Book Review: José van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media, Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth, Understanding Social Media and Jeremy Hunsinger and Theresa Senft (eds), The Social Media Handbook

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 1057-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Meikle
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals A brief history of contact in fostering and adoption: practice and power, and the coming of the mobile phone

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-284
Author(s):  
Jennifer E Simpson ◽  
Gary Clapton
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Family Time ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Looked After Children ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Birth Family ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Children In Care

This article charts the UK history of contact in fostering and adoption as it relates to looked after children and their birth relatives. It builds on a recent publication in this journal by one of the authors based on her research on the use of social media by children in care. Here we look at previous practices relating to the question of whether or not contact ought to be ‘allowed’ in which words such as ‘access’ were used, betokening the child as object. We also come up to date with reference to contemporary efforts to recast contact as ‘family time’ that is significant in the child’s continuation of understanding of self. Other words in the lexicon are problematised, including ‘contact’ itself. Attention is also devoted to the social work profession's conception and management of contact. We argue that a critical history of contact reveals the various ways that formal and informal power operates to both regulate and discipline those involved, most centrally the child and birth family members. Drawing upon emerging research relating to social media and contact, the article concludes with a discussion of how young people’s access to, and use of, social media has altered, how contact is managed and ‘policed’, and how this has shifted the balance of power in contact towards greater egalitarianism.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

New Wars and Their Visual Representation: Dead Bodies without Graves/Mourne

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tuncay Şur ◽  
Betül Yarar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
War Photography ◽  
New Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This paper seeks to understand why there has been an increase in photographic images exposing military violence or displaying bodies killed by military forces and how they can freely circulate in the public without being censored or kept hidden. In other words, it aims to analyze this particular issue as a symptom of the emergence of new wars and a new regime of their visual representation. Within this framework, it attempts to relate two kinds of literature that are namely the history of war and war photography with the bridge of theoretical discussions on the real, its photographic representation, power, and violence.  Rather than systematic empirical analysis, the paper is based on a theoretical attempt which is reflected on some socio-political observations in the Middle East where there has been ongoing wars or new wars. The core discussion of the paper is supported by a brief analysis of some illustrative photographic images that are served through the social media under the circumstances of war for instance in Turkey between Turkish military troops and the Kurdish militants. The paper concludes that in line with the process of dissolution/transformation of the old nation-state formations and globalization, the mechanism and mode of power have also transformed to the extent that it resulted in the emergence of new wars. This is one dynamic that we need to recognize in relation to the above-mentioned question, the other is the impact of social media in not only delivering but also receiving war photographies. Today these changes have led the emergence of new machinery of power in which the old modern visual/photographic techniques of representing wars without human beings, torture, and violence through censorship began to be employed alongside medieval power techniques of a visual exhibition of tortures and violence.

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