Applying user analytics to uses and effects of social media in China

ABSTRACT

We introduce what user analytics can do in the first half of the paper and then illustrate how to do user analytics in the second half. In the current context, user analytics refers to a set of diverse communication research methods on uses and effects of social media. User analytics has evolved from TV ratings research to online user research. The history illustrates what data sources, measures, and analyses can be used for what types of research questions under user analytics. We discuss the similarities of and differences between user analytics and other methods of computational communication research (e.g. content mining and online experiments), and compare the strengths and weaknesses of user analytics with traditional quantitative methods (e.g. survey). Finally, we present an application study of Chinese bloggers to demonstrate how to employ user analytics methods to study the production, consumption, and effects of user-generated content.     

Conviviality as a politics of endurance: the refugee emergency and the consolations of artistic intervention

ABSTRACT

Against the impasse of despair in the public response to the refugee emergency, artistic interventions emerge to offer fleeting significant opportunities for restorative and reparative action. This article takes up conviviality as a conceptual tool to understand artistic interventions to the forced migration and asylum issues that variably aim for healing, empathy, and reflexivity. Drawing on comparative research consisting of interviews of artists in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and textual analyses of their performances, we discuss specific motivations and diverse representational practices that aim to enact togetherness-in-difference. We discuss the potentials and risks of convivial artistic productions, which we argue produce a politics of endurance that, as Feldman has said, helps “people live better with circumstances they cannot change.”     

Reviving audience studies

Audience measurement data are increasingly central to what many media corporations produce, yet much of these data are inaccessible to scholars. I therefore argue that cultural studies is in need of an audience studies revival. Fan studies continues at strength, but a wider range of audience studies is required to counter and to interrogate the occasional proclamations that companies such as Netflix, Facebook, and Google share with us about audiences and users.     

The development of a hypertext-based tutor for Geographical Information Systems

Experience gained in the construction of the world's first Geographical Information Systems tutor, ARCDEMO, emphasised the importance of accommodating different learning strategies. ARCDEMO, while highly successful, suffered from static graphical displays, a single pre-determined access path, and an overall design which restricted its scope in use. The Geographical Information System Tutor (GIST) was developed to address these problems using Apple's object-orientated HyperCard software. GIST incorporates a 'point-and-click' interface with graphical cues to initiate operations which include animated demonstrations, step-by-step illustrative graphics and graphical displays capable of user modification. The system was designed with two alternative access modes, serial or browsing , to allow different classes of user to work through the material in their preferred fashion. The use of GIST in undergraduate and short course teaching has shown how users respond well to the interface and find graphical explanations easy to follow.