Digital anthropology and educational eGames: learning through behavioural patterns in digital, game-based contexts

The selected publications are focused on the relations between users, eGames and the educational context, and how they interact together, so that both learning and user performance are improved through feedback provision. A key part of this analysis is the identification of behavioural, anthropological patterns, so that users can be clustered based on their actions, and the steps taken in the system (e.g. social network, online community, or virtual campus). In doing so, we can analyse large data sets of information made by a broad user sample,which will provide more accurate statistical reports and readings. Furthermore, this research is focused on how users can be clustered based on individual and group behaviour, so that a personalized support through feedback is provided, and the personal learning process is improved as well as the group interaction. We take inputs from every person and from the group they belong to, cluster the contributions, find behavioural patterns and provide personalized feedback to the individual and the group, based on personal and group findings. And we do all this in the context of educational games integrated in learning communities and learning management systems. To carry out this research we design a set of research questions along the 10-year published work presented in this thesis. We ask if the users can be clustered together based on the inputs provided by them and their groups; if and how these data are useful to improve the learner performance and the group interaction; if and how feedback becomes a useful tool for such pedagogical goal; if and how eGames become a powerful context to deploy the pedagogical methodology and the various research methods and activities that make use of that feedback to encourage learning and interaction; if and how a game design and a learning design must be defined and implemented to achieve these objectives, and to facilitate the productive authoring and integration of eGames in pedagogical contexts and frameworks. We conclude that educational games are a resourceful tool to provide a user experience towards a better personalized learning performance and an enhance group interaction along the way. To do so, eGames, while integrated in an educational context, must follow a specific set of user and technical requirements, so that the playful context supports the pedagogical model underneath. We also conclude that, while playing, users can be clustered based on their personal behaviour and interaction with others, thanks to the pattern identification. Based on this information, a set of recommendations are provided Digital Anthropology and educational eGames 6 /216 to the user and the group in the form of personalized feedback, timely managed for an optimum impact on learning performance and group interaction level. In this research, Digital Anthropology is introduced as a concept at a late stage to provide a backbone across various academic fields including: Social Science, Cognitive Science, Behavioural Science, Educational games and, of course, Technology-enhance learning. Although just recently described as an evolution of traditional anthropology, this approach to digital behaviour and social structure facilitates the understanding amongst fields and a comprehensive view towards a combined approach. This research takes forward the already existing work and published research onusers and eGames for learning, and turns the focus onto the next step — the clustering of users based on their behaviour and offering proper, personalized feedback to the user based on that clustering, rather than just on isolated inputs from every user. Indeed, this pattern recognition in the described context of eGames in educational contexts, and towards the presented aim of personalized counselling to the user and the group through feedback, is something that has not been accomplished before.

Nagaland: Borders, Boundaries, Belonging: Contested spaces and disputed narratives

In 2011 I travelled to three of the ‘Seven Sister’ states of old Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya & Assam. My journey to this remote and politically sensitive region, bordering Chinese occupied Tibet, Bangladesh and Myanmar was prompted by my father’s experiences in the region during WW2 in the Burma Campaign and brought into sharp relief on-going themes in my work, the impact the past has on the present, the relationship of time and place, identity and memory and the transcultural experiences caused by war, colonisation and migration. The drawings I made on location, the objects I collected and the notes and photographs I took formed the basis of the bookwork: NAGALAND borders boundaries belonging. When making the finished work the material quality of the object and the processes by which it was made become very important. The historical resonance of the medium and the time consuming nature of the process reflect the embedding of form and idea, and paid homage to the material culture of the Naga hill tribes. The bookwork was hand-bound, handset and printed by letterpress. Some spreads were printed in 6 colours and the book took over a year to produce. I see my practice as echoing that of generations of Lady travellers; embracing the need to journey, be in a liminal space, to have a plan but not be afraid to divert from it. To be alone, take a sketchbook and make images is, for me, the definition of the itinerant illustrator; one who travels widely in geographic space, visual forms and ideas, in order to get lost and find the unlooked for.

Big Money is Moving in, Docklands Community Poster Project and posters from the East London Health Project

The exhibition took as its departure the rediscovery of the experience of the working photographer from 1920-1930, and the new intellectual context that emerged subsequent to 1968, that was marked by a new form of urban resistance.

Re-modelling clay: ceramic practice and the museum in Britain (1970-2014)

This thesis analyses how the dialogue between ceramic practice and museum practice has contributed to the discourse on ceramics. Taking Mieke Bal’s theory of exposition as a starting point, it explores how ‘gestures of showing’ have been used to frame art‑oriented ceramic practice. Examining the gaps between the statements these gestures have made about and through ceramics, and the objects they seek to expose, it challenges the idea that ceramics as a category of artistic practice has ‘expanded.’ Instead, it forwards the idea that ceramics is an integrative practice, through which practitioners produce works that can be read within a range of artistic (and non-artistic) frameworks. Focusing on activity in British museums between 1970 and 2014, it takes a thematic and broadly chronological approach, interrogating the interrelationship of ceramic practice, museum practice and political and critical shifts at different points in time. Revealing an ambiguity at the core of the category ‘ceramics,’ it outlines numerous instances in which ‘gestures of showing’ have brought the logic of this categorisation into question, only to be returned to the discourse on ‘ceramics’ as a distinct category through acts of institutional recuperation. Suggesting that ceramics practitioners who wish to move beyond this category need to make their vitae as dialogic as their works, it indicates that many of those trying to raise the profile of ‘ceramics’ have also been complicit in separating it from broader artistic practice. Acknowledging that those working within institutions that sustain this distinction are likely to re-make, rather than reconsider ceramics, it leaves the ball in their court.

Exploring the relationship between women’s empowerment and the internet in China: potentials and constraints

This thesis reports on an exploratory study of the relationship between the Internet and women’s empowerment in China. The theoretical framework of the study combines feminist theorisations of power – the core concept of empowerment – with insights from sociological perspectives on power and gender, as well as collective action theory. This allows for the conceptualisation of women’s empowerment as a dynamic process that is shaped by a set of communicative practices. Focusing on female Chinese bloggers and women’s groups of different organisational types, this study aims to explore the respective ways in which these two types of women actors use the Internet with a view to examining whether, and the extent to which it enables them to generate a sense of empowerment. The empirical data mainly derives from interviews with female bloggers and with staff members from different women’s groups, as well as from a features analysis and social network analysis of the sampled blogs and official websites of studied groups. Overall, the findings suggest that the opportunities offered by the Internet for women’s empowerment through awareness-raising, social interactions, and the organising of collective action, are limited. For female bloggers, their activities do not translate the new communicative practices afforded by the Internet into concrete action to bring about changes in their everyday life. On the contrary, blogs become an alternative platform to discipline their behaviours and to reinforce patriarchal gendered norms. Moreover, the research finds that the promise of empowerment is further undermined by the pervasive commercialisation of the Internet and state control. For women’s groups, contextual factors prevent them from fully realising the potential of the Internet for increasing their organisational visibility, promoting public awareness about gender issues, building a sense of the collective, campaigning, or networking. The major barriers in these processes are state control, a lack of resources, online censorship, and at times, competition from commercial sites. In this respect, the Internet does not play a significant role in forming a collective to challenge existing unjust power relations.

Information ethics in the age of digital labour and the surveillance-industrial complex

Thee rise of computing and the internet have brought about an ethical eld of studies that some term information ethics, computer ethics, digital media ethics, or internet ethics e aim of this contribution is to discuss information ethics’ foundations in the context of the internet’s political economy e chapter rst looks to ground the analysis in a comparison of two information ethics approaches, namely those outlined by Rafael Capurro and Luciano Floridi It then develops, based on these foundations, analyses of the information ethical dimensions of two important areas of social media: one concerns the framing of social media by a surveillance-industrial complex in the context of Edward Snowden’s revelations and the other deals with issues of digital labour processes and issues of class that arises in this context e contribution asks ethical questions about these two phenomena that bring up issues of power, exploitation, and control in the information age It asks if, and if so, how, the approaches of Capurro and Floridi can help us to understand ethico-political aspects of the surveillance-industrial complex and digital labour

Television history: archives, excavation and the future. A discussion

This article considers possible futures for television (TV) studies, imagining how the discipline might evolve more productively over the next 10 years and what practical steps are necessary to move towards those outcomes. Conducted as a round-table discussion between leading figures in television history and archives, the debate focuses on the critical issue of archives, considering and responding to questions of access/inaccessibility, texts/contexts, commercial/symbolic value, impact and relevance. These questions reflect recurrent concerns when selecting case studies for historical TV research projects: how difficult is it to access the material (when it survives)? What obstacles might be faced (copyright, costs, etc.) when disseminating findings to a wider public? The relationship between the roles of ‘researcher’ and ‘archivist’ appears closer and more mutually supportive in TV studies than in other academic disciplines, with many people in practice straddling the traditional divide between the two roles, combining specialisms that serve to further scholarship and learning as well as the preservation of, and broad public engagements with, collections. The Research Excellence Framework’s imperative for academic researchers to achieve ‘impact’ in broader society encourages active and creative collaboration with those based in public organizations, such as the British Film Institute (BFI), who have a remit to reach a wider public. The discussion identifies various problems and successes experienced in collaboration between the academic, public and commercial sectors in the course of recent and ongoing research projects in TV studies.

The Subject in the Crowd: A Critical Discussion of Jodi Dean’s “Crowds and Party”

This article presents a critical discussion of Jodi Dean’s (2016) book “Crowds and Party”. I pay particular attention to her discussion of crowds and the Communist Party that is influenced by psychoanalysis. Dean has put forward an important argument for the affectivity within crowds that may be transformed into a Communist Party that is characterised by a similar affective infrastructure. I suggest that Dean’s discussion of affect is slightly vague at times and may be supplemented with Sigmund Freud’s work on affect. In contrast to Dean, who stresses the collectivity and deindividuation of the crowd, I argue that the crowd needs to be thought of as a place where individuality and collectivity come together and remain in tension. Such a tension may then be managed by the Party, as Dean illustrates.

Understanding Media Production: A rejoinder to Murdock and Golding

This article is a rejoinder to Murdock and Golding’s response to my critique of the political economy of communications (PEC) analysis of media production (see Author 2015). This article sets this exchange in the context of a broader debate in recent editions of Media, Culture & Society (Garnham 2016, Fuchs, 2016) about the value of PEC. Much of this debate stems from Garnham’s (2011) critical review of 40 years of PEC research.

Experiments and Archives in the Expanded Field

All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist explores the documentation of the creative process. From their different viewpoints, fifteen leading artists, archivists and art historians reflect on the ways that artists and archivists deal with all this stuff , and how artists manage and relate to their own archives. This is a timely and important book, based on work initiated by the Art Archives Committee of ARLIS, the Art Libraries Society of the UK and Ireland. The book addresses issues from the perspectives of the archivist as well as those of the artist. At a time when more members of the library profession are being asked to manage artists archives, it is important to address the challenges associated with the special nature of this material. All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist provides artists and researchers valuable insights into the archival process, addressing questions such as what material should artists be keeping? What will happen to their material after it has been accepted by an archive? It also explores how an archivist or researcher can approach an artist s archive in a non-traditional way. The experiences described by the different contributors offer a practical understanding of the challenges facing researchers working with artists archives, and will help to raise awareness among artists of the longer-term value of their archival material, and the unpredictable ways in which it may be recontextualised, explored and interpreted in the future.

Feeling the commute: Affect, affordance and communities in motion

This chapter draws upon research conducted in 2012-2013 in the English town of Glossop, Derbyshire, UK, exploring notions of affect, affordance and interconnections as part of a project within the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Connected Communities programme: Revisiting the mid-point of British Communities: a study of affect, affordance and connectivity in Glossop. The project aimed to explore how an affectual analysis of place, space and mobility reveal a deeper understanding of how non-familial residents of Glossop connect/ disconnect with each other. This chapter will specifically focus on experiences of Glossop train station, illustrating research data gathered during the train commute from Glossop to Manchester, as well as the affordances of the train station itself. Highlighting contemporary residential migration patterns, practices of commuting and everyday mobilities, this focus asks how people’s senses and feelings of community are constituted in relation to these mobilities and the affordances of particular spaces. The findings of this chapter further reveal that amalgamating a study of affect and atmospheres within social and cultural contexts can impact on the design of mobility, transport and spaces which are designed to facilitate community (dis)connection.

Racism, nationalism and right-wing extremism online: The Austrian Presidential Election 2016 on Facebook

Thee 2016 Austrian presidential election saw a run-o between the Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen and the Freedom Party of Austria’s (FPÖ) far-right candidate Norbert Hofer. This paper asks: How did voters of Hofer express their support on Facebook? It presents the results of a qualitative ideology analysis of 6755 comments about the presidential election posted on the Facebook pages of FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache and FPÖ candidate Hofer. The results reveal insights into the contemporary political role of the online leadership ideology, online nationalism, new racism online, the friend/enemy-scheme online, and online militancy. Right-wing extremism 2.0 is a complex problem that stands in the context of contemporary crises and demagoguery.

Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism and the Subverison of Form

This book examines the work of Witold Gombrowicz in the context of Polish modernism as well as dealing with issues such as exile, formal experimentaiton and the subversion of stable identities. The book sees Gombroiwcz as a precursor to the post-sturcutralist thought of theorists such as Deleuze and Foucault and positions his work in relation to contemproary developments in aesthetic theory