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THESIS ONLINE SPACES: TECHNOLOGICAL, INSTITUTIONAL, AND SOCIAL PRACTICES THAT FOSTER CONNECTIONS THROUGH INSTAGRAM AND TWITCH Submitted by Taylor Weigel Department of Communication Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado Summer 2020 Master’s Committee: Advisor: Evan Elkins Greg Dickinson Rosa Martey Copyright by Taylor Laureen Weigel All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT ONLINE SPACES: TECHNOLOGICAL, INSTITUTIONAL, AND SOCIAL PRACTICES THAT FOSTER CONNECTIONS THROUGH INSTAGRAM AND TWITCH We are living in an increasingly digital world.1 In the past, critical scholars have focused on the inequality of access and unequal relationships between the elite, who controlled the media, and the masses, whose limited agency only allowed for alternate meanings of dominant discourse and media.2 With the rise of social networking services (SNSs) and user-generated content (UGC), critical work has shifted from relationships between the elite and the masses to questions of infrastructure, online governance, technological affordances, and cultural values and practices instilled in computer mediated communication (CMC).3 This thesis focuses specifically on technological and institutional practices of Instagram and Twitch and the social practices of users in these online spaces, using two case studies to explore the production of connection- oriented spaces through Instagram Stories and Twitch streams, which I argue are phenomenologically live media texts. In the following chapters, I answer two research questions. First, I explore the question, “Are Instagram Stories and Twitch streams fostering connections between users through institutional and technological practices of phenomenologically live texts?” and second, “If they 1 “We” in this case refers to privileged individuals from successful post-industrial societies.
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