Browsing by Subject "new media"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Extending Knowledge Domains for New Media Education: Integrating Interaction Design Theory and Methods
    (2010-08) Faiola, Anthony; Davis, Stephen Boyd; Edwards, Richard
    Over the last 10 years, new media has ascended to a prominent place in many fields that utilize communication technologies. At the same time, new media education has evolved in such a way that students are often not prepared to understand the social context of new media design and development. To produce new media professionals who are adequately prepared to meet the needs of an online hyper-social marketplace, new media curricula must reflect those human-centered theories and practices found within the discipline of interaction design, in addition to formal new media technical knowledge. The authors propose a new three-by-three theoretical model, referred to as Knowledge-Operators-and-Domains (KOD). Applying this model suggests an approach that extends the practical boundaries of new media to include a range of human-centered theories and practices, such as ethnography and usability-based studies.
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    The persuasiveness of humanlike computer interfaces varies more through narrative characterization than through the uncanny valley
    (2015) Patel, Himalaya; Pfaff, Mark S.; Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie; MacDorman, Karl F.; Šabanović, Selma
    Just as physical appearance affects persuasion and compliance in human communication, it may also bias the processing of information from avatars, computer-animated characters, and other computer interfaces with faces. Although the most persuasive of these interfaces are often the most humanlike, they incur the greatest risk of falling into the uncanny valley, the loss of empathy associated with eerily human characters. The uncanny valley could delay the acceptance of humanlike interfaces in everyday roles. To determine the extent to which the uncanny valley affects persuasion, two experiments were conducted online with undergraduates from Indiana University. The first experiment (N = 426) presented an ethical dilemma followed by the advice of an authority figure. The authority was manipulated in three ways: depiction (recorded or animated), motion quality (smooth or jerky), and recommendation (disclose or refrain from disclosing sensitive information). Of these, only the recommendation changed opinion about the dilemma, even though the animated depiction was eerier than the human depiction. These results indicate that compliance with an authority persists even when using a realistic computer-animated double. The second experiment (N = 311) assigned one of two different dilemmas in professional ethics involving the fate of a humanlike character. In addition to the dilemma, there were three manipulations of the character’s human realism: depiction (animated human or humanoid robot), voice (recorded or synthesized), and motion quality (smooth or jerky). In one dilemma, decreasing depiction realism or increasing voice realism increased eeriness. In the other dilemma, increasing depiction realism decreased perceived competence. However, in both dilemmas realism had no significant effect on whether to punish the character. Instead, the willingness to punish was predicted in both dilemmas by narratively characterized trustworthiness. Together, the experiments demonstrate both direct and indirect effects of narratives on responses to humanlike interfaces. The effects of human realism are inconsistent across different interactions, and the effects of the uncanny valley may be suppressed through narrative characterization.
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    Public Pedagogy and Popular Culture: Assessing Satire and Activism in an Emergent Media Landscape
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Herrera, Omar; Nightingale, Amy
    Popular culture has created a widened scope through which non-traditional political actors participate in the public sphere. Moreover, new media technology such as YouTube videos, blogs, and internet memes has created new possibilities for crafting and exacting social change. Although scholars debate whether these opportunities harm or bolster genuine political activism, the fact remains that more individuals have the ability to gain access to and influence the public conversation thereby raising consciousness and galvanizing new communities. Through a communications and cultural studies framework, this research explores the opportunities and limitations of political satire within this media landscape of evolving web technologies. This exploration considers two case studies where non-traditional groups have been able to influence the national conversation. First, we analyze the LGBTQ community’s response to the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) widely-distributed advertisement “The Gathering Storm,” which opposed marriage equality and supported California’s Proposition 8. The satirical and parodic video responses produced by websites like Funny or Die exposed holes in NOM’s argument against marriage equality that might have remained inconspicuous without satirical intervention. Second, we examine the rhetoric of comedian Lalo Alcaraz and his ability to propel the term “self-deportation” to the national stage, eventually having the satirical term adopted into the right wing political platform. Under the pseudonym Daniel D. Portado, Alcaraz organized efforts online to promote the farcical policy, which resulted in political participation en masse on the part of otherwise alienated immigration activists. We argue that these satirical, new mediabased interventions provide alternative sites of political discourse that direct attention to issues and perspectives that would otherwise be ignored in the public sphere. Consequently this type of satirical intervention serves as a public pedagogy of the people in that it has the potential to help traditionally marginalized perspectives raise political consciousness and influence decision making.