Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Multimedia Communication'

This study deems that to play a videogame is to gain a literacy of the body. The motor aspect of human interaction with videogames has largely escaped analysis in hand-held controller interactions, yet this is a mass cultural phenomenon in which human movement is technologized and uniquely, digitally expressive. Videogames are motor imperative in some form or another; it is a condition of interaction with this medium that symbolically transposes human movement into far-flung digital action. Contrary to the assumption that full-body interactions present richer embodied experiences in videogame technology, the data reveal that subtle motoric phenomena have aesthetically significant substructures that are imaginatively unbounded, like high literacy. The subtlety of player hand-motor effort is difficult to observe and therefore describe, yet encompasses a constellation of observable dual phenomena expressed in the ties between human and digital processes. In order to better understand this human engagement with technology, this study uses a phenomenological frame as a first person research method combined with principles of linguistics and Rudolf Laban's system of movement transcription and analysis. The intention of this project is to provide a methodology for describing and analyzing this remarkable, complex human interaction with technology in order to discuss its interdisciplinary implications for designers and theorists interested in the phenomena of videogames, as well as to anchor this interactive complexity in the humanities.

This dissertation makes the connection between the human drive, as described by psychoanalysis, to construct God and the construction of the technological entity, Google. Google constitutes the extension of the early Christian period God to the twenty-first century. From the examination of significant religious and theological texts by significant theologians (Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, etc.) that explain the nature of God, the analogous relationship of God to Google will open a psychoanalytic discourse that answers questions on the current state of human mediation with the world. Freud and, more significantly, Lacan’s work connects the human creation of God, ex nihilio, to Google’s godly qualities and behaviors (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence). This illustrates the powerful motivation behind the creation of an allencompassing physical / earthly entity that includes the immaterial properties of God.

Essentially, Google operates as the extension or replacement of the long reigning God in Western culture. Furthermore, the advent of science and technology through rationalism (as outlined by Nietzsche) results in the death of the metaphysical God and the ascension of the technological God. Google offers an appropriate example for study. Moreover, the work of Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan will further comment on Google as the technological manifestation of God, particularly in its media formulations. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a review that highlights future research with an exploration that foresees the death of Google from the same rational method of inquiry by which the death of God occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

Given the increasing popularity and effect of online media, especially Twitter, as news sources, this study was designed to examine Saudis’ behaviors toward Twitter with regard to newspapers and information delivery and the role that Twitter plays in getting news updates. It investigated if Saudi Twitter users perceive Twitter as a credible source for news and rely on it to read the news more than legacy newspapers and their online counterparts. This research conducted an online survey and distributed it among Saudis who use Twitter to get news updates. The sample of this study had been drawn online by using the “SnowBall” sampling method through Survey Monkey and, the sample was collected during December 2015 and January 2016. A total of 3,003 Saudi Twitter users completed all questions in the survey. The results showed that Saudis consider Twitter as a newsgathering tool; therefore, they read news on Twitter more than reading legacy newspapers because it is easier and the fastest way of getting news, which indicated that the area of legacy newspapers in Saudi Arabia is at stake. Moreover, Saudis positively rated Twitter as a trustworthy and credible source for getting news updates. Thereby, they concurred that using Twitter has changed the path that people deal with legacy newspapers. Furthermore, non-legacy newspapers’ Twitter accounts received the lion's share of Saudis trust, especially Sabq newspaper, that was at the top as the newspaper account with the highest following. In regard to age groups, young Twitter users in Saudi Arabia trust non-legacy newspaper Twitter accounts more than older users, while old Twitter users were more likely to trust legacy newspaper Twitter accounts. The disbelief in the fairness of legacy newspapers could also be referred to the Saudis’ understanding that the government has a sweeping power to direct the media.

After the bloody Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China (CCP) suffered a devastating blow among the overseas Chinese (OC). The CCP responded to the challenge by implementing transnational outreach policy in the OC community, which includes substantial efforts to increase the Party’s influence in the overseas Chinese-language media (OCLM). By conducting a qualitative analysis of the evolution of the CCP's OC policy, this thesis finds that the Party has made tremendous progress in achieving the policy’s strategic goals: modernization and transnational legitimacy. The CCP’s increased influence in the OCLM has made crucial contributions to the Party's success in restoring transnational legitimacy in the OC community. This thesis finds that the China News Service (CNS), China's second-largest news agency operating under the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, plays a major role in the CCP's attempt to influence the OCLM and centralize the production of Chinese-language news.

The explosive mobile data growth needs more spectrum to accommodate the traffic. Existing policy of exclusive spectrum access has made today's spectrum both over-controlled and underutilized. One possibility to improve spectrum efficiency is via dynamic spectrum sharing, which has the potential to release a large percentage of underutilized spectrum.

Cognitive radio is one of the most promising technologies to facilitate dynamic spectrum sharing. Yet, there exist many problems for cognitive radio to support multimedia communications. This dissertation advances the concept of “spectrum aware” for cognitive-radio based wireless multimedia communication system. We interpret spectrum awareness in a broad way which includes spectrum sensing, spectrum effectiveness and spectrum efficiency. In particular, we have made the following contributions in this dissertaion:

• We design and implement RECOG, a cognitive radio (CR) system that improves conventional CR with a smart sensing, fast backup channel searching and QoS managing. The proposed system is the first fully-fledge CR system that can supports real-time applications such as video chat.

• We design and implement PINOKIO, a system that monitors spectrum usage and improves spectrum efficiency in frequency-agile WiFi networks.

• We design and implement FAVICS, a frequency-aware video communication system that leverages the nature of unequal error protection (UEP) in frequency diversity for wireless streaming without modifying existing wireless PHY, and improve the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of video streaming by 5∼10 dB.

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is intended by the Telco industry, to make it easy for third-party application developers to create new, innovative services that will help to offset the fall in revenue of regular voice services. However, a slow roll out of the system is increasing the chance of a disruptive technology to fill some of the space that IMS hopes to cover. This thesis presents a hands on example of the implementation of such a new innovative service. XMPP has been used as an alternative platform to launch the service, and is thoroughly compared to the IMS in this master's thesis. Ironically the service could not be launched on IMS due to technical problems. Results suggest that XMPP could replace IMS as a service platform, thus disrupting the business model of IMS.

What is community? What defines it, and what creates it? What—or who—is the gay community? Is the gay community the same as it was ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago? Those are some of the questions I will be answering as I explore the creation, expansion, and subsequent integration of the physical gay community into one that embraces an online, fragmented community. I will explore the creation and evolution of the gay community, examining its early years and the challenges it faced as a marginalized group. To help define community, I will use the concept of identity theory by incorporating the theory of play and weaving the idea of claiming public space into my argument to show how the physical, economic, social creation of the gay community is dependent upon a geographic and virtual community. Those examples will set up my argument that the idea of community has changed in part to the commonality of technology and social applications. I argue that the idea of the traditional gay and lesbian community, which relied heavily on where you lived, has become fragmented and disjointed because of the reliance of an online, virtual community which, in turn, has led to a lack of interpersonal connections among individuals of this marginalized group.