| 1. |
- Mathew Martin, Poothullil John, 1965-
(author)
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Web Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities : Evidence from India
- 2008
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In: Communicator. - New Delhi, India : Indian Institute of Mass Communication. - 0588-8093. ; XLIII:1, s. 28-56
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Websites are today the face of an organization, with Global reach. The Information and Technology (IT) Act 2000 of India, is entirely silent on the subject of web accessibility. However the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) guidelines of 2009, which has been ratified by Govt. of India, of which Article 9.2 (g) & (h) especially lays down that, states should facilitate access for Persons with disabilities (PWDs) to new information and communication technologies, especially the Internet. A study was undertaken on 3rd December 2009, to analyze the qualities of a website designed by Government Organizations (GOs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) working for PWDs in terms of Information & Dissemination, Accessibility, Design and Interactive participatory features. The main contribution of this study is to illuminate the features of websites used by GOs and NGOs working for PWDs in India and its accessibility.
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| 2. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(author)
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Lessons learned from ’being’ virtually there: Worded action in the perceptual field of online computer games
- 2008
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In: Paper presented at ECER 2008, From teaching to Learning (September 2008, Gothenburg, Sweden).
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Computer games are assumed to, for better or worse, influence knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of the user. Assumptions are often based on computer games complex environments and visual components. This has brought along expectations about using computer games within education for pedagogical purposes. Though, attempts to use computer games in education has shown to be a complicated affair, demanding structures surrounding such attempts that often is not met. Further, research show that games cannot be used in ways that other media have been invoked in education. Computer games as category is used to a wide array of products. Those different genres give rise to different activities from the players. Online game environments are a category which can be seen as the next computer game area to be glanced at for pedagogical purposes. Though, earlier research on learning and computer games are based on computer game formats that lack crucial features from online games. The most obvious difference is that players’ meet other players within these online spaces, and interact through virtual bodies. The most popular and developed virtual worlds focus game-specific contents. This paper take such online game worlds (i.e. massively multiplayer online role-playing games, MMORPG) as focus for scrutinizing players activity. How, then, are online game formats to be understood in relation to learning aspects? Earlier research concerning Massively Multiplayer Online Games has, among all, studied the lingo developed between players’ in online games. This paper advocates for studying online gaming worlds as domains in itself. In other words, how players’ manage their virtual bodies (i.e. the avatar) in conduct with others in task-oriented group activities, or the work players do when they role-play a character through the mediated tool of the avatar. To play, live and communicate in online games, players’ need to master their avatar through typing in chat channels and using interaction methods that have been institutionalized in these online spheres. These institutionalized ways to act and be, stems from earlier technological online environments. Hence, the paper argues that the skills and competencies needed to “be” in an online game space must be considered before embracing them for learning potentials outside activities that is done in ordinary “virtual” life. The empirical material comes from screen-captured video-recorded avatar-interaction within the online games World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online. Detailed transcripts have been transformed into sequential art to highlight aspects of the activities to make the setting understandable for outsiders.
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| 3. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(author)
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Sheeping, sapping and avatars-in-action: An in-screen perspective on online gameplay
- 2008
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In: In S. Mosberg Iversen (Ed.), Proceedings of The [Player] Conference. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2008. ; , s. 28-52
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper is about the various practices that players use to coordinate their in-game activities. In the paper, screen-captured video data of one group of players’ gameplay are scrutinized in order to explicate coordination work. Instead of seeing interaction between online players as design issues or focusing off-screen events, the paper reframes in-screen collaboration activities as participants’ concerns. In order to explore empirical examples of players’ accomplishment of tight coordination in massively multiplayer online games, ethnomethodological influenced interaction analysis is used. The paper elaborates a player perspective by bridging the researcher’s knowledge of gameplay with empirical in-screen data. This study shows the work players do as coordinated, referential activities; accomplished by means of avatar movements and actions, as well as highlighted and made observable by visual markers and gaming discourse. The players’ achievement of mundane, jointly activities are termed routine play.
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| 4. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(author)
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Walking as a dragon slayer: Analyzing online gamers make-believe discourse within a coordinated game activity
- 2008
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In: Space Interaction Discourse International Conference, November 2008, Aalborg, Denmark.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Computer game activities can be mistaken for an easygoing and non-communicative form of entertainment. Such descriptions have shortcomings when seen in relation to what players do in an online game world. Knowledge about the game interface and game specific tasks within the game world is a starting point to act in such social world. As a social world the complexness originates from the multifarious activities players do together when playing and socializing. As such, online game worlds consist of communication mediated through typed text in chat channels (or voice-chat), and interaction between the player’s puppet (i.e. avatar), the game world and other players doings. Such avatar-mediated-interaction has been said to be insufficient in relation to what we do in face-to-face settings (cf. Moore, Ducheneaut & Nickell, 2007). The point of departure in this work concern the ways players actively maintain a role-play discourse concerning something else than is visible in the game space, while at the same time achieve a coordinated game activity. Instead of seeing this layered activity as insufficient or problematic, the material is seen as activities that players do as “visible-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes” (Garfinkel, 1967, p. vii). The empirical material comes from naturally occurring video-recorded avatar-interaction within the online game World of Warcraft. Detailed transcripts have been transformed into sequential art to highlight aspects of the recordings to make the setting understandable for outsiders. Further, the empirical material is also used to raise issues in relation to how to collect and utilize transcriptions of such data.
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| 5. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(author)
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Welcome to the digital puppet show: Positioning work and make-believe methods in role play MMORPG servers
- 2008
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In: In S. Mosberg Iversen (Ed.), Proceedings of The [Player] Conference. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2008. ; , s. 53-87
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper it will be suggested that a role play MMORPG server is a complex, institutionalized practice which is built on competent acting in and through a digital puppet. The paper takes departure in four different in-game situations to investigate players’ achievement of various social roles, where role play is one dimension of the interaction. This is made through methods stemming from interaction analysis. The empirical material consists of screen-captured video-recorded data from World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online. The detailed analysis makes visible the achievement of (in-character) role play, as well as social roles achieved out-of-character. The players’ competences are seen as interactional achievements where they by means of the avatar and other interface resources manage moment-by-moment positioning. Players are seen to make visible their positioning via their digital puppet to move and speak from three different footings; the physical player, the virtual personae and a fantasy character. Furthermore, through the multi-voiced activity the analysis point out players ever-present out of character stance when engaged in various kinds of ‘puppet shows’. Playing on a role play dedicated server demand skilled acting in social and technical characteristics to be able to produce and perceive phenomena seen and heard as a role play event.
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| 6. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(author)
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What does it take to 'be' a player? The skilled work of role-players in an online game space
- 2008
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In: Paper presented at Multimodality and Learning International Conference, June 2008, London.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper takes departure in arguments and beliefs of playing activities within fantasy role-play and information- and communication technology. Opinions on how to play a fantasy role-playing game have been active since the 70s. The tension stem from, on one side, to play a game with rules and specific outcomes (instrumental play). On the other side, living and breathing as a fantasy character. Also, interactive media, as digital games, have been assumed to diminish the gap between representation and represented phenomena. Such arguments and assumptions can be seen in relation to online game environments, such as World of Warcraft, where computer game rules exists side-by-side with social norms. On certain game servers, role-playing rules exists on a meta-level. In other words, how to be and act as a role-playing character are only regulated within the community of role-play members. The paper describes and analyzes one sequence of screen captured video-data of players’ management of player characters – so called avatars – in interaction with other avatars, focusing both role-play and instrumental play. The work is based on interaction analysis, with influences of methods used in conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. What will be highlighted through the analysis of player actions when managing the tools at hand, i.e. the avatar, the game environment and the discourse produced by text in chat windows, are the ways in which players achieve role-play and instrumental play. The norms and values in online games can be regarded as institutionalized ways where members make visible role-playing phenomena. The players’ avatars are seen to use methods to manage and maintain a role-play focused discourse and perception. And at the same, through movements and actions of avatars, players conduct coordinated instrumental play. What is investigated in this study is the work that is needed to become, what some would call, immersed, and others being ‘in-character’. Thus, players are not per se absorbed in the game experience. As such, the paper investigates the skills needed and used to achieve such play. Using Goodwin’s concept of professional vision when scrutinizing the players’ accomplishment, the activity consist of a practice where discourse, perception and practical action are meshed. The competences players present through their avatars actions is seen as intertwining creative discursive activities with perceptual awareness of the game space.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Westlund, Oscar, 1979
(author)
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Diffusion of Internet for Mobile Devices in Sweden
- 2008
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In: Nordic and Baltic Journal of Information and Communications Technologies (nb!ict). - 1902-097X. ; 2:1, s. 39-47
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Diffusion of mobile internet is presently taking place and the mobile phone is being transformed from a predominantly communication device into a multimedia device that can be used for mobile internet. This paper outlines empirical arguments why usage is a more preferable measure than ownership of devices. Diffusion of mobile internet in Sweden between 2006 and 2007 is analysed and the characteristics of the early-adopters are identified. Furthermore, the paper provides explanations for the rate of diffusion via an analysis of attitudes towards different attributes of mobile internet services.
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| 9. |
- Kroon Lundell, Åsa, et al.
(author)
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The complex visual gendering of political women in the press
- 2008
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In: Journalism Studies. - London : Routledge. - 1461-670X .- 1469-9699. ; 9:6, s. 891-910
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, we present an analysis of how gendering is “being done” in press visuals of women in politics. In short, we will argue that women professionals working within the area of politics are gendered and type-cast in more complex ways than previous research has yet shown. In a qualitative analysis of visuals from three different political scandals in Sweden involving prominent political women, we analyse the diversified ways of portraying women in visuals that do not simply reproduce the idea that the gendering of women uncritically correlates with concepts like sexualization, objectification, passivity and otherness. As on-lookers of a professional woman in politics caught in a pressing situation in a photograph, we will argue that at times we may be invited to see her as both an Other and a person with whom we can identify ourselves with. Or a woman may be positioned as an object with a focus on appearance, but not by emphasizing her femininity and sexuality but by doing exactly the reverse. We will also discuss the complexity that is related to the various contextual factors that come into play when press photographers and editors communicatively “work” at accomplishing specific gendered visual “preferred readings”.
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| 10. |
- Persson-Thunqvist, Daniel, 1969-, et al.
(author)
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Språkligt arbete i nödsamtal : En kunskapsöversikt med forskningsutblickar
- 2008
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In: Språk och stil. - 1101-1165 .- 2002-4010. ; 18, s. 67-92
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Emergency calls are an important public service and comprise the first step in an emergency response.This service is essentially mediated through talk. The article presents a review of conversationanalytic studies of the interaction taking place in real-life emergency calls. Some of thesestudies focus on analyzing the highly specialized conversational structure of calls to the emergencyservices. Others explore a variety of routine interactional troubles, including, for instance, misunderstandingsarising from the asymmetries in knowledge about the institutional setting, as well asdifferent expectations the parties bring to the interaction. A further subset of studies includes analysesof deviant cases, in which emergency calls not only evinced interactional troubles but alsoproved seriously consequential for the response operation. The present review reveals that there isa lack of studies targeting emergency calls with certain specific categories of callers that may provecommunicatively problematic, such as non-native callers and children. An analysis of a few exchangesbetween an immigrant child and the operator serves to illustrate some specific languagerelatedsources of interactional trouble. This demonstrates, more broadly, the need for analytic researchto highlight the procedures through which the parties work to manage and remedy such interactionalproblems, thus allowing for the accomplishment of a successful emergency assistance.
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