scholarly journals Reproducibility, Replicability, and Revisiting the Insta-Dead and the Human Remains Trade

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Graham ◽  
Damien Huffer

The trade in human remains on social media happens in an ever-changing field of digital media technologies. We attempt to replicate our earlier study, exploring the differences in what we can observe now in the trade on Instagram versus our first foray in 2016 (published in Huffer and Graham 2017). While the previous study cannot be reproduced, it can be replicated, and we find that the trade is accelerating.

Author(s):  
Simon Keegan-Phipps ◽  
Lucy Wright

This chapter considers the role of social media (broadly conceived) in the learning experiences of folk musicians in the Anglophone West. The chapter draws on the findings of the Digital Folk project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and begins by summarizing and problematizing the nature of learning as a concept in the folk music context. It briefly explicates the instructive, appropriative, and locative impacts of digital media for folk music learning before exploring in detail two case studies of folk-oriented social media: (1) the phenomenon of abc notation as a transmissive media and (2) the Mudcat Café website as an example of the folk-oriented discussion forum. These case studies are shown to exemplify and illuminate the constructs of traditional transmission and vernacularism as significant influences on the social shaping and deployment of folk-related media technologies. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the need to understand the musical learning process as a culturally performative act and to recognize online learning mechanisms as sites for the (re)negotiation of musical, cultural, local, and personal identities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Shaimma El Naggar

<p>Over the past few decades, televangelism has emerged as one important media phenomenon, inter alia, among Muslim communities. As a phenomenon, televangelism is interesting in many respects; it is a manifestation of the phenomenon of "info-tainment" as televangelists integrate entertainment features such as sound effects and music in their sermons. It is also a manifestation of the rise of the celebrity culture as televangelists have become 'media celebrities' with thousands of hundreds of fans and followers on social media networks.</p><p> </p><p>Thematically, this study is divided into two main sections. First. I delineate the characteristics of televangelism as a novel form of religious expression in which televangelists adopt a modern style and use colloquial language; and in which televangelists present religion as a source of individual change. I have argued that these features seem to have granted televangelists popularity particularly among Muslim youth who view televangelism as a new form of religious expression that is modern in appearance and relevant to their everyday lives.</p><p>The study has further highlighted the importance of digital media technologies in popularizing televangelists' programmes and sermons. Drawing on two case studies of popular televangelists, namely Amr Khaled and Hamza Yusuf, the study has shown that televangelists draw on a plethora of digital media tools to extend the visibility of their programmes including websites and social media networks. The study has found that televangelists' fans play an important role in popularizing televangelists' programmes. Moreover, the study relates televangelism to the rise of digital Islam. The study has argued that digitization and the increase of literacy rates have changed the structure of religious authority in the twenty first century, giving rise to new voices that are competing for authority. </p><p>Having provided an explanatory framework for the phenomenon of televangelism, the study moves in the second section to critique televangelism as an 'info-tainment' phenomenon.</p>Drawing on Carrette and King's <em>Selling Spirituality, </em>one issue that the study raises is the extent to which televangelism fits into the modern form of 'spiritualities'. Rather than being a critical reflection of the consumer culture, modern spiritualities seem to 'smooth out' resistance to the hegemony of capitalism and consumerism. I have proposed that it is through a content-related analysis of televangelists' sermons that one can get a nuanced understanding of how the discourses of particular televangelists can possibly relate to dominant (capitalist) ideologies, how structures of power are represented in their discourses and what their texts may reveal about the socio-historical contexts of Muslims in the twenty first century.


Author(s):  
Daniel E. O’Leary

This paper surveys and extends the use of social media technologies as part of decision making support system (DMSS) development and management. In particular, this paper investigates how social media technologies, such as wikis, blogs, micro-blogs and tagging, have been and can be used to facilitate development and management of DMSS, through communication and collaboration. However, the author suggests going beyond simply communication and collaboration. The particular focus is on using an analysis of digital media content to address a range of issues, including using social media content to facilitate capturing project history, doing an analysis of that content to facilitate documentation development, and monitoring content from social media to provide insights into project development. Domain-based characteristics of the text are investigated to discover meaning in social media content.


Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 225
Author(s):  
Magdalena Mądra-Sawicka ◽  
Jeretta Horn Nord ◽  
Joanna Paliszkiewicz ◽  
Tzong-Ru Lee

This study investigated the use of digital media, specifically social media technologies, in the workplace in Taiwan. The data for this study were collected through an online survey. Participants responded to questions asking whether social technologies could be a source of empowerment, leading to equality. Respondents included female and male employees. The findings reveal that both genders use social technology platforms for business support, experience benefits, and believe that these technologies could provide empowerment for success. Detailed results are reported in this paper, including a comparative analysis. The differences between women and men using Facebook and YouTube were significant. Women in Taiwan have a higher awareness of the benefits of social technologies, specifically Facebook, when used for business support and empowerment. This paper reveals a comparison between the attitudes of women and men when using social technologies and investigates the realization of the economic empowerment component.


2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Gilmore

Over the past decade Brazil has become well known for its open embrace of new media technologies. In tandem, an increasing number of Brazilian candidates have begun to use web and social media sites as an integral part of their overall campaign efforts. The present study is the first effort at large-scale modeling of these relationships in an emerging Latin American democracy. To explore the relationship between using digital media in a candidate’s political campaign strategy and voter support, I built an original dataset of the 2010 elections for the lower house of the Brazilian Congress. I investigate factors such as a candidate’s use of web and social networking sites in conjunction with other traditional influences such as candidate gender, age, incumbency, party affiliation, coalition membership and campaign spending. I demonstrate that having a robust web presence and using social media, holding other factors constant, can be a significant contribution to the popularity of a candidate on election day in an open-list proportional representation electoral system such as that in Brazil. Additionally, I demonstrate how this digital media campaign tactic might be specifically beneficial to traditionally disadvantaged candidates in bridging the gap of their under-representation in Brazilian politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 673-685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Scherr ◽  
Florian Arendt ◽  
Thomas Frissen ◽  
José Oramas M

Self-injurious behavior is often practiced in secrecy or involves body parts that are easy to hide, making early detection difficult and hampering intervention and treatment. However, cutting, one of the most common intentional forms of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), is relatively often shared publicly via new digital media technologies. We explored NSSI on Instagram through a pioneering combination of two computational methods: First, we developed an automatic image-recognition algorithm that uncovered NSSI (or the absence of NSSI) in digital pictures, and second, we employed web-scraping techniques to obtain all pictures posted on Instagram in a given time frame under four NSSI-related hashtags in English and German. The image-recognition algorithm was then used to explore the relative prevalence of NSSI in these N = 13,132 pictures posted within 48 hr on Instagram under #cutting ( n = 4,219), #suicide ( n = 7,910), #selbstmord ( n = 173), and #ritzen ( n = 830) in June 2018. This article not only aims to raise awareness of NSSI on Instagram but also introduces the first automatic image-recognition algorithm that addresses cutting on social media and presents that algorithm’s first empirical test run on a large sample of pictures scraped from Instagram. The ultimate goal of this research is to protect vulnerable populations from contact with NSSI-related pictures posted on social media.


Author(s):  
Daniel E. O’Leary

This paper surveys and extends the use of social media technologies as part of decision making support system (DMSS) development and management. In particular, this paper investigates how social media technologies, such as wikis, blogs, micro-blogs and tagging, have been and can be used to facilitate development and management of DMSS, through communication and collaboration. However, the author suggests going beyond simply communication and collaboration. The particular focus is on using an analysis of digital media content to address a range of issues, including using social media content to facilitate capturing project history, doing an analysis of that content to facilitate documentation development, and monitoring content from social media to provide insights into project development. Domain-based characteristics of the text are investigated to discover meaning in social media content.


Author(s):  
Damion Sturm

Media technologies and digital practices are reshaping and redefining the future of sport fandom. This article points to some of the utopian and dystopic transformations for fandom presented by (post)television, digital/social media and the anticipated virtual technologies of the future. Specifically, three distinct phases of fan participation are charted around existing and futuristic visions of technology-as-sport. First are the current televisual technologies that attempt to engage and retain traditionally “passive” viewers as spectators through pseudo-participatory perspectives that will carry over to new screens and technologies. Second, the assumed interactive participation afforded by social and digital media is considered, positing the future amplification of connectivity, personalisation and networking across digital fan communities, albeit undercut by further impositions of corporatisation and datafication through illusory forms of “interactivity”. Finally, the fusion, intensification and continual evolution of technology-as-sport is explored, asserting that forms of immersive participation will be significant for future virtual technologies and may ultimately re-position fans as e-participants in their own media-tech sport spectacles. Collectively, it is anticipated that the creation of new virtual worlds, spaces and experiences will amplify and operationalise forms of immersive participation around augmented spectatorship, virtual athletic replication and potentially constitute the sport itself. Indeed, a new model of the fan-as-immersed-e-participant is advanced as such futuristic virtual sporting realms may not only integrate fans into the spectacle but also project them into the event as participant and as the spectacle.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110227
Author(s):  
Su Young Choi

This article argues for adopting the theoretical lens of gift exchange and reciprocity into the study of social movements and social media in an attempt to widen the horizon of the field of protest and media beyond its technological orientation. This lens invites us to see how protesters can build a movement strategically through the practice of gifting and the principle of reciprocity, and how such practices intersect with socially situated usages of digital media technologies to mediate and facilitate the politics of reciprocity. Based on an ethnographic analysis of energy activism in South Korea, the study suggests four necessary conditions for movement-building through culturally and technologically mediated forms of gift and reciprocity: pursuit of inclusive and open-ended alliances, prohibition of negative exchange, commitment to mutual interest aligned with shared movement goals, and the maintenance of voluntary and creative participation in gift exchange.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511773575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonis Kalogeropoulos ◽  
Samuel Negredo ◽  
Ike Picone ◽  
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

In this article, we present a cross-national comparative analysis of which online news users in practice engage with the participatory potential for sharing and commenting on news afforded by interactive features in news websites and social media technologies across a strategic sample of six different countries. Based on data from the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and controlling for a range of factors, we find that (1) people who use social media for news and a high number of different social media platforms are more likely to also engage more actively with news outside social media by commenting on news sites and sharing news via email, (2) political partisans on both sides are more likely to engage in sharing and commenting particularly on news stories in social media, and (3) people with high interest in hard news are more likely to comment on news on both news sites and social media and share stores via social media (and people with high interest in any kind of news [hard or soft] are more likely to share stories via email). Our analysis suggests that the online environment reinforces some long-standing inequalities in participation while countering other long-standing inequalities. The findings indicate a self-reinforcing positive spiral where the already motivated are more likely in practice to engage with the potential for participation offered by digital media, and a negative spiral where those who are less engaged participate less.


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