The Phd. thesis of Cameron Alexander Marlow
(Department of Media Arts and Science , MIT)
The primary goal of his thesis is to answer two questions about media contagion among weblogs.
1.What does the social structure of weblog authors look like, and how does it relate to their offline social ties?
2.How can media contagion be described, and to what extent does the social structure play a role in this process?
Persuasion By Design:
The State of Expertise
on Visual Influence Tactics
(A review from Persuasive Imagery)
Keven Malkewitz
North Caroline State University
Peter Wright
University of Oregon
Marian Friestad
University of Oregon
In this review they assess the accumulated expertise on visual persuasion in American society at the beginning of the 21st century.
This review enables the following generalization: The shared knowledge available in visual presentation domains is saturated with production technology information. By and large, the visual persuasion expertise of those in society most directly engaged in and trained for visual communication concerns the practical details of “how to produce a particulaer type of visual stimulus.” This is totally understandable; given the enormous complexities of mastering the use of modern technologies for makking buildings, televised images, physical objects, pictorial renderings, digitized images, and so forth. These technologies of production keep changing at a very rapid pace. Just keeping up with the “how to produce it” knowledge that grows exponentially must preoccupy professionals.
In bridging their expertise rom traditional media into the realm of supposedl new media, they must confront the issue of how much to import and how much to create anew, intheir production tactics. For example. During the 20th century, the photographic image seemed to present us with a secure authentic credible representation of reality. For over a hundred years, when we saw a photo we tended to trust in what it showed. We knew the photo images could be doctored, but for a long time the doctoring was fairly detectable. Photography was believed.That is no longer true. Photography is now almost suspect, because of he new digital editing capabilities that even lay people can master. The practical uses of photographic images must therefore be rethought by visiual communication professionals.
The necessity of concentrating on production technology education as a bedrock for visiual persuasion practical expertise means, however, that gains in the other aspects of visiual persuas expertise must be sacrificed. An individual can only gain valid expertise in a limited domain during same time period. If technical information in that narrow domain keeps changing, its mastery requires continual attention.
Assesing Individuals' Practical Expertise In Visiual Design And Persuasion Over The Lifetime : A Research Frontier
