1.
2.
Jonsson, Fatima, 1972-
(författare)
Hanging out in the game café : Contextualising co-located computer game play practices and experiences
2012
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
What social practices are people involved when staying in a game café? What kind of social setting is the game café? What are the attitudes towards playing computer games at home and in public among parents? What are the media representations of co-located game playing in public? What are the sensory experiences of playing co-located game play in public? This dissertation gives a descriptive and analytical account of the contexts and meanings of playing co-located computer games in public settings such as game cafés and LAN parties. The overall aim with the dissertation is to describe and investigate the social and cultural meanings and contexts of playing computer games in a game café. The research questions have been investigated in four empirical studies.The dissertation shows that people are involved in various social practices and activities aimed at supporting and maintaining social relationships among friends and peers. The game café can be seen as a third place, as it used by players for recreation and an escape from the pressure of home and school, a place which feels like home, is familiar and welcoming. However the game café is a limited third place used by young men who likes to play online and network games. The dissertation also shows how the social environment provides for specific sensory experiences. These sensory experiences involve sitting together side by side slapping each other’s shoulders and legs, eating candies and drinking sodas, listening to music. The representations of co-located game playing in public reproduce traditional gender roles where professional gamers are represented by men and causal gamers are represented by women (and men) as well as construct youth as party lovers. The study also suggests that parents’ attitudes towards their children playing games in public draw on traditional values and ideas about children’s play and social relationships.
3.
Andersson, David, 1988-
(författare)
Simple Models for Complex Nonequilibrium Problems in Nanoscale Friction and Network Dynamics
2020
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
This doctoral thesis investigates three different topics: How friction evolves in atomically thin layered materials (2D materials); How social dynamics can be used to model grand scale common-pool resource games; Benchmarking of various image reconstruction algorithms in atomic force microscopy experiments. While these topics are diverse, they share being complex out-of-equilibrium systems. Furthermore, our approach to these topics will be the same: using simple models to obtain qualitative information about a system's dynamics. In the case of atomically thin layered materials, we will be expanding on the influential Prandtl-Tomlinson model and obtain an improved model constituting a substantial improvement in the theoretical description of friction in these systems. In the context of social dynamics, we will introduce a novel model representing a new approach to consensus rates on social networks in relation to society spanning coordination problems. For the image reconstruction project, our ambition is to investigate a new method for recreating free-energy surfaces based on AFM experiment, however, for this project only preliminary results are included.
