The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media
Abstract
This book studies the rise of social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century, up until 2012. It provides both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of networking services in the context of a changing ecosystem of connective media. Such history is needed to understand how the intricate constellation of platforms profoundly affects our experience of online sociality. In a short period of time, services like Facebook, YouTube and many others have come to deeply penetrate our daily habits of communication and creative production. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate user connectedness, but have become global information and data mining companies extracting and exploiting user connectivity. Offering a dual analytical prism to examine techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of social media, the author dissects five major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Each of these microsystems occupies a distinct position in the larger ecosystem of connective media, and yet, their underlying mechanisms for coding interfaces, steering users, filtering content, governance and business models rely on shared ideological principles. Reconstructing the premises on which these platforms are built, this study highlights how norms for online interaction and communication gradually changed. "Sharing," "friending," "liking," "following," "trending," and "favoriting" have come to denote online practices imbued with specific technological and economic meanings. This process of normalization is part of a larger political and ideological battle over information control in an online world where everything is bound to become "social."
... The reciprocal influence between social media users, platforms, and corporate entities provides a unique site of exploration to study cultural transmission and transformation. Every day, billions of individuals interact in some way through social media (van Dijck, 2013). Whereas human interaction was once dictated by the ability to be in-person, social media and the Web 2.0 have created participatory and connected cultural sites independent from meeting in real life (van Dijck, 2013). ...
... Every day, billions of individuals interact in some way through social media (van Dijck, 2013). Whereas human interaction was once dictated by the ability to be in-person, social media and the Web 2.0 have created participatory and connected cultural sites independent from meeting in real life (van Dijck, 2013). As more people participate in the online cultures and sub-cultures, researchers have turned to digital ethnography to make sense of these rapidly expanding social worlds. ...
Academic project designs and methods: From professional development to critical and creative practice is the first textbook of its kind to address an important element or shift in fields such as education, arts, social sciences, and humanities. For many years, university professional and non-professional programmes have been moving away from an exclusive focus on traditional academic manuscript-based graduate theses towards practical, creative, and/or critically self-reflective, academic non-traditional non-thesis projects. Using the term project throughout this book is important as it recognizes and legitimizes the difference yet equal value of these alternative academic practices. The benefits of academic projects to students are many. They can be useful for students’ existing or future careers (e.g., workshop design, website creation, student leadership training curriculum); allow greater flexibility for highly imaginative and arts-based skill sets or work (e.g., zines, community mapping, visual learning materials, exhibitions or installations); or provide textual and visual analysis which is responsive to contemporary or working contexts (e.g., social media analysis, museum content explorations, policy analysis). While academic projects employ different structures to traditional or normative theses —and therefore offer different uses and values to graduate students—they are equally legitimate and important forms of scholarship.
... Communication was still perceived as merely 'reflecting' the social world (1976, p.815) and data was understood as 'proximate to daily life' (Lefebvre, 2014, p.816). Today, data no longer reflects life but creates it (van Dijck, 2013). Building on Lefebvre's spatial analysis is to reflect on the broader consequence of the operational turn of media technologies. ...
... Operationalism embodies the philosophical belief of objective truth, and operational media runs on the premise of 'data are objective' (Cibangu, 2013;van Dijck, 2013). The operational space is presented as the proper space that minimises human emotions and errors. ...
This article examines the production of operational space amidst the rise of self- and data-tracking media, through the case study of the Qantas Wellbeing App. We draw on the operational paradigm in media studies to envisage how the Qantas Wellbeing App is embedded in the social-material relations between its users and the app, and the broader data-platform economy. By conceptualising the Qantas Wellbeing App as an operational media, the inquiry focuses on its designs and techniques that prompt users to fulfil prescribed tasks and follow instructions. We follow Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the production of space to evaluate three sets of social relations reconfigured by the Qantas Wellbeing App: human-to-human, human-to-machine, and data-to-data. By relying on qualitative evidence collected from an auto-ethnographic approach, our analyses focus on (1) spatial practices and (2) social relations constructed around the Qantas Wellbeing App between the authors to argue that social space is becoming a programmed reality that adheres to the logic of technological automation. Our analysis here affirms the app's capacity and objective to modify human behaviours and to evaluate how the app has recalibrated the authors’ respective and shared social spaces to create the needed condition of behaviour changes among the users. As social space is centred around human relations and activities, human agency and lives become secondary in an operational regime, which relies on data synchronisation to prosecute for the operational space and life.
... Furthermore, defining a specific community is problematic because they overlap, exist within each other, and have hazy and fluid boundaries (Amit & Rapport, 2020). This is especially so for online communities, which are often united by a narrow range of shared interests (Andrews et al., 2002;Van Dijck, 2013). Although some two-way interactions and supportive exchanges do occur, the participants in the comments sections studied in this thesis were primarily behaving as individuals rather than as part of a community. ...
... This could be seen as problematic if, for example, British suburbanites are responding to articles discussing the impact of free-living (feral) cats in rural Australia. However, it arguably reflected real-world situations, where individuals consume information from eclectic sources and engage with geographically dispersed social media networks (Orgad, 2009;Van Dijck, 2013). Even before the Internet, travel, and migration in the twentieth century was transforming communities across the world (Castles, 2019). ...
This thesis employs thematic discourse analysis to elucidate prominent themes and points of contention associated with roaming cats (Felis catus). The data comprised 2476 online user comments responding to content related to roaming cats, 75 qualitative survey responses, 771 Facebook responses, and biographies reconstructed from eight case studies of cat-human relationships. These reflect broader social discourses surrounding more-than-human animals and human governance over other animals. Notions of guardian (owner) responsibilities are underpinned by different perceptions of companion cats (pets), ranging from childlike dependents who need to be protected and ‘parented’ to wild-like animals whose confinement would be morally wrong. Comments reveal how discourses from scientists, cat and wildlife advocacy groups, and the media are filtered through a local lens and often applied out of context. The data supports the notion that media reporting is instigating a moral panic over roaming cats by evoking emotive responses to predation by cats. These invariably become entangled within discourses related to cat safety, welfare, and complaints of ‘nuisance’ behaviours. Discourses surrounding cats in the community are further examined within a morethan- human biopolitical framework that describes how cohesive social mechanisms exert control over feline bodies through normalisation of practices such as desexing and confinement. Language was found to play a key role in biopolitical control by dominating the narrative of ‘responsible’ cat guardianship. Language is also central to moral panic theory, and the term ‘feral’ was shown to reinforce a ‘folk devil’ trope of free-living cats as transgressive and inherently different from companion cats. ‘Feral’ also invoked pity among those adamant cats need human love and care. However, cats are not without agency and can co-create meaning within a multispecies home or community. Case studies demonstrated cat-human intersubjectivity (joint meaning-making) and the various relationships formed between cats and non-feline animals (including human), both inside and outside of their homes.
... In the online survey questionnaire, the respondents were first asked if they have ever visited the Tricity Landscape Park and the non-visitors were then excluded from the survey sample. Statistical analyses were done using R version 3.6.1 (R Core Team, 2019); figures were produced using packages "likert" version 1.3.5 (Bryer & Speerschneider, 2016) and "vcd" version 1.4-4 (Meyer, Zeileis, Hornik, Gerber, & Friendly, 2017). ...
... AR features on social media platforms have become increasingly popular due to their interactive and Ewis/ The Successful Application Of Augmented Reality And Its Impact………. aesthetic appeal, enhancing user engagement and strengthening social relationships (Andrejevic, 2020;Van Dijck, 2013). Snapchat, in particular, has emerged as a significant platform in this regard due to its cross-platform accessibility and user-friendly interface, which allows users to share images and videos and facilitate connections among friends and family (Katz et al., 2015). ...
Despite their potential as interactive marketing tools, Augmented reality (AR) filters are frequently used as a social media feature that provides users with various visual effects. This study explores the audience's emotional responses to augmented reality (AR) while using Snapchat filters as a self-presence tool. It focuses on the user's interactions with Snapchat Face Lenses, especially how they choose one and behave when using it. The study adopted a quantitative method design to collect quantitative data from different Snapchat users by using a closed-ended survey instrument. The quantitative data was analysed descriptively using the mean and the standard deviation. The results revealed that depending on the underlying cause of AR filter usage, these uses might have both positive and negative consequences regards to curiosity and compatibility with users' contentment. Therefore, Specialists should include the necessary elements while creating the filters to give consumers enjoyable and exciting experiences, the chance to socialise, and access to new material. Finally, The study suggests further research to examine augmented reality filters on other social media sites to indicate whether the outcomes vary depending on the platform.
... In the current study, we introduced the live-streaming e-commerce model into the cross-border agricultural supply chain and found that some critical internet enterprises in the live-streaming e-commerce field are not just websites or multinational corporations that provide transaction matching services [86]. They are platforms that connect a large number of users/customers with service providers, advertisers, or other users, organizing, reorganizing, and even reforming many industries [115,116]. From this, we expanded the application of platform ecosystem theory to explain the factors and mechanisms of China's cross-border live-streaming e-commerce sustainable supply chain development, which is centered around platform enterprises. ...
The organization and coordination of cross-border e-commerce platforms in agricultural product trading are continuously increasing, and the involvement of digital platforms has driven the integration and development of cross-border agricultural product supply chains with live-streaming e-commerce, effectively facilitating the comprehensive development of producers, sellers, and professional service providers within the ecosystem. However, despite the growing importance of this integration model in the market, there are still numerous unresolved issues from a supply chain perspective, and existing research provides relatively limited guidance on the effective operation of this integrated supply chain model. To address this gap in theoretical research, this study first delves into the essence and fundamental characteristics of sustainable cross-border agricultural product supply chains in the context of live streaming. Secondly, employing grounded theory as the primary research method and combining platform theory and ecosystem theory, an influencing factor system and an impact model for the development of sustainable cross-border agricultural product supply chains in the context of live streaming are constructed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of this integrated supply chain model. Finally, from the perspectives of government agencies and practitioners, development pathways for sustainable cross-border agricultural product supply chains in the context of live-streaming e-commerce are proposed, aiming to enhance existing research and provide decision-making support for relevant stakeholders in formulating development strategies. The findings of this study contribute to expanding the research perspective on the ecosystem of live-streaming e-commerce and sustainable cross-border agricultural product supply chains, providing theoretical support for the establishment and operation of sustainable cross-border agricultural product supply chains in the context of live streaming. Additionally, it offers important references for promoting the sustainable development of live-streaming e-commerce and cross-border agricultural product supply chains, facilitating industry upgrading, global agricultural trade, and achieving mutually beneficial outcomes.
... As an implication of advances in information technology, there is enormous global recognition and acceptance of IT as an essential aspect of societal development in all spheres of life (Dijck, 2013). Individuals and organizations such as manufacturing, agriculture, finance, governance, and entertainment are strongly utilizing IT to increase their competitive advantage, and upscale their efficiency, growth, and profit. ...
A new research perspective on the construct of the role of transformational leadership to agile approach in the IT project management landscape in Switzerland.
... Através dela, reproduzimos e desafiamos normas e hierarquias (GOODY, 1982(GOODY, , 1998JULIER, 2013;WATSON;CALDWELL, 2005). Simultaneamente, a cultura digital é também um elemento essencial da vida cotidiana, tanto em sua reprodução quanto em suas resistências (MCCHESNEY, 2013;THUMIM, 2012;VAN DIJCK, 2013). Isso é especialmente verdadeiro em nosso mundo pós-covid (WHEELER, 2020). ...
Comida e cultura digital estão mutuamente implicadas nos processos contemporâneos da produção de conhecimento e da contestação de poder ao redor do mundo. Nossa introdução e os artigos nesta edição especial do European Journal of Cultural Studies buscam traçar distinções, paralelos e sobreposições entre a comida e o digital para oferecer insights críticos sobre as capacidades, paradoxos e impactos da cultura alimentar digital sobre a vida cotidiana. Fazemos uma série de questões fundamentalmente focadas em questões de poder que sinalizam uma questão crucial para a (re)produção e circulação de desigualdade na ligação entre a comida e o digital. Para nós e para os autores aqui, Estudos Culturais é um solo particularmente fértil para se analisar a comida digital precisamente devido ao compromisso da disciplina em fazer a crítica do poder e da desigualdade e sua subsequente capacidade para esclarecer a política da comida digital cotidiana e seus impactos sociais, culturais e éticos. Este artigo apresenta e destaca questões essenciais – e introduz conceitos relacionados e debates teóricos – que guiam a agenda desta pesquisa. Além disso, abordamos as formas como os artigos desta edição se conectam à cultura alimentar digital e ao poder após a COVID-19. Concluímos com o sumário dos artigos desta edição e suas contribuições para a pesquisa sobre cultura alimentar digital e estudos culturais de forma mais ampla.
... Van Dijck [61], for example, has pointed out that the spread of social media logic transforms network communication into platform-based social communication, which is profoundly changing the nature of our connection, creation and interaction. Although this view clearly points out the profound influence of social media logic on the logic of communication behavior, it also ignores the influence of implicit psychological motivation. ...
Over the past years, the issue of cyber violence has gradually become a key focus of social media studies. Most previous studies of cyber violence in social media have focused on superficial behaviors, with less attention given to implicit psychological factors, particularly on forgiveness behaviors and their effects. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study selects Chinese youth as the subject of analysis, and specifically examines the factors influencing their social media use forgiveness behaviors and cyber violence tendency. The study finds that empathy, trust, commitment, and anger rumination all positively influence forgiveness intention, and forgiveness intention significantly predicts forgiveness behavior, with forgiveness climate and risk perception playing a positive moderating role. In addition, the end of the structural equation modeling demonstrates that forgiveness behavior significantly predicts the tendency for cyber violence, which is the evidence of the importance of forgiveness behavior on cyber violence that cannot be ignored. This study provides a new path for understanding the causes of social media forgiveness behaviors among Chinese youth, and also provides a reference for emerging variables to mitigate cyber violence.
... Social media platforms serve as important "memory ecologies", enabling diverse memory practices such as posting, linking and sharing content [82]. The specific characteristics of each platform [83] influence how they are used to negotiate, commemorate and educate about the Holocaust, providing multiple avenues of engagement beyond traditional public discourse and formal education. ...
This study adopts a conceptual research approach to examine recent developments in Digital Holocaust Memory regarding the use of digital technology for teaching and learning about the Holocaust. In order to promote heritage education, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that links the field of Digital Holocaust Memory with the approach of learning ecologies. A key element of this framework is the idea that technological advances can enhance learning by fostering participatory cultures and empowering users. The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how digital technology can be used to create meaningful learning experiences about the Holocaust, and to propose a theoretical lens based on an ecological approach to learning. In addition, the study aims to present a framework that can assist students in developing their own Holocaust-related learning experiences. The focus is on understanding Holocaust remembrance and learning as complex, multidirectional and multi-layered phenomena, influenced by the specific learning environment, the use of digital technology, and historical, political and cultural contexts. By taking into account the specific cultural, social and economic characteristics of the learning environment, this framework provides a comprehensive approach to designing educational interventions that meet the needs of learners, teachers and stakeholders.
... This finding implies that CSM platforms can be used as a source of information for Malaysian Chinese. It is consistent with previous research that people can discover global news and significant events through social media (Van Dijck, 2013), which can help them keep up with the events and expose them to a broader range of news and information (Hermida et al., 2012). For example, Weibo, which is known as China's Twitter, has a search function that allows anyone to post content on it, and audiences can access news and information in Chinese through it (Zhang & Pentina, 2012). ...
With the increasing number of overseas users of China’s social media (CSM), this study aimed to explore the motivation and behavior of Malaysian Chinese in using Chinese social media platforms. A questionnaire was done to 219 Malaysian Chinese, and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis in SPSS. The results show that Malaysian Chinese use CSM with high frequency and duration. Their main motives are information, entertainment, and interpersonal interaction. The results indicated that entertainment motivation (?=0.448, p=0.000), information motivation (?=0.348, p=0.000), self-presentation motivation (?=0.142, p=0.047), and social motivation significantly (?=-0.249, p=0.000) affected the use of CSM among Malaysian Chinese, while business motivation did not. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the patterns of Malaysian Chinese usage of CSM and their motivations, which is crucial for marketers and advertisers trying to effectively target this group on social media platforms. Moreover, the findings of this study have important implications for cross-country communication and exchange within the same ethnic culture.
... AR features on social media platforms have become increasingly popular due to their interactive and Ewis/ The Successful Application Of Augmented Reality And Its Impact………. aesthetic appeal, enhancing user engagement and strengthening social relationships (Andrejevic, 2020;Van Dijck, 2013). Snapchat, in particular, has emerged as a significant platform in this regard due to its cross-platform accessibility and user-friendly interface, which allows users to share images and videos and facilitate connections among friends and family (Katz et al., 2015). ...
This article makes a methodological contribution to the growing subfield of digital memory studies. It demonstrates a possible way forward for memory studies scholars who want to try out digital methods but also remain in conversation with the kinds of research traditionally produced within the field. The article revolves around a showcase of an analytical workflow for conducting a scalable reading of large quantities of tweets through access to the Twitter API. The article argues that using only basic computational approaches to social media data in combination with API access can drastically improve data collection practices and enrich analytical practices, producing results recognizable and compatible with existing research in memory studies. As a case study, the article uses a dataset of nearly 200,000 tweets collected around two events that prompted Twitter users to discuss the history of the American children’s television program Sesame Street. It does so to demonstrate: first, how a visualization focusing on chronology can help underpin arguments about heightened activity around certain events. Second, a close reading of selected tweets from these events can support claims of shared activity, even if no hashtags were used. And third, how using simple tools for distant reading makes it possible to converse with questions and issues about gatekeepers and connectivity already central within memory studies. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how the Twitter API supports a more systematical, large-scale collection of tweets than usually seen in memory studies, making researchers less dependent on the algorithmic bias that rules the search in the platform’s regular interface.
Este artigo pretende discutir novas formas de apresentação de problemas e soluções da ciência em conteúdo audiovisual para um público amplo, analisando como esse conteúdo circula no Youtube, a partir do caso do canal Nunca vi 1 cientista, com 200 mil inscritos. Pretende-se, com isso, compreender como o conteúdo audiovisual de divulgação científica no YouTube difere de outras propostas já consolidadas da mídia tradicional, em uma abordagem de crítica de mídia que projeta a expansão das narrativas da TV para outras linguagens e dispositivos. Para tanto, selecionamos três episódios do canal sobre um mesmo tema e estudamos suas características centrais, como a linguagem e a performance das comunicadoras. Aspectos de sua circulação também foram mapeados a partir dos comentários da audiência. A conclusão é que esses novos produtos rompem com modelos mais formais de comunicação, como os conteúdos jornalísticos, proporcionando autenticidade na linguagem e nas trocas com a audiência, além de oferecerem uma abordagem crítica de forma acessível e dinâmica.
This chapter seeks to show how the society of the digital swarm we live in has changed the way individuals behave to the point that we have become Homo digitalis. These changes occur with information privatization, meaning that not only are we passive consumers, but we are also producers and issuers of digital communication. The overarching argument of this reflection is the disappearance of the “reality principle” in the political, economic, and social spheres. This text highlights that the loss of the reality principle is the effect of microblogging as a digital practice, the uses of which can either impoverish the space of people's experience to undermine the public space or achieve the mobilization of citizens against of the censorship of the traditional means of communication by authoritarian political regimes, such as the case of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Moving beyond the publicness-oriented perspective in Internet censorship studies, this article directs attention to censorship’s consequences for users’ personal lives. We examine “account bombing” in China, a phenomenon where social media platforms suspend user accounts permanently, and we focus on the loss of the “victims.” Notably, people commonly use social media accounts as personal archives that store their digital traces, from which they obtain a sense of self, and perceive the accounts as their private property. We use the dignity takings theory to illustrate the dual harm the victims suffer in account bombing: Censorship deprives them of both their social media accounts and dignity. We propose the concept of “dual dehumanization” to explain the dignity violation in account bombing, as this arbitrary conduct not only occurs in a dehumanizing manner, but also destroys users’ identity work and community ties.
The word “dissemination” is used in two distinct ways in communication scholarship: as a theoretical model and as a mundane term. According to John Durham Peters's conceptual classification, dissemination is the loose “seeding” of ideas that may (or may not) be harvested by audiences. When used as a mundane term, dissemination depicts the directed spread of information, ideas, or (most often) scientific knowledge from a central source to divergent audiences. While both uses refer to an intentional spread of messages from one entity to many, the theoretical construct is “thinner” as the sender does not aim to control the conditions (or outcomes) of resection. In contemporary digital culture, the two meanings of dissemination collide in the concept of “sharing.” Used as an overarching term for depicting a wide array of online activities, “sharing” incorporates a new incarnation of dissemination, tailored to fit the phatic, self‐oriented, and algorithmic Web 2.0 culture.
An analytics strategy helps an organization make better decisions using data and analytics. While web analytics helps organizations identify how to improve their websites, social media analytics help them improve how social media channels are used by offering strategic KPI use and monitoring. This is essential for maintaining an effective design and for using the web and social media analytics. In this chapter, we discuss the process of creating a web analytics strategy and a social media strategy. We also discuss how to select the appropriate analytical tools for websites and social media channels.
The contribution demonstrates how cooperative practices are embedded in media ecologies. By drawing on Isabelle Stenger’s influential term ‘ecology of practices,’ practices are considered to be conditioned both by multiple options for action and by constraints, requirements, and obligations that need to be negotiated. They thus become part of a media ecology that understands media as socio-technical environments equally shaped by specific materials, technologies, networked infrastructures, and subjectivations. Special attention is paid to digital media practices and network politics of sharing and distributing images on social media. Besides digital practices of photo sharing on Flickr the long-term collaborative project “Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake” by the Canadian artist Perry Bard dedicated to Dziga Vertov’s film classic is analyzed in detail. The contribution ends with an outlook on a media praxeology of relations that aims at constructing ‘new practical identities’ both for collaborative and cooperative media practices and thereby makes suggestions for a new cosmopolitics in Stenger’s sense.
Para investigar as relações entre o processo de naturalização das redes sociais e a dinâmica de distinção social, este artigo mobiliza dados dos perfis digitais de oito restaurantes paulistanos e de guias gastronômicos nacionais e internacionais no Facebook, Instagram e Tik Tok, além de matérias e entrevistas na mídia com chefs e administradores desses restaurantes. Calcada na teoria bourdieusiana, a análise aponta que as disputas por legitimação no campo gastronômico são afetadas pela necessidade de atender à pressão dos novos hábitos digitalizados da clientela, posto que tal jogada pode ser julgada como condenável pelos agentes consagradores desse campo. Por meio da amostra selecionada, o artigo explora as diversas estratégias postas em prática pelos agentes do campo para evitar a caracterização do movimento como "interesseiro" e para estabelecer modalidades legítimas de incorporação das redes sociais no cotidiano dos restaurantes.
Under the framework of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation in the twenty-first century, a growing number of students from the South, especially those from African countries that enjoy strong ties with China, have enrolled themselves in Chinese universities. In China's higher education sector, their number had grown from 1,384 students in 1999 to 81,562 students in 2018. This study was based on in-depth interviews with 18 African university students that were triangulated with participant observations and a literature review. The participants were interviewed offline and online on social media platforms inside the Internet Firewall of China-such as Mi-croblogs and WeChat-and Facebook from 2019 to 2020. This study aimed to understand how the participants discovered and explored new opportunities in digital entre-preneurship as university students in China. Although engagement in digital entrepre-neurship can lead to empowerment and new forms of belongingness, however, new challenges and setbacks can emerge concurrently to disrupt their entrepreneurial tra-jectory. In terms of opportunities, the participants drew on educational, social and cultural capital to establish their start-ups, but their relative success was challenged by disruptions in the digital ecosystem and the "zero Covid-19" policy in China.
This entry examines contemporary scholarship on media and information technologies at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The term “media and information technologies” is used to bring together a variety of research frameworks that seek to capture symbolic, social, cultural, or political aspects of technology. This body of work emphasizes broad historical scope, infrastructural dimensions, and the distinctive interplay of materiality with symbolic content and meaning. The discussion is organized around three key conceptual bridges: prevailing notions about causality in technology–society relationships; the process of technology development; and the social consequences of technological change. The entry concludes by considering some broader implications of the contemporary landscape of research at the intersection of STS and communication studies for continued intellectual dialogue between the two fields.
Today's digital era has manifested a massive movement of people from an old society to a new society. This digital world has also changed the way people see and practise religion. Here, at least two questions are asked. First, consider how the use and accessibility of digital media affect religious knowledge and practise in order to raise religious awareness. The second question is how religion can be both a social practise and a discourse so that more people can participate in the discussion. This research aims to answer these two questions by adopting the indigenous religion paradigm which based on relationality. Indirectly, the main objective of this research is to figure out the interactions related to religious content in digital media as an up-to-date portrait of how religiosity is understood using the alternative of the religious paradigm as the embodiment of new topics in religious studies and the digital world: religious relationality paradigm. Through the three principles of the paradigm—responsibility, ethics, and reciprocity—digital media has helped to create distinctive religious awareness. [Era digital saat ini telah mewujudkan perpindahan masyarakat secara masif dari masyarakat lama ke masyarakat baru. Dunia digital ini juga telah mengubah perspektif dan praktik seseorang dalam kehidupan beragama. Karenannya, dalam artikel ini, setidaknya terdapat dua pertanyaan yang diajukan. Pertama, bagaimana penggunaan dan aksesibilitas media digital memengaruhi pengetahuan dan praktik keagamaan untuk meningkatkan kesadaran beragama. Pertanyaan kedua adalah bagaimana agama dapat menjadi praktik sosial sekaligus wacana sehingga lebih banyak orang dapat berpartisipasi dalam diskusi keagamaan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjawab kedua pertanyaan tersebut dengan mengadopsi paradigma agama lokal yang berbasis relasionalitas. Secara tidak langsung tujuan utama dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui interaksi terkait konten keagamaan dalam media digital sebagai potret terkini bagaimana religiusitas dipahami dengan menggunakan alternatif paradigma keagamaan sebagai pengejawantahan topik baru dalam kajian agama dan dunia digital: paradigma relasionalitas agama. Melalui tiga prinsip paradigma—tanggung jawab, etika, dan timbal balik—media digital telah membantu menciptakan kesadaran beragama yang khas.]
Las aplicaciones basadas en Inteligencia Artificial intermedian de forma creciente nuestra relación con el entorno, lo que da lugar a la emergencia de procesos adaptativos con implicaciones éticas y antropológicas que apenas comienzan a vislumbrarse. Este texto examina algunas de ellas a través del caso de los youtubers. Estos se enfrentan cotidianamente con sistemas de recomendación controlados por redes neuronales artificiales que deciden el destino de sus producciones, y muchos tratan de comprender su funcionamiento para obtener ventaja y poner a estas «de su parte». Se teoriza sobre el papel de la Inteligencia Artificial analizando los discursos y prácticas de los youtubers frente a estos «algoritmos». Se plantea como hipótesis que estos presionan a los participantes a adherirse al modelo de negocio de YouTube, convirtiendo sus producciones en ofrendas para las redes neuronales.
This study investigates Korean teen females’ Kakao gaming culture by focusing on the political economy of mobile social games and the issue of free labor within free-to-play games. Through focus group interviews with 23 teen females, the study explores how the connective properties of the KakaoTalk platform affect the logics of Kakao Games and how gamers’ social activities become monetized and commodified by game companies. Based on the monetization strategies of free-to-play games and the theoretical framework of exploitation and alienation in digital labor, we analyze how the game companies subtly conceal viral marketing tools under the mask of socializing components, specifically by encouraging users to send invitations and hearts, as well as engage in boasting. We argue that while this process multiplies revenue for the corporate territory of game companies and platform businesses, teen female gamers are alienated not only from their game play and social labor but also from themselves and others, thus revealing commodified social relations. This study interrogates the impact of the platformization and gamblification of the game industry and underscores the risk they produce for vulnerable populations.
We surveyed 803 undergraduates at a large public university about their online writing practices. We find that despite wide platform access, students typically write in a narrow range of spaces for limited purposes and audiences, with a majority expressing rhetorical concerns about writing in digital spaces. These findings suggest rich opportunities for writing instructors to better help students negotiate the terrain of online public discourse.
Virtual reality has been the object of study from various fields from the business field, study centers and researchers, in the educational area its implementation in the classroom has gained strength; as a didactic aid tool in the different subjects of the different business administration and public accounting undergraduate programs, therefore the perception of the students enrolled in the different programs offered by the universities selected in the sample, it is necessary to know it Faced with the implementation of virtual reality in the classroom as an assisted tool is a point that must be taken into consideration, in the processes that are currently being carried out in the different institutions, to understand the perception of the students.The research was carried out through a phenomenology study, with the use of semi-structured surveys with 34 students. The results analyzed in the surveys suggest the need for virtual learning environments, as well as the review of the current technological infrastructure conditions. Among the universities and students surveyed, students perceive that the new virtual environments can visualize learning generating more capacity for understanding and remembering,however, they recognize that they have not had direct contact with these new scenarios in the institutions where they are enrolled, therefore the universities have challenges
O presente trabalho propõe uma reflexão sobre a dimensão temporal da escuta conexa a partir do “aovivismo” musical. Entenderemos a escuta conexa, não como um modo particular de se escutar e consumir música, mas como um modo de entender a escuta musical em sentido mais amplo atentando para suas camadas “não-musicais”, ou seja, como uma prática comunicacional acionada através do engajamento entre o corpo humano e tecnologias de reprodução em regimes de conectividade em rede e através de plataformas digitais. Com base em três breves relatos de transmissões de shows recentes e seus desdobramentos nas mídias sociais propõe-se um debate sobre o “ao vivo” na música além uma condição técnica da gravação e transmissão, mas, sim, como um efeito construído através de agenciamentos das assincronias e temporalidades complexas da performance gravada, entendendo a escuta musical como um elemento temporalizador e agenciador de um tempo presente.
O objetivo deste artigo é identificar como se configura a performance no Instagram Stories por meio de selfies. Esta pesquisa se justifica pela grande popularidade que o Instagram tem, pela centralização de cinco grandes empresas do meio de site de redes sociais e pela grande performatização que acontece dentro das plataformas. Para tanto, o referencial bibliográfico conceitua Performance, Plataforma, Instagram, Instagram Stories e Selfie. Como instrumento de pesquisa, optou-se pela aplicação de questionários dentro da plataforma do Instagram junto a usuários considerados heavy-users de selfies. O questionário foi respondido por 47 usuários heavy-users de selfies na referida plataforma. Entre os resultados encontrados, destaca-se o tema da felicidade como instrumento de performatização via selfies e a preocupação constante dos usuários com o engajamento.
Research on motives for using social media suggests competing hypotheses regarding how far back in time people vicariously travel to experience nostalgia online. Automated text analyses of user comments on 56 YouTube videos featuring Billboard Magazine's top 30 songs of the year from the 1950–2019 period identified clusters of co‐occurring words suggesting nostalgia. Boolean operators transformed the word clusters into sentence structures conveying nostalgia [e.g., (“ miss ” and ((“ young ” and “ man ”) or “ days ” or “ times ”)) → “I miss those days when I was a young man ”]. Analysis of 37,217 comments revealed that the percentage expressing nostalgia was higher for videos from the 2000s–2010s compared to the 1950s–1980s. Social media has made instant online access to the recent past a normal part of daily life, making users more prone to expressing nostalgia toward relatively recent experiences.
This article explores the configuration of collective memory under the impact of the digital turn. In recent debates, there has been a marked tendency to interpret ‘digital memory’ as a new type of memory, which is radically different from the traditional conceptualization. Even leading authors in the field claim that the digital revolution implies the end of collective memory. However, I argue that despite the transformations that memory undergoes in the digital age, these changes do not imply a new ontology of memory but rather a materialization of the theoretical claims made by Memory Studies since the field's inception.
To support this hypothesis, I analyze digital memory in relation to three topics: first, I focus on the problematic definition of collective memory to demonstrate how the digital realm allows us to rethink the social nature of memory through a different concept of the social. By contrasting Halbwachs' notion of the social, which forms the basis of memory studies, with the alternative proposal of Gabriel Tarde, I argue that the latter enables us to refine the concept of the ‘collective’ that we have inherited from the founding figure of memory studies. Second, I delve into the new ontology of the digital archive showing how it materializes one of the defining features of collective memory: its mobile, dynamic, and procedural nature. Lastly, I address the inversion of the dialectic between memory and forgetting to highlight the specificity of these practices in the digital environment. I demonstrate how these changes effectively implement, surpassing older technologies, the concept of collective memory as a distributed and dynamic technological process that shapes our shared representations of the past.
Background: This policy review unpacks the complexities of applying competition law to platforms. These complexities arise from competing schools of thought, multisided market environments, and a limited capacity to address broader questions of platform governance.
Analysis: A comparative analysis of a selection of cases and legislation is used to illuminate the diversity of approaches within competition and antitrust laws.
Conclusions and implications: Reform-minded scholars, activists, and policymakers should engage the antitrust option with realistic expectations and simultaneously continue to seek policy alternatives to this framework.
Digital surveillance is a daily and all-encompassing reality of life in China. This book explores how Chinese citizens make sense of digital surveillance and live with it. It investigates their imaginaries about surveillance and privacy from within the Chinese socio-political system.
Based on in-depth qualitative research interviews, detailed diary notes, and extensive documentation, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre attempts to ‘de-Westernise’ the internet and surveillance literature. She shows how the research participants weave a cohesive system of anguishing narratives on China’s moral shortcomings and redeeming narratives on the government and technology as civilising forces. Although many participants cast digital surveillance as indispensable in China, their misgivings, objections, and the mental tactics they employ to dissociate themselves from surveillance convey the mental and emotional weight associated with such surveillance exposure.
The book is intended for academics and students in internet, surveillance, and Chinese studies, and those working on China in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, social psychology, psychology, communication, computer sciences, contemporary history, and political sciences. The lay public interested in the implications of technology in daily life or in contemporary China will find it accessible as it synthesises the work of sinologists and offers many interview excerpts.
Social media content moderation faces a complex normative dilemma. The central question is: Which rules should govern online content? Private norms or democratically voted laws? If more national laws or international standards are simultaneously applicable, which law to choose? How to avoid the risk of having one single approach imperialistically imposed on the others? This dilemma exposes a tension between the risk of normative authoritarianism, imperialism and anomie. A process of ‘constitutionalisation’ of the social media environment seems to be needed. An input to this process is increasingly originating from civil society actors. Over the past few years, a significant number of ‘bills of rights’ have been proposed to articulate constitutional rights for social media. This phenomenon has been described in terms of the emergence of a movement of ‘digital constitutionalism’.
Communication is essential not only in personal communication but also in organizational and group contexts. Organizational communication occurs vertically, horizontally, and across channels. The Paguyuban Kampung Pesilat in Madiun is a way to build social ties. It has been approved by 14 pencak silat colleges in the city and supported by the government and TNI/POLRI security forces. Pencak silat is one of the nation's cultural treasures that must be preserved. Even pencak silat itself has contributed to the process of Indonesian independence. This research aims to: (1). what is the communication pattern on social media towards social relations between martial arts colleges? (2). what is the impact of social relations between martial arts colleges on social media and in the real world? This research aims to find out the communication patterns of social relations between martial arts colleges on social media. The research methodology used is a qualitative explanation which aims to explain the position of the variables studied and the relationship between one variable and another. In contrast, the data collection techniques used are interviews, document studies, observations and literature studies. The theory used is the theory of organizational communication Horrison and Doerfel, Persuasive Communication and S-O-R Theory Studies. It can be said through the theory's assumption that "Communication is a key variable that makes it possible to build relationships in an organization and interact and share information". The results of this study indicate that organizational communication has a vital role in improving social relations between martial arts colleges in Dimadiun. The pattern of organizational communication towards martial arts colleges in Madiun is the formation of a paguyuban kampung pesilat as a place to improve social relations and efforts to overcome conflicts that continue to occur every year.
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the urgent need to sustain the pedagogical bond without classroom attendance on the world educational policy agenda. The analysis presented in this article attempts to shed light on the response to educational continuity in Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic addressing three dimensions: policies, pedagogical strategies and technopedagogical trends involved. The article concludes that most of the experiences were polarised in two strategies, being one the reproduction of face-to-face attendance by videoconference and the other, mostly, tasks by email or WhatsApp. The multiple digital divides and the political controversy over "attendance" left little room for the stability of online or hybrid forms of teaching.
Sexual behavior and related sexual health issues among young people present major public health concerns all over the world, and therefore, effective health promotion for younger age groups is needed. Social media is considered a promising platform to engage young people with sexual health. However, current research highlights not only the potential but also the concerns about the use of social media for sexual health-related topics. Therefore, the study reviewed the existing literature to identify young people's perceived benefits and barriers. The review only included qualitative approaches to gain a deeper insight into the perspective of the target group. The search and selection process followed the PRISMA approach and resulted in eight studies that were included in the final analysis. In conclusion, all studies show that the use of social media is a new way of promoting sexual health and creates many opportunities to reach out to younger age groups. The most frequently reported benefits identified in this review are the use of entertainment, easy and fast access, interaction, and the use of platform-specific features. On the contrary, perceived barriers are privacy concerns, lack of control, unsuitability of social media for sexual health issues, and the rapid change of technologies. The results demonstrate the variety of perceived benefits and barriers of sexual health promotion on social media. This exploration of young people's perspectives provides valuable insights for sexual health educators, future sexual health promotion on social media, and future research.
The article explores Bitchute, a video-hosting platform associated with the Far/Alt Right, with the aim of understanding how it reconfigures political communication and the digital public sphere. Methodologically, the article employs the walkthrough method and non-participant observation to identify the main features and functionalities offered to users. These include a set of values that prioritise creators, an algorithmic organisation that keeps users engaged with a single creator channel rather than with the same topic across channels; and embedded buttons for tips and pledges for creators enabling them to directly monetise their content. The content posted on Bitchute tends to coalesce around politicised cultural issues. It is noteworthy that although Bitchute hosts some advertising, it does not use data for microtargeting and in general makes limited use of user data. We interpret these findings as suggesting that Bitchute constitutes a media infrastructure that encourages, incentivises and sustains microcelebrities of the Far/Alt Right, who act as ideology entrepreneurs. Bitchute can therefore be seen as an infrastructure for the multiplication/sustenance of ideological entrepreneurs/political influencers who vie for the attention and money of far-right publics. If we can speak of a structural transformation of the public sphere associated with Alt Tech, our discussion of Bitchute suggests that this takes the form of a political media infrastructure that enables the continued existence and consolidation of a new type of political actor, the ideology entrepreneur.
This article examines the way Wikipedia authors write their ‘community’ into being. Mobilizing concepts regarding the communicative constitution of communities, the computer-mediated conversation between editors were investigated using Grounded Theory procedures. The analysis yielded an empirically grounded theory of the users’ self-understanding of the Wikipedia community as ethos-action community. Hence, this study contributes to research on online community-building as it shifts the focus from structural criteria for communities to the discursive level of community formation.
This article investigates whether social media in general—using Facebook as an example—warrant identification of a new public sphere, another private sphere, or a different corporate sphere, as some scholars have argued. It is argued that social media platforms neither warrant a recalibration of Habermas’ public sphere, nor a conscious blending of spheres. Rather, social media platforms form a contested space where private, public and corporate interests compete to produce new norms of sociality and connectivity. In order to understand the dynamics of social media, it is not enough to revamp existing social theory of networks, to polish up legal frames, or to reintroduce political-economic schemes. We need to connect these theories and come up with an analytical model that accounts for the complexities of the various interests interpenetrating the new space of mediated communication.
• This article argues that search engines in general, and Google Scholar in particular, have become significant co-producers of academic knowledge. Knowledge is not simply conveyed to users, but is co-produced by search engines’ ranking systems and profiling systems, none of which are open to the rules of transparency, relevance and privacy in a manner known from library scholarship in the public domain. Inexperienced users tend to trust proprietary engines as neutral mediators of knowledge and are commonly ignorant of how meta-data enable engine operators to interpret collective profiles of groups of searchers. Theorizing search engines as nodal points in networks of distributed power, based on the notions of Manuel Castells, this article urges for an enriched form of information literacy to include a basic understanding of the economic, political and socio-cultural dimensions of search engines. Without a basic understanding of network architecture, the dynamics of network connections and their intersections, it is hard to grasp the social, legal, cultural and economic implications of search engines. •
Understanding the social dynamics shaping the internet is vital as media power takes on new dimensions in the digital realm. The internet is increasingly necessary for participation in social life yet corporations continue to shape the online architecture to suit their own narrow commercial interests. In their drive to enclose the internet, online media companies create synergistic membranes with prescribed circuits that constrain user freedoms. Taken together, these synergistic membranes form a new layer of the internet — the Google layer, which constrains and commodifies users' range of motion within a narrow, privatized slice of the world wide web. This jeopardizes the creation of a commons-based communications system with a public service orientation, something that is essential to participatory and democratic dialogue. The open architecture of the internet, characterized and supported by free and open source software (FOSS), defends the digital commons against cyber-enclosure. Social practices and values that distinguish FOSS comprise a liberatory praxis as well as an alternative vision of social organization offline that prefigures a more democratic media system, and broadly construed, a more democratic society.
Family websites represent one of the more interesting areas of research into cultural change and reproduction. They also compellingly demonstrate the complex role of technology in both cultural processes. As the latest example of the long‐established practice of family photography, these hybrid multimedia products have followed the path of the analogue photograph, framed and displayed in the home, kept in wallets or presented as series of pictures in photo albums, with a marked move to the digital world and a much less noticed shift to the sophisticated multimedia context of the Web. This article examines how this fairly recent shift from private photography to the semi‐public space of the Internet, which is unfolding in dialogue with technology, has reinforced, expanded or radically changed the nature of family communications and the very significant social and cultural functions this highly codified practice has fulfilled from the onset. From an exploratory research study into online family websites, I discuss examples, which illustrate the similarities and changes taking place, the possible cultural‐propagandistic and emancipatory effects, and the wealth of cultural information that can be decoded. I further discuss the methodological aspects and implications of decoding these new and very vivid exponents of culture.
The digital turn, and with it increased use of location-aware technologies, has yielded innovative image applications and posed new questions about the status and value of the image. These applications rely on algorithmically defined relations between the viewing subject and the world viewed, offering robust alternatives to the visual economies of the past. If we take seriously Heidegger's insights regarding the Welt-bild as a metaphor for the modern era, the algorithmic reconfiguration of subject-object relations in this emerging visual regime potentially offers insights through which we can reflect upon the current era – and a metaphoric alternative. This article uses two entry points to explore this possible reconfiguration and, with it, the question of value. Downloadable applications such as Photosynth aggregate location-tagged photographs into a near-seamless whole, and offer a way to consider such issues as collaborative authorship of the image, unstable points of view and the repositioning of subject-object relationships – all elements that fundamentally challenge western representational norms dominant in the modern era. In this new regime, the spatial referents of greatest value are points of uniqueness sought out and built upon by the program's algorithms – and not those perceived by the viewer. The viewer is in turn free to explore an extensive and dynamic image space unconstrained by (and, indeed, without access to) an authorised or ‘correct’ viewing position. A second case, built upon certain augmented reality applications, works by ‘recognising’ particular spaces and, through the use of computationally enhanced viewing screens, superimposing new images over real space. In this case, a system of virtual spatial annotation depends upon the ‘correct’ positioning of the viewer (and portable computing device) in the world. The two cases stand in a roughly reciprocal relationship, turning on different notions of algorithmic intermediation and subject-object relations and dynamics for the generation of meaning and value.
In recent years, a new realm has appeared for the study of political and sociological phenomena: the Internet. This article will analyze the decision-making processes of one of the largest online communities, Wikipedia. Founded in 2001, Wikipedia—now among the top-10 most popular sites on the Internet—has succeeded in attracting and organizing millions of volunteers and creating the world's largest encyclopedia. To date, however, little study has been done of Wikipedia's governance. There is substantial confusion about its decision-making structure. The organization's governance has been compared to many decision-making and political systems—from democracy to dictatorship, from bureaucracy to anarchy. It is the purpose of this article to go beyond the earlier simplistic descriptions of Wikipedia's governance in order to advance the study of online governance, and of organizations more generally. As the evidence will show, while Wikipedia's governance shows elements common to many traditional governance models, it appears to be closest to the organizational structure known as adhocracy.
Social metadata are receiving interest from many domains, mainly as a way to aggregate various patterns in social networks. Few scholars have, however, taken the perspective of end users and examined how they utilize social metadata to enrich interpersonal communication. The results of a study of end-user practices of social metadata usage are presented in this article. Data were gathered from a variety of online forums by collecting and analyzing user discussions relating to social metadata supporting features in Facebook. Three hundred and fifteen relevant comments on social metadata usage were extracted. The analysis revealed the use of experimental profiles, clashes between work-and non-work-related social metadata usage and differences in users' social investment, causing social dilemmas. The study also resulted in developments of theory relating to social metadata and relationship maintenance. In conclusion, social metadata expand a pure “attention economy,” conveying a much wider qualitative range of social information.
Many have questioned the reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia. Here a different issue, but one closely related: how broad is the coverage of Wikipedia? Differences in the interests and attention of Wikipedia's editors mean that some areas, in the traditional sciences, for example, are better covered than others. Two approaches to measuring this coverage are presented. The first maps the distribution of topics on Wikipedia to the distribution of books published. The second compares the distribution of topics in three established, field-specific academic encyclopedias to the articles found in Wikipedia. Unlike the top-down construction of traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia's topical coverage is driven by the interests of its users, and as a result, the reliability and completeness of Wikipedia is likely to be different depending on the subject-area of the article.
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in European Journal of Information Systems. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/journal/v15/n6/abs/3000653a.html Interpretive flexibility – the capacity of a specific technology to sustain divergent opinions – has long been recognised as playing an important role in explaining how technical artefacts are socially constructed. What is less clear is how a system’s technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly. This gap in the literature has largely arisen because recent contributions to this debate have tended to be rather one-sided, focussing almost solely upon the role of the human agent in shaping the technical artefact, and in so doing either downplaying or ignoring the artefact’s shaping potential. The broad aim of this study was to reappraise the nature and role of interpretive flexibility but giving as much consideration to how an information system’s technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly, as we do to its potential for social construction. In this paper we use the results of two in-depth case studies, in order to propose a re-conceptualisation of the role of interpretive flexibility. In short, this model helps explain how the initial interpretations of stakeholders are significantly influenced by the scope and adaptability of the system’s functionality. Stakeholder interpretations will then, in turn, influence how the system’s functionality is appropriated and exploited by users, to allow divergent interpretations to be realised and sustained. Accepted for publication
The debate over the contribution of new communication technology to democracy is far from settled. Some point to the empowering effects of online discussion and fund-raising on recent electoral campaigns in the United States to argue that the Internet will restore the public sphere. Others claim that the Internet is just a virtual mall, a final extension of capitalist rationalization into every corner of our lives, a trend supported by an ever denser web of surveillance technologies threatening individual autonomy in the advanced societies of the West. This introduction to the special section on critical theory of communication technology argues for the democratic thesis with some qualifications. The most important contribution of new technology to democracy is not necessarily its effects on the conventional political process but rather its ability to assemble a public around technical networks that enroll individuals scattered over wide geographical areas. Communities of medical patients, video game players, musical performers, and many other groups have emerged on the Internet with surprising consequences. New forms of resistance correlate with the rationalizing tendencies of a technologized society.
Video sharing has become a growing social practice, with YouTube being the predominant online video sharing site. Most of the research concerning YouTube's social impact has been focused on quantitative evaluation of the social interaction facilitated by the tools embedded in the site. This study aims to explore the growth of the YouTube online community through the eyes of YouTube users who author video-blogs, and to ascertain whether a community is actually created, or does YouTube remain an online broadcasting platform. Building upon users' perspectives and thoughts, and using grounded theory approach, the foundations of an online community – people, interaction, shared purpose and culture – are analysed to understand how users view YouTube. A new important characteristic of the YouTube online community, face-to-face mediated interaction, will be presented and its role in differentiating the visually enhanced YouTube community from textual communities will be assessed.
At first glance, the ease with which individuals can access and contribute to YouTube sets it in direct opposition to large corporate media outlets with their top-down mode of dissemination. However, in this paper, I argue that despite these seemingly democratic features, YouTube is better understood not as opposed to traditional corporate media but in the same genealogy as previous archival technologies and techniques. In archives, all content is flattened and has equal weight, so it is up to a curatorial authority to present content to audiences. While YouTube promises to democratize media, its lack of a centralized “curator” actually sets the stage for large media corporations to step into the curatorial role and decide how each object in YouTube’s archives will be presented to users. As these new “curators” step in, the competition for the time and attention of an audience – and therefore advertising revenue – will inevitably lessen as internet media becomes more and more oligarchical. This paper thus draws on political economic and historical critiques of museums, collections, and archives in order to connect the emergent technologies in YouTube with earlier attempts to organize and present information, objects, and images.
Convergence culture, as a concept, articulates a shift in the way global media industries operate, and how people as audiences interact with them. It recognizes contemporary media culture as a primarily participatory culture. In turn, this assumption renders notions of production and consumption of (mass, mediated) culture not just theoretically problematic – as has been established earlier in disciplines as varied as communication studies, cultural geography, and media anthropology – but also less than useful on a practical level when making sense of the role media play in people’s everyday lives. This paper explores the practical applications of convergence culture from the perspectives of media workers, suggesting not so much the use of “new” categories, but rather an alignment of production, mediation and consumption as constituent practices in all experience of (in) media life.
Communications technology allows governments to spread their values and secure their interests. But increased connectivity also poses a number of dangers. To foster the free flow of information and challenge authoritarian regimes, democratic states will have to learn to create alliances with people and companies at the forefront of the information revolution.
This study examines the potential of PCTV (watching television on your PC) among consumers. An intercept field study that included product demonstration with a convenience sample of US adults was conducted (N = 309). Expectancy-value theory was used to measure respondents’ interest in PCTV. While a majority had heard of the product, expectations of what PCTV could provide remained low and as a result, value and subsequent interest was low. As terrestrial broadcasting, cable, telephone, internet companies and other programming providers explore the potential market for PCTV and promote that market, the possibility exists that value related to PCTV could be developed. In other words, PCTV remains an open field waiting for leadership to manifest its diffusion.
Although the use of social media for the purposes of protest organization and dissent in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya was widely reported by bloggers, journalists, and academics, these reports were rarely rooted in detailed research. In fact, the terms “Twitter Revolution” and “Facebook Revolution” have now been called into question as overly techno-utopian, and as ignoring the use of social media by authoritarian regimes for the purposes of repression. Despite this lack of concrete evidence, representatives of the Swedish state were quick to declare social media as key tools in the battles over freedom of speech rights and democratic change. On January 21, 2011, the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation published an opinion piece in the Expressen newspaper, titled, “Net Activists Are the New Democracy Fighters.” The response of the Swedish administration—primarily how the administration made clear links between technological innovation and democratic/social change, and translated those links into concrete action in the form of aid—raises a number of questions regarding the ways in which a powerful stakeholder appears to assume a causal relation among technology use, the expansion of access to information, and democratic change. The purpose of this article is to examine how the technology discourse forwarded by the current Swedish government—in policy documents and public statements—reflects a liberation technology perspective on the relation between technology and sociopolitical change in developing countries, particularly in relation to possible foreign aid to net activists.
This article focuses upon the concept of ‘affective economics’ arguing that it should be expanded to include a consideration of emerging forms of data-mining including ‘sentiment analysis’ and ‘predictive analytics’. Sentiment analysis in particular seeks to manipulate consumer behaviour by gathering data about emotional responses and conducting controlled experiments on consumers. Any consideration of affective economics should include the ways in which marketers seek to manage consumers through the collection not just of demographic information, but of extensive real-time databases of their online behaviour and conversations.
Extended Abstract Microblogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, also known as tweets, to the public or a selected circle of contacts. A variegated mosaic of microblogging uses has emerged since the launch of Twitter in 2006: daily chatter, conversation, information sharing, and news commentary, among others (Java et al, 2007). Regard-less of their content and intended use, tweets often convey pertinent information about their authors mood status. As such, tweets can be regarded as temporally-authentic microscopic instantiations of public mood state (O'Connor et al, 2010). Here we perform a sentiment analysis of all public tweets broadcasted by Twitter users between August 1 and December 20, 2008. For every day in the timeline, we extract six dimensions of mood (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, confusion) using an extended version (Pepe and Bollen, 2008) of the Profile of Mood States (POMS), a well-established psychometric instrument (Norcross et al, 2006; McNair et al, 2003). We compare our results to fluctuations recorded by stock market and crude oil price indices and major events in media and popular culture, such as the U.S. Presidential Election of November 4, 2008 and Thanksgiving Day (see Fig. 1). We find that events in the social, political, cultural and economic sphere do have a significant, immediate and highly specific effect on the various dimensions of public mood. In addition, we found long-term changes in public mood that may reflect the cumulative effect of various underlying socio-economic indicators. With the present investigation (Bollen et al, 2010), we bring about the following methodological contributions: we argue that sentiment analysis of minute text corpora (such as tweets) is efficiently obained via a syntac-tic, term-based approach that requires no training or machine learning. Moreover, we stress the importance of measuring mood and emotion using well-established instruments rooted in decades of empirical psychometric research. Finally, we speculate that collective emotive trends can be modeled and predicted using large-scale analyses of user-generated content but results should be discussed in terms of the social, economic, and cultural spheres in which the users are embedded.
We investigated how doctored photographs of past public events affect memory for those events. Italian participants viewed either original images or misleading digitally doctored images depicting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing and a 2003 protest in Rome against the war in Iraq, and they subsequently answered questions about those events. Viewing the doctored images affected the way participants remembered the events. Those who viewed the doctored photograph of the Beijing event estimated that a larger number of people participated in it. Those who viewed the doctored photograph of the Rome event rated the event as more violent and more negative, recalled more physical confrontation, damage to property, and injuries to demonstrators, and were less inclined to participate in future protests. Both younger and older adult participants were affected by the manipulation. Results indicate that doctored photographs of past public events can influence memory, attitudes and behavioural intentions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Instead of the currently prevailing competitive model, a more collaborative strategy is needed to address the concerns related to the unsustainability of today’s business. This article aims to explore collaborative
approaches where enterprises seek to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with all stakeholders and want to
produce sustainable values for their whole business ecosystem. Cases here analyzed demonstrate that alternative ways of doing
business are possible. These enterprises share more democratic ownership structures, more balanced and broader governance
systems, and a more comprehensive view of organizational goals and performance – which goes beyond the narrow concept of financial
bottom line and into a stronger and systematic care of the needs and requirements of the different stakeholder groups. Thanks
to this evidence and different theoretical and empirical contributions, we suggest that the strength and sustainability of
enterprises come from their ability to fit into the environmental, social, and cultural context in which they operate. By
creating values for all stakeholders, enterprises can involve them and gain deep support based on their commitment. This may
lead to superior performance from a multiple-bottom-line perspective.
Privacy has largely been equated with every individual's right to privacy. Accordingly, current efforts to protect privacy on the Internet have sought anonymity by breaking, where possible, links with personally identifiable information (PII)—all uses of aggregated data stripped of PII are considered legitimate. This article argues that we need to use a broader concept, general or group identifying information (GII), because even aggregated data stripped of PII violate privacy at the community level. The search engine companies, or anyone else with access to their log files, can use these data to generate a moment-by-moment view of what is on the collective mind. Such a view can be used in a variety of ways, some with deep economic and even political impact. In order to frame this discussion, it is necessary to examine some of the realities of the search engine-mediated associative interface to the World Wide Web. While this interface has enormous benefits for the networked world, it also fundamentally changes a number of issues underlying various current debates about Internet governance.
Free software is supposedly developed by a loosely organised "community" of programmers. However it has been quite unknown until now who, except for some well-known celebrities, belongs to this community, and more importantly how contributions are distributed. The authors present a first survey of free software authorship, with the emphasis not on building a census or even a "hall of fame", but on identifying patterns of concentration and distribution of contribution. The sample code size is not necessarily representative and there are several errors due to the automated and vast nature of the task of identifying and crediting authors. Nevertheless, comprehensive data is collated for the first time, and can be scrutinised in detail on the survey Web site.
This article investigates a paradox in the reception of Web 2.0. While some of its services are seen as creators of a new informational economy and are hence publicly legitimized, other features are increasingly under surveillance and policed, although in reality the differences between these services is far from obvious. Our thesis is that we are currently experiencing a temporary postponement of the law, in the context of Web 2.0. Agamben's work on the state of exception is here used to theorize the informational economy as an ongoing dispossession, under the guise of 'networked production'. This dispossession is seen as a parallel to the concept of 'primitive accumulation', as a means of moving things from the exterior to the interior of the capitalist economy. This theory lets us problematize the concept of free labor, the metaphor of the enclosure, and puts into question the dichotomy between copyright and cultural commons. © 2010, First Monday.
In this article [1] some of the critical aspects of Web 2.0 are mapped in relation to labor and the production of user generated content. For many years the Internet was considered an apt technology for subversion of capitalism by the Italian post-Marxists. What we have witnessed, however, is that the Internet functions as a double-edged sword; the infrastructure does foster democracy, participation, joy, creativity and sometimes creates zones of piracy. But, at the same time, it has become evident how this same infrastructure also enables companies easily to piggyback on user generated content. Different historical and contemporary examples are provided to map how the architecture of participation sometimes turns into an architecture of exploitation.
A number of studies have assessed the reliability of entries in Wikipedia at specific times. One important difference between Wikipedia and traditional media, however, is the dynamic nature of its entries. An entry assessed today might be substantially extended or reworked tomorrow. This study paper assesses the frequency with which small, inaccurate changes are quickly corrected.
The use of Flickr, a photo sharing Website, is examined in the context of amateur photography as a 'serious leisure' pursuit.
Method. Eleven telephone interviews were carried out with users of Flickr, using an open-ended interview schedule to explore use of the system within the context of the interviewees' photographic practices.
Analysis. Practices described are set against theoretical considerations from the literature, specifically the alternate paradigms of the photographic club and the photo magazine. Sontag's cultural critique of photography is an important, challenging reference point.
Results. The affordances of the system affect the satisfactions of hobby photography. Flickr creates moral dilemmas, such as whether to reciprocate comments or tag the photos of others. The system's appeal lies in its moral qualities as much as whether it is easy to use or performs functions efficiently. Flickr draws users into the hobby and so, like the camera club or the magazine, can be linked to the interests of industry. Yet it is too pessimistic to see it as simply a vehicle of consumerist culture; users expressed almost unqualified satisfaction with the system for its direct pleasures and learning opportunities.
Conclusions. The fluid social relations of Flickr potentially free the hobby from the rather restrictive codes and ordering of the photographic club.