Detention, a Game More Than Just Games

This paper's main topic is how Taiwan's self-made video game Detention affects Taiwanese young people's understanding of their history and how this will affect the promotion of transitional justice in Taiwan. First, it summarizes its features and achievements of the international video game industry. Moreover, after briefing the story content, it explains its strategies for interpreting the White Terror, the performance of trauma, and how the Taiwanese learn more about their history while playing games. Finally, it demonstrates the uniqueness of games from other traditional media, which provides another possibility and imagination for young people to understand history.

Embodying Meaning Visually: From Perceptual Dynamics to Motion Kinematics

This paper adopts an embodied cognitive perspective to review the significance of dynamic patterns in the visual expression of meaning. Drawing upon the work of Rudolf Arnheim we first show how perceptual dynamics of inanimate objects might be extended in order to structure abstract meaning in fixed images such as paintings. Second, we evaluate existing experimental work that shows how simple kinematic structures within a stationary frame might embody such high-level properties as perceptual causality and animacy. Third and last, we take inspiration from these experiments to shed light on the expressiveness of dynamic patterns that unfold once the frame itself becomes a mobile entity (i.e., camera movement). In the latter case we will also present a filmic case study, showing how filmmakers might resort to these dynamic patterns so as to embody a film’s story content, while simultaneously offering a further avenue for film scholars to deepen their engagement with the experimental method.

Libya, the media and the language of violence: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis

The Arab revolution euphoria of 2011 was covered around the clock by different media sites, engaging millions of followers around the world, and eventually turning into discontent in some affected countries. This study examines the outcomes of the Libyan uprising (2011–2015), specifically the topics of civil-war and terrorism, through the lenses of the Arab written media in Arabic (Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya), the Arab written media in English (Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya), and the Western written media in English (BBC and CNN). Through Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis (CADS), integrating discursive news values analysis (DNVA), this study highlights the ideological representations of these media, and examines their similarities and differences in terms of frequency distribution and story content. The findings indicate that the media coverage of the outcomes of the Libyan Revolution, when reporting on the topics of war and terrorism, follow similar directions in the story content and the frequency distribution, with some differences in the latter between the analysed media sites. Also, the collocations, concordances, and DNVA results, especially NEGATIVITY, IMPACT and ELITENESS, prove the emphasis of the media on violent language, making terrorism appear the norm, and thus manipulating the audience and affecting their understanding of the news.

Children’s Online Collaborative Storytelling during 2020 COVID-19 Home Confinement

Digital collaborative storytelling can be supported by an online learning-management system like Moodle, encouraging prosocial behaviors and shared representations. This study investigated children’s storytelling and collaborative behaviors during an online storytelling activity throughout the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 home confinement in Spain. From 1st to 5th grade of primary school, one-hundred-sixteen students conducted weekly activities of online storytelling as an extracurricular project of a school in Madrid. Facilitators registered participants’ platform use and collaboration. Stories were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using the Bears Family Story Analysis System. Three categories related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic were added to the story content analysis. The results indicate that primary students worked collaboratively in an online environment, with some methodology adaptations to 1st and 2nd grade. Story lengths tended to be reduced with age, while cohesion and story structure showed stable values in all grades. All stories were balanced in positive and negative contents, especially in characters’ behavior and relationships, while story problems remained at positive solution levels. In addition, the pandemic theme emerged directly or indirectly in only 15% of the stories. The findings indicate the potential of the online collaborative storytelling activities as a distance-education tool in promoting collaboration and social interactions.

Educational Policy Change, Newspapers and Public Opinion in New Zealand, 1988-1999

<p>This thesis analyses educational trends as reported in five major New Zealand daily newspapers from 1988-1999 when the New Zealand education system underwent radical policy reforms. Newspaper reporting of the educational reforms was set alongside and compared with a range of academic and professional critiques. The role of newspaper reporting differed from the academic literature in two inter-related ways. First, newspapers had to appeal to a ‘reader audience’ so as to achieve their second function, commercial viability. Commercial viability was achieved by a process of ‘gatekeeping’ whereby articles were selected for their publishing suitability. Gatekeeping took into account the reader audience, time constraints and the employer’s political orientation. The key argument of this thesis was, that because of those restraints, reporting on complex educational issues, which required time to investigate, analyse, reflect and theorise, were too difficult and therefore, were largely ignored. A mixed research methodology was used to identify the similarities and differences between academic and professional concerns with those educational articles found in newspapers. Five newspapers were surveyed over 12 years (1988-1999) on the basis of every 11 days, but omitting Sunday. This resulted in 1680 newspapers being identified. Educational articles were coded according to their story content and substory content and scored according to their prominence using the ‘Budd Score’ method. The key findings were that articles about education, in the new global media market with its focus on the commodification of information, were superficial, narrow, unquestioning and given low priority. Such ‘dumbing down’ was seen to have effectively muzzled the ‘watchdog’ role that the media claimed to have upheld. As a result a ‘cultural bricolage’ had led to an unequal power distribution that, based on the evidence of the literature review and the Budd score analysis in this thesis, was arguably anti-social, anti-Maori, anti-feminist, anti-competitive and therefore, anti-democratic.</p>

Educational Policy Change, Newspapers and Public Opinion in New Zealand, 1988-1999

<p>This thesis analyses educational trends as reported in five major New Zealand daily newspapers from 1988-1999 when the New Zealand education system underwent radical policy reforms. Newspaper reporting of the educational reforms was set alongside and compared with a range of academic and professional critiques. The role of newspaper reporting differed from the academic literature in two inter-related ways. First, newspapers had to appeal to a ‘reader audience’ so as to achieve their second function, commercial viability. Commercial viability was achieved by a process of ‘gatekeeping’ whereby articles were selected for their publishing suitability. Gatekeeping took into account the reader audience, time constraints and the employer’s political orientation. The key argument of this thesis was, that because of those restraints, reporting on complex educational issues, which required time to investigate, analyse, reflect and theorise, were too difficult and therefore, were largely ignored. A mixed research methodology was used to identify the similarities and differences between academic and professional concerns with those educational articles found in newspapers. Five newspapers were surveyed over 12 years (1988-1999) on the basis of every 11 days, but omitting Sunday. This resulted in 1680 newspapers being identified. Educational articles were coded according to their story content and substory content and scored according to their prominence using the ‘Budd Score’ method. The key findings were that articles about education, in the new global media market with its focus on the commodification of information, were superficial, narrow, unquestioning and given low priority. Such ‘dumbing down’ was seen to have effectively muzzled the ‘watchdog’ role that the media claimed to have upheld. As a result a ‘cultural bricolage’ had led to an unequal power distribution that, based on the evidence of the literature review and the Budd score analysis in this thesis, was arguably anti-social, anti-Maori, anti-feminist, anti-competitive and therefore, anti-democratic.</p>

A Study of the Influence of Music on Audiences’ Cognition of Animation

How do animation directors and music composers integrate personal creativity and expression into their work, and how do audiences understand and appreciate it as being important and worthy of discussion? This study explores the influence of music on audiences’ cognition of animation by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Scholars specializing in aesthetics and music have conducted much research on music aesthetics and music itself. In recent years, further studies on music and film have also been carried out. However, there is a lack of research regarding audiences’ cognition of music in animation. This study focuses on the popular form of sand animation and provides insights into audiences’ cognition differences and preferences in order to uncover the core factors. The findings are that: (1) the audience perceived more consistent and subtle differences in the use of musical instruments, rhythm cadence and video–audio fit; there were also obvious differences in the perceptions of vocal skills, performance skills and musical style as well as emotional transmission; (2) three aspects of the audiences’ evaluation of an animation were affected by music: creativity, cultural meaning and preferences. The seven elements that constitute animation music (use of orchestration, vocal skills, musical style, rhythm cadence, performance techniques, emotional transmission and video–audio fit) exerted varying degrees of influence on the audiences’ evaluation of the animation film. Amongst these, video–audio fit was found to be the most important element, as it simultaneously affected the audiences’ evaluation in terms of creativity, cultural meaning and preferences; (3) audiences of different ages and professional backgrounds showed significant differences in evaluating animation films in terms of creativity, culture and preference; and (4) differences in music had a significant impact on audiences’ perceptions and evaluations of 10 facets of animation films, including the story content, role identification and spiritual fit.

The Implementation of School Literacy Movement by Using Storybook in Elementary School

Literacy is one way to build and develop children's thinking skills that are important for students. However, students' literacy habits are still low. Therefore, schools as one of the three educational centers should implement a literacy culture to improve children's thinking skills. This study aims to examine information about the application of literacy culture in schools and to apply literacy using children's stories for students. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach with a survey method. The subjects of this study were elementary school students. Data collection techniques through observation, interviews, and documentation. Data analysis through the stages of data reduction, data presentation, and concluding. The results showed that literacy activities in schools had been implemented with literacy fifteen minutes before the lesson started and used every corner of the school as a reading corner, while the implementation of literacy using storybooks was done by inviting students to read books with various story titles. Based on these results, it can be concluded that elementary schools already have a good literacy program and the application of literacy using storybooks can invite students to retell the story content and the moral values of the story. This research implies that schools should optimize their role as one of the three educational centers to build and develop literacy habits for elementary school students.

PENINGKATAN KETERAMPILAN BERBICARA MENGGUNAKAN MODEL SHOW AND TELL MELALUI PEMBELAJARAN DARING DENGAN PLATFORM WHATSAPP VIDEO CALL

This study aims to improve the speaking skills of fifth-grade students of SD Negeri 1 Kalijoyo for the academic year 2020/2021 by using the Show and Tell model with the whatsapp video call platform. This research is a Classroom Action Research (CAR) which refers to Kurt Lewin (Arikunto, 2015: 42) which consists of four stages of planning, action, observation, and reflection. The research was carried out in two cycles where each cycle was carried out in four meetings. The research subjects were 16 fifth-grade students of SD Negeri 1 Kalijoyo. The techniques accumulation of data is observation, interview, document analyzing, and test. The analysis of data use triangulation technique, triangulation sources, and content validation. This TECHNIQUE research is the interactive analysis model of Miles and Huberman (Sugiyono, 2015: 337) The results of the research data in the first cycle showed that the classical completeness in the pronunciation aspect was 56.20%, the vocabulary aspect was 62.50%, the fluency aspect was 50%, and the accuracy aspect of the story content was 56.20%. Pronunciation is 93.75%, vocabulary aspect is 81.25%, fluency aspect is 87.50%, and story content accuracy is 93.75%. These data indicate that the application of the model Show and Tell with the whatsapp video call platform can improve students' speaking skills.

“Distant death” in Maxim Gorky's short story “Obsession”

The paper analyzes the short story “Obsession” written by Maxim Gorky in the Nizhny Novgorod period of his work, which has been given little attention in philological works. On the one hand, the author himself defined its genre as a Christmas tale; on the other hand, this work cannot be brought into line with Christmas tales and short novels by Gogol and Dostoyevsky, since in Gorky’s story, no miracle occurs. However, this small text still deserves literary scholars’ attention. The short story introduces an interesting paradox of artistic space and time: in outward appearance, the action takes place within one room, on the couch, but the hero’s internal experiences, his conflict with the alter ego carry the reader into the distant past, the Christmas days of the main character’s family, and then the imagination, vision that visited Foma Mironovich come to the fore and become a plot-forming feature. The form in which the story content is presented (obsession, dream, delusion) is typologically similar to the structure of Russian folklore tales telling about encountering the phenomena of the “other world”. The results of the study may be of interest to both literary and cultural scholars.