title: The impact of Nintendo’s "for men" advertising campaign on a potential female market

authors: Schott, Gareth R.

abstract: In order to emphasize the maturation of their hand-held console and increase its appeal to an adult market, Nintendo's UK advertising campaign for the Game Boy Advance SP drew explicitly upon 'lad' culture and a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of cologne advertising. In this campaign, the lead and most prominent promotional advert for the device used an image of the Game Boy with the tagline "For Men". This paper outlines why Nintendo's decision to present the Game Boy as a male accessory prompted exploration into its potential impact on the female market. Much of the emerging research field examining female participation in game cultures had at that point tended to focus its attention on exploring the experiences of different female groups with a variety of software titles and its associated communities. In contrast, this paper addresses participants' perceptions of the gaming industry and its relevance to them as a (potential) consumer by taking a hardware device as its focus. This was achieved by conducting a series of focus groups, with a range of both experienced and inexperienced female game players, during which participants were asked to engage with the hand-held device and experience both its single and networked game-play capabilities with the game Legend of Zelda. The findings address participants' awareness and views on the extent to which gaming is coded male and its ramifications for their participation in game cultures.

text: The impact of Nintendo’s "for men" advertising campaign on a potential female market In order to emphasize the maturation of their hand-held console and increase its appeal to an adult market, Nintendo's UK advertising campaign for the Game Boy Advance SP drew explicitly upon 'lad' culture and a tongue-in-cheek appropriation of cologne advertising. In this campaign, the lead and most prominent promotional advert for the device used an image of the Game Boy with the tagline "For Men". This paper outlines why Nintendo's decision to present the Game Boy as a male accessory prompted exploration into its potential impact on the female market. Much of the emerging research field examining female participation in game cultures had at that point tended to focus its attention on exploring the experiences of different female groups with a variety of software titles and its associated communities. In contrast, this paper addresses participants' perceptions of the gaming industry and its relevance to them as a (potential) consumer by taking a hardware device as its focus. This was achieved by conducting a series of focus groups, with a range of both experienced and inexperienced female game players, during which participants were asked to engage with the hand-held device and experience both its single and networked game-play capabilities with the game Legend of Zelda. The findings address participants' awareness and views on the extent to which gaming is coded male and its ramifications for their participation in game cultures.

year: 2008

title: Adaptive XGBoost for evolving data streams

authors: Montiel, Jacob

subjects: computer science

abstract: Boosting is an ensemble method that combines base models in a sequential manner to achieve high predictive accuracy. A popular learning algorithm based on this ensemble method is eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB). We present an adaptation of XGB for classification of evolving data streams. In this setting, new data arrives over time and the relationship between the class and the features may change in the process, thus exhibiting concept drift. The proposed method creates new members of the ensemble from mini-batches of data as new data becomes available. The maximum ensemble size is fixed, but learning does not stop when this size is reached because the ensemble is updated on new data to ensure consistency with the current concept. We also explore the use of concept drift detection to trigger a mechanism to update the ensemble. We test our method on real and synthetic data with concept drift and compare it against batch-incremental and instance-incremental classification methods for data streams.

text: Adaptive XGBoost for evolving data streams Boosting is an ensemble method that combines base models in a sequential manner to achieve high predictive accuracy. A popular learning algorithm based on this ensemble method is eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB). We present an adaptation of XGB for classification of evolving data streams. In this setting, new data arrives over time and the relationship between the class and the features may change in the process, thus exhibiting concept drift. The proposed method creates new members of the ensemble from mini-batches of data as new data becomes available. The maximum ensemble size is fixed, but learning does not stop when this size is reached because the ensemble is updated on new data to ensure consistency with the current concept. We also explore the use of concept drift detection to trigger a mechanism to update the ensemble. We test our method on real and synthetic data with concept drift and compare it against batch-incremental and instance-incremental classification methods for data streams.

year: 2020

title: Diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand picturebooks published between 2021 and 2022

authors: Daly, Nicola

subjects: Design

abstract: It is widely accepted that diversity in the literature read by and with children is of great importance, both for ensuring all children see themselves in the stories they share and in ensuring children are aware of lives and experiences outside their own. There is a growing body of international literature critically exploring the diversity present in English-language children’s literature, but to date very little analysing diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study examines 90 picturebooks published between 2021 and 2022 in terms of representations of ethnicity, skin colour, gender, disability, family structures, and language use. Findings indicate similar representations of gender, disability, and family structure to those found internationally but higher representation in relation to the ethnicity and skin colour of primary and secondary characters. New findings in relation to language use are presented. Future research concerning the details of representation in picturebooks and other formats of children’s literature in Aotearoa New Zealand is called for.

text: Diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand picturebooks published between 2021 and 2022 It is widely accepted that diversity in the literature read by and with children is of great importance, both for ensuring all children see themselves in the stories they share and in ensuring children are aware of lives and experiences outside their own. There is a growing body of international literature critically exploring the diversity present in English-language children’s literature, but to date very little analysing diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study examines 90 picturebooks published between 2021 and 2022 in terms of representations of ethnicity, skin colour, gender, disability, family structures, and language use. Findings indicate similar representations of gender, disability, and family structure to those found internationally but higher representation in relation to the ethnicity and skin colour of primary and secondary characters. New findings in relation to language use are presented. Future research concerning the details of representation in picturebooks and other formats of children’s literature in Aotearoa New Zealand is called for.

year: 2025