PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

Translation Studies scholars have extensively examined paratexts of translated materials, including titles, translator's notes, blurbs, and covers, across traditional formats such as books, DVDs, and television broadcasts. While these studies are significant for the field of Translation Studies, there is limited research on the use of paratexts in internet-based video streaming services. Streaming services are relatively new to the global scene, and their translation practices are understudied, with studies on their digital paratextual material being almost non-existent. In an attempt to respond to calls for further exploration of such new paratextual manifestations, this research investigated the shifts made to the paratextual material of Netflix Originals for the Saudi Arabian market. Using a descriptive approach to identify patterns of shifts, a corpus of 120 original titles, consisting of thumbnails and metadata, was compiled and analyzed. The findings reveal minimal localization in the thumbnails, while metadata show some shifts in the form of omission and addition, some of which pertain to culturally sensitive topics. To shed light on the decisionmaking behind the observed changes, the second part of this dissertation attempted to answer how and why these decisions are made through a close analysis of Netflix guidelines available on their platform as well as through interviews and surveys with localization professionals that currently work on translating Netflix Originals into Arabic. The aim of the analysis and interviews is to shed some light on how Netflix, as an international streaming service, engages with controversial or taboo topics in Saudi Arabia, whether they conflict with official regulations or cultural and religious norms.

Committee: Erik Angelone (Advisor); Françoise Massardier-Kenney (Committee Member); Said Shiyab (Committee Member); Yesim Kaptan (Committee Member); Julie Mazzei (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Linguistics

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, German

Trauma has been an important facet of literature and German studies since the romantic era, and just as people grow and change, so do the ways trauma is represented in different times. Trauma studies has already been applied to many different forms of literature including crime fiction and romantic era novellas. This analysis expands trauma study into the realm of film and television. By defining the Netflix original series Dark as a trauma narrative, the therapeutic function of its structure, repetitions, characterizations of emotional attachments, and resolutions become apparent. The narrative style of Dark mirrors the effects of trauma on the brain while the characters in the series propose dramatized aspects of symptoms of trauma that can help the audience reflect on aspects of their own lives. The characters in Dark create a representation of Tannhaus's trauma by showing different aspects of Tannhaus's grief. This aspect of the show distances the audience from Tannhaus while also creating an emotional attachment towards other characters. At the end of the series, the removal of the characters displaces the emotional grief, caused by loss, from Tannhaus to the audience. German forms of literature have been playing with these tropes of displacement, of fractured identity, haunting of the past, death, and new beginnings, for over two centuries. They appear in the romantic period, e.g. in E.T.A. Hoffmann's works and find further reflection in Freud. This analysis will show how film and a modern made-for-TV series like Dark can also help their audiences to attempt healing through reflection.

Committee: Christina Guenther Ph.D. (Committee Member); Edgar Landgraf Ph. D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Romance Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Mass Communication (Communication)

This dissertation investigates how Netflix's Black Mirror (2011—) articulates both the technology/human interconnectedness and a varied array of posthuman subjects within the narrative. I engage with posthumanist theory and utilize narrative rhetorical criticism and the method of articulation to analyze a selection of ten episodes. Based on the textual analysis, I contend that each selected narrative reveals a unique hypothetical scenario that questions the humanist conceptualization of human nature in addition to envisioning potentials for challenging the common understanding of self, identity, subjectivity, and agency. With its controversial and multilayered articulations of the posthuman condition, I propose that this quality science fiction television program takes as its central theme the symbiotic technology/human relationship as the kernel of a co-constructed reality between these two actants in the digital age. I suggest that Black Mirror introduces five shades of be(com)ing posthuman: be(com)ing alienated, be(com)ing cyborg, be(com)ing fractured, be(com)ing immortal, and be(com)ing human. Ultimately, I argue for an empathetic techno/human future that recognizes that both technology and humans matter and mutually influence one another in the construction of the techno/human subject that is unapologetically cyborg, hybrid, and posthuman such that it refuses to be categorically unadulterated and pure.

Committee: Suetzl Wolfgang (Advisor); Ng Eve (Committee Member); Aden Roger (Committee Member); Sheldon Myrna (Committee Member) Subjects: Mass Communications

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Spanish

En esta tesis analizo como la primera serie espanola original de Netflix, Las chicas del cable representa las tensiones sociopoliticas de la primera mitad del siglo XX a traves de sus protagonistas femeninas. Durante esta epoca, las mujeres eran oprimidas por la sociedad patriarcal por lo que les faltaban varias libertades otorgadas a los hombres. Propongo que esta serie representa las injusticias sufridas por las mujeres por medio del melodrama. Mas especificamente, utilizo los argumentos de Herman Herlinghaus y Jesus Martin-Barbero para explicar que la serie reduce las tensiones sociopoliticas a un conflicto personal e intimo para presentarlas al espectador de una manera cercana y a traves de un lenguaje universal, o sea, el lenguaje del amor y de lo sentimental. De esta manera, tambien sostengo que Netflix sirve como el folletin digitalizado del siglo XXI debido a su forma de distribucion por entregas y su uso de la estetica melodramatica en esta serie en particular. Ademas, destaco varias dinamicas entre las protagonistas y como cada una representa un conflicto de la epoca como, por ejemplo, las tensiones entre la clase media/obrera y la burguesia o la marginacion de la mujer en la vida politica y en la esfera domestica. Debido al uso del melodrama, estas tensiones son presentadas a traves de una manera que le permite al espectador adentrarse en la trama e identificarse con las protagonistas y sus luchas. Mas aun, los elementos melodramaticos en la serie la convierten en una serie transhistorica y transcultural. Asi, la representacion de la epoca de Las chicas del cable puede llegar a una gama de personas de otras sociedades y culturas que tambien pueden identificarse con las protagonistas y entender los conflictos de la epoca pese a no ser espanoles.

Committee: Pedro Porben Dr. (Advisor); Francisco Cabanillas Dr. (Committee Member); Valeria Grinberg-Pla Dra. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cinematography; European History; European Studies; Film Studies; Foreign Language; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Language; Mass Media; Womens Studies

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2017, Art

The Napster revolution at the turn of 21st century toppled recorded music revenue streams as peer-to-peer file-sharing and piracy tore listeners away from music retailers and left a power vacuum at the center of the music industry. From 2008-2016, streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube emerged as the de facto leaders in the free culture of recorded music. This paper examines the impact of streaming services on local musicians and explores possible design interventions to improve financial returns of streaming for local acts. Streaming revenues accounted for 51% of recorded music revenue in 2016, but local artists, without the financial resources of major record labels, are not enjoying the financial revival. Favoring regional talent in streaming algorithms and incorporating existing plugins or widgets into the user interface of streaming platforms can funnel more revenue toward local artists.

Committee: Dennis Cheatham (Committee Chair); Richard Campbell (Committee Member); Diane Fellows (Committee Member); Chris Strobel (Other); Glenn Platt (Other) Subjects: Fine Arts; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Music; Performing Arts; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Journalism (Communication)

This dissertation, comprised of two experimental studies, focuses on the impact of pairing targeted advertisements and ratings with television programming for college-aged individuals in terms of media enjoyment. The first experiment, building off of Saks (2013), examines how pairing television shows with either age-congruent or age- incongruent advertisements can influence participants' enjoyment of shows from three different genres outside of the participants' age demographic. The second experiment moves into the realm of targeted ratings, similar to those utilized by websites like Netflix. That experiment explores how individuals are influenced by manipulated ratings telling them how much they will supposedly like a show. The results from the first study, which utilized Mandler's Discrepancy/Evaluation theory, show no statistical significance in terms of change in enjoyment when viewers' saw shows outside of their age demographic paired with either age-congruent or age-incongruent advertisements. The second study, however, showed statistical significance for individuals' enjoyment being manipulated by randomly assigned supposedly targeted ratings. Various explanations for both phenomena are discussed.

Committee: Carson Wagner (Committee Chair); Jatin Srivastava (Committee Member); Roger Cooper (Committee Member); Ronaldo Vigo (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2014, Journalism (Communication)

This dissertation examines to what extent the most popular documentaries as ranked by Netflix conform to the principles of journalism as defined by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, vs. the shared truth of the documentary filmmaker as defined by narrative inquiry theory. Fifteen of the most popular documentaries were viewed twice in their entirety. Time-code was noted to mark events and sequences of the narrative for the sake of reference and comparison. They were selected from the documentary categories used by Netflix that most parallel the documentary categories of history, propaganda, art, style, entertainment, biography, and politics or dissident message, which have appeared as the most common categories in the literature. Qualitative analysis found that political documentaries were the most closely associated with a shared truth, while biographical and historical documentaries were most closely associated with journalistic standards. If documentary filmmakers edit fairly, such as by providing clear identification of speakers and sources, offering the facts and voices of more than one side, verifying their facts and claims, stating their premises clearly, and leaving the conclusion open to the viewer, then they are an example of a high level of verification associated with journalism.

Committee: Michael Sweeney Dr. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Communication; Film Studies; Journalism; Mass Media

Master of Science, Miami University, 2011, Computer Science and Software Engineering

Recommender systems are used to predict the interest of a customer on a particular item based on that customer's ratings on other items. Many websites like Amazon and Netflix use such systems to recommend items of potential interest to their customers. In order to improve their recommendation service, the data owners sometimes publicly release all or part of their recommendation data i.e., the ratings of their customers on various items without any person specific detail like the customer names. Still, this released data could suffer from re-identification attacks compromising the customer's privacy. However, such releases in the past, like the one by Netflix, proved to be fruitful. So, in our work, we propose a technique to publish these recommendation datasets without compromising the privacy of the customers. The goal of this thesis is to provide better privacy and utility than the current solutions.

Committee: Keith Frikken Dr (Advisor); William Brinkman Dr (Committee Member); Lukasz Opyrchal Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science