Publications

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This open access book outlines how the digital platforms that mediate so many aspects of commercial and personal life have begun to transform everyday family existence. It presents theory and research methods to enable students and scholars to investigate the changes that platformization has brought to the routines and interactions of family life including intergenerational communication, interpersonal relationships, forms of care and togetherness. The book emerged from a seminar jointly funded by the Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe project, the Norwegian Research Council and The Australian Centre of Excellence for the Study of the Digital Child.

Book

Abstract:
This book introduces a new theory of national identity, arguing that the nation does not only represent an abstract “imagined community” but also represents embodied cultural and discursive practices. Drawing upon a detailed case study of Serbian Londoners, this truly interdisciplinary study positions media as constitutive of national identities. The author contends that nations come into being and are sustained through everyday interpersonal communication practices that have increasingly become mediated, especially for migrants. She develops the concept of "doing nation" to argue that we should think of the nation as a dynamic process. Situated first within a particular migration context, the concept is then applied more broadly as everyday communication practices are becoming increasingly mediated worldwide. Covering a breadth of key theories and concepts in this field, including diaspora, ethnicity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, social media affordances and polymedia, this book will appeal to scholars and students researching digital media, migration, identities, nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the social science disciplines.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article employs Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) to analyze the affective public surrounding the hashtag #christiantiktok. We find that “Christian TikTok” discursively negotiates the unpredictable visibility affordances of TikTok’s algorithm by ascribing layers of spiritual significance to how the algorithm delivers content. Our research uncovered four key themes to this spiritualized conceptualization of algorithmically controlled visibility: (1) Algorithm as directed by the hand of God, (2) Context collapse as an evangelism opportunity, (3) Boosting visibility as a spiritual obligation, and (4) Invisibility as persecution. Following our analysis, we develop an understanding of the “spiritual algorithmic imaginary,” building on Bucher’s concept of the “algorithmic imaginary.” Functioning as both a networked performance and an affective framework, the concept of the spiritual algorithmic imaginary theorizes how certain spiritual users sacralize their participation in and understanding of digital platforms.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Research on women and hostile behaviour in video games has largely focused on women as victims rather than perpetuators of hostile behaviour. In this study, by utilizing discourse analysis, we examine how women’s hostile behaviour is discussed in the subreddit r/GirlGamers, and how the ideal gaming woman is discursively constructed in these discussions.

Article / Journal

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Examinations of online far-right activity often focus on harmful content proliferation and its social and political impact. However, understandings of its spread often lack a consideration of the emerging political economy of social media algorithms and surveillance capitalism.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Digital gaming has evolved from a peripheral activity to a central aspect of mediatized lifeworlds, significantly impacting media culture and society. Despite its pervasive influence, digital gaming research often occupies a marginalized status within broader academic disciplines. This article advocates for recognizing digital gaming as an integral part of the media landscape and understanding its role within a deeply mediatized society. By adopting a holistic perspective, this study emphasizes the interconnectedness of digital gaming with other media forms and cultural practices, highlighting its significance in driving digital transformation. Therefore, we argue for a dual development: one that removes gaming from its segregated special status and recognizes it as an integral part of the media landscape, and another that situates the unique aspects of gaming within the broader context of a society deeply transformed and shaped by media; capturing both its significance and its role as part of the whole. We elaborate on the concept of gamevironments bridging deep mediatization research and communicative figurations to comprehend change brought about by the transformative power of digital gaming in deeply mediatized societies. Gamevironments encompass transmedia figurations and narratives, cross‐media adaptations, social interactions, user‐generated content, and the cultural and educational impacts of gaming. We discuss the analytical potential of gamevironments along five distinct yet interrelated areas (making of gamevironments, values in and of gamevironments, governance of gamevironments, education in and for gamevironments, and researching gamevironments) to provide a comprehensive view of digital gaming’s transformative impact on digital society.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Tracing the development of new technological skills and digital cultures, this book looks at the rise of new digital divides and reveals how these inequalities affect cross-cultural communication from a cultural discourse studies perspective in various ethnic and cultural groups across the world. The authors discuss the development of multicultural societies across the globe under new challenges brought by digitalization, such as digital exclusion, new professional and personal demands in terms of digital engagement. In addition to highlighting digital inequalities in access, use and benefits of using ICTs, case studies from different national contexts demonstrate the ways minority ethnic and cultural groups are adapting to the new digital environment; explore the transformations that multicultural affairs and communication undergo in the new digital setting; and analyse policy measures aimed at fostering digital inclusion of minor groups. The book advances knowledge of the digital divide, showing its development from a technological access- and skill-based problem into a social and culture-oriented one. This resourceful text will be of interest to students and scholars of social inequality, digital media and communication studies and anyone interested in learning how multicultural discourses are developing in varied national contexts today.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Bringing together leading scholars from media studies and digital sociology, this edited volume provides a comprehensive introduction to digital media metaphors, unpacking their power and limitations. Digital technologies have reshaped our way of life. To grasp their dynamics and implications, people often rely on metaphors to provide a shared frame of reference. Scholars, journalists, tech companies, and policymakers alike speak of digital clouds, bubbles, frontiers, platforms, trolls, and rabbit holes. Some of these metaphors distort the workings of the digital realm and neglect key consequences. This collection, structured in three parts, explores metaphors across digital infrastructures, content, and users. Within these parts, each chapter examines a specific metaphor that has become near-ubiquitous in public debate. Doing so, the book engages not only with the technological, but also the social, political, and environmental implications of digital technologies and relations. This unique collection will interest students and scholars of digital media and the broader fields of media and communication studies, sociology, and science and technology studies.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
How digital social reading apps are powerfully changing—and nurturing—the way we read. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that digital technology is a threat to reading, but in Digital Social Reading, Federico Pianzola argues that reading socially through digital media can help people grow a passion for reading and, in some cases, even enhance text comprehension. Digital social reading (DSR) is a term that encompasses a wide variety of practices related to the activity of reading and using digital technologies and platforms (websites, social media, mobile apps) to share thoughts and impressions about books with others. This book is the first systematization of DSR practices, drawing on case studies from Wattpad, AO3, and Goodreads on a worldwide scale. Using a combination of qualitative and computational methods, Pianzola offers fresh insight into the reading experience on the scale of big data. He discusses the impact of digital technology on reading skills and shows that a change of methodological perspective is necessary to understand the positive potential of DSR for promoting reading more broadly. He argues that it is not just the medium that changes but also the context and the attitudes of readers. He also asserts that grassroots media and open, bottom-up communities are crucial to the success of many reading practices today, especially with young audiences.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This anthology brings together scholars from around the world to theorize and explore "epistemic genres" of digital games, which are defined by the social uses and meanings attributed to different constellations of games by the communities the play, make, and study them. Game studies has experienced a cultural turn in the last decade, centering the social dimensions of games and play. What resources for theorizing game genres emerge from this cultural turn? How might the critical theories of race and culture, intersectional feminism, queer and trans theory, eco-criticism, and post-colonial and decolonial interventions of the past decade suggest new ways of thinking about game genres? The chapters in this edited volume make a case for epistemic genres that are distinguished primarily by their social context and use. The notion of epistemic genre centers the player's experience and the meanings that emerge from distinct communities as they engage with games. Epistemic game genres are those constellations of games that overflow and cut-across the genre boundaries of the commercial game industry and mainstream gaming culture. The first section examines epistemic genres as they are constituted by different scholarly lenses. Here, the contributors consider how certain scholarly theories allow us to see the connections between seemingly disparate games. The second section examines epistemic genres as products of specific material and discursive contexts. The third section examines epistemic genres defined by the specific interpretive frames of communities of players that share a cultural lexicon, symbol system, or grammar. Overall, the chapters in this book make the case for understanding game genres as formations shaped more by play that the qualities of the games themselves.

Other publication

Language(s): English

Article / Journal

Abstract:
This article examines the historical and contemporary mobilizations of ‘Luddism’ as a mode of resistance to technological inevitability, particularly in response to the integration of generative AI into education. Tracing three historical ‘waves’ of Luddism – the original nineteenth century machine-breakers, the Neo-Luddites of the late twentieth century, and the present day critics of digital automation – it explores how the term has been mobilized, at different junctures, in service of overlapping (and, at times, competing) political projects. Reading across these ‘waves,’ the article considers what lessons, and cautions, they hold for how education research and practice might confront generative AI and the challenges it introduces for teaching, learning, and school governance.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This paper proposes a concept of infrastructures of feeling, building on Raymond Williams’ work on structures of feeling and contributing to current work on digital media/tion, affect and time. It draws on empirical research conducted over the past decade on these themes, including art-making workshops with young people and interviews with digital media professionals. In the first part of the paper, I introduce the concept of infrastructures of feeling and what it might offer to understandings of the contemporary period. In the second part, I develop its affective and temporal dimensions. I suggest that today’s digitally mediated feelings are non-unified, contested, ambiguous and ambivalent and that they indicate a condition of middleness, or being in midst of form/ation and transformation. In the third part, I consider some of the implications of this argument for cultural politics, including for rethinking distance/presence and what resistance might look and feel like.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This special issue aims to illuminate women’s contributions throughout history by using gender as a critical lens in internet historiography and challenging the dominance of male-centered narratives. In the introduction, we contextualize the socio-cultural moment in which this issue was conceived and outline its dual focus. First, we reconstruct women’s contributions to the history of the Internet. Second, we examine gender identity and the role of LGBTQ+ communities within this history. Our approach is guided by two perspectives: understanding gender identity as a site of political mobilization and situating the Internet within the broader digital world. We also advocate for future directions that emphasize decolonizing and expanding Internet historiography.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Internet memes have emerged as the de facto language of the internet, where standardized memetic templates and characters distill and communicate narratives in simple, shareable formats. While prior research has highlighted their broad appeal as they traverse diverse audiences, their cultural function within online communities has received less attention. To investigate this function, we draw on cognitive anthropological conceptualizations of culture and theorize internet memes as “cultural representations.” We analyze 544 memes shared across two interconnected conspiratorial subreddits about COVID-19 between 2020 and 2022, employing a combination of content and thematic analysis. In doing so, we demonstrate that community members selectively engage with standardized memetic elements that resonate with their “conspiracist worldview.” Specifically, elements conveying the enduring “cultural themes” of Deception, Delusion, and Superiority function as “cultural resources” that stabilize the community’s culture. As such, we make three contributions. First, by theorizing internet memes as cultural representations, we demonstrate their stabilizing cultural function. Second, by showing how internet memes are used in online conspiratorial communities, we highlight their role in maintaining group cohesion and alleviating contention. Finally, we advance a revised methodological approach for the study of memetic communication.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Emojis are a ubiquitous form of online expression. In this paper, we explore emojis as affordances that enact and sustain discursive violence via toxic content. We take a case study approach by focusing on Chismes Frescos Medellin (Fresh Gossip Medellin), a Colombian Telegram group with over 125,676 members. Relying on Communalytic, we collected 98,729 publicly accessible posts. Next, we subdivided the posts into 3,155 toxic and 95,574 non-toxic posts using Detoxify, a popular machine-learning classifier . We explored and compared the two subsets through statistical analysis and thematic analysis. Our findings show that emojis— and specifically, emojis suggesting positive emotions such as 👍 and 😁 — are often used to accompany toxic speech in ways that indicate the approval and normalization of toxic speech. Overall, our study points to the need to pay closer attention to how affordances can enable symbolic forms of violence on digital platforms in unexpected ways.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
In light of the so-called Great Meme War, a meme-based propaganda campaign waged in favor of Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, this article identifies a type of disembodied far-right “meme warrior” that ironically denies longings for heroism. This ambivalent stance toward heroic masculine ideals, which characterizes the meme warriors’ (self-)portraits, stands in stark contrast to more serious traditional far-right heroic imaginaries. This phenomenon is discussed in relation to the notion of the post-heroic, a concept used in military studies to describe the shrinking willingness and (perceived) need to sacrifice one’s life in combat. The second part of the article explores the construction of a ludic collective heroism in the alt-right’s responses to Shia LaBeouf’s “He Will Not Divide Us” (HWNDU) project, which was conceived as a participatory video work in public space inviting people to repeat those words while gazing into a camera. The article employs a psychoanalytic depth-hermeneutic method; it asks how “post-heroic” identities created collectively online by the far right might be found alluring on a wider scale.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This book offers a critical discourse analytical perspective on the phenomenon of men who voluntarily abstain from relationships with women. Based on a case study of the online Reddit community known as ‘Men Going Their Own Way’, the author engages in qualitative examination of the argumentative and discursive strategies used to justify and legitimise an antifeminist, male separatist ideology. Methodologically, the book draws on the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse studies and investigates how members of this online community represent themselves, relationships with women, and the broader gendered social order. It considers male separatism as part of the new antifeminist social media network known as the manosphere, as well as part of a broader legacy of backlash against feminism and women’s rights. Overall, the book contributes to the growing body of literature on the manosphere and should be of interest to scholars in discourse studies, feminist media studies, and digital communication.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries. And when US Immigration Customs Enforcement aggressively reinforced its program of raids, detention, and family separation, it was powered by Silicon Valley corporations. In cities of refuge, where communities on the move once lived in anonymity and proximity to familial and diaspora networks, the possibility for escape is diminishing. As cities rely increasingly on tech companies to develop digital urban infrastructures for accessing information, identification, services, and socioeconomic life at large, they also invite the border to encroach further on migrant communities, networks, and bodies. In this book, Matt Mahmoudi unveils how the unsettling convergence of Silicon Valley logics, austere and xenophobic migration management practices, and racial capitalism has allowed tech companies to close in on the final frontiers of fugitivity—and suggests how we might counteract their machines through our own refusal.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This volume proposes “speaking up” and “talking back” as new theoretical access points for studying feminist activism in digital spaces. Drawing on the influential work of bell hooks, it highlights social justice interventions by feminist/queer/decolonial actors, groups, and collectives who recover the digital as a space for activist organizing and campaigning. In presenting a variety of sociocultural issues, such as gender violence, queer discrimination, or migrant hostility, the book centers empowerment practices in their digital forms, showcasing interventions in Asia, Europe, and the Americas—thereby critically examining the conditions for marginalized voices to speak up, talk back, and be heard in digital publics. In focusing on activist practices, formats, experiences, and scholarship, the contributions analyze many facets of digital feminist contention, including resistance storytelling, hashtag activism, grassroots journalism, or diaspora podcasting.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
The internet as we know it is not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the present corporatized, monolithic, surveilled state of our networked communications is just one possibility out of many, and there is radical promise in uncovering hidden alternatives: from pirate radio to barbed wire telegraph, from synthesizers transmitted over the telephone to encoded messages bounced off the surface of the moon. Other Networks is writer and researcher Lori Emerson’s speculative index of communications networks that existed before or outside of the internet: digital as well as analog, IRL as well as imagined, state-sponsored systems of control as well as homebrew communities in the footnotes of hacker culture. Featuring explanatory descriptions of each network, archival images, and original artwork by Robert Beatty, Other Networks documents historically alternative networks with a particular eye towards their experimental usage by artists and writers. The result is a boldly creative taxonomy of our networked world, a liberatory sourcebook for readers eager to escape the hegemony of technological history, and a lovingly designed guide to the freedoms and communal possibilities that have been lost along the way.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
In this paper, we report on creative- and arts-based sexual violence and bystander intervention workshops we developed and researched in England, Ireland, and Canada, through evaluation surveys, observations, and focus group interviews with nearly 1200 young people (aged 13–18). Whist the young people generally reported benefitting from the intervention, in the context of increasing use of digital technologies amongst youth, we explore the context-specific challenges they faced in learning about and being supported through bystander strategies across a wide range of diverse school spaces. We use the term postdigital bystanding to explicitly explore how teen’s digital networks are often connected to the school-based ‘real life’ peer group, in ways that complicate clear distinctions between online and offline, arguing that these postdigital dynamics have not yet been adequately considered in bystanding interventions. We analyse how the intersectional community, cultural, and identity-specific factors in particular schooling environments shape responses to bystanding in postdigital environments, including how factors of sexism, defensive masculinity, elitism, racism, and a reluctance to report digital issues played out in the responses to the workshops. Finally, following young people’s suggestions, we recommend that schools need to cultivate better safety and support strategies for youth in order to make postdigital bystander interventions more responsive and therefore effective in challenging and preventing sexual violence in society.

Book

Abstract:
Cosmopolitanism remains a multifaceted, widely-used concept. Cultural theory and empirical research have not remained stagnant, and a number of further theoretical and empirically-based concepts have emerged, not least postdigitality and postmigrancy. The »post« in these terms does not denote an end, but rather societal transformation due to and interwoven with both digitality and migration. The contributors to this volume call for new perspectives on the concept of cosmopolitanism, in the light of postdigitality and postmigrancy. The contributions reflect on a theoretical and an empirical level the need to reimagine cosmopolitanism for the twenty-first century.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This student guide is an introduction to research on language and digital communication, providing an overview of relevant sociolinguistic concepts, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches commonly used in the field. The book is a practical guide designed to help students develop independent research projects on language and digital communication. Topics covered include: the emergence of research on Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), interactional affordances and the design infrastructures of digital platforms, practical and ethical guidance in designing and implementing a research project on digital communication, contemporary approaches in the sociolinguistics of digital communication such as Computational Sociolinguistics (CS) and interactional analyses, and the impact of social and digital media on language change. Chapters are organised thematically, each supplemented with examples from various platforms and sociolinguistic contexts, as well as further reading and activities to scaffold students’ learning. The interdisciplinary relevance of this topic makes it key reading for students from A-level English language to undergraduate and postgraduate students in linguistics, English language, media studies, digital culture, and communications.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
An in-depth investigation of the Twitch streamers who make up the largest population on the platform: those streaming to small audiences or even no one. The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us, Mia Consalvo, Marc Lajeunesse, and Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to understand. Unlike the esports athletes and streaming superstars who receive the lion's share of journalistic and academic attention, microstreamers are not in it for the money and barely have an audience. In this, the first book dedicated to the latter group, the authors gather interviews from dozens of microstreamers from 2017 to 2019 to discuss their lives, struggles, hopes, and goals. For readers interested in livestreaming, and Twitch in particular, the book rethinks the medium's history through accounts of the everyday uses of webcams, with particular attention to notions of liveness and authenticity. These two concepts have become calling cards for the videogame livestreaming platform and underlie streamer motivations, the construction of their practices (whether casual, serious, or anywhere in between), and the complex “metas” that take shape over time. The book also looks at the authors' own practices of livestreaming, focusing on what can be gained through experiencing the lived reality of the practice. Finally, the authors explain how Twitch's platform (studied from 2017–2023) informs how streamers structure their every day and how corporate ideologies bleed into real-world spaces like TwitchCon.

Article / Journal

Abstract:
Social networks are simultaneously information and media platforms, but Blackness becomes understood differently depending upon which frame is deployed. While Black media creators have been lauded for their inventive enlivening of digital and social media technologies, Black information users are often considered as lacking technical, written, or mainstream cultural literacies. Mills’ works – from “Alternative Epistemologies” to The Racial Contract to one of his last “The Illumination of Blackness” – go beyond philosophy to inform media theory and science and technology studies. For example, Black Twitter shattered deficit models of Black digital expertise through discourse, affordances, and networked culture. I contend that Black Twitter illuminates the “racialized optics of modernity” (Mills 2021: 18) and of computation through Black standpoint epistemologies mediated by digital practices and discourses. I find that Mills anticipated that Black aesthetics and philosophy are well-suited for alternative visions of digital practice, design, and use.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article employs Bogost’s (2007) ‘procedural rhetoric’ frame to explore the ways in which the numerical values which constitute FIFA 22’s ‘Top 100’ Black and White digital women footballers reflect or challenge the exclusionary discourses that have, thus far, shaped the experiences of White and Black female sporting athletes in the social world. In doing so, this research is the first to empirically demonstrate considerable differences between the construction, sporting competencies and artificial emotional and sporting intelligence assigned to Black and White digital players within football video games. Findings also demonstrate the ways in which the numerical foundations of racialised digital women footballers are informed by, and reflect, processes of both sporting misogynoir and Whiteness, which intersect and underpin the markedly anti-Black and anti-feminine framings and sporting competencies of digital Black female footballers within this digital sports world.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Today's young people find themselves at the center of widespread debates about their online safety, and they are often told that social media platforms affect their mental health and body image by exposing them to cyberbullying and distressing images. Foregrounding their voices and experiences, The Kids Are Online explores how they navigate their identities across platforms and how they really feel about their young digital lives. Ysabel Gerrard talked to more than a hundred teens to unpack the myths and realities of their social media use. Instead of framing today's big platforms as either good or bad, she identifies moments when young people encounter social apps in paradoxical ways—both good and bad at the same time. Using the concepts of stigma, secrecy, safety, and social comparison, she helps readers understand young people's experiences. The Kids Are Online proposes a series of recommendations for parents, families, schools, technology companies, and policymakers to imagine how we might build safer social media systems.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
In recent years, the ‘mirror’ has emerged as a key metaphor for theorizing contemporary digital culture, with its disorienting communicative architectures and bewildering social and political effects. This short piece considers what the dynamic of ‘mirroring’ in digital culture means for the relationship between gender politics and an increasingly authoritarian right. In the digital hall of mirrors, feminist ideas and practices are mimicked, co-opted and warped into perplexing new formations. This happens through manosphere figures and ‘manfluencers’ who mirror feminist practices and discourses, weaponizing them for anti-feminist ends. But we also see uncanny doubles of feminism in the visibility of ‘tradwives’, ‘dark feminine’ dating influencers and self-proclaimed ‘reactionary feminists’. We argue that the tendency is toward a nihilistic anti-politics – or what we call a ‘vampire anti-feminism’ – whose goal is to suck out feminism’s life force, and to kill the possibility of collective political resistance. We argue that grasping the dynamics of ‘mirroring’ in digital culture is crucial for analyzing contemporary gender politics as it plays out in an increasingly reactionary terrain.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This highly original and stimulating edited volume focuses on ways of un‑writing the polysemous, controversial and highly political notion of interculturality in research and education. The authors argue that no ‘critical’ perspective on interculturality can do without revising, exploring and creating ways of engaging with different and potentially new aspects and forms of inquiry of the notion in writing. They also claim that un‑writing interculturality can serve an emancipatory function towards an epistemic re‑appraisal of the mainstream(s) and the dominant(s). While critiquing problematic perspectives, as well as the ‘taken‑for‑granted’ and ‘things as usual’ within interculturality scholarship, writing about interculturality is epistemically significant and indicative of change in the ways the notion is used. Each chapter reflects on how to un‑write, un‑do and un‑learn interculturality in research and aims to provide some answers to the following questions: What could un‑writing interculturality mean? What are the pros and cons of un‑writing in research on intercultural communication education? and How does constant work on languaging around interculturality contribute to enriching the notion globally? The book is aimed at students and scholars who wish to push the boundaries of scholarly engagement with interculturality, especially in relation to their modalities of writing, reasoning and critiquing.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This book identifies the converging socio- cultural, economic, and technological conditions that have shaped, informed, and realised the identity of the contemporary virtual influencer, situating them at the intersection of social media, consumer culture, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and digital technologies. Through a critical analysis of virtual influencers and related media practices and discourses in an international context, each chapter investigates different themes relating to digitality and identity: virtual place and nationhood; virtual emotions and intimacy; im/ materialities of virtual everyday life; the biopolitics of virtual human-production; the necropolitics of pandemic virtuality; transmedial and mimetic virtualities; and the political economy of virtual influencers. The book argues that the virtual influencer represents the various ways in which contemporary identities have increasingly become naturalised with questions of virtuality, mediated by digital technologies across multiple realities. From practices relating to AI- driven, invasive data profiling needed for virtual influencer production to problematic online practices such as buying digital skin colour, the author examines how the virtual influencer’s aesthetic, social, and economic value obfuscates some of the darker aspects of their role as an extractivist technology of virtuality: one which regulates, oppresses, and/ or classifies bodies and datafied bodies that serve the visual, (bio)political, and digital economies of virtual capitalism. In the process, the book simultaneously offers a critique of the virtual influencer as a representational figure existing across multiple digital platforms, spaces, and times, and of how they may challenge, complicate, and reinforce normative ideologies surrounding gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and ableism. As such, the book sheds light on some of the more troubling realities of the virtual influencer’s existence, inasmuch as it celebrates their transformational potential, exploring the implications of both within an increasingly AI- driven, digital culture, society, and economy. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and students working in the area(s) of: Popular Culture and Media; Internet, Digital and Social Media Studies; Data justice and Governance; Japanese Media Studies; Celebrity Studies; Fan Studies; Marketing and Consumer Studies; Sociology; Human– Computer Studies; and AI and Technology Studies.

Article / Journal

Language(s): Deutsch

Abstract:
In der internationalen Kulturpolitik steht derzeit die Restitution afrikanischer Kulturgüter kolonialer Herkunft im Zentrum der Debatten. Die Praxis des Sammelns ‚exotischer‘ Objekte in Europa begann bereits in der Renaissance, doch erst im 19. Jahrhundert intensivierte sich das europäische ‚Interesse‘ an afrikanischen Kulturen, verbunden mit der gewaltvollen Kolonialisierung großer Teile des Kontinents. Die systematische Entwendung afrikanischer Kulturobjekte durch europäische Kolonialmächte diente daraufhin der Legitimierung kolonialer Unterwerfungsstrategien. Trotz vereinzelter Rückführungsprojekte in den vergangenen Jahren protestieren viele Kritiker:innen gegen eine beobachtete Trägheit bei den Bemühungen um Restitution auf europäischer Seite. Ein Beispiel für den militanten Protest gegen diese Entwicklungen ist Mwazulu Diyabanza. Der kongolesische Aktivist versuchte im Jahr 2020, eine afrikanische Statue aus dem Musée du Quai Branly in Paris zu stehlen, und veröffentlichte seine Performance auf der online-Plattform YouTube, um auf die unrechtmäßige Aneignung von afrikanischen Kulturgütern aufmerksam zu machen. Nach einer Einführung in den Stand der anhaltenden Restitutionsdebatte analysiert dieser Artikel Diyabanzas YouTube-Video als postkolonialen Protest vor dem Hintergrund der anhaltenden Restitutionsdebatte sowie der kulturpolitischen Herausforderungen im Umgang mit kolonialen Kulturgütern.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This book unpacks key concepts and methods relevant for a critical and reflective framing of futures in postdigital education. The compiled chapters explore concepts and methods that have pertinence for contemporary debates about the emergence of data-driven education and scrutinize implicit or explicit ethical and normative implications. The book provides in-depth critical reflections and perspectives to engage and analyze data-driven education as an educational and cultural phenomenon. It focuses on the value-laden and ethical aspects reflected in educational imaginaries (discourses and practices) regarding emerging data-driven sociotechnical practices in education. The book is the result of scholarly exchanges between disciplines at a symposium held at VIA University College in Denmark in May 2022.

Book

Language(s): German

Abstract:
Die gesellschaftliche Brisanz des virtuellen Hasses hat zugenommen. Shitstorms, Empörungswellen oder Online-Eskalationen können als eine Phase in der Literatur- und Mediengeschichte des Tribunals gelesen werden. Die Beiträger*innen analysieren im Kontext der Geschichte und Theorie des Tribunals eskalierende Konflikte in sozialen Medien. Dabei setzen sie den Schwerpunkt auf mediale Gesten, rhetorische Darstellungstechniken, autofiktive Strategien und Interaktionsformen. Ein weiterer Aspekt sind Prozesse des Umstülpens, bei denen originär digitale Phänomene in analoge Kontexte übertragen werden. Der Fokus des Bandes wird somit um künstlerische und literarische Praktiken, die auf den virtuellen Hass reagieren, erweitert.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
The World White Web provides an interdisciplinary analysis of far-right radicalisation in the digital age, drawing from criminology, history, and computer science to explore how technology and imagery accelerate extremist recruitment. The book examines 20,000 internet memes to reveal white supremacy’s deep historical roots. It demonstrates how far-right propagandists leverage historical narratives and symbols to influence modern-day recruitment, bridging fringe and mainstream ideas across diverse time periods, countries and contexts, amid technological and social changes. Topics include racism and xenophobia in Greek and Roman antiquity, antisemitism in the Middle Ages, anti-Black racism rooted in the Antebellum South, the weaponisation of the Reconquista in Spain, the memeification of the Rurik Dynasty in Russia, Crusader iconography in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, eco-fascist propaganda in the Balkans, neo-Nazi mythology in India, and Völkisch ideology in Germany and Austria. The book emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary, socio-technical and multi-stakeholder approaches to truly comprehend and address the contemporary manifestations and threats posed by the global interconnectedness of the far right online.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Virtual collaborations via video-conferencing applications may enable international groups to develop ideas and explore synergies in creative ways. This article presents a case study that unveils how students in a group involved in a virtual simulation game, in which English as a lingua franca was used, navigate a highly intercultural environment, orient to team building through cooperative practices, and gradually develop their own team culture. The game was inserted in two online university courses in tertiary institutions in Germany and Finland. In the game, students performed several tasks that require collaborative work in the development plan of a fictitious city. The data for the study comprise video-recorded game interactions and students’ learning journal entries. This article is centered on the multimodal analysis of the interactions taking place during the kick-off session of the game and showcases successful multimodal strategies that aided the development of an inclusive and positive atmosphere in the group.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Samanta Schweblin is one of the most prominent figures in the contemporary Latin American panorama. Her narrative works Distancia de Rescate, Pájaros en la boca and Siete Casas Vacías explore the quiet horrors of family life and the looming menaces of industrialization and ecological disaster. In her novel Kentukis (2018), she peers into a dystopian world of human relationships mediated by technological artifacts that, under the disguise of innocent toys, create a global network of vigilance, dependency and interpersonal abuse. Challenging the boundaries of the novel, this kaleidoscopic work is organized in a fragmentary structure that shifts from one narrative capsule to another, offering a collection of narratives that span across the globe. The purpose of this article is to read Kentukis as a projection of the cosmopolitan ethical anxieties in a hyperconnected technological world. Drawing from the field of Experimental Ethics, I propose to interpret the collection of fictional narratives in this book as a series of ethical thought experiments. I contend that each one of the episodes presents the reader with an ethical puzzle aimed at testing the fabric of the ethical commitments towards strangers in the context of what can be called “digital cosmopolitanism.” Conceptually, this article is in close dialogue with Martha Nussbaum’s and Kwame Anthony Appiah’s theories of cosmopolitanism, Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical meditations, as well as with the concept of “digital cosmopolitanism” coined by Ethan Zuckerman.

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Abstract:
#BamaRushTok is a yearly viral event in which young women at the University of Alabama audition for spots in gender-specific social clubs (sororities). As a researcher working at the University of Alabama, I was uniquely situated in this viral phenomenon. I quickly became the expert called upon to explain this trend. However, being on the periphery of a viral event from my standpoint—social media researcher, lifelong resident of the U.S. South, tenure-track academic education—problematized everything I knew about the self and the research as I became subject, object, and spectator. Through this highly personal and reflexive digital autoethnography, I explore how I experienced context collisions—something normally thought of as collapsed audiences but invoked by me to explore what happens when researchers become physically entangled in the digital worlds they study. I experienced being subject, object, and spectator of these context collisions in three ways: At times I was in control; at times I was used; and at times I could only stand back and watch. My experience mirrored the visibility and precarity experienced by the girls of #BamaRushTok and the creators I have made a career out of studying. This speaks to the broader neoliberal conditions that structure platforms and American higher education. This work also underscores the importance of autoethnography as a valuable but underutilized method in Internet Studies research, as it is a way for those studying digital spaces to reach inside of themselves and understand vulnerable and liminal social media experiences.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
How the internet's memory infrastructure developed—averting a "digital dark age"—and introduced a golden age of historical memory.In early 1996, the web was ephemeral. But by 2001, the internet was forever. How did websites transform from having a brief life to becoming long-lasting? Drawing on archival material from the Internet Archive and exclusive interviews, Ian Milligan's Averting the Digital Dark Age explores how Western society evolved from fearing a digital dark age to building the robust digital memory we rely on today. By the mid-1990s, the specter of a "digital dark age" haunted libraries, portending a bleak future with no historical record that threatened cyber obsolescence, deletion, and apathy. People around the world worked to solve this impending problem. In San Francisco, technology entrepreneur Brewster Kahle launched his scrappy nonprofit, Internet Archive, filling tape drives with internet content. Elsewhere, in Washington, Canberra, Ottawa, and Stockholm, librarians developed innovative new programs to safeguard digital heritage. Cataloging worries among librarians, technologists, futurists, and writers from WWII onward, through early practitioners, to an extended case study of how September 11 prompted institutions to preserve thousands of digital artifacts related to the attacks, Averting the Digital Dark Age explores how the web gained a long-lasting memory. By understanding this history, we can equip our society to better grapple with future internet shifts.

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Language(s): German

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article explores the influence of digital culture on Holocaust commemoration through the test case of Anne Frank. By carrying out a comprehensive visual and multimodal analysis of three contemporary representations of Frank, I identify three new characteristics of her commemoration: performative engagement, media reconstruction, and narrative adaptation. While performative engagement introduces a new position for commemoration, media reconstruction focuses on the appropriation and use of media for Frank’s remembrance. Narrative adaptation represents a shift from linear storytelling, reiterating established narratives traditionally associated with Frank to new interpretations favoring heightened engagement and non-linearity. Altogether, these characteristics illuminate and address changes in three key aspects of Holocaust commemoration and the remembrance of Frank: subjectivity, media, and storytelling. I conclude by showing how the focus on Frank’s figure brings forward a burgeoning trend in Holocaust commemoration, which offers an alternative perspective to the mainstream promotion of immersive experiences in digital media. In doing so, I advocate a moderate approach to media use for memory work in digital culture.

Book

Language(s): English

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This study advances the field of disconnection studies by examining how digital (dis)connective practices intersect with diasporic identity construction and the articulation of belonging, focusing on the experiences of Turkish migrant women in Rome. Based on in‐depth interviews and participant observation with 10 Turkish women, the research highlights the central role of social class in the emergence of a “diasporic cosmopolitan” identity that is culturally and socially detached from, or even opposed to, their national identity. It further shows how this “cosmopolitan” identity intersects with the performance of specific digital (dis)connective practices and explores the cultural, political, and social dimensions of these dynamics. Particular attention is given to the influence of contemporary Turkish politics on online and offline diasporic sociality, which fosters tensions and segmented solidarities. Through this lens, the study identifies emergent forms of digital (dis)connective practices among Turkish women in Rome, which shape transnational and local social alliances and disruptions.

Book

Abstract:
This book provides a critical introduction to the ways in which digital technologies have enabled new types of interactions, experiences and collaborations across a range of platforms and media, profoundly shaping our socio-cultural landscapes. These discussions are grounded in classical sociological concepts; community, the self, gender, consumption, power and exclusion and inequality, to demonstrate the continuities that exist between sociological studies of ‘real’ world phenomena and their digital counterparts. Examining the various debates around methods in digital sociology in recent years, this book provides an accessible and engaging guide to using methodologies to study digital technology. From the moment we wake up until we go to bed, many of us constantly use digital technologies. Our mobile phones have become our maps, banks, newspapers and entertainment consoles. What's more, they allow us to be constantly connected with the people in our lives. This book will equip you to analyse digital media in your own work. The book offers a broad guide to the various areas of our lives that are impacted by digital technology, from the virtual communities that we form on social media to the impact that digital technology has on our identity through a 'sociology of selfies'. With chapters on leisure, work, privacy and methods, this is an essential introduction for students in the areas of sociology, digital media, and cultural studies.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article examines the influence of Mormon mommy bloggers (MMBs), as key web architects and content creators starting in the early 2010s. MMBs, referring here to Mormon content creators whose blogs focused on topics such as childrearing, domesticity, and lifestyle themes, were significant players during Web 2.0 through their usage of the longform blog. MMBs transformed the invisibilized domestic labor of mothering and housekeeping into monetizable content within the Mormon blogosphere or “Bloggernacle.” The aspirational monetization and professionalization of the blog offered a tangible occupation for Mormon stay-at-home mothers in a religious culture where working outside the home was discouraged. MMBs, through blogging, attempted to situate themselves not simply as caretakers but enterprising, digital cultural creators aligning themselves with a (neo)liberal feminist ethos of entrepreneurialism and individualistic influencing. Using a corpus of web archives from Brigham Young University’s digital collections, this article enlists the Archives Research Compute Hub (ARCH) to process archival data into derivatives to illuminate this underexplored period of web history, employing the methods of feminist thematic and social network analysis. By combining cultural and quantitative analysis of MMBs, this article highlights how MMBs were crucial creators who paved the way for contemporary trends of feminized influencing and the uneasy blending of feminist and commercial content which has increasingly defined contemporary mother-influencers.

Book

Language(s): German

Abstract:
Die Warnung von Eltern, aufzupassen, was man online teilt, ist allgegenwärtig. Dem schließen sich Datenschützer*innen an und gebieten einen bewussten und sparsamen Umgang mit Diensten und Daten. Eine digitale Desökonomie widersetzt sich diesen Warnungen und sucht den kritischen Umgang mit der digitalen Gegenwartskultur nicht in der Askese, sondern im Exzess. Kunstwerke, Bilder und Daten sind »zu viel«, türmen sich auf und wiederholen sich ständig. Mit Bezug auf Ansätze der Gouvernementalität, der Queer Theory und auf Theorien von Georges Bataille und Roger Caillois analysiert Sebastian Althoff diese unproduktive Produktionsweise des Digitalen und zeigt eine Praxis auf, die Trägheit statt flow schafft.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This thematic issue examines disconnectivity in a world where connectivity is often assumed to be the norm. Drawing on multiple areas of research, such as political unfriending, digital disconnection, migration studies, and media censorship, it delves into the complexities of disconnectivity, moving beyond its framing as voluntary choice and individual practice. Collectively, studies in this issue highlight disconnection as a compelled act for self-protection and a collective strategy to tackle systemic problems. By examining enforced and coerced disconnection, they also reveal disconnection’s dual role as control and resistance. Through a multi-contextual and interdisciplinary lens, this issue challenges the normative assumptions implicit in our current understandings of disconnection, and, in doing so, advances the field.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article argues for a Digital Interculturality Studies by bringing together a variety of theories including postdigitality, platformisation, Jürgen Bolten’s concept of interculturality, agency theory and Foucaultian media archaeology. It is argued that the internet should be viewed as a postdigital patchwork of bordered platforms, in which human agents drift between digital culturality and interculturality in a type of digital cultural fuzziness. It also centres digital agentive fragments: pieces of human ‘doing’ ‘within’, ‘above’ and ‘around’ the internet, which are often embedded in systematic agency. It lastly argues that a Digital Interculturality Studies should be centred on the materiality of contacts, exclusions and also incorporate digital intercultural contacts which have not been realised or not allowed to be realised. A methodological sketch is proffered in relation to how this could be undertaken, combining a post-qualitative perspective with the philosophical area of counterfactual theories of causation.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
AI is not new. What is new, however, is the speed and depth of its expansion in almost every aspect of our lives. This discussion forum is dedicated to exploring new frontiers and agendas for language and intercultural communication research. In this concluding piece, we invite the contributors to share insights on five key questions: their experiences (Question 1), the challenges and opportunities that we face (Question 2), the strengths and skills afforded by intercultural communication and applied linguistics (Question 3), considerations when collaborating with AI developers and user groups (Question 4) and the future landscape of intercultural communication (Question 5). Through these inquiries, we hope to amplify the contributors’ voices and experiences, often difficult to fit in academic writing, but crucial for contextualizing their epistemological stances in their work. We seek to broaden the discussion, drawing out a bigger picture of pressing issues, and exploring future prospects.