scholarly journals Presence in Digital Spaces. A Phenomenological Concept of Presence in Mediatized Communication

Human Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gesa Lindemann ◽  
David Schünemann
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
Spatial Presence ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Local Space ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Communication Challenge

AbstractTheories of face-to-face interaction employ a concept of spatial presence and view communication via digital technologies as an inferior version of interaction, often with pathological implications. Current studies of mediatized communication challenge this notion with empirical evidence of “telepresence”, suggesting that users of such technologies experience their interactions as immediate. We argue that the phenomenological concepts of the lived body and mediated immediacy (Helmuth Plessner) combined with the concept of embodied space (Hermann Schmitz) can help overcome the pathologizing of digital communication in social theory and enable descriptions which are truer to the experience of using said technology. From this perspective it appears as an ethnocentric premise to restrict interaction to human actors being present in local space. This restricted understanding of interaction does not allow for an appropriate empirical analysis of the emerging structures of digital communication.

scholarly journals Let’s go steady: a digital communication tool for loving couples

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Layden Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Face To Face

As progressive societies increasingly rely on digital technologies, our methods of communicating with each other continue to evolve. While this opens up many possibilities for the formation of new relationships, it also has repercussions with regard to our ability to maintain the relationships that matter most. This paper and project aims to identify challenges experienced by couples in loving relationships typically caused by or worsened by over-reliance on smartphones and social media. I have proposed a design solution in the form of a mobile application made specifically for committed partners, tentatively called Steady. The goal of the app is to encourage compassion, understanding and healthy communication; helping couples be more engaged in face-to-face interaction and avoid being distracted by their devices while spending time together.

scholarly journals Let’s go steady: a digital communication tool for loving couples

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Layden Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Face To Face

As progressive societies increasingly rely on digital technologies, our methods of communicating with each other continue to evolve. While this opens up many possibilities for the formation of new relationships, it also has repercussions with regard to our ability to maintain the relationships that matter most. This paper and project aims to identify challenges experienced by couples in loving relationships typically caused by or worsened by over-reliance on smartphones and social media. I have proposed a design solution in the form of a mobile application made specifically for committed partners, tentatively called Steady. The goal of the app is to encourage compassion, understanding and healthy communication; helping couples be more engaged in face-to-face interaction and avoid being distracted by their devices while spending time together.

Social anxiety is associated with similar emotional impairments during digital and face-to-face communication in daily life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Doorley ◽  
Kristina Volgenau ◽  
Kerry Kelso ◽  
Todd Barrett Kashdan ◽  
Alexander J. Shackman
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Medium Study ◽  
Reconstruction Method ◽  
Communication Behaviors ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Emotional Impairments ◽  
Emotional Safety

Background:Retrospective studies have found that people with elevated social anxiety (SA) show a preference for digital/online communication, which may be due to perceptions of enhanced emotional safety. Whether these preferences for/benefits of digital compared to face-to-face communication manifest in the real world has yet to be explored. Methods: We recruited samples of college students (N = 125) and community adults (N = 303) with varying levels of SA, sampled their emotions during digital and face-to-face communication using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) (Study 1) and a day reconstruction method (DRM) (Study 2), and preregistered our hypotheses (https://osf.io/e4y7x/). Results: Results from both studies showed that SA did not predict the likelihood of engaging in digital compared to face-to-face communication, and SA was associated with less positive and more negative emotions regardless of communication medium. Study 2 also showed that whether digital communication was synchronous (e.g., in real time via phone/video chat) or asynchronous (e.g., texting/instant messaging) did not impact the association between SA and emotions. Limitations: EMA and DRM methods, despite their many advantages, may be suboptimal for assessing the occurrence of digital communication behaviors relative to more objective methods (e.g., passively collecting smartphone communication data). Using event-contingent responding may have also yielded more reports of digital communication, thus strengthening our power to detect small, cross-level interaction effects. Conclusions:These results challenge beliefs that digital/online communication provides a source of emotional safety for people with elevated SA and suggests a greater need to address SA-related emotional impairments across digital communication platforms.

Development of computational thinking with on-line practices in time of pandemic: a possible road?

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilson Pereira dos Santos Júnior ◽  
Simone Lucena
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Online Education ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Computational Thinking ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Know How ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
On Line

We live in a society in which mobile and digital technologies are increasingly present in our daily lives and we cannot limit ourselves to knowing how to use them. It is important to know how to adapt them, personalize them and program them, if necessary, to solve our problems. Computational thinking is understood as the human ability to teach, humans or machines, to solve problems with the fundamentals of computing. Its development has gained space in education, formal and non-formal, through face-to-face practices. With the pandemic, the challenge arises to develop this skill with young people from high school in a public educational institution through online practices. In this article, we discuss the didactic design, based on the principles of online education, created for the development of computational thinking with online practices. The preliminary results indicate the feasibility of developing computational thinking from the perspective of online education.

scholarly journals Sexual Interaction in Digital Contexts and Its Implications for Sexual Health: A Conceptual Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Döring ◽  
Nicole Krämer ◽  
Veronika Mikhailova ◽  
Matthias Brand ◽  
Tillmann H. C. Krüger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Health ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sexual Interaction ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Sexual Encounters

Based on its prevalence, there is an urgent need to better understand the mechanisms, opportunities and risks of sexual interaction in digital contexts (SIDC) that are related with sexual arousal. While there is a growing body of literature on SIDC, there is also a lack of conceptual clarity and classification. Therefore, based on a conceptual analysis, we propose to distinguish between sexual interaction (1) through, (2) via, and (3) with digital technologies. (1) Sexual interactions through digital technologies are face-to-face sexual interactions that (a) have been started digitally (e.g., people initiating face-to-face sexual encounters through adult dating apps) or (b) are accompanied by digital technology (e.g., couples augmenting their face-to-face sexual encounters through filming themselves during the act and publishing the amateur pornography online). (2) Sexual interactions via digital technology are technology-mediated interpersonal sexual interactions (e.g., via text chat: cybersex; via smartphone: sexting; via webcam: webcam sex/camming). (3) Sexual interactions with digital technology occur when the technology itself has the role of an interaction partner (e.g., sexual interaction with a sex robot or with a media persona in pornography). The three types of SIDC and their respective subtypes are explained and backed up with empirical studies that are grouped according to two major mediators: consent and commerce. Regarding the causes and consequences of the three types of SIDC we suggest a classification that entails biological, psychological, social, economic, and technological factors. Regarding implications of SIDC we suggest to focus on both opportunities and risks for sexual health. The proposed conceptual framework of SIDC is meant to inform future research.

Holistic Framework for Quality Assessment of Mediated Social Communication

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Toet ◽  
Tina Mioch ◽  
Simon N.B. Gunkel ◽  
Omar Niamut ◽  
Jan B.F. van Erp
Keyword(s):  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Spatial Presence ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Cognitive Reasoning ◽  
Mutual Awareness ◽  
And Behavior

Modern immersive multisensory communication systems can provide compelling mediated social communication experiences that approach face-to-face (F2F) communication. Existing frameworks to assess the quality of mediated social communication experiences are typically targeted at specific communication technologies and do not address all relevant aspects of social presence (i.e., the feeling of being in the presence of, and having an affective and intellectual connection with, other persons). Also, they are typically unsuitable for application to social communication in virtual (VR), augmented (AR) or mixed (MR) reality. Here we present a comprehensive and general holistic mediated social communication (H-MSC) framework and associated questionnaire (the H-MSC-Q) for measuring the quality of mediated social communication. The H-MSC framework comprises both the experience of Spatial Presence (i.e., the perceived fidelity, internal and external plausibility, and cognitive, reasoning and behavioral affordances of an environment) and the experience of Social Presence (i.e., perceived mutual proximity, intimacy, credibility, reasoning and behavior of the communication partners). Since social presence is inherently bidirectional (involving a sense of mutual awareness) the H-MSC-Q distinguishes between the internal (‘own’) and external (‘the other’) assessment perspectives. The H-MSC-Q is efficient and parsimonious, using only a single item to tap into each of the relevant processing levels in the human brain: sensory, emotional, cognitive, reasoning, and behavioral. It is also sufficiently general to measure social presence experienced with any (including VR, AR, and MR) type of multi-sensory (visual, auditory, haptic, and olfactory) mediated communication system.

Digital Communication

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-112
Author(s):  
Terry L. Schraeder
Keyword(s):  
Digital Communication ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Physiological Data ◽  
Patient Portals ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Healthcare Data ◽  
Medical Apps ◽  
Exam Room ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Doctor's Office

There are few aspects of society, including clinical medicine, still untouched by digital communication and the Internet. It would seem that the important and intimate conversations in a doctor’s office or at the bedside should be one of the last refuges to provide private and exclusive face-to-face discourse between two humans, free of the distraction and distance of the computer. But that is changing. From computers in the exam room to electronic medical records, to email exchanges with patients and medical apps, computers are ever present in the delivery of healthcare. Of course, information technology has revolutionized medicine, and the advantages for patients and physicians are numerous. Through patient portals, patients can now look at their lab results, learn more about their diagnosis, and ask relevant questions; physicians can respond quickly to emailed questions; and patients can inform themselves about surgery by watching online videos. Apps monitor physiological data points; robots deliver medications and perform surgery; and artificial intelligence plays a bigger role in the analysis of complex healthcare data. Many physicians have jumped on board with social media, where they can have a variety of professional and personal interactions. It seems that those in medicine have readily adapted to the electronic universe. But how has it affected physicians’ behavior, expectations for access and processing of information, and most important, relationships with their patients? This chapter explores those topics and takes a closer look at the different ways in which medical professionals are communicating and interacting in the digital universe.

scholarly journals The Undesired Effects of Digital Communication on Moral Response

Comunicar ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (44) ◽  
pp. 149-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isidoro Arroyo-Almaraz ◽  
Raúl Gómez-Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Defining Issues Test ◽  
Moral Response ◽  
Real People ◽  
Validation Procedure ◽  
Pencil And Paper

The current paper is based on the hypothesis that communication through the new digital technologies modifies the moral response of users, and therefore reduces social capital. This approach has been contrasted by designing and conducting an experiment (N=196) using our own adaptation of the Spanish version of the Defining Issues Test on subjects who have been socialized by Internet and who constitute the representative samples of this study. This test on paper was adapted to our research following an expert validation procedure and then transferred onto two types of digital audiovisual formats. Finally, The use of digital communication technologies and students’ fluid intelligence response were evaluated in order to establish whether their response was significant and if it modified moral response. The results confirm the hypothesis and show that the quality of moral response decreases when digital technologies are used instead of pencil and paper. This difference is greater when virtual images of people designed by animation are used rather than visual images of real people. In addition, the results show that fluid intelligence mitigates these modifications. Se investiga cómo la comunicación mediada por tecnologías digitales modifica la respuesta moral de los usuarios, y por tanto, varía el capital social. Se diseña y realiza un experimento con 196 sujetos que se sirve de una adaptación de diseño propio del «Defining Issues Test» en papel, a partir de la versión española, sobre una muestra representativa del universo de sujetos que se han socializado con Internet. Se valida la adaptación del test sometiéndolo a juicio por un panel de expertos, se amplía el mismo a otros dos formatos digitales audiovisuales diferentes: con imágenes reales de personas o con imágenes virtuales de personas a través de animación, y se comprueba si la inteligencia fluida de los sujetos es significativa en la modificación de la respuesta moral. Los resultados confirman las hipótesis y demuestran que la calidad de la respuesta moral disminuye cuando se usan tecnologías digitales respecto a cuando se usa papel y lápiz. Esta diferencia es mayor cuando se usan imágenes virtuales de personas a través de animación que cuando se usan imágenes audiovisuales de personas reales. En todos los casos la inteligencia fluida es un atenuante de estas modificaciones.

Between openness and closure: Helmuth Plessner and the boundaries of social life

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Dobeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Degree Of Freedom ◽  
Specific Relation ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
High Degree

This article introduces the basic notions of the widely neglected Philosophical Anthropology of Helmuth Plessner. Instead of defining man as a privileged holder of consciousness, Plessner claims that all living organisms can be defined by their specific relation to their physical boundaries. In contrast to other living organisms such as plants and animals, however, the ‘eccentric’ nature of man allows for a comparatively high degree of freedom from the physical environment, which enables him to transcend, objectify, and deconstruct the boundaries of the same. The article concludes by outlining Plessner’s original contribution to contemporary debates in social theory, in particular constructivism and post-humanist studies.

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