A place to stand: Digital sociology and the Archimedean effect

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alphia Possamai-Inesedy ◽  
Alan Nixon

With the advent of the internet, particularly Web 2.0, sociologists have been called to take up the challenges and the promises of the web. In the face of this, sociologists are caught up in debates and practices concerned with how to ethically approach and develop appropriate methods/methodologies for the field. While these are important endeavours, more robust debate needs to take place on the unintended consequences of the promises of the internet, as well as the power relations that are at play in what we term the ‘digital social’. Employing the metaphor of the Archimedean screw and Archimedean point, this article argues that the space we now find ourselves in is unprecedented; it is one which simultaneously demands the empowerment of research and yet results in the stripping away of its foundation. The Archimedean effect demonstrates that the promises of the internet have not been fulfilled resulting in the evolution and de-evolution of the digital social framed by the reinforcement of existing power relations. Yet, rather than viewing this as a time of crisis, we should see it as a defining moment for our discipline, one where the demands of public sociology need to be adopted broadly.

2012 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Allen

This article explore how, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the internet became historicised, meaning that its public existence is now explicitly framed through a narrative that locates the current internet in relation to a past internet. Up until this time, in popular culture, the internet had been understood mainly as the future-in-the-present, as if it had no past. The internet might have had a history, but it had no historicity. That has changed because of Web 2.0, and the effects of Tim O'Reilly's creative marketing of that label. Web 2.0, in this sense not a technology or practice but the marker of a discourse of historical interpretation dependent on versions, created for us a second version of the web, different from (and yet connected to) that of the 1990s. This historicising moment aligned the past and future in ways suitable to those who might control or manage the present. And while Web 3.0, implied or real, suggests the ‘future’, it also marks out a loss of other times, or the possibility of alterity understood through temporality.


2010 ◽  
pp. 2298-2309
Author(s):  
Justin Meza ◽  
Qin Zhu

Knowledge is the fact or knowing something from experience or via association. Knowledge organization is the systematic management and organization of knowledge (Hodge, 2000). With the advent of Web 2.0, Mashups have become a hot new thing on the Web. A mashup is a Web site or a Web application that combines content from more than one source and delivers it in an integrated way (Fichter, 2006). In this article, we will first explore the concept of mashups and look at the components of a mashup. We will provide an overview of various mashups on the Internet. We will look at literature about knowledge and the knowledge organization. Then, we will elaborate on our experiment of a mashup in an enterprise environment. We will describe how we mixed the content from two sets of sources and created a new source: a novel way of organizing and displaying HP Labs Technical Reports. The findings from our project will be included and some best practices for creating enterprise mashups will be given. The future of enterprise mashups will be discussed as well.


Author(s):  
Hudson Moura

Snack culture is the new phenomenon that shrinks media cultural products and can be easily shared on social networks of the Internet. Thus, it can be consumed in a reduced amount of time circulating instantly all over the globe. These tiny and snappy materials are changing people’s habits, transforming passive viewers into active users, and promoting equal access to all, and requiring no professional skills. Viewers now can also produce cultural and social content in widespread virtual communities (based on the Web 2.0) that are increasingly interactive. This chapter presents and analyses a variety of media snacks that form and circulate as snack culture; it also elucidates some of those current changes that are shaping today’s relationship between society and media.


2010 ◽  
pp. 343-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Eijkman

This chapter addresses a significant theoretical gap in the Web 2.0 (or “Web 2.0+,” as it is referred to by the author) literature by analyzing the educational implications of the “seismic shift in epistemology” (Dede, 2008, p. 80) that is occurring. As already identified in Chapter 2, there needs to be a consistency between our own epistemic assumptions and those embedded in Web 2.0. Hence the underlying premise of this chapter is that the adoption of social media in education implies the assumption of a very different epistemology—a distinctly different way of understanding the nature of knowledge and the process of how we come to know. The argument is that this shift toward a radically altered, “postmodernist,” epistemic architecture of participation will transform the way in which educators and their students create and manage the production, dissemination, and validation of knowledge. In future, the new “postmodern” Web will increasingly privilege what we may usefully think of as a socially focused and performance-oriented approach to knowledge production. The expected subversion and disruption of our traditional or modernist power-knowledge system, as already evident in the Wikipedia phenomenon, will reframe educational practices and promote a new power-knowledge system, made up of new, social ways in which to construct and control knowledge across the Internet. The chapter concludes by advocating strategies for critical engagement with this new epistemic learning space, and posing a number of critical questions to guide ongoing practice.


Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Branch ◽  
Joanne De Groot

This paper presents findings from a graduate-level required class for teacher-librarians in Web 2.0. It provides a rich description of how teachers and teacher-librarians are using Web 2.0 technologies in their personal, teaching and learning, and professional development. No longer are they consumers of Web 2.0 but they are creators and sharers of new content on the Internet. There was a much more balanced use of Web 2.0 after the class – many of the teachers and teacher-librarians had never used a Web 2.0 tool in their personal, teaching or professional life before the class. Teachers and teacher-librarians who completed the Web 2.0 class saw themselves as technology leaders in their schools and districts.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Liu ◽  
Kwangjo Kim

Since 2004 the term “Web 2.0” has generated a revolution on the World Wide Web and it has developed new ideas, services, application to improve and facilitate communications through the web. Technologies associated with the second-generation of the World Wide Web enable virtually anyone to share their data, documents, observations, and opinions on the Internet. The serious applications of Web 2.0 are sparse and this paper assesses its use in the context of applications, reflections, and collaborative spatial decision-making based on Web generations and in a particular Web 2.0.


Author(s):  
Alana Northrop

This chapter presents the results of a random study of US cities’ and mayors’ uses of five social networking features: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as city use of online surveys. Data from a random sample of fifty cities stratified on population indicates that only Facebook is used by a majority of cities’ websites and mayors. The lower level of use of Twitter and YouTube and less than universal use of Facebook is complemented by a very low level of citizen followers, viewers, and friends. Most cities also do not use online surveys on their websites. This low use likely just reflects government’s tendency to follow trends rather than lead and is not a statement about cities’ lack of citizen orientation. It also appears to be a reflection of smaller cities adopting information technologies more slowly than larger cities when we compare 2010 data with that from early in 2011. Nonetheless, the result is that the potential positive opportunities for cities and mayors to connect and converse with citizens via Web 2.0 are under-realized if we just look at the Internet social networking face presented, and if cities do not get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon in this regard, citizens, especially younger ones, may feel that it is another example of government being out of touch with what is happening in the “real” world.


2011 ◽  
pp. 213-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa M. Regueras ◽  
Elena Verdú ◽  
María A. Pérez ◽  
Juan Pablo de Castro ◽  
María J. Verdú

Nowadays, most of electronic applications, including e-learning, are based on the Internet and the Web. As the Web advances, applications should progress in accordance with it. People in the Internet world have started to talk about Web 2.0. This chapter discusses how the concepts of Web 2.0 can be transferred to e-learning. First, the new trends of the Web (Web 2.0) are introduced and the Web 2.0 technologies are reviewed. Then, it is analysed how Web 2.0 can be transferred and applied to the learning process, in terms of methodologies and tools, and taking into account different scenarios and roles. Next, some good practices and recommendations for E-Learning 2.0 are described. Finally, we present our opinion, conclusions, and proposals about the future trends driving the market.


Author(s):  
Manuel A. Broullón-Lozano

En primer lugar, el fenómeno selfie consiste simplemente en volver del revés la sintaxis fotográfica con el fin de hacer coincidir en la misma instancia al fotógrafo y al objeto fotografiado. No obstante, más allá de esta operación, el selfie tiene que ver con el régimen escópico de la sociedad de comienzos del siglo XXI. El presente ensayo analiza un archivo de fotografías digitales tomadas y publicadas en Internet durante el año 2014, todas ellas compuestas de acuerdo con esta estructura enunciativa auto-consciente. En último término, se tratará de establecer una tipología cultural semiótica en torno a la estructura del ver y del ser visto a través de la web 2.0. Abstract:First of all, the selfie phenomena consists on turning inside the photoghraphic syntax, in order to concentrate into the same instance the photographer and the object of the photography. In addition to this, it has to deal with the visual structure of the society at the begining of the XXIst century. On that way, this essay may analyze some digital pictures which has been taken and published on the Internet during the year 2014 which have been composed according to this self conscient enunciation. At least we may be able to build a semiotic cultural typology about the structure of watching and being watched through the web 2.0.Palabras clave:selfie; sí mismo; cultura visual digital; fotografía digital; panopticon; semiótica.Keywords:Selfie; Self; Visual Digital Culture; Digital Photography; Panopticon; Semiotics.


Author(s):  
JAKUB CZOPEK

Jakub Czopek, Opowieść transmedialna jako przykład kreacyjnych możliwości fandomu [Transmedia story as an example of creative possibilities of fandom]. Interdyscyplinarne Konteksty Pedagogiki Specjalnej, nr 23, Poznań 2018. Pp. 191-202. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 2300-391X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14746/ikps.2018.23.11 The subject of the article is the creative activity of fan communities (fandom), with particular emphasis on the transmedia storytelling, i.e. the story told simultaneously within various media. The development of the Internet in the Web 2.0 formula has opened a number of possibilities for the creation of fandoms centered around a particular series, movies, books or games. The main manifestations of the activity of these groups can be reduced on the one hand to analyzing and commenting on a given text of culture, and on the other hand, to develop it, by adding new stories, often using other medium than the one originally used.


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