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This chapter analyses the different ways in which metal album covers draw upon medieval media. The analysis is situated within the broad theoretical frame of intermediality, and more specifically view the process where medieval media cross the borders and find their way into metal album covers as media transformation. Four different types of media transformation are analysed, and it is argued that the medievalism of album covers can be defined in terms of media transformation. Likewise, neomedievalism is defined in terms of second-order media transformation. The album cover is described as a media patchwork, and the chapter gives examples of the patches in terms of relationship and properties.

This chapter analyses a range of media outputs produced to raise awareness of the campaign of forced sterilisation conducted in Peru during the period 1993–1998. Focusing in detail on the Quipu Project the authors investigate the ways in which different media configure differently witness subjects, audiences and listeners. The chapter also analyses the effectiveness of these media outputs within the contexts of human rights discourses.

The chapter is framed by narrative theories of documentary video production, new media technology and intermediality. The authors also draw on theories of witnessing that have emerged in critical studies of witness testimony in video and new media. It uses secondary data, that is, the testimonies of women already collected, selected and, in most cases, edited by documentary makers and campaigners.

The case studies compare the ways in which conventional video documentary and techniques of digital storytelling transform the content of women’s testimony.

Funding limitations have meant that progress on the site was, at the time of writing, temporarily suspended. We therefore analysed the pilot, or prototype, of the Quipu Project, which should be viewed as a work in progress. However, a more developed site for the Quipu Project went live after the chapter was completed.

This chapter represents the first attempt to analyse the effectiveness of an experimental project such as the Quipu Project. The authors were given access by the curators of the project to the site at various stages of its construction. The chapter provides insights into the potential of digital technology to create opportunities for media outputs to internationalise interventions into campaigns for justice and reparation.

Dark Souls heralded a shift from the dichotomy of survival horror, and instead, thrust the player into a world where narrative was everywhere (if only you dared to look). This chapter explores the reimagination of Gothic narrative and narrative engagement in the cryptic and fragmented nested narratives of the iconic FromSoftware, Inc. series. In doing so, this chapter highlights the emergence of a hybrid ludo-narrative form within the Gothic genre, and examines the ways in which the series presents said narratives to the player as it shifts the onus of narrative engagement from the storyteller to the one now living the experience. The chapter explores video-ludic interpretations of death, play, and experientiality through the lens of video game studies, and posits the value of the series as a defining moment in the Japanese action role-playing game genre.

This chapter discusses textography as a strategy for researching academic writing in higher education. Textography is an approach to the analysis of written texts which combines text analysis with ethnographic techniques, such as surveys, interviews and other data sources, in order to examine what texts are like, and why. It aims to provide a more contextualized basis for understanding students’ writing in the social, cultural and institutional settings in which it takes place than might be obtained by looking solely at students’ texts. Through discussion of the outcomes of a textography, which examined the written texts submitted by visual and performing arts doctoral students at a number of Australian universities, we reflect on what we learnt from the study that we could not have known by looking at the texts alone. If we had looked at the texts without the ethnographic data not only are there many things we would not have known, but many of the things we might have said would likely have been right off the mark. Equally, had we just had the ethnographic data without the text analysis, we would have missed the insights provided by the explicit text analysis. The textography enabled us to see the diversity of practices across fields of study and institutions as well as gain an understanding of why this might be the case, all of which is of benefit to student writers and their supervisors.

This chapter presents findings from a qualitative study focused on the strategies that two marginalized seventh graders used as they completed an Internet inquiry project about survival.

The participants spent time over a four-week period in three phases – selecting a topic, locating information, and presenting information. Participants completed journals and participated in interviews. The participants’ online searches and how they organized their presentations were recorded. The researcher took field notes. These four data sources were used to determine subcategories in each phase to document the strategies they employed as they completed the project.

Participants used phrases and questions as they decided on key words to locate information. The majority of the sites they visited ended in the .com domain. They used different web browsers and spent varied amounts of time reading websites once they decided on key words and selected sites. Each participant approached the project uniquely and met the requirements to complete it.

This study suggests that students in self-contained resource classes engage with online content in sophisticated ways but that they still need support from teachers to optimize their learning.

Studies like this add to a body of research offering thick descriptions of teachers and students work together. In addition, this chapter derives value from the fact that it was conducted by a classroom teacher and therefore offers a unique perspective on the classroom as a learning environment as well as a site of inquiry.

In this chapter, the authors situate metal medievalism in the discourse on medievalism and neomedievalism. Detangling the ways in which historicity and authenticity are perceived and negotiated in metal cultures reveals how metal medievalism’s relationship to the past illuminates perceptions of post-modernity. The disparate pieces of the Middle Ages (both ‘real’ and ‘imagined’) form a bricolage through which post-modern meanings are expressed. Metal musicians and consumers use these fragments of the past as a means of collective resistance against the post-enlightenment, capitalist and machine-mediated present. The Middle Ages represent attempts at the re-enchantment of the present with a transcendent, organic, and carnal past. The meanings which are created this way are far from uniform or absolute however, but spiral between historical and imaginary, collective and individual, and continue to spin on in ever more complex permutations with no sign of abating.

Usage patterns of mobile phones in Israel position them as instruments of great importance and as everyday, multipurpose, and interpersonal devices. This study utilizes a critical perspective of the “uses and gratifications” approach to explore the usage of and gratification sought from smartphone usage of millennials. Sixty personal in-depth interviews were conducted during 2013 with millennials (undergraduate students) with the primary goal of exploring millennials’ perceptions of smartphone usages, as well as their personal experiences with smartphones and the role of smartphones in their lives. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze students’ reflections on the roles of smartphones in their lives. Participants have expressed a great bonding with their smartphone and relationships that can be described in term of "love and hate.” The thematic analysis highlighted the addictive elements of using their smartphone, that is, using it more frequently and under undesired circumstances than one would like to, and even becoming anxious about losing the device or even getting too far away from it. Other leading themes included the influence of external pressures to use smartphones, the varied usefulness that smartphones serve in participants’ lives, and a strong sense of "Fear of missing out" as an explanation for their extensive use of their smartphones. The findings of this chapter indicate that smartphones have become an indispensable medium among young adults, used due to practical, as well as to emotional reasons; inner, as well as external impulses.