Textual and Media-based Self-Learning modules

Owing to the importance of a subject like Mathematics in the teaching and learning of science, self-learning often poses a challenge to the educator. The objective of this study is to analyse the enhancement of the textual and the media form of self-learning modules to teach Algebra and Geometry to eighth graders considering their retention levels. A pre-test post-test single-group quasi experimental design was tested and tried out on 49 participants of a school. The 20 modules of self-learning material covering content in the topics of Algebra and Geometry in the textual and media-assisted forms of self-learning were administered over three months. The findings of the study revealed the ability of media-assisted self-learning modules to enhance achievement in the post-test when compared to the pre-test. The textual-assisted learning modules was able to enhance significant difference in the achievements in Geometry, but not of Algebra. The delayed post-test results were found to indicate an improved achievement in Mathematics.

Undermining the gendered genre: Kabuki in manga

According to Jaqueline Berndt, Thomas LaMarre, and other critics, manga is a highly participatory media form. Narratives with vibrant characters and creative inconsistences in the plotline encourage the reader to recontextualise the text, create new contents and unfold activities which go beyond reading (such as fan art and CosPlay). Recent popularity of manga about Japanese traditional arts – for example, Kabuki – further expanded the potential interaction with manga and other popular media to include (re)discovering traditional Japanese culture. Examples, such as Kabukumon by Tanaka Akio and David Miyahara (Morning 2008-2011), or Kunisaki Izumo no jijō by Hirakawa Aya (Weekly Shōnen Sunday 2010-2014) and a variety of other manga, anime and light novels exemplify this tendency. Consequently, influential franchises, such as Naruto and One Piece boast adaptations as Super Kabuki stage-plays. Furthermore, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto observes how thematic and stylistic overreaching in contemporary manga further distort the notions of the gendered genre that lays at the foundation of the manga industry. In this case, Kabuki theatre as a theme employs a variety of gender fluid characters and situations. For this purpose, Kabuki manga utilise cross-genre narrative and stylistic tropes, from overtly parodying borrowed tropes, to homage, and covert inclusions. On the example of Kabuki-manga I will explore a larger trend in manga to employ elements of female genres in male narratives, thus expanding the target readership. My paper explores specific mechanism that facilitates reading manga cross-genre, I also inquire what novel critical potential thematic and stylistic exchange between audiences may entail.

Social Media Users Behavior before the Mass Street Protests in Russia in January and April 2021

The purpose of this work is to identify the specifics of the online audience behavior before major street actions in Russia: how users react to current events, what is the focus of their attention, which authors, publics and publications are gaining popularity. The research was held on 7 social media platforms and based on content analysis including both a quantitative and a qualitative methodology. A certain similarity was revealed in the behavior of users of different platforms within the same period: they were interested in the same news and the positions of the same personalities. In addition, Twitter and social media users showed an increased interest in each other's reactions to the events that concerned them. The «climate of opinions» investigation held by social media users was especially obvious before the rally, announced suddenly. The research also revealed similarities in media consumption, interest in the same opinion leaders and a similar level of politicization before rallies among users of 5 platforms. These social media form a unified segment of the public sphere. The research data suggest that the platforms where «the climate of opinions» leans in favor of the protest agenda are more likely to influence protest activity. At the same time, direct calls to take to the streets seem to have an insignificant impact on protest behavior.

Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion

Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion aims at advancing the study of anime, understood as largely TV-based genre fiction rendered in cel, or cel-look, animation with a strong affinity to participatory cultures and media convergence. Taking Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shin Seiki Evangerion) as a case study, this volume acknowledges anime as a media form with clearly recognizable aesthetic properties, (sub)cultural affordances and situated discourses. First broadcast in Japan in 1995-96, Neon Genesis Evangelion became an epoch-making anime, and later franchise. The initial series used already available conventions, visual resources and narrative tropes typical of anime in general and the mecha (or giant-robot) genre in particular, but at the same time it subverted and reinterpreted them in a highly innovative and as such standard-setting way. Investigating anime through Neon Genesis Evangelion this volume takes a broadly understood media-aesthetic and media-cultural perspective, which pertains to medium in the narrow sense of technology, techniques, materials, and semiotics, but also mediality and mediations related to practices and institutions of production, circulation, and consumption. In no way intended to be exhaustive, this volume attests to the emergence of anime studies as a field in its own right, including but not prioritizing expertise in film studies and Japanese studies, and with due regard to the most widely shared critical publications in Japanese and English language. Thus, the volume provides an introduction to studies of anime, a field that necessarily interrelates media-specific and transmedial aspects. In Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion, anime is addressed from a transnational and transdisciplinary stance. The disciplinary and methodological perspectives taken by the individual chapters range from audio-visual culture, narratology, performance and genre theory to fandom studies and gender studies. In its first part, the book focuses on textual analysis and media form in the narrow sense with regard to filmic media, bank footage, voice acting and musical score, and then it broadens the scope to consider subcultural discourse, franchising, manga and video game adaptations, as well as critical and affective user engagement.

Virtual Reality: Confinement and Engulfment; Replacement and Re-placement

This chapter explicates Virtual Reality (VR) as the first instantiation of the post-screen. Specifically, it interrogates VR’s sense of immersion via two vectors in the post-screen’s “forgetting” of screen boundaries – confinement of a viewer’s visual field with restricted viewing devices; and engulfment by being surrounded with large screens. The chapter’s key idea is its alternative expression of VR’s relations of reality as an immersive media form, which it argues shifts from the critical paradigms of replacement to re-placement. Through theoretical critique and readings of various applications of VR, the chapter argues for re-placement as a more ethical and generative space for thinking through VR’s relations of the real. In turn, where and how the actual and the virtual is re-placed informs the very purpose of media itself.

Gender Stereotype of Femininity in The Thesaurus of Modern Russian and English Press

This study was carried out at the intersection of two branches of linguistics (linguistics of the English-language and Russianlanguage media and linguistic genderology), which is relevant and demanded in modern science. The purpose of the article is to conduct a gender linguistic analysis of printed English-language journals, which will help clarify the distribution of gender roles in English-speaking society and the femininity stereotypes that mass media form in public consciousness. The material of the study was excerpts from printed Russian and English publications in which the image of a woman is realized. A list of the most common images that are verbalized in the Russian and English-language media and based on stereotypes of female behavior, thinking and the role of women in modern society is compiled. A gender analysis of modern and Russianlanguage and English-language press revealed a tendency to change in the hierarchy of gender stereotypes of femininity, in which a shift in emphasis towards the actualization of female business activity and dominance in the professional sphere is clearly observed. The following methods were used in the study: continuous sampling method, content analysis, classification method, comparison, statistical data processing.

The Discourse of Independent Animation in the Contemporary Chinese Context

Independent animation is a marginal media form in China, and studies describe how both Chinese artists and scholars of film studies have only started to practice or construct this genre and popular cinema since the 1990s, especially after the Shanke (Chinese Flash animators, 閃客) phenomenon. In this article, the existing discourse of independent animation in contemporary China is critically analyzed by studying mainly what is said and written by the local practitioners and scholars in China. The author’s analysis is based on the assumption that animation should be taken ‘as an art form’, which should be able to express itself freely without any external constraints or intervention by others. Hence, the focus should be placed on the ultimate purpose and meaning of art along with the form. Among the various types of discourses constructed by practitioners, the author argues that the discourse constructed by the contemporary Chinese art scene should be encouraged to keep the nature of independent works so as to give voice to true, personal and inner values, and expressions that are outside the institutionalized and dominating discourse or framework.

James Baldwin and Film Beyond the American Century

This article provides an introduction to this special section of James Baldwin Review 7 devoted to Baldwin and film. Jackson considers Baldwin’s distinct approach to film criticism by pairing him with James Agee, another writer who wrote fiction as well as nonfiction in several genres, and who produced a large body of film criticism, especially during the 1940s. While Agee, a white southerner born almost a generation before Baldwin, might seem an unlikely figure to place alongside Baldwin, the two shared a great deal in terms of temperament and vision, and their film writings reveal a great deal of consensus in their diagnoses of American pathologies. Another important context for Baldwin’s complex relationship to film is television, which became a dominant media form during the 1950s and exerted a great influence upon both the mainstream reception of the civil rights movement and Baldwin’s reception as a public intellectual from the early 1960s to the end of his life. Finally, the introduction briefly discusses the articles that constitute this special section.

The use of digital storytelling of patients’ stories as an approach to translating knowledge: a scoping review

Background A growing interest has centered on digital storytelling in health research, described as a multi-media presentation of a story using technology. The use of digital storytelling in knowledge translation (KT) is emerging as technology advances in healthcare to address the challenging tasks of disseminating and transferring knowledge to key stakeholders. We conducted a scoping review of the literature available on the use of patient digital storytelling as a tool in KT interventions. Methods We followed by Arksey and O’Malley (Int J Soc Res Methodol 8(1):19–32, 2005), and Levac et al. (Implement Sci 5(1):69, 2010) recommended steps for scoping reviews. Search strategies were conducted for electronic databases (Medline, CINAHL, Web of Science, ProQuest dissertations and theses global, Clinicaltrials.gov and Psychinfo). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) was used to report the review process. Results Of 4656 citations retrieved, 114 full texts were reviewed, and twenty-one articles included in the review. Included studies were from nine countries and focused on an array of physical and mental health conditions. A broad range of interpretations of digital storytelling and a variety of KT interventions were identified. Digital storytelling was predominately defined as a story in multi-media form, presented as a video, for selective or public viewing and used as educational material for healthcare professionals, patients and families. Conclusion Using digital storytelling as a tool in KT interventions can contribute to shared decision-making in healthcare and increase awareness in patients’ health related experiences. Concerns centered on the accuracy and reliability of some of the information available online and the impact of digital storytelling on knowledge action and implementation.

Reading Gender by the Column Inch: Analyzing Gender Representation in Philippine Print Advertisements

The bulk of literature on reading gender in print advertisements studies magazines, which are a media form tailored for specific audiences. By analyzing gender representations in Philippine newspaper ads, this study aims to provide a reading of gender portrayals published in a more general interest medium. Results of the content analysis performed on 256 ads that appeared in top local publications revealed that while gendered inequalities did not strongly manifest in terms of character count and gender distribution, a closer reading of characters and their gendered differences with specific ad elements in terms of contexts, roles, and physicalities evidence the persistence of stereotypical gender representations in print ads.