User Generated Media

This thesis builds a case for using social media as a tool for qualitative research through the form of photo-studies as well as the value such research offers graphic designers, especially when there is no time and/or budget to conduct extensive ethnographic research on the field. This thesis will also look at how graphic designers can use this type of research to identify design opportunities by gaining insights into users’ lives, needs, and motivations. Lastly, in support of this thesis, a pilot study was conducted on the Instagram platform by using a specific hash-tag to examine the top post every day for thirty days. The evidence from this study validates the thesis premise, however, further research is needed to confirm these findings.

Social Bookmarking (SBM) is one of the most widely used Web services. An SBM website displays and shares each user's bookmarks. The SBM service aggregates the number of users who bookmark a given Web page and provides useful information as a result of these aggregations. However, an increase in the popularity of the SBM service and in the number of the users of the SBM service results in an increase in the amount of SBM SPAM. In addition, the SBM service generates irrelevant information to many users because of the aggregation of a large number of bookmarks; we call this problem "SBM pollution." In this paper, we propose a method for countering the problem of SBM pollution based on the degree of bookmark similarity. The proposed method creates blacklists that contain lists of users having a high degree of bookmark similarity. Based on the created blacklists, the number of bookmarks of the Web pages influenced by SBM pollution is reduced. From the results of the performance evaluation, we show that our method reduces the number of bookmarks of most Web pages influenced by the SBM pollution to a great extent.

An introductory speculation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle is a consideration of the epistemological, ontological and metaphysical downfalls of film theory’s understandings of the spectator and the spectacle; with particular emphasis directed towards the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body.

The thesis will argue that these shortcomings are representative of wider ranging issues of complacency engulfing the film industry and film exhibition as a whole. Furthermore, the fundamental disruptions of the digital upgrade of cinema, and the expanding means through which film content can be experienced, will be explored in relation to the pressing need for film theory to reassess itself.

Drawing on a plethora of empirical and non-empirical research, this dissertation is a highly progressive expression of how film experience has always been about transcendence and, as a result of its digital re-birth and diversifications, it is now becoming even more so.

An introductory speculation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle is a consideration of the epistemological, ontological and metaphysical downfalls of film theory’s understandings of the spectator and the spectacle; with particular emphasis directed towards the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body.

The thesis will argue that these shortcomings are representative of wider ranging issues of complacency engulfing the film industry and film exhibition as a whole. Furthermore, the fundamental disruptions of the digital upgrade of cinema, and the expanding means through which film content can be experienced, will be explored in relation to the pressing need for film theory to reassess itself.

Drawing on a plethora of empirical and non-empirical research, this dissertation is a highly progressive expression of how film experience has always been about transcendence and, as a result of its digital re-birth and diversifications, it is now becoming even more so.