each element or layer is both independent and interdependent, inherently affecting the significance of other elements around it and being affected in turn by those other elements. In this study, the theoretical model of the palimpsest is applied to three aspects of the cinematic experience, from the intra- to the inter- and extratextual levels. Emphasizing the multiplicity of the lived experience of cinematic viewership, the model seeks to explain the intersubjective, dialogic relationship of the human mind to the media technologies it encounters on a regular basis in the 21st century

Медиа грамотность: перспектива Украины

The development of new media and rapid global technicalization and computerization of all spheres of human life – business, education, culture, etc. – make digital and media literacy proficiency an indispensable skill for everyone. In Ukraine, despite the urgent requirements of the time, media education is still fragmented and is implemented sporadically, and there is no integration of the efforts of teachers-innovators into a unified effective system of media education which is to play an indispensable role in creating civil society. Studying and analyzing experience of more advanced countries in the area of media education, means and ways of making media education really effective, not just one more subject for pro forma which school and university students do not consider interesting and useful, should become the focus of future research and discussions.Поява новітніх ЗМІ, компьютерізація всіх сфер життя суспільства - бізнесу, освіти, культури - перетворює медіа грамотність в найбільш важливе вміння сучасної людини, Незважаючи на те, що медіа грамотність відіграє важливу роль в формуванні свідомості громадянського суспільства, медіа освіта в Україні фрагментарна, епізодична та неефективна. Досвід більш розвинутих західних країн може бути корисним.Появление новых средств массовой информации, компьютеризация всех сфер жизни общества – бизнеса, образования, культуры – превращает медиа грамотность в наиболее востребованное умение для современного человека. Несмотря на насущную необходимость владения медиа грамотностью и ее ведущую роль в создании гражданского общества, в Украине медиа образование фрагментарно, эпизодично, неэффективно. Изучение опыта более передовых в области медиа грамотности западных стран может быть полезным для украинских педагогов