Showing papers on "Digital media published in 2013"

The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics

Abstract: From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests are using digital media in ways that go beyond sending and receiving messages. ...

The digitally engaged patient: Self-monitoring and self-care in the digital health era

Abstract: The phenomenon of digital health has emerged as a key dimension of contemporary healthcare policy and delivery in many countries. This review article focuses on one aspect of digital health discourses: the concept of patient engagement that encourages patients to take up the new digital media technologies to engage in self-monitoring and self-care, or what I term ‘the digitally engaged patient’. A critical approach is adopted to examine the sociocultural dimensions of eliciting patients to become ‘digitally engaged’ in their own medical care and preventive health efforts. It is argued that the techno-utopian discourses articulated in the mainstream healthcare policy literature concerning the possibilities and potentialities afforded by digital health technologies do not acknowledge the complexities and ambivalences that are part of using self-monitoring and self-care technologies for monitoring health and illness states, both for patients and for healthcare providers. These include the surveillance and disciplinary dimensions of using these technologies, the emotions and resistances they provoke, their contribution to the burden of self-care and the invisible work on the part of healthcare workers that they require to operate.

Social Media and Firm Equity Value

Abstract: Companies have increasingly advocated social media technologies to transform businesses and improve organizational performance. This study scrutinizes the predictive relationships between social media and firm equity value, the relative effects of social media metrics compared with conventional online behavioral metrics, and the dynamics of these relationships. The results derived from vector autoregressive models suggest that social media-based metrics (web blogs and consumer ratings) are significant leading indicators of firm equity value. Interestingly, conventional online behavioral metrics (Google searches and web traffic) are found to have a significant yet substantially weaker predictive relationship with firm equity value than social media metrics. We also find that social media has a faster predictive value, i.e., shorter “wear-in” time, than conventional online media. These findings are robust to a consistent set of volume-based measures (total blog posts, rating volume, total page views, and search intensity). Collectively, this study proffers new insights for senior executives with respect to firm equity valuations and the transformative power of social media.

Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication

Abstract: This article develops a new theory of polymedia in order to understand the consequences of digital media in the context of interpersonal communication. Drawing on illustrative examples from a comparative ethnography of Filipino and Caribbean transnational families, the article develops the contours of a theory of polymedia. We demonstrate how users avail themselves of new media as a communicative environment of affordances rather than as a catalogue of ever proliferating but discrete technologies. As a consequence, with polymedia the primary concern shifts from the constraints imposed by each individual medium to an emphasis upon the social, emotional and moral consequences of choosing between those different media. As the choice of medium acquires communicative intent, navigating the environment of polymedia becomes inextricably linked to the ways in which interpersonal relationships are experienced and managed. Polymedia is ultimately about a new relationship between the social and the technological, rather than merely a shift in the technology itself.

The digital natives as learners: Technology use patterns and approaches to learning

Abstract: This study investigated the claims made in the popular press about the ''digital native'' generation as learners. Because students' lives today are saturated with digital media at a time when their brains are still developing, many popular press authors claim that this generation of students thinks and learns differently than any generation that has come before, but the evidence to support these claims is scarce. This study used a survey to gather data on the technology use of university freshmen, the degree to which they identified with the claims being made about their approaches to learning, and the productiveness (in terms of focused attention, deep processing, and persistence) of their approaches to learning. Valid surveys were received from 388 freshmen at a large Midwestern land grant university. A factor analysis was used to identify meaningful patterns of technology use, and descriptive statistics, analysis of correlations, and extreme group t-tests were used to explore the relationships between technology use patterns and learning characteristics. The findings indicate some positive correlations between use of digital technology and the characteristics ascribed in the popular press to the digital native learners, and negative correlations between some categories of technology use and the productiveness of student learning behaviors. Overall, however, the small to moderate relationships suggest a less deterministic relationship between technology and learning than what the popular press writers claim.

Social Media and Firm Equity Value

Abstract: Companies have increasingly advocated social media technologies to transform businesses and improve organizational performance. This study scrutinizes the predictive relationships between social media and firm equity value, the relative effects of social media metrics compared with conventional online behavioral metrics, and the dynamics of these relationships. The results derived from vector autoregressive models suggest that social media-based metrics Web blogs and consumer ratings are significant leading indicators of firm equity value. Interestingly, conventional online behavioral metrics Google searches and Web traffic are found to have a significant yet substantially weaker predictive relationship with firm equity value than social media metrics. We also find that social media has a faster predictive value, i.e., shorter “wear-in” time, than conventional online media. These findings are robust to a consistent set of volume-based measures total blog posts, rating volume, total page views, and search intensity. Collectively, this study proffers new insights for senior executives with respect to firm equity valuations and the transformative power of social media.

Democracy's Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring

Abstract: List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Dedication Introduction Chapter 1: Digital Media and the Arab Spring Chapter 2: The Recent History of Digital Media and Dissent Chapter 3: Information Infrastructure and the Organization of Protest Chapter 4: Authoritarian Responses and Consequences Chapter 5: Al Jazeera, Social Media, and Digital Journalism Conclusion: Digital Media and the Rhythms of Social Change References Endnotes Index

Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice

Abstract: Introducing a new hobby for other people may inspire them to join with you. Reading, as one of mutual hobby, is considered as the very easy hobby to do. But, many people are not interested in this hobby. Why? Boring is the reason of why. However, this feel actually can deal with the book and time of you reading. Yeah, one that we will refer to break the boredom in reading is choosing media society world social theory and digital media practice as the reading material.

Web 2.0, Synthetic Immersive Environments, and Mobile Resources for Language Education

Abstract: In light of the increasingly blurred line between mediated and nonmediated contexts for social, professional, and educational purposes, attention to the presence and use of innovative digital media is critical to the consideration of the future of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). This article reviews current trends in the use of mediated communication and offers a vision for near-future second and foreign language (L2) learning that utilizes emerging media as (a) meaningful contexts for L2 language development and (b) a means for adding real world relevance to in-class uses of internet-mediated communication tools. In this article, we first explore a sampling of Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking) related to collaborative content building and dissemination of information. We then consider three types of 3-dimensional virtual environments, including open social virtualities (such as Second Life and There), massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) (e.g., World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Eve Online), and synthetic immersive environments (SIEs, i.e., visually rendered spaces which combine aspects of open social virtualities with goal-directed gaming models to address specific learning objectives). In particular, we report on SIEs as they might be used to foster interlanguage pragmatic development and briefly report on an existing project in this area. The ultimate goal is to spark future research and pedagogical innovation in these areas of emerging digital media in order to arrive at a greater understanding of the complexities involved in their integration with language learning in ways that will be most relevant to the communicative contexts of the 21st century.

"Bridging Activities," New Media Literacies, and Advanced Foreign Language Proficiency

Abstract: In this article we propose the pedagogical model bridging activities to address advanced foreign language proficiency in the context of existing and emerging internet communication and information tools and communities. The article begins by establishing the need for language and genre-focused activities at the advanced level that attend to the shifting social practices and emerging literacies associated with digital media. Grounded in principles of language awareness and the concept of multiliteracies, the bridging activities model centers on guided exploration and analysis of student selected or created digital vernacular texts originating in Web 2.0 and other technologies/practices such as instant messaging and synchronous chat, blogs and wikis, remixing, and multiplayer online gaming. Application of the model includes an iterative implementation cycle of observation and collection, guided exploration and analysis, and creation and participation. In sum, the bridging activities approach is designed to enhance engagement and relevance through the incorporation of students' digital-vernacular expertise, experience, and curiosity, coupled with instructor guidance at the level of semiotic form to explore interactional features, discourse-level grammar, and genre. The ultimate goal is to foster critical awareness of the anatomy and functional organization of a wide range of communicative practices relating to both digital and analogue textual conventions.

A Survey of Digital Watermarking Techniques, Applications and Attacks

Abstract: The expansion of the Internet has frequently increased the availability of digital data such as audio, images and videos to the public. Digital watermarking is a technology being developed to ensure and facilitate data authentication, security and copyright protection of digital media. This paper incorporate the detail study watermarking definition, concept and the main contributions in this field such as categories of watermarking process that tell which watermarking method should be used. It starts with overview, classification, features, framework, techniques, application, challenges, limitations and performance metric of watermarking and a comparative analysis of some major watermarking techniques. In the survey our prime concern is image only.

Digital Literacy and Informal Learning Environments: An Introduction.

Abstract: New technologies and developments in media are transforming the way that individuals, groups and societies communicate, learn, work and govern. This new socio-technical reality requires participants to possess not only skills and abilities related to the use of technological tools, but also knowledge regarding the norms and practices of appropriate usage. To be ‘digitally literate’ in this way encompasses issues of cognitive authority, safety and privacy, creative, ethical, and responsible use and reuse of digital media, among other topics. A lack of digital literacy increasingly implicates one's full potential of being a competent student, an empowered employee or an engaged citizen. Digital literacy is often considered a school-based competency, but it is introduced and developed in informal learning contexts such as libraries, museums, social groups, affinity spaces online, not to mention the home environment. This article recognizes and connects the ways and places we might conceptualize and realize a...

What Is Digital Labour? What Is Digital Work? What’s their Difference? And Why Do These Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?

Abstract: This paper deals with the questions: What is digital labour? What is digital work? Based on Marx’s theory, we distinguish between work and labour as anthropological and historical forms of human activity. The notion of alienated labour is grounded in a general model of the work process that is conceptualized based on a dialectic of subject and object in the economy that we present in the form of a model, the Hegelian-Marxist dialectical triangle of the work process. Various aspects of a Marxist theory of work and labour, such as the notions of abstract and concrete labour, double-free labour, productive labour, the collective worker and general work are presented. Labour is based on a fourfold alienation of the human being. After these concepts are introduced, they are used for discussing the notions of digital labour and digital work. The presentation is on the one hand general and on the other hand uses Facebook as a concrete case for explaining how digital labour functions. Digital work is the organisation of human experiences with the help of the human brain, digital media and speech in such a way that new products are created. Digital labour is the valorisation dimension of digital work. We conclude that we require the transformation of digital labour into digital work, a true social media revolution that makes “social media” truly and fully social. We also argue why in our view work is not the same as labour by discussing the concept of playful work and pointing out limits of concepts such as antiwork, postwork and zerowork.

The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World

Abstract: No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeplysome would say totallyinvolved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name todays young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be app-dependent versus app-enabled and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.Gardner and Davis are concerned with three vital areas of adolescent life: identity, intimacy, and imagination. Through innovative research, including interviews of young people, focus groups of those who work with them, and a unique comparison ofyouthful artistic productions before and after the digital revolution, the authors uncover the drawbacks of apps: they may foreclose a sense of identity, encourage superficial relations with others, and stunt creative imagination. On the other hand, the benefits of apps are equally striking: they can promote a strong sense of identity, allow deep relationships, and stimulate creativity. The challenge is to venture beyond the ways that apps are designed to be used, Gardner and Davis conclude, and they suggest how the power of apps can be a springboard to greater creativity and higher aspirations.

Black Twitter? Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion

Abstract: Race itself has become a digital medium, a distinctive set of informatic codes, networked mediated narratives, maps, images, visualizations that index identity. (1) There is a growing body of research exploring issues of race and ethnicity in digital environments. Social networking relations, modes of online communication and digital identities have been revealed to be far from race-neutral. (2) Research has raised questions concerning how extant racial segregations and inequalities have spilled over into the virtual realm, highlighting the creation of new kinds of digital divides. The oft-cited, iconic 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner announcing 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog' captured the apparent freedom of a blossoming World Wide Web. However, the original cyberspace promise of 'leaving the meat (body) behind' has done little to withstand the racialization of online spaces. The internet has always been a racially demarcated space and today the plethora of online communication platforms (instant messaging, email-lists, blogs, discussion forums and social media) continue to exhibit varying degrees of identity marking and racialized segregation. (3) The internet, in other words, is a manifold set of sociotechnical practices, generative of digital privileges and racial ordering. It has become apparent that online race is complex and mutable. This picture supports Geert Lovink's declaration that: 'The idea that the virtual liberates you from your old self has collapsed. There is no alternative identity'. (4) That digital media should be understood as merely an adjunct to the 'real' world is, then, an increasingly tenuous standpoint. But this should not be taken to mean that there is a static replication of 'off-line' identities online, far from it. Online racial inclusions and exclusions are dynamically transforming, augmented by the explosion of 'Web 2.0' social networking sites, and modes of access (broadband and mobile phones). For instance, the rise of social networks witnessed the 'white flight' of users from MySpace towards Facebook. (5) And variations in the adoption of social media by different ethno-racial groups have become more visible. (6) The hype of Web 2.0 celebrating user participation and content generation has obscured the racialized protocols that circumscribe our online interactions. (7) Web studies exploring race and ethnicity have principally conceived identity as a 'lived' social construction or hegemonic mode of representation. The relationship between communication platforms and identity practices is difficult to unravel, particularly as research in this field risks essentialising online activity in relation to supposed ethno-racial designation. The rapidly expanding digital landscape poses a further challenge to researchers, as the 'real-time' speed, propagation and irruptions of race online create a presentism that seemingly resists critical analysis. (8) Modalities of race wildly proliferate in social media sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter: casual racial banter, race-hate comments, 'griefing', images, videos and anti-racist sentiment bewilderingly intermingle, mash-up and virally circulate; and researchers struggle to comprehend the meanings and affects of a racialized info-overload. (9) The complexity of online racial formations raises the question of whether adequate attention is being paid to the significance of the online environments that race exists in: how are both race and digital networks transformed in their mutual encounter? This essay offers an analysis which centres upon exploring the technosocial production of race. Digital networks are generative of race and can be grasped by an approach attentive to the operations of online platforms. My contention is that a move to a materialist understanding of digital media and networks (10) opens up new possibilities for rethinking how race works online. Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White intimate that 'race itself has become a digital medium'; thus the materiality of both race and the digital can prompt an alternative approach and method, beyond the mantra of race as a social construction. …

Storytelling in a digital age: digital storytelling as an emerging narrative method for preserving and promoting indigenous oral wisdom:

Abstract: This article outlines the methodological process of a transdisciplinary team of indigenous and nonindigenous individuals, who came together in early 2009 to develop a digital narrative method to engage a remote community in northern Labrador in a research project examining the linkages between climate change and physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being. Desiring to find a method that was locally appropriate and resonant with the narrative wisdom of the community, yet cognizant of the limitations of interview-based narrative research, our team sought to discover an indigenous method that united the digital media with storytelling. Using a case study that illustrates the usage of digital storytelling within an indigenous community, this article will share how digital storytelling can stand as a community-driven methodological strategy that addresses, and moves beyond, the limitations of narrative research and the issues of colonization of research and the Western analytic project. In...

The Value of Big Data in Digital Media Research

Abstract: This article discusses methodological aspects of Big Data analyses with regard to their applicability and usefulness in digital media research. Based on a review of a diverse selection of literatur...

Networked Discontent: The Anatomy of Protest Campaigns in Social Media

Abstract: We analyze the communication network that emerged in social media around an international protest campaign launched in May 2012. Applying insights from network science and the theory of brokerage, we examine the cohesion of the network with community detection methods, and identify the users that spanned structural holes, creating bridges for potential diffusion. We also analyze actual information flows to assess how the network was used to facilitate the transmission of information. Our findings provide evidence of fragmentation in online communication dynamics, and of a distribution of brokerage opportunities that was both uneven and underexploited. We use these findings to assess recent theoretical claims about political protests in the digital age.

Comparing the Relative Effectiveness of Advertising Channels: A Case Study of a Multimedia Blitz Campaign:

Abstract: In this study, the authors develop an inexpensive method to help firms assess the relative effectiveness of multiple advertising media. Specifically, they use a firm's loyalty program database to capture media exposure, through an online media survey, for all the media in which the firm advertises. In turn, the exposure data are matched with the purchase history for these same respondents, thereby creating single-source data. The authors illustrate their method for a large retailer that undertook a short-term promotional sale by advertising in television, radio, newspaper, magazine, online display ad, sponsored search, social media, catalog, direct mail, and e-mail channels. In this case, seven of the ten media significantly influence purchase outcomes. Finally, the authors demonstrate how to use their advertising response model to determine the optimal budget allocation across each advertising media channel.

Social media in food risk and benefit communication

Abstract: The overall objective of this doctoral thesis was to contribute to a better understanding of the role social media can fulfil for the communication of food-related risks and benefits. Social media is the collective name for a number of online applications, including social networks, video- and picture-sharing websites, blogs, and microblogs, that allow users to generate and share information online. As a consequence users now control how information is found and used instead of the producers. New levels of public engagement have emerged ranging from passive information acquisition through one’s social network to active deliberation with communicators. The research is based on data which were collected through four consecutive studies with qualitative, quantitative and experimental research designs. The outcome indicated that particularly a younger audience appreciates social media to acquire and seek information about food risks and benefits. Social media can act as a complementary information channel, but is not seen as a substitute for traditional or online media. Additionally, actively engaging consumers in discussion about food risks and benefits can lead to better informed consumers. Although the use of social media will not be the answer for all communication difficulties, its advantages such as the accessibility, speed and interaction cannot be ignored to improve food risk and benefit communication.

Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy

Abstract: The ubiquitous media landscape today is reshaping what it means to be an engaged citizen. Normative metrics for engagement—voting, attending town meetings, participation in civic groups—are eroding in the context of online advocacy, social protest, “liking,” sharing, and remixing. These new avenues for engagement offer vast opportunities for new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning about political engagement in the context of new media platforms and technologies. This article explores digital media literacy as a core competency for engaged citizenship in participatory democracy. It combines new models of engaged and citizenship and participatory politics with frameworks for digital and media literacy education, to develop a framework for media literacy as a core political competency for active, engaged, and participatory citizenship.

Digital play in the early years: a contextual response to the problem of integrating technologies and play-based pedagogies in the early childhood curriculum

Abstract: In many countries technologies are still not fully integrated with perspectives on play-based learning in early childhood education. This is evidenced in international curriculum documents that continue to separate descriptions of play as a basis for learning from the use of technologies as learning outcomes for young children. Meanwhile, technologies continue to be rapidly interfaced with digital media, and in particular, provide a platform for young children's consumption of popular culture. Understanding children's play is this newly emerging context provides one way of thinking about how best to bridge the gap between pedagogical understandings of play and young children's experiences with digital technologies, digital media and their consumption of popular culture. This article examines the emerging context using ideas drawn from cultural historical theory, the sociology of consumption and the sociology of childhood to explore children's contemporary play experiences. It is suggested that a contextua...

Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design

Abstract: Over the last few years, the term ‘smart cities’ has gained traction in academic, industry, and policy debates about the deployment of new media technologies in urban settings. It is mostly used to describe and market technologies that make city infrastructures more efficient, and personalize the experience of the city. Here, we want to propose the notion of ‘ownership’ as a lens to take an alternative look at the role of urban new media in the city. With the notion of ownership we seek to investigate how digital media and culture allow citizens to engage with, organize around and act upon collective issues and engage in co–creating the social fabric and built form of the city. Taking ownership as the point of departure, we wish to broaden the debate about the role of new media technologies in urban design from an infrastructural to a social point of view, or from ‘city management’ to ‘city making.’