One of the main promises of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) is that they would decrease the need for travel and face-to-face meetings. In this study we aim at comparing the dynamics and content of group discussions in desktop virtual environments with physical-world discussions. We have conducted an experiment in which four groups of 7-12 participants each carried out a political discussion on the same topic; specifically, global warming. Two groups conducted the experiment in a face-to-face setting and two other groups conducted a similar discussion inside the virtual world SecondLife (http://www.secondlife.com). Virtual-world discussions were found to include shorter sentences on average, have a smaller number of themes discussed, discuss a smaller number of themes in depth, and require a longer time for discussion threads to form. In this paper we provide a quantitative analysis of the similarities and differences between virtual-world and physical-world discussions.
The study examined media coverage of Israeli citizens convicted of committing political crimes against the state in order to determine how the media portrays such perpetrators, ultimately to discern what these framing choices suggest about citizens involved in political crimes. In contrast to external acts of political crime for which the explanation provided by the media is clear, mainly that the perpetrator, "the other," is evil and acting against "us," this study found that when the perpetrator is "one of us" there is a profound need in the media to find a multidimensional explanation for the act. This study found that the Israeli media applies a personalized news frame to portray each of "our" criminals differently and explain their motivations to the public.The study examined news media coverage of Israeli citizens convicted of committing political crimes against the state in order to determine how the media construct and portray such perpetrators, ultimately to discern what these framing choices suggest about citizens involved in political crimes. Political crimes, both violent and non-violent, perpetrated by a country's own citizens are an important social problem which threaten the social order. Since the primary way that the public has come to understand these incidents is through media consumption, the media's portrayal of such crimes has significant consequences for how the public thinks about political crimes and identifies with the perpetrators involved (Chermak & Gruenewald, 2006). In contrast to external acts of political crime for which the explanation provided by the media is clear, mainly that the perpetrator, "the Amit Lavie-Dinur is Vice Dean and Head of Visual Content Studies at
The present study aims to gain an understanding of the patterns of representation and appearances of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the genre of reality shows in Israel. This genre has become extremely dominant in the television-broadcasting schedule. The mere fact that Arab people are visually present in TV entertainment, and in reality shows more specifically, should not lead us to conclude that Israeli TV is witnessing a move toward pluralism. It is important to examine the precise mode of representation of the ''others.'' That is to say: we must look at the visibility of Arab participants in those reality shows in which they appear (research question 1); how Arabs are represented in such programs (research question 2), and at the types of interaction between Arabs and other, Jewish-majority, participants in the program (research question 3). Content analyses were conducted for all reality shows broadcast on Israel's commercial TV channels between 2003 and 2007 that included Arab participants. Results show the reality show genre is still firmly ruled by a Jewish hegemony that represents the Palestinian Arab as the ''other'' and that the overwhelming majority of spectators are Jewish.
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