Digital media

About: Digital media is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 17508 publications have been published within this topic receiving 266693 citations. The topic is also known as: machine-readable data.

Ad Lib: When customers create the ad

Abstract: Consumers are now generating, rather than merely consuming advertising. The consequences for brands, marketers, and senior executives are significant. Advertising was traditionally generated by, or on behalf of, the firm and broadcast to relatively passive consumers. With the rise of digital media, the Internet, and inexpensive media software, considerable creative and distributive power has been handed to the consumer. Liberated from the exclusive control of the firm, ads now express a myriad of different voices. Some ads are subversive, others laudatory, but the fact remains that the firm is no longer in exclusive control of the message. Using a number of high profile cases, this article explores the motivations that drive consumers to create their own ads and develops a typology of the ads created. It develops a model for the various strategic stances that a firm can adopt in response to this phenomenon so that managers can anticipate and thus deal more effectively with some of the extreme consequences of liberated advertising.

Re-constructing digital democracy: An outline of four ‘positions’:

Abstract: There is currently a diversity of understandings of digital democracy being deployed within popular commentary, research, policy making, and practical initiative. However, there is a lack of resources clearly outlining this diversity; this article undertakes such an outline. It provides a reconstruction of four digital democracy positions. These four positions are referred to here as liberal-individualist, deliberative, counter-publics, and autonomist Marxist. The delineation of each position draws from critical-interpretative research and has been developed with respect to three elements: the democratic subject assumed, the related conception of democracy promoted, and the associated democratic affordances of digital media technology. The aim is to draw attention to different understandings of what extending democracy through digital media means, and to provide a framework for further examination and evaluation of digital democracy rhetoric and practice.

The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps

Abstract: Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technology studies with cultural studies, through which researchers can perform a critical analysis of a given app. The method involves establishing an app’s environment of expected use by identifying and describing its vision, operating model and modes of governance. It then deploys a walkthrough technique to systematically and forensically step through the various stages of app registration and entry, everyday use and discontinuation of use. The walkthrough method establishes a foundational corpus of data upon which can be built a more detailed analysis of an app’s intended purpose, embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users and uses. The walkthrough also serves as a foundation for further user-centred research that can identify how users resist these arrangements and appropriate app technology for their own purposes.

The Mediated Construction of Reality

Abstract: Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media. Drawing on Schutz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital media s profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

The New Digital Media and Activist Networking within Anti–Corporate Globalization Movements

Abstract: This article examines how anti–corporate globalization activists have used new digital technologies to coordinate actions, build networks, practice media activism, and physically manifest their emerging political ideals. Since the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and through subsequent mobilizations against multilateral institutions and forums in Prague, Quebec, Genoa, Barcelona, and Porto Alegre, activists have used e-mail lists, Web pages, and open editing software to organize and coordinate actions, share information, and produce documents, reflecting a general growth in digital collaboration. Indymedia has provided an online forum for posting audio, video, and text files, while activists have also created temporary media hubs to generate alternative information, experiment with new technologies, and exchange ideas and resources. Influenced by anarchism and peer-to-peer networking logics, anti–corpo-rate globalization activists have not only incorporated digital technologies as concrete to...