STORRE Collection: Electronic theses of Communications, Media and Culture students.Electronic theses of Communications, Media and Culture students.http://hdl.handle.net/1893/92024-03-29T13:03:22Z2024-03-29T13:03:22ZAttending, listening, taking time: the quietly radical ethical practice of the filmmaker Jenny GilbertsonMain, Shonahttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/354192023-09-27T09:23:25Z2023-01-06T00:00:00ZTitle: Attending, listening, taking time: the quietly radical ethical practice of the filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson
Author(s): Main, Shona
Abstract: Jenny Gilbertson, an independent self-funded filmmaker, lived and filmed Shetland communities in the 1930s, then, after a teaching career, Inuit communities in Arctic Canada from 1970–1978. Keen to develop a practice that resists the extractive nature of documentary production and a determination to foreground Gilbertson as an ethical filmmaker, in this thesis, I ask what can contemporary filmmakers learn from her way of living with and filming an Indigenous community?
Ethical debate in documentary filmmaking is largely dominated by the protection of the filmmaker’s property (the film) through copyright, consent and freedom of expression. Yet this strengthening of ownership cannot deny the very nature of documentary, which is extractive and assimilatory. Gilbertson’s approach was quietly different: shaped by the valuing of friendship, community and reciprocity, it resulted in a portrayal of Inuit by a qallunaaq (white person) that was unlike any other at that time.
Using the three experiential events of archival research (including close readings of Gilbertson’s diaries, her last film, Jenny’s Arctic diary (1978) filmed in Grise Fiord and her newly digitised Arctic Sound Recordings from 1970–1978); fieldwork (filming and interviews carried out in Grise Fiord in 2018); and the editing process, I used my buddhist practice and theory as liberatory practice to deepen and develop the ethics – thinking and caring – in my filmmaking practice.
Recognising the 40 years of political and cultural change between Gilbertson and myself, I consider the daily business of documenting people and place and how in thinking and caring about those you film, you confront and negotiate desire, responsibility and possibility, all within the context of a relationship, a project, an industry, a technology, a budget, and, significantly, the history of the other. My written thesis draws on these confrontations and negotiations to examine Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil’s theories of attention and Pauline Oliveros, Dylan Robinson and Salomé Voegelin’s approaches to listening and sounding, I consider both Gilbertson’s and my own attempts to resist ‘taking’ from and ‘using’ the people we filmed and recorded and where this sits alongside our shared overriding desire to make community and kin.
The outcome of this liberatory theory on my practice research is a 75-minute film in which I go ‘with’ Gilbertson to Grise Fiord. In this I learn about her time there, the people and things she looked at, listened to and spent time with. Using this time between Gilbertson and myself, I present a visual and sonic reflection of Gilbertson’s practice through my own and reveal the ways in which attending, listening and putting the filmed before the film can generate ethical possibilities that interrupt the norms of documentary filmmaking.2023-01-06T00:00:00ZMeaning-ful Encounters: Relational Encoding in Pioneer Journalism and the Reimagining of Journalistic EpistemologyAnderson, Bissiehttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/352822023-08-29T10:51:51Z2023-03-23T00:00:00ZTitle: Meaning-ful Encounters: Relational Encoding in Pioneer Journalism and the Reimagining of Journalistic Epistemology
Author(s): Anderson, Bissie
Abstract: This dissertation critically examines the epistemic praxes of four “pioneer journalism”
communities (Hepp & Loosen, 2021) and sheds light on how they reimagine journalistic
epistemology through their knowledge production (encoding). Pioneer journalism communities
are loose networks, local-global collectives whose raison d’etre is to transform journalism, its
epistemology and its relationship with communities and audiences. Examining pioneer
journalism epistemic praxis, therefore, is important as it can sensitize us to shifts in journalistic
epistemology and its possible futures. Grounded in Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory
(1973, 1980) and the monist, relational ontology of new materialism, this doctoral study explores
the process, discourse and material products of encoding in four pioneer journalism startups
operating in different journalistic cultures – The Current (Pakistan), New Naratif (Malaysia), DoR
(Romania), and Bureau Local (UK).
Through a multiple case study design and methodological triangulation (braiding
metajournalistic discourse analysis, interviews with pioneer journalism actors, and multimodal
discourse analysis of story artefacts), this comparative multi-method study builds on Hall’s
encoding/decoding model by conceptualising the pioneer journalism knowledge production
process as 'relational encoding'. Through a cross-case synthesis, it contributes to theory-building
by proposing a three-dimensional conceptual framework of 'meaning-ful encounters', an enactive,
relational framework that could be extrapolated both theoretically and methodologically to
examine journalistic knowledge production in various contexts and illuminate journalistic
epistemology more broadly, by connecting the moments of encoding and decoding through the
critical analysis of story interfaces and their encoded agentic capacities vis-à-vis audiences and
wider world. This doctoral study also has strong normative potential as it offers seven epistemic
recommendations for a meaningful and relational industry practice, thus feeding into both academic
and practice debates on journalism’s changing epistemologies (Callison & Young, 2019). Beyond
that, through its cross-border focus, the study contributes to ongoing efforts to develop
transnational, global-comparative understandings of journalism (Berglez, 2008; Ward, 2008,
2018).2023-03-23T00:00:00ZOptimising Antibiotic Treatments using Evolutionary AlgorithmsGoranova, Milahttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/351952023-06-13T12:20:45Z2022-09-30T00:00:00ZTitle: Optimising Antibiotic Treatments using Evolutionary Algorithms
Author(s): Goranova, Mila
Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development. Antibiotic overuse and misuse are the main drivers for the emergence of resistance. Studies in the medical sphere have indicated that shortened antibiotic treatments can be as effective as standard fixed-dose ones and have shown that an initial higher dose followed by a lower maintenance dose are more beneficial to patients with critical illnesses. It is crucial to optimise the use of existing antibiotics in order to improve medical outcomes, decrease toxicity and reduce the emergence of resistance. We formulate the design of antibiotic dosing regimens as a continuous optimisation problem and use several evolutionary algorithms as the search technique. Regimens are represented as vectors of real numbers encoding daily doses, which can vary across the treatment duration. A stochastic mathematical model of bacterial infections with tuneable resistance levels is used to evaluate the effectiveness of evolved regimens. The main objective is to minimise the treatment failure rate, subject to a constraint on the maximum total antibiotic used. We consider simulations with different levels of bacterial resistance; two ways of administering the drug (orally and intravenously); as well as coinfections with two strains of bacteria. The approach produced effective dosing regimens, with an average improvement in lowering the failure rate 30%, when compared with standard fixed-daily-dose regimens with the same total amount of antibiotic. A general pattern of an optimised treatment is found, where if 2x is the standard daily dose then the optimised treatment follows the 3x mg, followed by several 2x mg with a last dose of x mg. A noise handling technique is used to minimise the runtime of the experiments while maintaining the quality of treatments. The results of this work indicate that clinical studies confirming the effectiveness of this approach could be highly beneficial to future of antibiotic treatments.2022-09-30T00:00:00ZThe complexity of ffotography: conceptualising Welsh photography as a complex adaptive systemMacdonald, Ellie Mhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/346612022-11-15T16:29:45Z2022-06-06T00:00:00ZTitle: The complexity of ffotography: conceptualising Welsh photography as a complex adaptive system
Author(s): Macdonald, Ellie M
Abstract: This thesis is a transdisciplinary inquiry into expressions of national identity present in
photography generated in and of Wales. It operationalises applied methods informed by
complexity theory to conceptualise ‘Welsh photography’ as a complex adaptive system and in
doing so makes contributions to the sub-fields of applied complexity, photography, and Welsh
national identity.
Ontologically, both Welshness and photography exhibit characteristics that are indicative
of complex systems. Traditional attempts to apply positivism to Welsh identity and photography
have resulted in fracture and polarisation, both of which now demonstrably characterise these
phenomena. Complexity theory advocates a dynamic approach to ontology that rejects traditional
epistemological reductionism (in which phenomena are understood through their constituent
components) in favour of a systems-based approach which accounts for dynamic constructionism,
holism, and emergence (Cilliers, 2000). Complexity theory is particularly suited to phenomena that
are irreducible, contingent, and dynamic; it places epistemological importance on interactions
between components within a system, and offers strategies for apprehending, rather than solving
complex phenomena.
Complexity-informed research mobilises reflexive inquiry-led methods, in which the
researcher and participants have an explicit and collaborative role in the generation of knowledge.
To this end, this thesis makes use of unstructured interviews and photo-elicitation to characterise
photographic expressions of national identity as an ongoing complex process consisting of a
variety of system components and operating within a specific but open environment.
This thesis concludes that as Welshness itself is increasingly conceptualised as
multiplicitous, so is Welsh photography. Specifically, this thesis contends that photographic
Welshness is a negotiated phenomenon, that is continuously constructed and deconstructed
through a series of non-linear, dynamic, and fed-back interactions which can be understood as
occurring between components within a complex system of photographic practice and wider
contextual discourse.2022-06-06T00:00:00Z