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- Title
- The Modern Church Communicates: Rhetoric and Hypertext in Church Website Design.
- Creator
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Palmer, Edward, Applen, John, Jones, Dan, Stephens, Sonia, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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The Internet and the World Wide Web have supplanted many paper-based information systems. People turn to the web to locate local services in the same way they find ecommerce sites such as Amazon. Churches of all sizes must develop effective and attractive websites to attract new members and inform existing members. These two groups form distinct audiences that must be correctly targeted by the website content. Other churches may visit to gather ideas for their programs; they are a third group...
Show moreThe Internet and the World Wide Web have supplanted many paper-based information systems. People turn to the web to locate local services in the same way they find ecommerce sites such as Amazon. Churches of all sizes must develop effective and attractive websites to attract new members and inform existing members. These two groups form distinct audiences that must be correctly targeted by the website content. Other churches may visit to gather ideas for their programs; they are a third group of site visitors. Organization of hypertext on the web requires skills that are different than writing for print. Technical communicators possess those skills and can help others write better hypertext. This research examines eight churches that cross three categories: denomination, size, and location. The websites of the churches are analyzed from the standpoint of the reader and the technical communicator to determine their effectiveness in content, organization, and underlying structure of the webpages, and then consider if geography, size, or denomination account for the observed differences. Audience and message are lesser issues than organization of information and navigational guidance for the reader. No remarkable differences were observed based on size, geography, or denomination. The technical communicator can assist non-technical content producers in developing skills in organization and classification.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006635, ucf:51218
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006635
- Title
- Placing birds on a dynamic evolutionary map: Using digital tools to update the evolutionary metaphor of the "tree of life".
- Creator
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Stephens, Sonia, Dombrowski, Paul, Applen, John, Murphy, Patrick, Lindgren, Robb, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
This dissertation describes and presents a new type of interactive visualization for communicating about evolutionary biology, the dynamic evolutionary map. This web-based tool utilizes a novel map-based metaphor to visualize evolution, rather than the traditional (")tree of life.(") The dissertation begins with an analysis of the conceptual affordances of the traditional tree of life as the dominant metaphor for evolution. Next, theories from digital media, visualization, and cognitive...
Show moreThis dissertation describes and presents a new type of interactive visualization for communicating about evolutionary biology, the dynamic evolutionary map. This web-based tool utilizes a novel map-based metaphor to visualize evolution, rather than the traditional (")tree of life.(") The dissertation begins with an analysis of the conceptual affordances of the traditional tree of life as the dominant metaphor for evolution. Next, theories from digital media, visualization, and cognitive science research are synthesized to support the assertion that digital media tools can extend the types of visual metaphors we use in science communication in order to overcome conceptual limitations of traditional metaphors. These theories are then applied to a specific problem of science communication, resulting in the dynamic evolutionary map.Metaphor is a crucial part of scientific communication, and metaphor-based scientific visualizations, models, and analogies play a profound role in shaping our ideas about the world around us. Users of the dynamic evolutionary map interact with evolution in two ways: by observing the diversification of bird orders over time and by examining the evidence for avian evolution at several places in evolutionary history. By combining these two types of interaction with a non-traditional map metaphor, evolution is framed in a novel way that supplements traditional metaphors for communicating about evolution. This reframing in turn suggests new conceptual affordances to users who are learning about evolution. Empirical testing of the dynamic evolutionary map by biology novices suggests that this approach is successful in communicating evolution differently than in existing tree-based visualization methods. Results of evaluation of the map by biology experts suggest possibilities for future enhancement and testing of this visualization that would help refine these successes. This dissertation represents an important step forward in the synthesis of scientific, design, and metaphor theory, as applied to a specific problem of science communication. The dynamic evolutionary map demonstrates that these theories can be used to guide the construction of a visualization for communicating a scientific concept in a way that is both novel and grounded in theory. There are several potential applications in the fields of informal science education, formal education, and evolutionary biology for the visualization created in this dissertation. Moreover, the approach suggested in this dissertation can potentially be extended into other areas of science and science communication. By placing birds onto the dynamic evolutionary map, this dissertation points to a way forward for visualizing science communication in the future.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004639, ucf:49898
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004639
