Digital Ruins

Disentangling ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 163-188
Author(s):  
Gonzalo C. Garcia ◽  
Vincent Miller
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
The Social ◽  
Industrial Modernity ◽  
Abandoned Spaces

Geography has seen a rebirth of interest and appreciation of the ruined and abandoned spaces of industrial modernity. This work has often considered such ruins largely in terms of the phenomenological or affectual experiences of material decay, disorder, and blight. This chapter is an investigation into ruined spaces that do not have materiality or temporality: digital ruins. Existing in a kind of eternal present, such spaces do not decay, yet still demonstrate many affective and phenomenological experiences of what we understand to be ruin. Using ethnographic research of three abandoned and nearly abandoned virtual worlds, these landscapes provide a unique opportunity for a critical analysis of digital ruins as spaces of disconnection: particularly in their relationship with time, their algorithmic disconnection from the social imaginary of the Internet, the phenomenological disconnection one experiences in these places, and their founding premise as spaces of utopian disconnection from the limitations of materiality.

Managing Social Reputation in Twitter

2013 ◽  
pp. 91-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabell Preussler ◽  
Michael Kerres
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Theoretical Construct ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Social Reputation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Status Information ◽  
Reward Mechanism

Online communities, like Twitter, attract thousands of users worldwide spending hours communicating with others via the Internet. Most platforms offer mechanisms that show the ‘rank’ or ‘social reputation’ users have gained within the social community the platform establishes. This chapter analyses the motivation of users to engage intensively from a social psychological perspective and follows the hypotheses that these status information function as a highly effective reward mechanism. The chapter describes the results of a survey that has been conducted with users of Twitter in order to find out how important it is for users to gain ‘followers’. The chapter outlines a theoretical construct that explains why users try to gain social reputation in different virtual worlds. For this, a typology of virtual worlds has been developed based on possible spill-over effects of social reputation that can be gained in virtual and real worlds.

scholarly journals Digital ruins

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Miller ◽  
Gonzalo C Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Phenomenological Experience ◽  
Industrial Modernity ◽  
Abandoned Spaces ◽  
Digital Spaces

In recent years, Geography has seen a rebirth of interest and appreciation of ruins, abandoned and neglected spaces of industrial modernity. This work has often emphasised the sensuousness of the material contextualisation of industrial ruins largely in terms of the phenomenological experience of decay, disorder and blight, or the affective elements of these spaces through concepts such as ‘ghostliness’ and ‘haunting’. This article is an investigation into ruins or abandoned spaces which do not have materiality or temporality: digital ruins. Existing in a kind of eternal present, such spaces do not decay, yet still demonstrate many of the affective, phenomenological and existential experiences of what we understand to be ruin, abandonment or blight. Using autoethnographic research of a variety of abandoned and nearly abandoned virtual worlds, this article will reconsider the notions of ‘ruin’ within the increasingly important context of digital spaces, the utopian rhetoric which framed the development of these worlds, and situate the digital ruin within a wider critique of digital prosumerism.

scholarly journals The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Boostrom, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Virtual Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Internet Connections ◽  
Stigmatized Identity

Persistent virtual spaces are becoming available to users, often for free, via internet connections. Due to the immersive character and malleability of these communities, new forms of technology-mediated social interaction are emerging. In this paper, ethnographic research done in Second Life is used to outline (1) how the reality within these virtual worlds is constructed, (2) what role elements of the secondary socialization play in these groups, and (3) the way the stigmatized identity of the neophyte user, the “newbie,” is conceptualized, confronted and addressed by virtual world residents. This research suggests ways of viewing consumer behavior within virtual worlds and further social research directions.

scholarly journals E-SERVICES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ON THE BASIS OF THE POLISH SOCIAL INSURANCE INSTITUTION (ZUS)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Owczarczyk ◽  
Joanna Lazurek
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Survey Questionnaire ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Insurance Institution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Results

The term e-services refers to such services that are delivered over the Internet and their rendition is frequently automated and remote. Apart from the Internet, an e-service may also be provided by means of mobile devices or television. The wider and wider range of e-services is offered by institutions from the public administration sector, striving to anticipate their client's expectations (especially those of the younger generation) and using the ongoing digitisation process. This study aims at presenting the role and opinions of e-service in one of the social insurance institutions, i.e. Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) where numerous electronic tools have been implemented facilitating work and enabling clients to make contact, get information, send and receive documents. All these efforts are made so as to increase accessibility for prospective and current clients as well as to make the institution's operations more efficient. To achieve this, the following research methods were used: a critical analysis of the literature, an analysis of statistical data, an analysis of survey results (conducted by ZUS), and a survey questionnaire (own research).

The Internet in Everything

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura DeNardis
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Solutions

The Internet has leapt from human-facing display screens into the material objects all around us. In this so-called Internet of Things—connecting everything from cars to cardiac monitors to home appliances—there is no longer a meaningful distinction between physical and virtual worlds. Everything is connected. The social and economic benefits are tremendous, but there is a downside: an outage in cyberspace can result not only in a loss of communication but also potentially a loss of life. Control of this infrastructure has become a proxy for political power, since countries can easily reach across borders to disrupt real-world systems. This book argues that this diffusion of the Internet into the physical world radically escalates governance concerns around privacy, discrimination, human safety, democracy, and national security, and it offers new cyber-policy solutions. The book makes visible the sinews of power already embedded in our technology and explores how hidden technical governance arrangements will become the constitution of our future.

scholarly journals Are we becoming gadgets? Social capital in the era of social networking

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark K. Ingle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social

Social capital is partially predicated on the levels of trust obtaining between institutions and between members of society. As such it is a vital ingredient in the ‘glue’ which holds society together and which facilitates contractual economic activity. Recent technological advances, and the concomitant ascendancy of social networking, have radically reconfigured the environment in which social capital is generated, and the social sciences have some way to go fully to digest these new developments. This article surveys the meteoric rise of the ‘technium’ in the social imaginary and delineates some of the reservations current commentators have about the next ‘singularity’ to succeed the Internet. The discussion includes a brief account of the philosophy behind the objectification of the human. It also speculates about the consequences of paradigm shifts in modes of relating for the formation of social capital in the future.

Recessionary games: Video games and the social imaginary of the Great Recession (2009–2015)

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 884-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Óliver Pérez-Latorre ◽  
Víctor Navarro-Remesal ◽  
Antonio José Planells de la Maza ◽  
Cristina Sánchez-Serradilla
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

How do the most popular video games in recent years contribute to the construction of the social imaginary of the Great Recession? The discursive struggles over the definition of crucial aspects of the recession such as austerity, the heroic ethos to face precariousness and being anti-establishment are being played not only in the political arena and ‘serious’ news genres but also in the narrations of popular culture and video games. Thus, critical analysis of the social resonances of video games on the Great Recession is a relevant exercise not only academically but also socially. To address this question, this article proposes an analysis of bestselling video games from 2009 to 2015, based on cultural studies and game studies. The analysis is organized in three case studies: (a) post-apocalyptic video games and their potential resonances regarding austerity and precariousness; (b) video games, neo-liberalism and counter neo-liberal views; and (c) video games and the representation of anti-establishment characters and rebel communities.

Protesting in a Cultural Frame

2014 ◽  
pp. 296-318
Author(s):  
António Rosas
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Era ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Governments ◽  
First Time

ICTs and particularly the Internet are changing national and international politics. International organizations, activists, and even national governments are now extending their organizational resources and apparatuses to the digital virtual worlds, thus expanding the horizons of politics to new levels and challenges. In this chapter, the author concentrates on a surprising and unprecedented initiative that took place in Portugal in March 12th, 2011, the “Geração à Rasca” protests, as well as on the March 12th Movement (M12M), the social movement that followed it. More precisely, the chapter examines how Internet-enabled technologies, like social media, were used as tactics for political organization and mobilization, and how several political cultures were activated. In a country where non-conventional politics was limited to unions and to well-demarcated interests, those two initiatives inaugurated a new era of political participation and democratic opposition. For the first time, 4 young graduates, who never participated in politics before, were able to mobilize more than 500,000 people in several cities of the country, while adapting their messages to the particular political cultures of their “natural” constituencies, the young unemployed or underpaid seasonable workers, to the overall population, dissatisfied with the economic performance of successive governments, and to the more radical groups still committed to the political cultures of the 1974 Carnations Revolution. Besides those tactical and discursive uses, political and economic contexts, contingent events, and the support of symbolic elites were also important factors in both initiatives.

scholarly journals Netnography: A Method Specifically Designed to Study Cultures and Communities Online

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Bowler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Online Communities ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Ethical Conduct ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Important Site

With many people now using online communities such as newsgroups, blogs, forums, social networking sites, podcasting, videocasting, photosharing communities, and virtual worlds, the internet is now an important site for research. Kozinets' (2010) new text explores netnography, or the conduct of ethnography over the internet - a method specifically designed to study cultures and communities online. Guidelines for the accurate and ethical conduct of ethnographic research online are set out, with detailed, step-by-step guidance to thoroughly introduce, explain, and illustrate the method to students and researchers. Kozinets surveys the latest research on online cultures and communities, focusing on the methods used to study them, with examples focusing on the blogosphere (blogging), microblogging, videocasting, podcasting, social networking sites, virtual worlds, and more. The book is essential reading for researchers and students in social sciences.

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