scholarly journals Mobile people, phones and photography: Somali visual practices in Nairobi's Eastleigh estate

Africa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-245
Author(s):  
Neil Carrier

AbstractThe coming of the mobile phone camera has transformed photography. This article explores this transformation through a case study of photography in Eastleigh, a Nairobi estate that is home to many thousand Somalis, both Kenyan Somalis and refugees from Somalia. It is a trade hub for East Africa, a social and economic hub for the global Somali diaspora, and a place regarded as suspect in a country where Somalis have long been marginalized. This article examines Eastleigh as photographic subject and setting, comparing the ubiquity of mobile phone photography there with seldom-practised more traditional forms of photography that are often treated with suspicion in an estate subject to securitized government policy and negative press. It shows how mobile phone photography helps people in the estate communicate visually with the wider Somali diaspora through social media, and how it helps people sell their goods, using as a case study a particular archive of images sent through WhatsApp to the author by Mohaa, a friend of his and a trader in the estate. The article also adds a political dimension to recent anthropological theorizing on mobile photography, showing how, in Eastleigh, Somalis have used photography and social media to take control of the way in which the estate is represented visually, and to demand from the state better services and better treatment.

Corpora ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-61
Author(s):  
Michael Gauthier

Contrary to the idea which has been widespread for at least a hundred years that women differ substantially from men when they express themselves in English-speaking contexts (e.g., Jespersen, 1922 ; and Steadman, 1935 ), empirical studies have shown that these differences are often minimal and are not due to gender alone (e.g., Eckert, 2008 ; and Baker, 2014 ). This also frequently applies to the way they swear, despite certain preferences which have been documented in empirical studies. With the growing impact that social media now has in our everyday lives, these represent a unique opportunity to study vast quantities of written data. This paper is based on a corpus of about one-million tweets and is an attempt to delve deeper into the analysis of gendered swearword habits. First, the goal is to show that even if there are certain gendered preferences in terms of the choice of swearwords, women and men frequently display similar patterns in using them, thus reinforcing the idea that they are not so linguistically different. Secondly, this paper provides insights into how collocational networks can be used to achieve this, and thus how focussing on differences can be one way to spot similarities across two sub-corpora.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-180
Author(s):  
Roslina Abdul Latif ◽  
◽  
Sojoud Elgarrai ◽  

The following study of selected works of art by Zulkiflee Anwar Haque or better known as Zunar, a Malaysian political cartoonist from his book ‘Twit Twit Cincin’. This study is guided by the visual rhetoric theory that has three areas of study - nature, function and evaluation. The study looks at selected cartoons that addressed political figures, politics and social issues. The research looked at the way the caricatures portrayed Malaysian politicians, his perspectives on the political and social issues and how these issues were addressed. The researcher also looked at metaphors used by the cartoonist to communicate his ideas to the audiences. The study found that Zunar’s portrait of Malaysian politicians is not always positive. He is critical but not in an inflammatory way. The metaphors found in Zunar’s work are found to be common themes and simple to understand. They are also very well-known, visually appealing and a tool to tie his messages together and to get his ideas across. Zunar has managed to resist the oppression of the state through his cartoons while looking at institutional reform, puts forth an alternative articulation of history and nation that juxtapose the current government. Keywords: Zunar, political cartoonist, political and social issues, Twit Twit Cincin, metaphors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pouyan Tabasinejad

Scholars of transnational entrepreneurship have largely focused on the issue of institutional barriers within the country of origin (COO) context, asserting that transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) can overcome these barriers in a way that constitutes a competitive advantage. What has not been analyzed in the literature is the way in which institutional barriers that are imposed from outside of TE networks can affect TE behaviour and success. In this study, I will introduce the concept of externally imposed institutional barriers, using the example of Iranian TEs as a case study in which to understand this concept. By looking at three cases of Iranian TEs functioning within the context of Iran’s exclusion from the global financial system, this study will draw conclusions on the state of Iranian-Canadian TE activity and its implications for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.


2018 ◽  
pp. 439-452
Author(s):  
Shaun A Seixas ◽  
Geoffrey E Nield ◽  
Peter Pynta ◽  
Richard B Silberstein

In a short few years, social media has become the dominant way in which we communicate with the outside world. It has become prevalent in almost every aspect of our daily lives, but one of the most significant changes social media has had, has been on the way we watch television. This phenomenon, known as dual screening, has caused some concern amongst marketers and advertisers, who believed that this behaviour was having an overall negative impact on consumer engagement with television. This chapter attempts to address some of these concerns by providing evidence obtained from the neurosciences and from a case study. The evidence we present in this chapter demonstrates the opposite effect, whereby social media can actually be used to enhance viewer engagement.


Author(s):  
J. J. Sylvia IV ◽  
Kyle Moody

The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has been widely debated by scholars and journalists. However, these works have not fully analyzed the ads that have been released by Facebook and the U.S. Congress. This project uses a case study to analyze the ads posted by the Russian-affiliated Internet Research Agency, considering the quantities of ads targeted to particular geographic locations, the frequency of targeting for unique keywords, and the reach and impressions of each of the ads. Further, these results are compared to results from best practices in traditional social media campaigns as a way to better understand the goals and potential impacts of the IRA ads. In conclusion, the project, by analyzing the full set of IRA ads, sheds new light on the way false information narratives were leveraged by the Russian-linked IRA.


Author(s):  
Andrés Camero ◽  
Jamal Toutouh ◽  
Javier Ferrer ◽  
Enrique Alba

The unsustainable development of countries has created a problem due to the unstoppable waste generation. Moreover, waste collection is carried out following a pre-defined route that does not take into account the actual level of the containers collected. Therefore, optimizing the way the waste is collected presents an interesting opportunity. In this study, we tackle the problem of predicting the waste generation ratio in real-world conditions, i.e., under uncertainty. Particularly, we use a deep neuroevolutionary technique to automatically design a recurrent network that captures the filling level of all waste containers in a city at once, and we study the suitability of our proposal when faced to noisy and faulty data. We validate our proposal using a real-world case study, consisting of more than two hundred waste containers located in a city in Spain, and we compare our results to the state-of-the-art. The results show that our approach exceeds all its competitors and that its accuracy in a real-world scenario, i.e., under uncertain data, is good enough for optimizing the waste collection planning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Snehangshu Shekhar Chanda

Language is the way of communication and used in different aspects of life. In every country there is a national language which is the state language used in offices and different organizations. Bengali is the state and widely spoken language of Bangladesh however language varies from community to community, race to race, society to society This study shows that there are many indigenous languages in Bangladesh which may be endangered in future specially in the Sylhet area of Bangladesh. The Manipuri language which is not used officially in Bangladesh may be one such language. It has its own alphabets and is spoken in the community. The language has however not been hampered due to COVID 19 and in fact has become more popular during the lockdown. Due to the increase in the popularity of social media (face book group, Cheik Kheik) the Manipuri language in Sylhet, still maintains their ethnic culture and use their language in the home domain.


Author(s):  
Maria Giaquinto-Cilliers ◽  
Tertius N. Potgieter ◽  
Gert Steyn

Mobile phones have progressively become an inseparable partner to plastic surgeons in their clinical practice. From using the mobile phone camera to take pictures of injuries and sending those for instant advice, to searching for the best evidence articles in peer review journals, mobile phones have changed the plastic surgeons' approach on the best way to manage their patients. The availability of information in mobile technology has allowed a growing market for education tools for plastic surgeons and patients, and the use of social media for marketing purposes. With the increased availability of smartphone applications, these devices have become an invaluable tool for the modern plastic surgeon.


Author(s):  
Swati Panchal ◽  
Lakshay Panchal

Social Networking is a good source to stay connected with others so it can be used as a tool in teaching. Those students, who are not able to learn the concept in the regular classroom, go to tuition. They work whole night to complete their homework and assignments meanwhile they cannot resist themselves from using social networking sites. They have a view that they can multitask, but actually, most of the concentration is in social networking and messengers and less in studies. So ultimately their studies suffer. Because of this, they feel unrest in next day classroom also. To change the habit of using the mobile phone and social networking is very difficult. Now they are addicted to using these. So, the only solution is to change the way they use these things. The only requirement is training the student about the use of these systems, for which they are made of. So, the basic aim of this research is how social networking can be used as an Efficacious tool in teaching and utilizing the time wastage on social networking sites and messenger by students in studies.


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