• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.49
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• pp.611-631
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• 2017

At first there was practice, then festivals and theory followed. Compared to the animation production, which is older then the medium film itself, festivals and theory in this area started with a delay. While animation programs where shown in film festivals like Cannes since the mid 1940s, the first animation festival in Annecy, France was founded in 1960, followed by several short-lived events in Romania, Italy and Tokyo and finally in 1972 by the second oldest festival up to date, Animafest Zagreb. Animation theory evolved in the late 1980s in the Anglo-American area with associations like the Society for Animation Studies, following its 'big sister' film studies. Expanding ever since as a research area, European animation studies in e.g. France, German speaking countries, Poland or Croatia have been catching up in recent years by organizing theoretical conferences and publications. A vivid synergy between practice, festivals and theory has always been a key factor for establishing a platform for the art form and culture of animation. However, in the past few years a trend could be observed towards a more intense interaction between animation festivals and theory. Animation festivals are hosting theoretical and scientific symposia or conferences, which are open for artist positions and insights into the industry. At the beginning of the lecture a short reflection of the concept of Animafest Scanner itself is followed by an introduction of the Symposium Expanded Animation at the media festival Ars Electronica Linz. The talk will subsequently focus on the multilayered academic symposia at the Festival of Animated Film ITFS and the International Conference on Animation, Effects, VR, Games and Transmedia in Stuttgart. These case studies will reveal the blurring boundaries between art, science, theory and industry as well as the specificities of the interplay between artists, practitioners, scholars, curators and festival visitors in different formats.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.