Deakin University: openjournals@Deakin
Not a member yet
1277 research outputs found
Sort by
The Female Video Game Player-character Persona and Emotional Attachment
Get PDFThis research, using online qualitative survey questions, explored how players of the PlayStation 4 console game, Horizon Zero Dawn, formed emotional attachments to characters while playing as, and assuming the persona of the female player-character, Aloy. It was found that the respondents (approximately 71% male) formed emotional attachments to the female player-character (PC) and non-player characters. Players found the characters to be realistic and well developed and they also found engaging with the storyworld via the female PC a profound experience. This research advances knowledge about video games in general and video game character attachment specifically, as well as the emerging but under-researched areas of Persona Studies and Game Studies
Mapping Persona and Games
Get PDFFor those new to games studies, the most important primer is the recognition that, as a field of research, it is at its most revealing when in conversation with perspectives from other fields and domains of inquiry. Espen Aarseth (2001) announced that the first issue of Game Studies, the international journal of computer game research, marked the commencement of computer game studies. Aarseth's editorial launched the trajectory for the following two decades of game research, obscuring much of the previous work examining digital and analogue games that had contributed to the tipping point at which the fields' coalescence could become a reality. Emerging from media studies, sociology, and a particular tradition of textual analysis in cinema and literature studies, games studies has since had a reputation for being the latest kid on the block. Like persona studies, game studies features key moments in which intersections between it and other fields and their theoretical and analytical perspectives prove enlightening, enriching, and even entertaining
Professional communication competence in English for occupational purposes (EOP) courses: A systematic literature review and proposal of a framework
Get PDFThis paper reports a systematic literature review that was conducted to explore the areas of research pertaining to English language workplace communication needs in order to design courses in English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) that can better meet the demands of the industry. Articles from Scopus, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight were extracted following the five-step method of conducting a systematic literature review. In total, 133 articles were analysed. From the analysis, it was found that most studies focused on examining the needs of the learners, or the needs of the industry; very few studies triangulated the findings between different stakeholders to obtain a better picture of the needs, wants, and gaps between the target situation and the present situation. Additionally, most studies focused on language tasks required and did not pay due emphasis on the competencies required to perform the tasks well. Thus, the outcome of this review is a proposed theoretical model to develop professional communication competence among new graduates that is intended to be used in a future study to address the gaps found in this review. Practically, the review also sheds light on gaps that exist in current research that can be addressed in future research, especially for higher education institutions (HEIs) that are working to design and develop courses in EOP to improve English language communication skills for employability
The Decline and Resurgence of Turkish Islamism: The Story of Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP
Get PDFFor decades, Turkish Islamists have failed to attract the votes of large sections of society and remained marginal. As a result of this failure to come to power, and due to domestic and international constraints and windows of opportunities, they have declared that they have jettisoned Islamism. Many Turkish Muslims whose religious disposition was shaped by the pluralistic urban Ottoman experience and small-town Anatolian traditionalism, and by the contesting currents of cosmopolitan pluralism and rural social conservatism, voted in favour of these former Islamists who have become “Muslim Democrats”. This paper elaborates on the genealogy of Turkish Islamists and their political trajectories and argues that when the forces and constraints of domestic and external social, political and economic conditions disappeared and the opportunities derived from being Muslim Democrats no longer existed, the former Islamists easily returned to their original ideology, showing that despite assertions to the contrary their respect for democracy and pluralism had not truly been internalised. This paper also aims to demonstrate that similar to other authoritarian populists, Erdoganists perceive the state and its leader as more important than anything else and as being above everything else, which has culminated in a personality cult and sanctification of the state. As long as Turkey’s economy continued to boom, almost everyone was happy that Turkey could readily market the “Muslim Democrats” story to the whole world for a long period as a major success story, or as an “exemplary Muslim country” or “model”. Yet, Middle Eastern elites and Western forces got carried away and learnt the hard way just how naive their view was in perhaps the first great transformation movement of the twenty-first century – the Arab Spring. Likewise, the Turkish Spring turned all too quickly towards autumn and then winter
The Niichii Project: Revitalizing Indigenous Language in Northern Canada
Get PDFTwo Anishnabek kindergarten teachers discuss four principles of Indigenous pedagogies in a project with a university researcher that created a context for children to engage in activities to learn their Anishnabek language and culture, and create positive identities. The university researcher sent a rabbit puppet named Niichii (Friend), who was assigned the role of an Anishnaabek child whose family was from their Indigenous community but had moved away. Taking the role of Niichii’s Kokum (Grandmother), the university researcher asked the child to teach Niichii the community’s language and traditional ways. The teachers describe and interpret the learning activities of the Niichii project in terms of four elements of Indigenous pedagogies: intergenerational learning; experiential learning; spiritual learning involving interconnections with the land; and learning about relationality. Implications for other bilingual and multilingual contexts include creating role play contexts where children are positioned as teachers and helpers to support an imaginary character’s language and cultural learning, building on children’s funds of knowledge and highlighting cultural connections to the local community
Cultural Explorations of Time and Space: Indigenous Australian Artists-in Residence, Conventional Narratives and Children’s Text Creation
Get PDFThis paper details a project, funded by the University of Ballarat in Victoria, which addresses a local problem of schools' lack of acknowledgement of their being positioned on traditional owners' land. In addressing this issue, I am using two texts, 'My Place' (Wheatley and Rawlins 1987) and 'Who am I? The Diary of Mary Talence' (Heiss 2004) to engage the participants in discussions to make visible what has been invisible; that is, the issue of traditional Indigenous Australian ownership of the land on which the school is placed. Taking up notions of deconstruction from poststructuralist theory, I have looked to these texts as ways of disrupting the taken-for-granted occupation of public space, that is, I examine the language used to position the readers and 'yield up the ideologies that inform them' (Bradford 2001, p.9). I will then ask participants to use these understandings to look at their own situation in relation to the space their school occupies. What is examined in this project is the current state of affairs, where the land occupied by schools is owned by the state, and, notionally at least, by the school community of various stakeholders with no sense even of an Indigenous Australian perspective on ways in which relationships with the land may go well beyond concepts of ownership. The project referred to in this paper has not concluded, so I do not report here on any changes that may have occurred. Rather, I report on how I envisage the texts are to be used to make visible issues of land ownership and how and why these particular texts can contribute to this
Cultural Rights as Human Rights and the Impact on the Expression of Arts Practices
Get PDFCultural rights are becoming an increasingly important area of human rights discussion given the association between culture, identity and social equity. The subject is considered here in the context of how the absence of cultural rights influences both the recognition of the diversity of cultures and the capacity of some to access and practice art. Culture and arts practices are intertwined but certain arts practices are prioritised over others by funding bodies, governments and institutions. Recent examples from Australia are highlighted, in which changes to the cultural makeup of the country are occurring at a rapid rate without adequate responses from governments to address funding inequities. It is argued here that unless cultural rights are seen as a basic human right and embedded in the legal national framework, then sectors of the broader community are disenfranchised
Implications of Lived and Packaged Religions for Intercultural Dialogue to Reduce Conflict and Terror
Get PDFThe use of intercultural dialogue (ICD) to promote intergroup understanding and respect is considered as a key to reduce tensions and the likelihood of conflict. This paper argues that understanding the differences among religions – those between packaged and lived religion – enhances the chances of success and makes the effort more challenging. Religions contained and packaged are found in formallyorganised expressions of religion – churches, denominations, synagogues, mosques, temples and so on. For packaged religions, religious identity is singular and adherents are expected to identify with only one religion and are assumed to accept the whole package of that religion. ICD in this context involves communicating with religious groups such as organisations and encouraging different leaders to speak with each other resulting in platforms filled with ‘heads of faith’ – bishops, muftis, ayatollahs, chief rabbis, swamis and so on. In contrast, lived religions involve ritual practices engaged in by individuals and small groups, creation of shrines and sacred spaces, discussing the nature of life, sharing ethical concerns, going on pilgrimages and taking actions to celebrate and sustain hope. There is some evidence that, although packaged religions are declining, lived religions continue at persistent levels. Violent extremism is more likely to be associated with lived rather than packaged forms of religion, making a more balanced intercultural competences approach to ICD critical to countering conflict.1
1 This article is a revised version of Gary D Bouma (2017) ‘Religions – lived and packaged – viewed through an intercultural dialogue prism’ in Fethi Mansouri (ed) Interculturalism at the Crossroads: Comparative perspectives on concepts, policies and practice, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, France, pp. 129–144
Being “Other” in Berlin: German Koreans, Multiraciality, and Diaspora
Get PDFGermany is considered a relatively recent country where multiraciality has become a recognised phenomenon. Yet, Germany still considers itself a monoracial state, one where whiteness is conflated with “Germanness”. Based on interviews with seven people who are multiracial (mostly Korean–German) in Berlin, this article explores how the participants construct their multiracial identities. My findings show that participants strategically locate their identity as diasporic to circumvent racial “othering”. They utilise diasporic resources or the “raw materials” of diasporic consciousness in order to construct their multiracial identities and challenge racism and the expectations of racial and ethnic authenticity. I explored how multiracial experiences offer a different way of thinking about the actual doing and performing of diaspora
Intercultural Public Intellectual Engagement
Get PDFThe article firstly examines the different conceptions of dialogue and reason within political theory, especially in the work of Rawls. Secondly we explore multicultural political theorists who have been motivated less by abstract reasoning by a sole reasoner or identical identity-less individuals and more by dialogue. For such multiculturalists, the principles of social justice are not known in advance or simply by reason, but are arrived at by conflict and learning, by dialogue and negotiation in circumstances of inequality and minority-claims making. In response to the multiculturalists, interculturalists allege that multiculturalism is too focused on the macro and the conflictual, and dialogue should be redirected to the micro and the cooperative. Although I welcome the interculturalists’ focus on micro-relations, this does not require abandoning the idea of dialogue at the level of political controversies and public discourses. It is not an either–or choice because groups and intergroup problems exist in society and cannot be simply handled at a micro level of contact, interaction and sociability. The kind of macro-level dialogue that I am speaking of can also be understood as a form of public intellectual engagement that can contribute to societal dialogues.1
1This article is a reprint of Tariq Modood (2017) ‘Intercultural public intellectual engagement’ in Fethi Mansouri (ed) Interculturalism at the Crossroads: Comparative perspectives on concepts, policies and practice, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, France, 83-102