Our door is always open : Aligning Literacy LearningPractices in Writing Programs and Residential LearningCommunities

Writing studies has considered college students\u27 literacy development as a chronological progression and as influenced by their off-campus connections to various cultural and professional communities. This project considers students\u27 literacy development across disciplines and university activity systems in which they\u27re simultaneously involved to look at the (missed) opportunities for fostering transfer across writing courses and residential learning communities as parallel—but rarely coordinated—high-impact practices. Rather than calling for the development of additional programs, I argue for building/strengthening connections between these existing programs by highlighting shared learning outcomes focused on literacy skills development and learning how to learn

The Paratexts of Audience Engagement: Cover Matter That Draws in and Keeps Readers

Within the book publishing industry, purchase statistics often determine a book’s success. This metric neglects crucial factors of reader engagement (i.e., reception and anticipation of current and future work) such as level of interest and appreciation. By blending key concepts from work on assemblage, ecology, reader-response, audience invoked, and media studies, this thesis attempts to (re)invigorate the discourse of book paratexts’ role in inspiring reader engagement. As a manifestation of various voices performing and contextualizing a core text for readers, paratexts are a key component to the discursive uptake of books by readers and their publics. Book covers, specifically, are the most front-facing paratexts and have considerable potential to inspire lasting engagement in audiences. Specifically, this project uses a stylistic analysis of 3 prominent books from the independent press imprint Algonquin to examine the choices made in the composing, production, and initial uptake of these texts as they attempt to move into spheres of discourse. In this manner, this thesis investigates the potential for cover matter to inspire engagement in theory, in intent, and in practice. By asking what potential functions book paratexts can perform, scholars and industry professionals can better gage what paratextual choices correspond to quality instances of public and reader engagement

Surveillant assemblages of governance in massively multiplayer online games:a comparative analysis

This paper explores governance in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), one sub-sector of the digital games industry. Informed by media governance studies, Surveillance Studies, and game studies, this paper identifies five elements which form part of the system of governance in MMOGs. These elements are: game code and rules; game policies; company community management practices; player participatory practices; and paratexts. Together these governance elements function as a surveillant assemblage, which relies to varying degrees on lateral and hierarchical forms of surveillance, and the assembly of human and nonhuman elements.Using qualitative mixed methods we examine and compare how these elements operate in three commercial MMOGs: Eve Online, World of Warcraft and Tibia. While peer and participatory surveillance elements are important, we identified two major trends in the governance of disruptive behaviours by the game companies in our case studies. Firstly, an increasing reliance on automated forms of dataveillance to control and punish game players, and secondly, increasing recourse to contract law and diminishing user privacy rights. Game players found it difficult to appeal the changing terms and conditions and they turned to creating paratexts outside of the game in an attempt to negotiate the boundaries of the surveillant assemblage. In the wider context of self-regulated governance systems these trends highlight the relevance of consumer rights, privacy, and data protection legislation to online games and the usefulness of bringing game studies and Surveillance Studies into dialogue

A Prototype Comparison of Human Trafficking Warning Signs: U.S. Midwest Frontline Workers’ Perceptions

Guided by the cognitive prototype approach, this article examines the prototype structure of the frontline workers’ perceptions concerning warning sign indicators in human trafficking. Online survey responses across a range of workplace sectors were analyzed using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) for three groups. These groups were based on respondents’ self-reported human trafficking experiences: no witness (no encounter of human trafficking), sex trafficking witness, and labor trafficking witness. The MG-CFA analysis revealed a three-factor structure – physical condition, reproductive health, and personal risk – representing the participants’ perceptions of the warning signs. Further analysis showed group-level mean (latent intercept) and variance differences between the prototype structures of the three witness groups. The final structural model results indicate that these group-level prototype differences can be explained by two organizational resource variables: identification protocol and training. The results are discussed in light of the current empirical literature on human trafficking identification, stereotypical frames of victimhood, and policy practices

Youth Violence Myths and Realities: A Tale of Three Cities

A study of media coverage of youth violence, actual crime data, and interviews with committed youth and the professionals that work with them

The postcolonial cultural economy the politics of British Asian cultural production

This thesis is an investigation into the production of British Asian cultural commodities. While the hybrid qualities of contemporary British Asian vernacular cultures have largely been celebrated within cultural studies for de-essentialising fixed notions of national identity and disrupting racist nationalist discourse, the thesis considers how this political potential is determined during the process of commodification. As certain radical cultural studies theorists have argued, capitalism is inscribed with a neo-colonial logic that has the effect of transforming British Asian cultural forms in particular, into Orientalist sites of exotica, thus undermining their transcriptive capacity. Yet such accounts lack a sustained engagement with the cultural industries and cultural production, and subsequently fail to adequately explain how such a process actually occurs. Reconceptualising commodification as a technology through which capitalism governs the counter-narratives of difference, this thesis is an empirical investigation into the experiences of British Asian cultural production in the culture industries. It focuses on the production of Asian cultural commodities in three cultural industries: theatre, broadcast television, and book publishing. Drawing from in-depth interviews, participant observation, and analysis of trade literatures, publicity materials and the commodities themselves, the research elaborates accounts of British Asian cultural production, providing a deeper and multi-layered reading of what occurs during the commodification of Otherness. It is through the concept of the postcolonial cultural economy that this thesis argues that a sociological approach to the cultural industries and cultural production, framed within postcolonial concepts of epistemology and power, is the most effective way of conceptualising the political effectiveness of particular anti-racist cultural strategies. I argue that such an approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the complex relation between capitalism and race as it occurs in the global cultural economy, revealing the spaces from which effective cultural-political interventions can be held

Laughing and Yelling Through Yaks: A Content Analysis of Yik Yak, Exploring Humor Topics, Types, Styles and User Motives in the Anonymous Social Media Environment

This study examines 2,000 posts divided by a default thread and hot thread on Yik Yak, an anonymous mobile platform. Results reveal that 1) silliness is the most frequent humor type in both threads; 2) humorous posts with negative styles are adopted more significantly than positive styles in the hot thread; 3) “social media, media and television” is the most frequent humor topic; and 4) user motives are unrelated to humorous posts

Consuming online communities : computer operating systems, identity and resistance

A defining feature of the modern era of computer technologies has been a massive reliance upon the mass consumption of personal operating system software. Currently three products dominate how the world experiences computer operating system – Microsoft‘s Windows, Apple‘s Mac, and Linux. The near monopoly held by Windows has been a crucial enabler of the ICT revolution, while the small but significant markets held by Mac and Linux provide alternatives to Windows monoculture. Aside from their technical differences each offers distinct examples of modern-day branding, with individuals forming communities in which members signify their allegiance with these products. This thesis presents these individuals as User-Fans – those who develop an affinity with the mundane products of modern culture. Adapted from the fan models forwarded by Thorne and Bruner (2006), and Hunt, Bristol and Bashaw (1999), it is proposed that User-Fans are an acknowledgement of the extremes of devotion displayed by modern consumerism while also conveying an acceptance that consumerism is a form of discourse where strong allegiances can exist. Central to this thesis is the idea that brand communities exist as a consumer response to the emerging influence of the consumer society. Muñiz and O‘Guinn‘s (2001) brand community theory provides an apt description of the behaviour and bonds exhibited by the consumers central to this study. In outlining the convergence of individual and communal worship‘ of brands the brand community concept is adopted as both a form of communal interaction and the outcome of consumer devotion. The emergence of brand communities and User-Fandom reflects wider shifts in a society enveloped within the rhetoric of consumerism and the influence of the consumer society. Central to this is the manner in which the relationship between producers and consumers has evolved. In noting this relationship it becomes important to determine whether individuals are active agents within this system or if they are passive to the hegemonic forces that surround them. For the purpose of this research the consumer perspective was focused upon. It is the description of these converging forces that stands as the major theoretical contribution of this study. In performing netnographic research on the postings of operating systems users on online forums, the research identifies distinct forms of social interaction and consumer-product relationships. The broad concepts of community, identity, the consumer society and resistance have been brought together to establish a framework in an attempt to explain the socielity within this context. The analysis of the forums through the theoretical grounding allow for the concepts of brand communities, User-Fandom and resistance through consumerism to be explored