Life editing: Third-party perspectives on lifelog content

Lifelog collections digitally capture and preserve personal experiences and can be mined to reveal insights and understandings of individual significance. These rich data sources also offer opportunities for learning and discovery by motivated third parties. We employ a custom-designed storytelling application in constructing meaningful lifelog summaries from third-party perspectives. This storytelling initiative was implemented as a core component in a university media-editing course. We present promising results from a preliminary study conducted to evaluate the utility and potential of our approach in creatively interpreting a unique experiential dataset

Using punctuation as an iconic system for describing and augmenting video structure

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-101).Affordable digital cameras, high bandwidth connectivity and large-scale video hosting websites are combining to offer an alternative mode of production and channel of distribution for independent filmmakers and home moviemakers. There is a growing need to develop systems that meaningfully support the desires of these filmmakers to communicate and collaborate effectively with others and to propel cinematic storytelling into new and dynamic realms. This document proposes the development of a networked software application, called PlusShorts, that will allow a distributed group of users to contribute to and collaborate upon the creation of shared movie sequences. This system introduces an iconic language, consisting of punctuation symbols, for annotating, sharing and interpreting conceptual ideas about cinematic structure. The PlusShorts application presents individual movie sequences as elements within an evolving cinematic storyspace, where participants can explore, collaborate and share ideas.Aisling Geraldine Mary Kelliher.S.M

Everyday Mediated Storytelling

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-110).Personal stories make our experiences memorable over time. Transforming our fragmentary memories into shareable narratives helps us to understand and communicate who we are as individual and social beings. This thesis presents 'Everyday Mediated Storytelling', a model of the casual storyteller's process of capturing, creating and sharing personal mediated narratives. The purpose of this model is to better support rich-media storytelling through systems that enable storytellers to engage with personal media in a reflective, meaningful and shareable process. Based on the Everyday Mediated Storytelling model, an online authoring and publishing application for creating everyday rich-media narratives named 'Confectionary' was developed. Confectionary provides the storyteller with a spatial storytelling environment that encourages creativity and experimentation, supports a wide variety of storymaking styles, provides novel wayfinding strategies for story discovery and enables the audience to actively and broadly interpret personal rich-media stories. As a spatial storytelling environment, Confectionary reduces cognitive overload on the storyteller by making it easy to begin authoring, supports a wide variety of storymaking strategies and styles and enables the audience to engage in reflective dialogs through multiple active feedback modes.(cont.) Results from a comparative evaluation with other current best practice within the context of online media and story sharing applications indicate that a spatial authoring and publishing application is more enjoyable to use, better facilitates the process of beginning to tell stories and is easier to navigate and explore. Quantitative and qualitative results from a lengthy study with a group of committed users signify the success of the system as an engaging everyday tool for personal storytelling that stimulated self-reflection and broadened the scope of media capture techniques and storytelling strategies demonstrated by its users. Critical lessons were learned about methodology and system design for rich-media personal storytelling. The model, methodology, and system presented in this thesis provide a basis for understanding how we move fluidly between our direct experiences, our cognitive and emotional reflections and our storied representations and interpretations. This thesis also demonstrates how a spatial everyday authoring and publishing application advances the digital storytelling process from one of collective anthology to one of storied reflection.by Aisling Geraldine Mary Kelliher.Ph.D

Perceived vulnerability and its impact on the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities

Stigma is instigated through society’s judgement on what it deems undesirable, causing the devaluation of a person’s identity. People with intellectual disabilities are classed as socially different therefore undermining their identity as a ‘normal’ member of society. Objectives The principal research is based on how people with disabilities navigate stigma to form lasting relationships. The aim of this study is to explore how people with intellectual disabilities navigate stigma in their daily lives and their experiences of being treated differently. Methods A qualitative research method was chosen, using critical disability theory as a guiding concept. It proposes that disability is a social construct of our society. The experiences of seven people with intellectual disabilities aged from 20 to 53 were explored. Thematic analysis was completed and ATLAS.ti was used for data analysis. Results The participants had varying levels of understanding regarding their disability, none of them had a complete awareness of what disability meant and the implications that it has in their lives. The participants were involved in a variety of activities but the commonality was the overwhelming level of support, supervision and control being provided at all times. Conclusions People with intellectual disabilities are being sheltered from information that would give them a full awareness of their own disability. Families and the services involved in their care are creating a protective capsule around them from the stigmatisation associated with disability. This protection is necessary at times, but the perceived vulnerability of people with intellectual disabilities is hindering their autonomy and expression of individuality