“We Ain’t Playing F*Cking Nice…”: Reactionary Fandom, Playful Platforms, and the White Masculine Crusader Fan Identity

This dissertation will explore the role of brand culture, digital platforms, and fan play in the development of a reactionary fan identity that I call the white masculine crusader (WMC). By interrogating the playful affordances of digital platforms and how people adopt fan practices in reaction to contemporary politics, I reveal three distinct (yet interconnected) fannish and playful embodied expressions of reactionary politics and white supremacy conspiracy theories (the tactical body, the fit body, and the spiritual body). The following chapters highlight how fan communities not only seek and spread reactionary content but often poach brands to play out fantasies of fighting back against a world corrupted by secularism, multi-culturalism, and progressive politics. This dissertation is designed to show how our current media environment, through playful and preparatory practices, enables the persistence of white supremacy and the growth of far-right extremism

Gesture based persuasive interfaces for public ambient displays

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Informática 2º Semestre, 2011/2012This Master thesis studies how Public Ambient Displays (PAD) can be used as a tool to achieve behaviour change, through persuasive technology. In order to reach the goals of the thesis, an interactive public ambient display system called Motion-based Ambient Interactive Display (MAID) was developed. MAID is driven to motivate behaviour changes regarding domestic energy consumption, through a persuasive game interface based on gesture recognition technology. The developed prototype guides players through the different rooms of a house, where they have to find out what is wrong and practice the correct actions to save energy, using similar gestures to the ones they would use in real life to achieve the same goals. The system provides feedback regarding the consequences of each action, in order to make users aware of the consequences of their actions. The implementation of MAID is based on a purpose built, highly configurable and modular framework. It allows the administrator to fine tune and tweak the application to the necessities of the setup location constraints, by adjusting basic display properties, change image content or even modify the scripted gameplay itself. The scripted game system is flexible enough to allow the repurposing of the framework, beyond the previously defined theme, for future studies. The MAID was subjected to user testing, in order to show that it is possible to create a persuasive PAD interface, using seamless interaction methods, with the currently available technology, and use it to spread awareness of a cause, leading to behaviour change.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - project DEAP (PTDC/AAC-AMB/104834/2008); CITI/DI/FCT/UNL (PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/201

Queering Virtual Groups: Exploring Facebook Groups as a space for identity construction and social justice among the LGBTQ community in India

India has emerged as one of the top users of the Internet. However, the question is how the rise of the Internet influences a society like India, which is still struggling with issues like poverty, literacy, employment, religion, and gender. This research endeavors to explore one aspect of that question by studying the role of the social media platform – Facebook Groups, for the LGBTQ community in India against the backdrop of the societal taboos and lack of legal support for the queer community, coupled with the existing infrastructural loopholes like education and technology. Over the past couple of decades, India has been witnessing a wave of change as conversations surrounding non-normative gender and sexuality is on the rise. Following from the social identity theory, social identity model of de-individuation effects (SIDE), and the theory of counterpublics, this sequential mixed methods research analyzes and presents an understanding of the relationship that exists between social media, identity, LGBTQ community, and the Indian social context. It is hoped that it will add to the conversation surrounding social media and identity, particularly queer identity, and enable an understanding into how social media can be used for identity construction for a minority population like the queer community, in a socio-cultural context like India

Twitters Impact on Sports Media Relations

The introduction of Social Media (SM) into sports communications in professional leagues is disrupting the traditional methods of sports media relations. In the past, teams used websites to post information for fans, but it was strictly a one-way format of communication whereby a story was posted for fans to read. To fully engage with this new communication channel, the sports communications departments in professional leagues have begun to use SM to communicate directly with fans through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Currently, SM like Twitter allows the team communication departments to communicate directly with fans in an interactive two-way format that is not mediated by a reporter or someone from a traditional media outlet. In addition, the open format of SM means that media relations staff are no longer the only intermediary between the media and the players; through the use of SM like Twitter, a professional athlete can now communicate directly to fans without gatekeepers like the media or the sports communications department of the team. This thesis will explore how SM has changed media relations from several different perspectives. The first perspective is related to the risks that are associated with the use of SM by professional athletes: without an intermediary or a filter for athlete-fan communication, many athletes have caused irreparable damage to their reputation and the reputation of their team. The second perspective is related to the benefits for teams that use SM as a platform to connect with fans: the ability to connect with fans using SM is new to sports communications and represents an interactive one-to-one and one-to-many mode of communication through which the fan can directly communicate with the team. Finally, this research will look at how Twitter has changed media relations in sports from the perspective of the lived experiences of people who work in sports media. To explore the risks associated with athletes’ use of social media, this research used Situational Crisis Communication Theory as a theoretical framework to explore reputation-damaging incidents that occurred through social media. The study reviewed national media stories reported in North America from 2009 to 2010 that were perceived to have negative impact on athletes’ reputation. In total, 17 incidents were reviewed — seven incidents in particular demonstrated the athlete as the source of the SM crisis. Through the review and categorization of these 17 situations, the study was able to identify four broad categories of situations that a sports communication manager needs to be prepared for. The four categories identified were “Rookie Reporter”, “Team Insider”, “Opportunist”, and “Imposter”. Each of these categories are invaluable for team communication managers to recognize in order to address the risks associated with social media. To explore the benefits associated with the communications department’s use of social media, this research used Uses and Gratification theory as a theoretical framework to explore how and why fans followed team Twitter accounts. This study was conducted in partnership with the Canadian Football League (CFL) and a total of 526 people responded to an online survey that was tweeted out to them for their feedback. The results of the survey indicated several significant findings — in particular, the phenomenon of converged sports fan consumption was identified, which has not been previously acknowledged in academic research. The phenomenon of converged sports fan refers to the multi-screen environment whereby a sports fan decides where, when, and how they want to consume sporting content. This research identified that in-game consumption of SM while watching television and the mobile consumption of SM are both dominant ways for fans to interact with their teams. This multi-modal format of connecting with the team supports the idea of Henry Jenkins’s Black Box Fallacy (2006, p. 13): as teams move forward in developing communications platforms to reach their fans, they will need to recognize that all channels can and do work together. In order to further understand how Twitter has changed sports media relations, the study used long semi-structured interviews with a phenomenological research design to understand how Twitter has impacted sports media relations. The phenomenological analysis of the informant interviews suggested that Twitter is the source of three themes of change: general media relations, mechanical job functions, and other changes specific to sports media relations. The significance of Twitter’s impact on sports media relations cannot be understated. With the ubiquitous use of SM like Twitter, it is important to understand how sports media relations can use SM to manage the image of their respective teams and athletes. After looking at SM and sports from three different perspectives, the pivotal finding was the role that Twitter and mobile communications play in ‘flattening’ sports media relations. Similar to how Friedman (2006) argued that the convergence of the personal computer drove globalization, Twitter and the increased adoption of mobile communications have flattened the role of sports media relations. This research will explain how the flattening of sports media relations happened and what the implications might be for sports media professionals

Examining the Relationship Between Trust, Credibility, Satisfaction, and Loyalty Among Online Donors

Despite more than $769 million in charitable gifts in 2013, U.S. nonprofit organizations lost$735 million in lapsed and reduced gifts. Donor attrition is a problem for most charitable organizations, and many are using the Internet to cultivate donors. Online communication has become an important part of fundraising for many charitable organizations. The online communication factors in the current study include trust, credibility, and satisfaction. These factors may affect donor loyalty. Donor loyalty may increase or decrease donor attrition. Reducing donor attrition is important to anyone who plays a role in the success of a nonprofit organization. The purpose of the current cross-sectional quantitative study was to examine the relationship between the communication factors and the loyalty among online donors. The theoretical foundation for this study includes Bandura\u27s social cognitive theory and Luhmann\u27s social systems theory. Data were collected online from a random sample of online donors aged 18 years or older in the United States. Spearman correlation was used to assess the correlation between the independent and dependent variables. The results indicated there is a correlation between communication factors and loyalty among online donors in the United States. This study may help organizations communicate better with donors in an online environment and reduce online donor attrition. Reducing attrition will increase funding to a charitable organization through repeat donations, thereby helping improve finances to support the organization\u27s mission and positively influencing societal change

Digital Diasporas and transnational Identities: Media Practices of the Spanish Diaspora in Germany

The dissertation focuses, from a practice-based approach, on the processual, relational and situated character of the concept of “digital diaspora”. I selected the contemporary Spanish diaspora in Germany as a case study, applying a combination of two research methodologies: a) in-depth qualitative interviews and b) qualitative content analysis. Practice theory approaches (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 1996) seek to build social theory centred on "practices", rather than structures, systems, individuals, or interactions (Postill, 2010). RQ1 addresses both personal relationships and the public/political media practices of Spanish migrants in Germany: How do diaspora communities develop their personal relations and public-political participation within the network? To answer this question, I proposed the concept of “migrant’s digital associationism” to describe new digital logics of migrant communicative practices. It incorporates the public and political articulation 'within' the diaspora. The RQ2 addresses the processes of cultural identity and community development: How do contemporary Spanish migrants in Germany symbolically construct a sense of we-ness, Spanish-ness and otherness through their media practices? Here I specifically discuss discursive practices connected with different processes of belonging with the aim of illustrating how these identities are embedded in concrete realities. In this phase I also relate the concepts of belonging and memory, developing the construction of memory as a situated space of negotiation through certain social and communicative practices. The RQ3 constitutes the synthesis of the first question and the second, combining the conclusions drawn in both the public-private interaction and the identity analysis phase: Which role play the ICT and media practices in the construction of transnational communities and identities? Through the analysis of media practices and their processes of belonging, I develop the concept of Digital Diaspora from a practice-based approach as a contested and negotiated space in terms of belonging, but, at the same time, with a material and embodied basis

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Modern trends in digital transformation of marketing & management

The monograph examines the current trends in the development of digital technologies in marketing, management and business administration. The prospects for the development of digital technologies in various sectors of the economy of Ukraine and the trends of the influence of digital technologies on global shifts in the systems of marketing management and business administration are determined. The transformations of business models in the conditions of the digital economy are analyzed, the impact of blockchain technologies on the development of promising areas of the marketing management system and business administration is analyzed. Reasonable impact of digital technologies on the transformation of management systems in social, public, legal and administrative spheres and various sectors of the economy. The contours of the formation of the digital economy in the sectors of economic activity and the social sphere have been developed