Conclusions

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-196
Author(s):  
Ran Wei ◽  
Ven-hwei Lo
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Power Consumption ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Social Shaping Of Technology ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
New Type

This chapter draws conclusions based on empirical evidence concerning the why, how, and effects of mobile news consumption. A new type of news consumer emerges—one who prefers to seek news over the phone rather than the PC, who tends to engage with the news, and who learns something about currents affairs from it. The increased consumption of news via the mobile phone reveals a process in which Asia’s civically motivated young generations seek to be informed. Our findings offer insights into the debate over technological determinism in that technological innovations matter in early stages of a technology’s diffusion. However, as the technology matures and its use becomes routinized, it is increasingly subject to societal constraints and impositions of political power. Consumption of mobile news among college students in the four studied Asian cities represents an illuminating case of social shaping of technology.

Consumption

2021 ◽  
pp. 60-84
Author(s):  
Ran Wei ◽  
Ven-hwei Lo
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Portable Device ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
News Consumption ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
Different Levels

This chapter traces the evolution of the mobile phone as a viable channel to disseminate news by news organizations and as a portable device to access and consume news for users in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei. It also explores the gap in regulations concerning mobile news in the four aforementioned Asian cities and documents the growing trend in consuming mobile news among the mobile phone-savvy college students. The chapter then identifies predictors of patterns in mobile news consumption. Significant differences in consumption exist across the four studied cities due to different levels of press freedom.

Perceptions

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
Ran Wei ◽  
Ven-hwei Lo
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Perceived Utility ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
News Credibility ◽  
Risky Business

Consuming mobile news can be risky business. How do Asian college students view the quality and credibility of news content they consume via the mobile phone? This chapter assesses their perceptions of the credibility of news created and delivered to the mobile screen in the four selected Asian cities. Findings indicate an ambivalence toward mobile news held by college students in Asia, especially those in Shanghai and Singapore—mobile news is reliable but lacks diversity in perspectives (e.g., alternative to the official stance or government point of view). Comparative analyses further reveal that Shanghai and Singapore respondents rated mobile news credibility more highly than did their counterparts in Hong Kong and especially in Taipei, where evaluation of mobile news credibility was the lowest. Perceptions of mobile news credibility also vary by gender, level of consuming mobile news, reliance on traditional media as news sources, perceived utility of mobile news, and appeal of presentation.

A Concept ‘Vandalised'

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amin Y. Kamete
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Social Shaping Of Technology ◽  
Planning Project ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
Empty Signifier

The article attempts to explain how there can be contestation and uncertainty over something that should be as ‘obvious' as e-planning. It tries to make sense of stakeholders' conflicting interpretations of e-planning in a real-life case. It uses the social shaping of technology perspective as an analytical framework and draws on semiotics and post-structural theories to provide a more nuanced explanation. Drawing on research in ‘Tektown', a Zimbabwean urban centre that had embarked on an e-planning project, the paper confirms the SST argument that contrary to technological determinism, the appropriation of technology does not emerge from the unfolding of a predetermined logic or a single determinant. But it also reveals that there are limitations in the explanatory power of SST when confronted with questions of contestation, uncertainty, and outcome. The paper argues that e-planning is fraught with conflicts and disagreements precisely because it is an empty signifier. It contends that the population of this vacuous concept can be explained in terms of power/knowledge.

scholarly journals Russian-Speaking Digital Buddhism: Neither Cyber, nor Sangha

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 449
Author(s):  
Timur Badmatsyrenov ◽  
Elena Ostrovskaya ◽  
Fyodor Khandarov ◽  
Innokentii Aktamov
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Graph Model ◽  
Social Shaping Of Technology ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Modeling Techniques ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
Key Issues

The paper presents the results of a study that implemented a mixed methods approach to explore the question of correlation between online and offline activities of Buddhist organizations and communities in Russia. The research was carried out in 2019–2020 and addressed the following key issues: How do Buddhist websites and social media communities actually interact with offline organizations and Russian-speaking Buddhist communities? How do the ideological specifics of Buddhist organizations and communities influence their negotiations with the Internet and strategies towards new media technologies? Within the methodological frame of the religious–social shaping of technology approach by Heidi Campbell, we used the typology of religious digital creatives to reveal the strategies created by the Russian-speaking Buddhist communities developing their own identity, authority, and boundaries by means of digital technologies. In the first stage, we used quantitative software non-reactive methods to collect data from social media with the application of mathematical modeling techniques to build a graph model of Buddhist online communities in the vk.com social network and identify and describe its clusters. The second stage of the research combined biographical narratives of Buddhist digital creatives and expert interviews.

scholarly journals Welcome Back, We’ve Missed You! Humanized Business Communication in Shop Window Messages during Early 2020-Lockdown

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Kurt Feyaerts ◽  
Geertrui Heyvaert
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Mutual Relationship ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
New Type ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Business Exchange

This paper focuses on the way in which small and medium-sized businesses in Flanders adapted communication with their customers during the economic lockdown in March–May 2020. It documents, more specifically, how shops tried to maintain, re-establish, or even re-invent communication with their customers during this two-month period. Based on pictures of shop windows in a Flemish city, we analyze the (semi-)commercial messages that appeared in this setting during this period. This analysis adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, in which a cognitive linguistic approach is integrated with analyses and practical advices by marketing agencies. Despite their orientation towards distinct, theoretical and practical goals, both approaches share an analytical interest in mapping participants and their mutual relationship as part of a communicative interaction. In the period of economic lockdown, marketers urged shop owners to ‘humanize’ their business strategy by downplaying content-related issues in favor of maximal social outreach towards customers. Considering this advice, it was hypothesized that under these circumstances participants in commercial transactions would be construed much more prominently, presenting themselves and each other as unprecedented empathetic business personas. Much of our data comply with this expectation, thus providing empirical evidence of a subjectified communicative ground, in which both buyer and seller personas figure with augmented prominence as parts of the object of conceptualization. Messages include, among other things, expressions of empathy, solidarity, combativity, but also creativity and humor thus incorporating a new type of humanized business communication. With respect to the analysis of marketing strategies, the collected data at the same time instantiate and legitimize marketers’ communication advice about humanizing one’s business exchange.

Platform Capitalism ‘Made in China’? Intelligent Manufacturing, Taobao Villages and the Restructuring of Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boy Lüthje
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Manufacturing ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Social Shaping Of Technology ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
Made In China ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Conditions Of Employment ◽  
Made In

The article examines the development of advanced digital manufacturing (as outlined in the ‘Made-in-China 2025’ government plan) from the perspective of the changing socio-technical paradigms of production. The analysis focuses on the transformations of value chains and work, based on theories of social shaping of technology, regulation theory and regimes of production. Analytically, the author proposes to distinguish between ‘production-driven’ and ‘distribution-driven’ pathways of manufacturing digitalisation. The transformation of semi-rural industrial areas (‘Taobao villages’, named after China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao) into mass production clusters for e-commerce is depicted as a paradigmatic model of distribution-driven transformation and as a characteristic Chinese strategy in this field. The article examines the impact on industry supply chains and work, leading to ever-more precarious conditions of employment. Policy recommendations focus on local strategies to stabilise supply chain structures and working conditions, as an alternative to the present top-down approaches to manufacturing modernisation in China.

Tracking Depression Dynamics in College Students Using Mobile Phone and Wearable Sensing

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Wang ◽  
Weichen Wang ◽  
Alex daSilva ◽  
Jeremy F. Huckins ◽  
William M. Kelley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Wearable Sensing

The effects of shyness and loneliness on cell phone dependence in college students

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Yan Chen
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Loneliness Scale ◽  
Mobile Phone Addiction ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

I explored the relationships among shyness, loneliness, and cell phone dependence (CPD) in college students, with a special focus on the mediating effect of loneliness in the relationship between shyness and CPD. Participants were 593 students recruited from a college in Henan, China, and they completed the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, the UCLA Loneliness Scale–Short Form, and the Mobile Phone Addiction Index. The results show that shyness was significantly correlated with both loneliness and CPD, and that loneliness partially mediated the effect of shyness on CPD. These findings shed light on how shyness predicts CPD and have implications for preventing CPD in college students.

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