We here at EMAC are excited to announce another new faculty member, Cindy Shen. Cindy will be joining us in Fall of 2010. Currently she is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Cindy’s research interests are social media, online communities, virtual worlds, and social network analysis. Her dissertation project examines the social dynamics among players in EverQuest II, a large massively multi-player online game. Cindy is a researcher with the Virtual Worlds Observatory, funded by the National Science Foundation and Air Force Research Lab. She is also an active member of VOSS: Understanding and Enabling Network Dyanmics in Virtual Communities, also funded by NSF.

In addition to to her scholarly work, Cindy is generally interested in exploring the motivation of various online behaviors, such as playing social games and paying real money for virtual items in Farmville.

You can check out her research page and/or follow her on Twitter.

Before you head off for summer, here are some final updates regarding Fall 2010 courses.

Undergraduate Courses:

EMAC (ATEC) 2321 – Writing and Research for New Media, two sections (Staff)

EMAC (ATEC) 2322 – Introduction to Electronic and Digital Communication, two sections (K. Knight, Staff)

EMAC 3326 – Emerging Media and Communication (D. Leeson)

EMAC 4325 – Digital Writing (D. Parry)

EMAC 4372 – Topics in EMAC – Social Change, Social Justice and Social Media (M. Kasra)

Graduate Courses:

EMAC 6300 – Introduction to Emerging Media and Communication

Introduction to interdisciplinary study of the implications of interactive technology for the creation, dissemination, and impact of communication.Establishes basic theoretical concepts and principles underlying the graduate program in Emerging Media Communication. (K. Knight) W 7 – 9:45 pm

EMAC 6372 – Approaches to Emergent Media and Communications

Approaches to Emergent Media and Communications focuses on the study of emergent media from a theoretical frame, exploring the political, technological, cultural and historical forces which inform the way media and communication develop. (C. Shen) T 7 – 9:45 pm

EMAC 6373 – Emerging Media Studio 1

This course explores media production across multiple media. Students work in teams to develop meta-media projects in a variety of content delivery environments. Class will require students to develop a range of rhetorical (text, audio) and visual (image, video) strategies appropriate for emerging media. (D. Terry) R 7 – 9:45 pm

EMAC 6V81 – Special Topics in Emergent Communication — CANCELLED

My name is Joe Denton, and I am a student of Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) here at the University of Texas at Dallas. My hobbies include photography, web design, and internet/mobile technologies, to be vague.

I encountered another unique project in Mona Kasra’s Computer Imaging Class (ATEC 2382) involving Google Maps and photography. The assignment was to create a photo/narrative map using the “My Maps” feature on Google Maps. We were also told to experiment and be creative, and the results proved to be both narrative and informative. You can see more examples here, but I’ve highlighted a few below:

DART Map

Joe Posada created a map that tracks the DART route from UTDallas all the way to south Dallas. Each stop he passes on his way home from campus includes a picture, with more to come for the southern stops. This is useful information to anyone who travels to UTDallas by way of public transportation.

Animal Shelters

Becca Greening’s love for animals inspired her to create a map of nearby animal shelters, encouraging others to adopt instead of buying from breeders or pet stores.

Mundane Quest of Righteous Glory

Marco Salamone took a different approach to the assignment. He created a photo narrative based around errands he ran one day. The map is a story in itself, and a pretty good read at that.