Digital ventriloquism and celebrity access: Cameo and the emergence of paid puppeteering on digital platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110411
Author(s):  
Jenna Drenten ◽  
Evie Psarras
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Parasocial Relationships ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Power Dynamic ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
Real Housewives

Cameo is part of a growing set of new media platforms trending toward direct routes for monetizing fame. Cameo allows fans to book personalized shout-out videos and provides celebrities—celetoids and reality stars in particular—access to new modes of income, which became increasingly important amid the pandemic. This research explores how the direct monetization of the fan-celebrity relationship is re-shaping the power dynamic of these parasocial relationships. Using digital ventriloquism as an analytical lens to study reality stars (e.g. Real Housewives) on Cameo, this study introduces the concept of paid puppeteering on digital platforms, defined as a form of digital ventriloquism in which a celebrity’s public persona is manipulated and incentivized through financial means on a paid digital platform for the illusion of close parasocial connections with fans. Paid puppeteering reinforces celebrities as gig workers as Cameo mitigates fan access to celebrities—for a fee.

scholarly journals Sports broadcasting, journalism and the challenge of new media

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (53) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Kirsten Frandsen
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Sports Broadcasting

<p>This article explores the challenge faced by established media organisations integrating digital media in their production. Using a case study of a Danish broadcaster’s use of blogs in their coverage of major sports events, it is argued that the challenge is strategic in a broader sense, as the move to digital platforms is influenced by economic, organisational as well as conceptual parameters for roles. It is argued that in order to understand the potential and challenges of this case, the peculiarities of the role of sports journalists in broadcasting have to be taken into consideration. The case illustrates how their distinctive engagement with their topic and the audience makes some of them more prone to work for pleasure and produce for the digital platform on very unclear conditions, just as it influences the interaction that takes place in the blogs in various ways.</p>

scholarly journals Digital Platform Ecosystems as Living Labs for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation: A Conceptual Model Proposal

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6494
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Baran ◽  
Aleksandra Berkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Innovation Development ◽  
Sustainable Entrepreneurship ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Living Labs ◽  
Platform Ecosystems ◽  
The Relationship

The main idea of the paper is to combine modern research methods (as living labs that enable research in a real-life setting) with the new technological opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation development (as digital platforms) to search for innovative solutions, while addressing the sustainable development problems. Thus, the paper aims to explain how real value for society is created within digital platform ecosystems and how they employ to this end novel solutions that better address existing social problems. Consequently, it proposes a conceptual framework to research and develop sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation with the use of digital platforms. This research study takes a synthesizing conceptual approach that seeks to integrate the existing knowledge drawn on two major streams of research: living labs as a methodology and digital platform ecosystems to enrich the theory of sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation development. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing a novel conceptual model of digital platform ecosystems as living labs for sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation. The model depicts digital platform ecosystems examined as living labs and the implicit processes that include platform users in problem-solving and value-creation in real-life settings. The novelty of the model stems from framing these processes that capture the relationship between individuals and opportunities as the foundations of entrepreneurship and the relationship between the problem space and the solution space, where the opportunities occur.

What is Cyber or Digital Autoethnography?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-279
Author(s):  
Ahmet Atay
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
New Media Technologies

Because of rapid developments in new media technologies and digital platforms, we live in a media-driven and highly digitalized society. Most of our everyday experiences are either highly mediated or digitalized. Hence, we live in a complex and multidimensional cyberculture. In order to understand and make sense of our experiences and identities within this culture, as scholars, we require fresh, new methods; hence, I propose cyber or digital autoethnography. In this essay, I define cyber or digital autoethnography and making a case for their importance. I will also outline cyber or digital autoethnography’s potentiality.

Uberization in Paris – the issue of trust between a digital platform and digital workers

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wentrup ◽  
H. Richard Nakamura ◽  
Patrik Ström
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Market Entry ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Foreign Market ◽  
General Assumption ◽  
Foreign Market Entry ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform

Purpose Using the lens of Uber’s digital workers in Paris, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how the trust-building mechanism is constructed between a digital platform and its digital workers in a foreign market entry. Design/methodology/approach This is a case study based on empirical data from in-depth interviews with 35 Uber drivers. A cross-disciplinary literature framework from mainly international business and internet geography theory and a reflexive qualitative methodology are applied. Findings Results show that the relationship between the digital platform and the digital workers is characterized by mistrust and suffers from decreasing commitment levels soon after market entry. Uber mitigates its mistrust via control and scarce mechanisms. The digital drivers’ “illusionary freedom”, a state in which they feel they can log on and log off at any time, enables the digital platform to gradually lower its commitment. The authors find that the mistrust does not seem to hamper the digital platform’s business performance. Research limitations/implications The paper mainly covers the digital workers’ perspective and the case of Uber’s market entry in Paris. Social implications This paper implies that digitally conveyed control seems to come at the cost of lowered human trust. Given the pace at which digital control systems are permeating society, this could eventually lower the whole societal trust level. Originality/value The authors criticize incumbent international business theory for not being sufficiently able to explain a contemporary digital business logic and the authors challenge the general assumption that successful internationalization is built through trust. The authors contribute with the conceptualization of a new technical market entry mode for digital platforms – “digitally controlled proxies”.

Affordances, remediation, and digital mourning: A comparative case study of two AIDS memorials

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069801989468
Author(s):  
Spencer P Cherasia
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Digital Repository ◽  
Collaborative Project ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Aids Memorial Quilt ◽  
Names Project

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is a collaborative project that memorializes individuals who have died of AIDS-related causes. Since its inception, it has become the world’s largest public folk art project. Scholars have noted the Quilt’s materiality, scope, and cultural importance to collective memory processes related to HIV/AIDS. More recently, discussions of collective memory in the digital public sphere have attracted attention from new media theorists and memory scholars alike. @theAIDSmemorial (TAM) is an Instagram account that serves as a digital repository for a new form of connective memory. By assessing two AIDS memorials as comparative cases, this research argues that TAM’s digital affordances of interactivity and reach are evident, although in assessing the digital remediation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the materiality, metaphoric origins, and scope of the Quilt cannot be rendered on digital platforms, representing a loss in affective engagement.

Using the Past and Bridging the Gap: Premodern Islamic Legal Texts in New Media

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmood Kooria
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Audio Video

This article analyses the internal dynamics of online Islamic legal discourses embedded in their offline and multimedia contexts that use of a rich repository of legal texts composed over a period of about a thousand years. Through their vigorous and spirited engagements with these historical texts, contemporary Islamic jurists simultaneously create new digital platforms in mass and social media to disseminate their ideas. In so doing, they perpetuate a long textual legal tradition through hypertext commentaries and super-commentaries. The premodern texts are thus reborn through new forms ofḥāshiyas such as audio commentaries, video commentaries, audio-video commentaries and hypertext commentaries. These new developments from the age of new media contribute to the textuallongue-duréeof Islamic law. Tracking the peregrinations of three Islamic legal texts in the mass media and cyber world, I argue that the dissemination of premodern Islamic legal texts via cyber space has resulted in the “democratization” of a knowledge-system that was previously dominated by trained fuqahā and affiliated institutional structures and has enlivened the traditional school affiliations.

Couchsurfing with Bateson: An ecology of digital platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062110586
Author(s):  
Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając ◽  
Attila Márton ◽  
Mike Zundel
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Stress Adaptation ◽  
Tolerance Limits ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Organizational Patterns ◽  
Scaling Variables

Digital platforms radically alter socio-economic and organizational patterns. In an ecological sense, they enable the rapid extension of tolerance limits by digitally scaling variables such as the availability of accommodation or labour. However, such maximization of specific variables in a complex ecology bears the danger of pathological runaway patterns. In our paper we draw on the work of Gregory Bateson to outline an analytical approach for the study of digital platforms as ecological phenomena, focussing on the effects of digitalization on the context in which platforms operate. To study such meta-patterns, we elaborate three interrelated concepts: stress, adaptation and budgets of flexibility. We exemplify these ideas through a longitudinal study of the early digital platform Couchsurfing and develop implications for our understanding of technology and organization.

Forest Fire Scenarios in Digital Platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-176
Author(s):  
Liliana Gonçalves ◽  
Lídia Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Forest Fire ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Fire Scenarios ◽  
Facebook Pages

Forest fires are widespread in Portugal, particularly in the summer. Recently, in 2017, Portugal had two great fires. As a result, more than 120 people died, hundreds suffered injuries and registered significant economic and environmental losses. Since then, and due to the evolution and democratization of the internet and technology devices, forest fire content is much more common in cyberspace. Thus, to understand this issue, the authors propose to outline a profile of the digital platforms used in forest fire situations. The goal is to understand the uses and commitment arising from forest fires' issues in digital platforms by presenting a conceptual framework in Portugal's specific case. The authors analyzed webpages, mobile apps, Facebook pages and groups, and YouTube channels, focusing on forest fires contents. By understanding the kind of digital platform, its contents, uses, and interaction, this chapter contributes to understanding digital platforms' role in crisis and disaster scenarios such as wildfires.

“The Leaver” and “The Left”

2021 ◽  
pp. 288-306
Author(s):  
Nathan John Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Head Coach ◽  
Sports Fans ◽  
Parasocial Relationships ◽  
Reader Responses ◽  
Parasocial Relationship ◽  
Group Member ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ebb And Flow

The study of parasocial relationships has surged in recent years, as fans use new media to access even more information about various media personae. Most work involving sports fans has examined behavior at a particular time rather than over time. This article investigates how Kansas basketball fans reacted to the departure of former head coach Roy Williams over a period of nine years. Opinions were culled from reader responses to articles mentioning Williams on KUsports.com. Each comment was analyzed thematically and then coded by an expressed grief state using the Kubler-Ross (1969) model. The notion of parasocial divorce is introduced to describe the depth of parasocial relationships for highly motivated fans. The findings reveal an ebb and flow of affection and antipathy toward Williams over time. Results demonstrate how quickly fans may grow to loathe a former group member, but also how rapidly and under what conditions that parasocial relationship may be repaired.

Digital platforms in Russia: competition between national and foreign multi-sided platforms stimulates growth and innovation

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaroslav Eferin ◽  
Yuri Hohlov ◽  
Carlo Rossotto
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Emerging Market ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Winner Takes All

Purpose This paper aims to test the “winner-takes-all” vs the “winner-takes-some” scenarios in digital platform competition dynamics in emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an analytical reference framework to assess the emergence of digital platforms in Russia, including four elements: definition of multi-sided platforms (MSPs), platform enablers, business models and competitive dynamics. Findings This paper concludes that Russia shows that a healthy competition between national and foreign MSPs led to the emergence of a shared equilibrium, where local platforms were able to retain a significant, often majority, share vis-à-vis foreign and global platforms. Research limitations/implications This paper stands as a counterpoint to the widespread conviction that digital platform dynamics will result into a “winner-takes-all” scenario and dominance of global platforms. Practical implications This case study offers practical data and analysis that can be used to create a baseline and evaluate the dynamics of digital platforms in emerging markets. It offers data, trends and evidence on Russia’s digital economy. Social implications This research provides a logical framework to help policymakers take decisions on a policy framework to regulate platforms in emerging markets. The good outcome of competition between local and foreign platforms should emerge as a policy objective to achieve in most emerging markets. Originality/value This case study is the first baseline to assess the dynamics of competition between national and foreign digital platforms in the Russian market. It is one of the first papers to tackle the market of digital platforms in an emerging and developing economy. It tries to address the debate between “winner-takes-all” and “winner-takes some” competition equilibrium through a concrete case study in an important G20 emerging market economy.

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