Publications

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This book addresses the importance of sustainability and environmental worldviews and the role of intercultural competencies in achieving SDGs acceptance and their effective implementation. Particularly since the pandemic, there is a growth in online education, and this offers opportunities for educators and students that can be exploited with a focus on sustainability. The book provides examples of virtual exchange including Global South and Global North with tools ranging from Project-Based and Community-Based Service Learning, Debates, Environmental Games and Simulations, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, and Accessibility and DEI issues. Additionally, issues of social justice and digital colonialism are a thread through several of the chapters. By providing a broad range of global learning experiences from scholars across several continents from various disciplines that include various post-secondary education based on tools and best practices, the book is a great resource to academics, researchers, and students on approaches to education that prepare the learner for praxis and effective implementation of sustainable solutions for their professional and social future perspectives.

Book

Language(s): German

Abstract:
In Japan findet jährlich eine Vielzahl von Amateur-Comic-Events, darunter die größte Comic-Messe weltweit, die Comiket, statt. Entgegen dem globalen Trend zur Digitalisierung im Comic-Bereich wird ein Großteil der dortigen Werke nach wie vor von den Künstler*innen selbst verlegt, gedruckt und herausgegeben. Katharina Hülsmann nimmt die Kultur japanischer Fan-Comics (sog. dōjinshi) in den Blick: Wie entwickelte sich eine solch solide Infrastruktur in Japan und warum hält sie sich bis heute? Welche Anschlussmöglichkeiten haben dōjinshi an ein globales Fandom, wenn sie sich im Internet eher wenig verbreiten? Und was treibt japanische Amateur-Künstler*innen an, ihre Werke mit viel Aufwand herzustellen und mit anderen Fans zu teilen?

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

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Speakers may resort to different inferences and expectations in intercultural encounters. These expectations are influenced by speakers’ socialization processes in speech communities and networks, as well as by the local interactional demands and power dynamics in the communicative situation. While interactional sociolinguistic studies have unveiled intercultural mismatches in how contextualization asymmetries operate in the here-and-now of interaction, less attention has been given to speakers’ normative expectations of good and bad social encounters, as reflected in retrospective accounts of interactional experiences. This article uses critical discursive psychology to examine social interactional ideologies, as German and Chinese students (home and exchange students, respectively) reflect on their experiences in a virtual intercultural game. As an analytical tool, we use the notion of “interpretative repertoires,” i.e., culturally shared ways to construct generally recognizable versions of objects. Our analysis of reflection reports written by the game players shows repertoires addressing ideal behaviors and ideal group features, which tend to place the German students in a more favorable position than the Chinese students. We discuss how local and historical power dynamics are blended in the repertoires and point to the need to critically engage with the social interactional ideologies that exist – but often go unnoticed – in intercultural settings.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
The #StopAsianHate hashtag movement emerged as a challenge to the rising tide of racism in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic and contributed to the legislation of the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. Our research brings together concepts from social movement studies as well as network science and celebrity-fandom studies to examine a corpus of tweets about the movement. We employ a mixed-methods design combining structural topic modeling with digital discourse analysis. Even though the movement rose up against White Supremacist structural racism, we find that right-wing provocateurs with large followings often hijacked its hashtags to amplify sporadic Black-on-Asian violence. But the active participation of Asian celebrities such as BTS, with their own huge followings online, bolstered the movement. Their posts and statements about anti-Asian violence were heavily reposted and dominated the digital discourse. Crucially, we show how their fans helped boost the movement’s anti-racist agenda by repeatedly posting similar messages in concert, which we compare with the offline fan practice of “chanting” as a form of collective identity performance. While theories like the logic of connective action view digital activism as individualized and decentralized, our research elucidates its hierarchical structure and the oversized role of provocateurs and celebrities in raising the visibility of competing claims and agendas by re-contextualizing hashtags. At the same time, culture industries and practices can create bottom-up solidarities that can have a political impact by raising particular agendas in the digital attention economy.

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:
In recent years, the scholarly critique of tech power as a form of digital colonialism has gained prominence. Scholars from various disciplines—including communication, law, computer science, anthropology, and sociology—have turned to this idea (or related ones such as tech colonialism, data colonialism, and algorithmic colonization) to conceptualize the harmful impact of digital technologies globally. This article reviews significant historical precedents to the current critique of digital colonialism and further shows how digital rights activists from the Global South have been actively developing and popularizing these ideas over the last decade. I argue that these two phenomena help explain why scholars from varied disciplines developed adjacent frameworks simultaneously and at this specific historical juncture. The article also proposes a typology of digital colonialism around six core features. Overall, this article encourages historicizing current debates about tech power and emphasizes the instrumental role of nonscholarly communities in knowledge production.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Shortly after its 2018 global launch, reports surfaced that content creation platform TikTok tasked its moderators to suppress disabled creators’ user-generated content without formal notification to the users, a belief colloquially known as shadowbanning. This theoretical article introduces algorithmic ableism to interrogate how platform systems encode ableist ideologies into algorithmic recommendation infrastructures, reproducing dominant offline beliefs. With the invocation of algorithmic ableism, the article’s analysis highlights how platform companies rely on disability-related discrimination as a platform logic that reifies long-standing western biases of who belongs in public life. Supported by scholarship in critical disability and feminist creator studies, the article engages in a critical/cultural close reading of corporate and investigative cultural artefacts, using TikTok as a case study. In doing so, the article argues how algorithmic ableism reproduces bias for disabled and marginalized creators through content suppression and surveillance. The article’s conclusion offers additional insights into how disabled creators’ microactivist content creation subverts algorithmic ableism.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Abstract Counter-practices as minor practices Virtuality and counter-modelling Declaration of conflicting interests Funding ORCID iD References PDF/EPUB Cite article Share options Information, rights and permissions Metrics and citations Abstract Expanding from Borbach and Kanderske's study of counter-practices in sensor-media societies this commentary explores two additional aspects that both support their insights. The first, related to the concept of becoming-minor, seeks to further develop their ethical-political framework, while the second, focusing on virtuality and counter-modelling, broadens the scope of analysis to include the entanglement between the virtual and the computational.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Sexual pleasure is a question of sexual justice and sexual rights in so far as who is allowed or denied pleasure is a vital issue for queer, trans, and nonbinary people. Pleasure is also intimately a technological question as sex was always entangled with and regulated by technologies. In this article, we seek to delineate a queer politics of pleasure by exploring LGBTQ+ people’s uses and experiences of sextech in Australia and Sweden with a specific focus on sex toys. Which bodies, identities, pleasures, and practices do sextexch assume and extend? And how do these sextech users play with (while being played by) such norms and assumptions? We begin by considering the cultural specificity of queer and feminist histories of sex toys, including the commodification of sex and pleasure in late capitalism and how this relates to sexual identities and ideas of sexual liberation. We then discuss norms of sex, pleasure, and sextech. But rather than distinguishing the normative from the antinormative as a way of locating a transgressive potential, we rather consider how norms are always part of their own variation, opening up a broader sexual field of perhaps more mundane practices, yet no less significant. Finally, we explore how pleasure aligns with or disrupts an attention to norms and identities. In contrast to the commodification of sexual identities in sextech, and the linear enhancement of pleasure by design, we further an understanding of pleasure as something more improvisational and unpredictable with limited space in mainstream sextech data economies.

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:
Far from causing the "death of the book," the publishing industry's adoption of digital technologies has generated a multitude of new works that push the boundaries of literature and its presentation. In this fascinating new work, Élika Ortega proposes the notion of "binding media" — a practice where authors and publishers "fasten together" a codex and electronic or digital media to create literary works in the form of hybrid print-digital objects. Examining more than a hundred literary works from across the Americas, Ortega argues that binding media are not simply experimentations but a unique contemporary form of the book that effectively challenges conventional regional and linguistic boundaries. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that binding media have remained marginal in the publishing industry due to technological imperatives like planned obsolescence and commercial ones like replicability and standardization that run counter to these bespoke literary projects. Although many binding media and other hybrid publishing initiatives have perished, they've left behind a wealth of material; collecting and tracing the residues of these foreshortened projects, Ortega builds a fascinating history of hybrid publishing. Ultimately, this essential account of contemporary book history highlights the way binding media help illuminate processes of cultural hybridization that have been instigated by the expediency of globalized digital technologies and transnational dynamics.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This paper identifies the visibility practices of Japanese Twitter users supporting Ukraine during Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Studies of digital visibility often suggest that moral goals and ideals are not attainable in such practices, as they clash with conditions of visibility configured by social media. This has led scholars to suggest that moral paradoxes, or the need to reconcile conflicting considerations, are the main characteristic of visibility on social media platforms. In this study, through an innovative mixed-methods approach for analysing visibility practices, I also outline several moral paradoxes underlying practices through which Japanese Twitter users enhance or decrease the visibility of actors associated with Russia’s war on Ukraine. However, by adopting the conceptual approach of ‘ethics as practice’ which emphasises the moral considerations of practitioners when faced with a moral conundrum, I argue that users driven by the moral call to support Ukraine recognise the limitations of Twitter’s regime of visibility. Their grappling with the identified paradoxes as they engage in visibility practices is what gives moral value to these practices.

Chapter

Language(s): English

Abstract:
The chapter deals with constructions of threats in (extreme) right-wing online discourses. These include feminism and gender discourses, abortion, immigration and birth rates, and the chapter focuses on German speaking contexts. It also includes examples of constructions of threats by abortion of the right-catholic website Kath.net. The described threat constructions refer to feminist and human rights achievements, which are regarded as intimidating and endangering. Based on the assumptions of Ulrich Beck concerning cosmopolitanism, I outline how the background of cosmopolitanism can reinforce these threat constructions. Thereby, emancipatory processes become an even greater threat, as they enable legal access to abortion, the disturbance of biological and traditional gender roles and ideas of family, which aggravates the preservation of the “Volk”. This can reinforce existing uncertainties and enable right-wing online narratives to appear efficacious, which may lead to a more rapid dissemination of those narratives, which may thus be more easily adopted by people.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
How did Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s divorce become the centre of the anti-#MeToo backlash? Why have so many teen boys fallen under the thrall of Andrew Tate, a failed reality show contestant? And why are a growing number of influencers like #tradwives dressing up like 1950s housewives and preaching total subservience to men? In the years since #MeToo – the largest social media facilitated feminist campaign in history – Roe v. Wade has been overturned in the United States, there have been attacks on reproductive rights in multiple countries and female political leaders have withdrawn from the world stage citing the level of abuse they get as a reason. CTRL HATE DELETE takes a deep dive into how a collection of misogynists and their allies have turned male supremacist ideology from a niche set of beliefs into a mainstream movement. With interviews from experts, influencers and activists, it outlines how to fight the rising tide of online misogyny and make online spaces more equal and inclusive.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Dialogues on Digital Society is an international, interdisciplinary journal engaging with emerging and field-changing thinking about the intersections of digital technologies, human experience, and societies. It publishes cutting-edge articles and review forums that critique or expand current thinking on questions of digitisation and set the agenda for future research. The journal operates with open peer commentary, encouraging a dialogue between authors and a set of reviewers in order to foster critical dialogue to expand the field of inquiry.

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This article investigates the modalities through which Internet memes are involved in the process of generational othering. Existing research has emphasised that taking the distance from other cohorts is central to the reinforcement of generational cohesion. Nonetheless, studies empirically observing how generational categorisation occurs remain scarce. Internet memes, i.e. images or videos created and circulated online, can shed light on this process for their ability to express intergenerational conflicts and target specific cohorts. Using data coming from 41 semi-structured interviews, the article explores how memes contribute to the identification and portrayal of generational ‘others’, taking the Italian context as case study. The analysis leads to the identification of two generational ‘others’, the Old and the Young, whose characterisation relies on stereotyped beliefs related to digital literacy, media consumption, worldview and moral values. It is argued that memes partake in the process of generational othering as multimodal carriers of messages, which foster the construction, dissemination and consolidation of stereotypes associated with young and old people. Furthermore, the study shows how the memeification of conventional cohort labels (e.g. ‘boomer’) produces a semantic shift in the segmentation of generational categories, in which cultural aspects have a more prominent position than biographical age.

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:
Lesbians’ movement has been constellated across cities and lesbians have long used communication technologies to relay information across dispersed networks. This article brings together perspectives from geography and media studies to examine how communication technologies feature in lesbians’ social organising across the urban space of Montreal/Tiohtià:ke. It does so through interviews with representatives from organisations and individuals who use communication technologies in the development, promotion, and circulation of lesbian events. Findings and analysis reveal that organisers’ actions contribute to, and liaise with, hybrid constellations as connections among fragmented groups and individuals formed through, and reinforced across, digital media and communication technologies as well as interactions in physical space. Organisers contributed to the formation of hybrid constellations through three focal practices: a) using multiple technologies concurrently to draw lines between events and people as stars that knit the constellation together; b) negotiating platform constraints to define events according to fluid and expansive definitions of lesbian identity and to prefigure expectations for physical gatherings; and, c) conducting platformed visibility labour involving negotiation of microcelebrity and algorithmic curation and moderation. This research demonstrates how platforms, as dominant coordinating structures for an identity-based network that is not fixed in space, facilitate but also constrain representation and connection, especially connections across different subject positions united through shared gender or sexual identity. However, if these connections across difference can be forged, hybrid constellations hold potential for resisting heteropatriarchal arrangements of technology and space.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
A look at how we are all increasingly expected to be social influencers at work. A sculptor works while wearing a GoPro camera to capture Instagram content. A painter decides whether to make pieces that she won't be able to share on Instagram, after her account was blocked for sharing "sexualized" content. An artist finds that her portraits of light-skinned women get an algorithmic boost over those featuring dark-skinned models. These creative workers are now using the content-generation skills and promotional strategies pioneered by influencers to compete for visibility online. Influencer Creep explores what happens when creative workers must go beyond their work to build a comprehensive online presence. Communications expert Sophie Bishop delineates how professional influencers affected the ways creative workers navigate social media platforms. They must optimize their content to win the favor of opaque algorithms they do not control. They must engage in relentless self-branding, creating a compelling, consistent, and platform-ready image. And that image, in spite of being carefully manufactured, must be perceived as authentic. Taking seriously the motivations that drive more and more people into the contest for online visibility, Influencer Creep documents a creative workforce nervously conforming to the monopoly power of social media platforms—and occasionally resisting it.

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:
In this special issue, we refer to “content moderation” as the multi-dimensional process through which content produced by users is monitored, filtered, ordered, enhanced, monetised or deleted on social media platforms. This process encompasses a great diversity of actors who develop specific practices of content regulation. Users, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), activists, journalists, advertisers, experts, designers and researchers are becoming more and more involved in moderation-related activities, apart from, in partnership with, or against public authorities and firms. However, their precise contribution to the democratisation of content regulation, and to the balance between public and private interests in platform governance, remains little studied. Following the call to expand content moderation research beyond the relationship between states and firms (Gillespie et al., 2020), the goal of this special issue is to gather empirical studies that characterise the contribution of non-state actors in the current internet regulatory framework, and provide new insights on their various actions and strategies.

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:
This study examines audience interaction under a Finnish news article on Facebook, scrutinizing the influence of clickbait headlines and their contribution to Intercultural divisions. Utilizing positioning theory and the concept of ‘othering,’ the research enriches our comprehension of media framing, post-publication gatekeeping, and audience conduct in the digital realm. The comment analysis indicates that the audience primarily reacts to the headline, positioning in regard to the incident, often employing sarcasm and emojis to underscore their points. The media entity abstains from participating in post-publication conversation. The study accentuates additional significant insights and scrutinizes the scant presence of rational–critical reasoning, proposing strategies for its augmentation on digital platforms. By examining these dynamics within the digital milieu, the research offers a more layered portrayal of the perceived ‘other’ and addresses detrimental positioning.

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
There is a growing scholarship which focuses on the effectiveness of interventions that aim to develop men's critical awareness of harmful norms of masculinity, including those associated with misogyny and homophobia. This paper makes a unique contribution to this literature by showing how qualitative research with young (18–25 years old) cisgender heterosexual men (n = 42) about their digital homosocial practices, alongside relevant theory, underpinned the development of an educational toolkit called #Men4Change. In the paper, we highlight how banter is a potent form of homosocial currency in British young cisgender heterosexual men’s friendship groups as part of “lad culture”, which operates in specific ways in digital spaces. For example, young cisgender heterosexual men (18–25-year-olds) are often reluctant to challenge misogynistic “banter” in the private spaces of their online homosocial chat groups (e.g., those facilitated by WhatsApp) because they want to fit into their laddish friendship groups and benefit from the affective intensities of the groups. We show how hegemonic masculinity theory, alongside scholarship about men’s homosociality and its affective aspects, can be useful in developing gender transformative approaches which help young men challenge normalised misogyny and homophobia.

Thesis

Language(s): English

Abstract:
This dissertation investigates how children aged 8 to 12 develop digital literacies in ways that are personally meaningful to them. It highlights the role of different social contexts, such as the home, school and afterschool care, in these processes. Through longitudinal participant observations and interviews with children, parents and teachers, it explores how the use of digital media within different social contexts can contribute to the development of digital literacies. A key finding is that there is an essential role for play in these processes. The research shows that play helps children explore and experiment with digital media, both online and offline, and that it provides opportunities to develop tactics and skills that contribute to their development of digital literacies.

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Topic management is under-explored in language learning, teaching and testing settings. It may pose particular challenges in online intercultural exchanges (OIE) or virtual exchange (VE) because of differences in frames of time, space and culture. We investigate how language teacher trainees manage topic transitions in an OIE via videoconferencing where they design and test their own tasks. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we explore parallel cases of 30-minute exchanges by two trainee teachers with the same interlocutor (expert speaker of English). Findings indicate three essential features of a successful topic transition: timing of transition (mutual agreement on timing), signalling the transition (via verbal, nonverbal and material resources) and formulating work-thus-far, work-at-hand, and work-to-come. Trainee teachers employ multiple interactional resources including the task sheet as a transition-relevant object. We note differences in teacher trainees’ approach to time and task accomplishment, and how this enables or restricts intercultural dialogue. Results contribute to our understanding of topic management and VE interactional competence (VE-IC), and provide practical guidance for VE participants on how to manage topic transitions. The study also has implications for expert speakers’/teachers’ skills in leading instructional conversations in language learning settings.

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Libraries have long embedded social media platforms into their work practices, TikTok being a comparatively new addition. After its international launch, TikTok quickly became a popular platform, especially a space for ‘book talk’, called BookTok. The literature on libraries and TikTok is sparse, and little research has been done to investigate actual TikTok usage by libraries systematically. There is also a methodological advancement to be made in how to approach hashtags as chains when analyzing social media content. In this paper, we explore how Norwegian public libraries use TikTok, employing a dataset of 3248 posts as the basis for our analysis. The study combines digital methods approaches for data collection and analysis with traditional knowledge organization approaches, focusing on hashtags and hashtag chains as part of the complex socio-technical and algorithmic system. Our study has focused on the interpretive possibilities of hashtags as a constitutive element of the platform vernacular. We find that libraries contribute to the ongoing construction and maintenance of BookTok and LibraryTok, and the intersection of these sides through book recommendations and events. We further introduce the concept of daisy chains, signifying a deliberate but unsystematic tactic of tagging posts, part of the platform vernacular, serving the dual act of influencing distribution and communication in a complex algorithmic system.

Book

Language(s): English

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Evidence suggests that the rate of reporting abuse, harassment and problematic content to platforms is substantially low. This article assesses the extent to which platform interfaces may contribute to discouraging the use of reporting as a remedy to online harms. Using a walkthrough method, we analyse reporting interfaces for the extent to which they may contribute to a lack of trust in reporting. The study found that reporting interfaces (1) did not provide appropriate access to platform policy or guidelines, (2) failed to provide options for dialogue, testimonials or mechanisms to report in formats supporting user wellbeing needs, (3) were consistently framed as individualising and transactional rather than brokering care or peer support, and (4) added to the opacity of platform intervention and decision-making processes. We argue the available interfaces do not do enough to protect users from digital harms.

Book

Language(s): English

Abstract:
Interested in digital technology and its impact on our everyday lives? This multidisciplinary book introduces you to the theories, concepts, and methods you need to research our digital society. Drawing on diverse case studies and examples it gives you everything you need to understand and choose from a range of research designs, and to utilise and critique digital data from a variety of sources. Learn more about: · How technology shapes our society and how online and offline spaces impact each other · Key methodologies and theories used to understand digital societies · Approaches for studying different voices and communities in online spaces, including digital inequalities. The perfect companion for students and researchers across the social sciences, this book is a fresh, practical introduction to research in the digital age.

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.

Article / Journal

Language(s): English

Abstract:
From the start, the academic community was deeply involved in both the technological and conceptual development of the internet. Works by Rheingold, Castells, and others put forward influential, intellectual imaginaries. Over thirty years later, these sources offer valuable insights, reflecting the novelty and excitement of the time. Often infused with rhetoric of radical transformation, these authors either consciously or unconsciously foregrounded a revolutionary period marked by digital utopianism, while also presenting critical views. This paper aims to identify and historicize common themes and concepts in influential academic publications on the internet's significance and social impact. By adopting a longitudinal and comparative approach, we aim to provide a historically informed understanding of Internet Studies. Our paper contributes to a tradition of media historical scholarship, examining how new technologies were socially constructed, how dominant discourses shaped popular imaginaries, and their role in the evolution of Internet Studies.

Book

Language(s): German

Abstract:
Dieses Open-Access-Buch präsentiert innovative Ideen und Lösungsansätze, um die Potenziale Sozialer Digitalisierung gewinnbringend zu nutzen, insbesondere im Kontext der vier Dimensionen Housing, Working, Living und Caring/Supporting. Dabei werden nicht nur strategische Herausforderungen diskutiert, sondern auch neue Möglichkeiten der Zusammenarbeit innerhalb und außerhalb der Hochschulen erkundet und Best-Practice-Beispiele vorgestellt. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt auf der Schnittstelle zwischen Technologie und Gesellschaft. Auch konzeptionelle und organisatorische Herausforderungen wie Finanzierung, Lehre und Transfer stehen auf der Agenda. Weitere Themen umfassen Strategien zur transdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit mit verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Akteuren sowie die Bewertung von Wirkungen und Erfolgskriterien.