scholarly journals Understanding digital disconnection beyond media studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 135485652110489
Author(s):  
Hallvard Moe ◽  
Ole Jacob Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Digital Detox ◽  
Underlying Theme

Digital disconnection or ‘digital detox’ has become a key reference point for media scholars interested in how media technology increasingly gains influence on our everyday lives. Digital disconnection from intrusive media is often intertwined with other types of human conduct, which is less highlighted. There is a potential for media scholars to engage with what seems to be a mainstreaming of digital disconnection from self-help literature via mobile applications to media activism and public debate. In this article, we therefore aim to examine digital disconnection beyond media studies by distilling five common positions: disconnection as health, concentration, existentiality, freedom and sustainability. An underlying theme in all five positions appears to be the notion of responsibilisation, although some of the positions attempt to portray disconnection as a way to ultimately resist such responsibilisation. The article thus aims to spur media scholars to treat digital disconnection as part of broader cultural trends.

scholarly journals Imaginary economies: the case of the 3D printer

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schröter
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Research Field ◽  
3D Printer ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
3D Printers

AbstractIn the call for the special issue for the EAEPE Journal, we can find the word “scenario.” The question is if the authors can imagine scenarios in which “potential strategies for the appropriation of existing capitalist infrastructures […] in order to provoke the emergence of post-capitalist infrastructures” can be described. Obviously, the call verges on the border of science fiction—and this is not a bad thing. Diverse strands of media studies and science and technology studies have shown (e.g., Schröter 2004; Kirby 2010; Jasanoff and Kim 2015; McNeil et al. 2017) that not only the development of science and (media) technology is deeply interwoven in social imaginaries about possible outcomes and their implicated futures, but there is a whole theoretical tradition in which societies as such are fundamentally constituted by imaginary relations (Castoriadis 1975/2005). But in all these discussions, one notion very seldom appears: that of an “imaginary economy,” meaning a collectively held system of more or less vague or detailed ideas, what an economy is, how it works, and how it should be (especially in the future; but see the somewhat different usage recently in Fabbri 2018). The aim of the paper is to outline a notion of “imaginary economy” and its necessary functions in the stabilization of a given economy, but even more so in the transformation to another economy—how should a transformation take place if there’s not at least a vague image where to go? Of course, we could also imagine a blind evolutionary process without any imaginary process but that seems not to be the way in which human societies—and economies—work. Obviously a gigantic research field opens up—so in the proposed paper, only one type of “imaginary economy” can be analyzed: It is the field that formed recently around the proposed usages and functions of 3D printing. In publications as diverse as Eversmann (2014) and Rifkin (2014), the 3D printer operates as a technology that seems to open up a post-capitalist future—and thereby it is directly connected to the highly imaginary “replicator” from Star Trek. In these scenarios, a localized omnipotent production—a post-scarcity scenario (see Panayotakis 2011)—overcomes by itself capitalism: But symptomatically enough, questions of work, environment, and planetary computation are (mostly) absent from these scenarios. Who owns the templates for producing goods with 3D printers? What about the energy supply? In a critical and symptomatic reading, this imaginary economy, very present in a plethora of discourses nowadays, is deconstructed and possible implications for a post-capitalist construction are discussed.

scholarly journals Self-administered EMDR therapy: potential solution for expanding the availability of psychotherapy for PTSD or unregulated recipe for disaster?

BJPsych Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Z. Waterman ◽  
Maxwell Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Serious Adverse Events ◽  
Access To Treatment ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Psychological Therapies ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Potential Efficacy ◽  
Emdr Therapy

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) carries a high disease burden worldwide, yet significant barriers exist to providing and accessing treatment for PTSD, particularly in refugee populations and in low- and middle-income countries. There is emerging evidence that self-administered psychological therapies, such as those accessed via online and mobile applications, are efficacious for many mental illnesses and increase access to treatment. Online and mobile applications offering self-help tools for eye movement desensitisation reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, an internationally recommended treatment for PTSD, are already widely distributed to the public. Aims To present a commentary evaluating the potential benefits and risks of self-administered EMDR therapy: first, by conducting a search for existing peer-reviewed evidence relating to self-administered EMDR therapy; second, by presenting existing evidence for other self-help psychotherapies and evaluating what additional insight this could provide into the potential efficacy, safety, tolerability and accessibility of self-administered EMDR therapy; and, third, by describing the conflicting views of EMDR experts on the topic. Method A search was conducted for articles related to internet, mobile, book or computerised self-help EMDR therapy. The following databases were searched systematically: Medline, PsycInfo, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Cochrane Database and the EMDR Library. Results Only one small primary research study was found relating to self-administered EMDR therapy. The results indicated significantly reduced symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, distress and disability between pre-treatment and 3 month follow-up. No serious adverse events were reported. However, substantial methodological issues were discovered. Conclusions There is evidence that self-administered psychotherapies, in general, can be safe, effective and highly accessible. However, controversies persist regarding the safety and potential efficacy of self-administered EMDR therapy, and more robust research is needed. It is vital that methods are found to improve worldwide access to effective PTSD treatment, particularly given the current scale of migration to flee civil unrest.

scholarly journals Digital detox: Media resistance and the promise of authenticity

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 1269-1283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trine Syvertsen ◽  
Gunn Enli
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Corporate Websites ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Loss Of Contact ◽  
Digital Detox

A fascination for the authentic is pervasive in contemporary culture. This article discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically human in the age of constant connectivity. Digital detox can be defined as a periodic disconnection from social or online media, or strategies to reduce digital media involvement. Digital detox stands in a long tradition of media resistance and resistance to new communication technologies, and non-use of media, but advocates balance and awareness more than permanent disconnection. Drawing on the analysis of 20 texts promoting digital detox: self-help literature, memoirs and corporate websites, the article discusses how problems with digital media are defined and recommended strategies to handle them. The analysis is structured around three dominant themes emerging in the material: descriptions of temporal overload and 24/7 connectivity, experiences of spatial intrusion and loss of contact with ‘real life’ and descriptions of damage to body and mind. A second research topic concerns how arguments for digital detox can be understood within a wider cultural and political context. Here, we argue that digital detox texts illuminate the rise of a self-regulation society, where individuals are expected to take personal responsibility for balancing risks and pressures, as well as representing a form of commodification of authenticity and nostalgia.

Extensions after Man: Race, Counter/insurgency and the Futures of Media Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372199453
Author(s):  
Michael Litwack
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Freedom Struggles ◽  
Intellectual Movement ◽  
Plantation System ◽  
Western Media ◽  
Racial Slavery

This article returns to the geopolitical scene and racial logics that provide the underacknowledged conditions of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media and, specifically, its well-known proposition that media should be understood foremost as ‘outerings’ or ‘extensions of man’. Attending to the structuring inheritances of racial slavery and the plantation system in this founding statement of mid-twentieth-century media theory, as well as its debt to the literary and intellectual movement of the Southern Agrarians, I consider how the racializing figure of ‘Man’ conserved by the nascent field of media studies was contemporaneously brought to crisis by black (and) anticolonial freedom struggles. Arguing for the need to reread the career of western media theory through its political vocation in attempting to manage this crisis, the article concludes by turning briefly to a revisionary account of media and exteriority also circulated in 1964: the revolutionary intellectual James Boggs’s ‘The Negro and Cybernation’. Boggs’s writings, which situate emergent forms of computing and cybernation within a longer materialist genealogy of race, capitalism and technology, offer both a proleptic critique of the early disciplinary formation of media theory and a divergent set of coordinates for approaching media technology on the terrain of black political struggle.

scholarly journals DIGITAL DETOX CAMP: VALUES AND MOTIVATIONS FOR ENGAGING IN DIGITAL DISCONNECT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faltin Karlsen
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mental Wellbeing ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Domestication Process ◽  
Authentic Life ◽  
Domestication Theory ◽  
Ubiquitous Media ◽  
Digital Detox ◽  
Empirical Material

Media users increasingly express ambivalence about their own media consumption, often related to ubiquitous media technology such as the smartphone and social media. In order to understand the growing trend of disconnection as a cultural and social phenomenon, we conducted an analysis of the digital detox inspired camp for grownups, Underleir, which has been arranged in Norway annually since 2014. The main empirical material stems from a field study of the camp Underleir in 2019 where we conducted participatory observation on a four-day field trip. Online material about the camp from the inception in 2014 to the sixth installment in 2019 was also included. The framework for this analysis is media domestication theory with special attention to the concept reverse domestication. In contrast to the domestication process where new media technology is "tamed", reverse domestication implies cognitive processes and practical strategies involved when distancing from media technology. Underleir illustrates how practical, social, and normative aspects may be interwoven when media use is reversed or altered. Normatively speaking, the digital detox experience was tied to broader sets of values, including an aim for a more creative, authentic life and a quest for mental wellbeing and the ability to focus. Many participants stated that the opportunity to engage in creative activities, and to be social in a friendly setting, was just as important as the absence of media.

The emergence of “jingo” and “jingoism” as political terms in public debate in Great Britain (1878–1880)

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot King
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
Integrated Research ◽  
Large Databases ◽  
British Press ◽  
Insight Into

Content analysis is the most common approach to exploring the use of specific words within media studies. This approach has significant limitations that can be addressed through the application of other related approaches to understanding mediated content, including sociolinguistics and conceptual history. The emergence of large databases of digitized newspapers opens the possibility of an integrated approach that draws on elements of each of those related paradigms. An analysis of the rise and fall of the terms “jingo” and “jingoism” in the British press from 1878 to 1900 demonstrates how this integrated research paradigm can be productively applied to gain insight into how newspapers serve to broadly distribute words attached to specific concepts.

scholarly journals You Can’t Smell Roses Online

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (s1) ◽  
pp. 25-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faltin Karlsen ◽  
Trine Syvertsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Domestication Theory ◽  
Media And Communication

AbstractThere is an emerging range of self-help guides advising users on how to minimise their interaction with media. The aim is to create a lifestyle and identity that is less media-centred and more grounded in “real life”. This article discusses media self-help in the light of theories of media domestication, highlighting processes where the aim is to reduce the importance of, rather than to incorporate, media and communication technology into users’ lives. Based on a sample of 30 guides from the self-help site Wikihow dealing with how to handle television, games and social media respectively, the article discusses media self-help strategies in relation to key concepts of domestication theory: appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion. In conclusion, the article argues that strategies of withdrawal and resistance should receive more attention in media studies, and point to the concept of reverse domestication as one way of highlighting such strategies.

scholarly journals Media formats of post-drama theater

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Tatyana V. Boldyreva
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Modern Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Formats

The article is devoted to the study of the question of the existence of post-dramatic performances in the modern media environment, in particular, the media formats of site-specific performances are studied. The purpose of this study is to identify the mechanisms of interactivity, performativity and immersiveness in the media formats of post-drama theater. The article raises the question regarding the meaning of the media format concept used in media studies in its connection with theatrical practices. The basic components of the concept of media format are the technical characteristics and focus on the target public. The chosen methodology allows us to characterize the technical capabilities of modern media formats for creating the effects of performativity, interactivity and immersiveness. The empirical basis of the research is the podcast The Theater of Everyday Life. Site-Specific Performances for Everyday Places and Routes in the mobile application Yandex Music and performances in the application Mobile Art Theater. The article draws conclusions concerning the influence of technical and verbal means of interaction used in mobile applications and in VR performances on the emergence of the effects of performativity and immersiveness in the minds of the audience. It is pointed out that the mechanics of the performances under consideration are connected with the concepts of A. Artaud and H.-T. Lehman, in particular, draw a conclusion about the role of the audience in such performances.

scholarly journals Mediatization of religion in “texting culture”: self-help religion and the shifting of religious authority

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moch Fakhruroji
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Communication Practice ◽  
Self Help ◽  
New Phase

This  research  is  the  study of SMS Tauhiid phenomena as a  religious practicein  the context of media culture. SMS Tauhiid  service enables  its customer  toaccess  religious messages  through SMS which  is  in particular  contexts  couldpotentially  bring  new  patterns  of  religious  practice. This  article  uses  themediatization  concept  dealing with media  studies  and  political  economy  aswell.  I  argue  that  tausiah  as  (Islamic)  religious  communication  practice havetransformed  into a new pattern  that caused by the accomodative actions thathas taken by the religious leaders and actors against media logics. On the onehand,  this  phenomenon has  opened  a new phase  in disseminating  religiousmessages, however on  the other hand mediatization of  religion has potentialin causing a shift  in the role of religious leaders as the religious authorities.Penelitian ini merupakan studi tentang fenomena SMS Tauhiid sebagai bentukpraktik  agama  dalam  konteks  budaya media.  SMS Tauhiid memungkinkansetiap  pelanggan  dapat mengakses  nasihat  agama melalui  SMS  yang  dalamkonteks  tertentu  berpotensi memunculkan  pola-pola  baru  dalam  beragama.Artikel ini menggunakan pendekatan konsep mediatisasi yang memiliki kaitanerat  dengan  disiplin media  studies  dan  ekonomi  politik.  Saya  berargumen bahwa  tausiah  sebagai  praktik  komunikasi  agama  (Islam)  telah mengalamitransformasi  kedalam  bentuk  baru  disebabkan  tindakan  akomodatif  yangdilakukan  para  tokoh  dan  aktor  agama  terhadap  logika media. Di  satu  sisi,fenomena ini telah membuka babak baru bagi proses penyebaran pesan-pesanagama,  namun  di  sisi  lain mediatisasi  berpeluang menyebabkan  pergeseranperan  tokoh  agama  sebagai  pihak  yang memiliki  otoritas  sumber  informasiagama.

scholarly journals Disconnect to Reconnect! Self-help to Regain an Authentic Sense of Space Through Digital Detoxing

Disentangling ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Gunn Enli ◽  
Trine Syvertsen
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Media Influence ◽  
Self Help ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media And Technology ◽  
Physical Spaces ◽  
Digital Detox

A typical call in contemporary self-help literature is to “look away from screens and enter the physical world.” Drawing on an empirical analysis of 15 self-help books, this chapter explores advice to reconnect with social and physical spaces by taking a break from digital technology. Digital detox is a relatively new term, but its ideological foundations are familiar from a long history of media and technology criticism. In the chapter, self-help advice on digital detoxing is discussed in the light of classical and contemporary criticism of media influence. Although the self-help books illuminate obstacles and difficulties, they propagate an optimistic belief that invasive technology can be controlled, authenticity restored, and social and physical dislocation reversed.

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