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What do teenage boys read, and why? Little study has been done specifically of boys′ reading habits, leading to the suspicion that much public library selection for this group has been based on guesswork and intuition. This study sought to fill this gap in our knowledge through 60 one‐to‐one structured interviews of a stratified sample of 13‐15‐year‐old boys, approached through four Essex secondary schools. Discovers that reading compares favourably with other leisure pursuits, most boys reading regularly for 40 minutes per day on average, or one book per fortnight. Selecting fiction by genre, author and series, but chiefly by the blurb, boys are diverse in their tastes. Fifteen‐year‐olds read predominantly adult novels or have effectively ceased reading. The boys read reflectively, and are equally divided between those who imagine the story unfolding in their imaginations, those who imagine their own involvement, and those who do neither. Finds that the use of non‐fiction is lower and less important to teenage boys than had been believed. Draws implications for library provision for this group.

This study aims to explore students’ interests in multimodal texts by focusing on videos of social issues.

Data from 50 students in a first-year multilingual composition course were analyzed in two phases. Phase One examined 14 students’ reasons for self-selecting videos for multimodal analysis essays in one section of the course. Phase Two explored 50 students’ selected videos in four sections of the course across four semesters. The videos were classified as either problem- or solution-oriented to examine the students’ interests.

Analyzing the students’ responses in Phase One revealed that most of the selected videos included solutions to a social problem, and the students advocated the compelling ways in which the characters therein dealt with those problems. The findings for Phase Two revealed that the students’ selections were equally divided between problem- and solution-oriented videos. Nevertheless, a gradual increase in the selection of solution-oriented videos was observed over time.

A significant implication of this study is that it can help teachers expand their understanding of interesting and meaningful texts and make more engaging and effective instructional decisions.

The study contributes to the literature on text selection as it highlights students’ inclination toward what type of learning content interests them.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the feasibility of modifying a commercial off‐the‐shelf video game that incorporates elements of information literacy.

This paper examines six game design elements of educational video games and discusses the resources required to design and build Benevolent Blue, a “modded” video game.

This paper provides a discussion of the skills, time and funding required to build a “mod” incorporating information literacy.

Although modifying commercial videogames is quite popular, very little discussion or work is written about “modding” and its potential use designing video games for libraries. Further research is required to determine if the knowledge transfer of information literacy skills occurs with players. Additional study could look at incorporating information literacy into video games of different genres and well as the impact that video games have on undergraduate student engagement and satisfaction.

This paper outlines the resources needed to modify a commercial off‐the‐shelf video game and provides suggestions on how others in libraries might do the same.

This paper looks at serious educational games in a new way – the modification of commercial off the shelf games to develop complete game play experiences that sit outside the classroom and emphasize the importance of play.

This action research study explores how the multigenre research project develops historical empathy, or historical perspective taking skills, in a class of 22 fourth grade students. Much of the research in these areas focuses on the high school and university level. However, this study explored the degree to which upper elementary students were able to recognize historical perspectives, and whether the multigenre project format was conducive to developing this particular skill. The students in the study selected a historical topic from a list of historical subjects, then researched this topic, and displayed what they learned through multiple genres. The action researcher found that the multigenre research project increased students’ understanding of the differences in historical perspectives.

Ubiquitous Internet access and social media make visual consumption possibly the most vital characteristic of the experience economy. A cumulative, integrative framework for the analysis of visual artefacts has thus been called for as existing analytical tools and theoretical frameworks (such as semiotics, discourse analysis, content analysis, iconography, rhetoric and so on) each provide in isolation only a restricted perspective. To advance best practice towards shaping brand perception and consumer engagement, this paper provides a crucial analytical tool to uncover the unique and specific characteristics of identitary luxury fashion brand discourse by introducing and applying such an integrative framework.

A rigorous grounded theory approach was applied to a corpus of primary data, print advertising in Vogue (UK and US) and Vanity Fair (UK). Outcomes were distilled to first principles of meaning-making and aggregated in a framework which also integrates long-existing classics from diverse fields of knowledge to present a broad cumulative perspective for the analysis of visual discursive practice. This paper demonstrates the methodological rigour and validity of the framework, that is, its practical adequacy and explanatory power in uncovering the identitary brand discourse of luxury fashion.

An application of the integrative framework breaks new ground in uncovering the discreet identitary characteristics of the discursive practice of the luxury brands under investigation, Chanel and Gucci, which can be encapsulated as gendered technology of the confident self (Foucault) and spectacle (Debord), respectively.

To advance theory that illuminates understanding and shaping of brand perception and consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands, the proposed framework is the first to integrate insight from a rigorous analysis of primary data with long-existing classics from salient fields of knowledge. It, thus, provides a broader, more inclusive perspective that elucidates the multifaceted layers of meaning of luxury fashion discourse in a new and comprehensive way which existing approaches with focus on an isolated dimension such as semiotics or nonverbal behaviour and so on would not have been able to reveal.

The inclusive, practicable theoretical framework provides a parsimonious and practical tool that can be applied by non-experts across disciplines to unlock meaning in fashion discourse as a route to shaping brand image and engaging consumers.

The paper provides a new perspective on the communication practice of luxury fashion advertising as the new integrative framework illuminates layers of meaning crucial to understanding the intricacies of identitary brand discourse and to shaping brand perception and engaging consumers.

Contemporary cinema and video games express considerable skepticism toward the colonization of further planets. Contemporary films including Elysium and Passengers depict space travel as the prolongation of inequalities within human civilization, while others such as Gravity and The Martian predict a rebirth of the human species through technological advances and space travel limited to a lucky few. Games, meanwhile, explore topics ranging from private spaceflight to the genetic modification required for long-term space habitation, especially in EVE Online, which we focus on in this chapter. Although both contemporary films and games celebrate technological advances, these media also show that multiple inequalities lurk behind the celebratory human renewal into a multiplanetary species.

This study extends the Mehrabian‐Russell environmental psychology model to include both emotional states and cognitive processing as mediators of the music‐intended behavior relationship. Our model specifically suggests that music affects customers’ perceptions of service quality and merchandise quality as well as feelings of arousal and pleasure, in the context of a women’s fashion store. The effect of music on service quality has not previously received much attention. In addition, it has been suggested that previous results of studies examining the effect of music on consumer responses may have been largely the result of individual music tastes. In the present study, therefore, the effect of music tastes is also examined. Findings indicated that liking of music has a major effect on consumers’ evaluations (pleasure, arousal, service quality and merchandise quality), while the music characteristics (specifically slow pop or fast classical) have an additional effect on pleasure and service quality. Further, pleasure, service quality and merchandise quality affected intended approach behaviors, and arousal contributed to these behaviors when the store environment was considered pleasant. Affiliation behaviors similarly resulted from service quality, pleasure and arousal, but not merchandise quality. Overall results indicate the importance of understanding the effect of music on both consumers’ internal evaluations as well as intended behaviors.

To a certain extent the history of women's poetry in America is a tale of confinements,” writes Alicia Ostriker in the opening chapter of Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America. I would argue that it is less a tale of confinements than a tale still untold. Ostriker's own book on the topic, for instance, covers the entire period of women's poetry from 1650–1960 in a single chapter.