scholarly journals Death in digital spaces: social practices and narratives

Author(s):  
Stefania Graikousi ◽  
Maria Sideri

Purpose: In post-modern society, Internet and social media mediate between daily life processes such as death, establishing new forms of social interaction among social actors and creating new norms. The creation of digital cemeteries and the usage of the services they offer by Internet users, the conversion of a deceased person’s Facebook profile into a profile “Remembering” or the replacement of a user's profile photo by a black background in cases of grieving, demonstrate emphatically the new dimensions that the event of death takes on Internet and social media, leading to the building of a public experience, despite the fact that in Western societies death is considered to be a private affair.Methods: This paper based on an in-depth review of the literature deals with death as an event mediated by new technologies, since Internet and social media have given the opportunity for new narratives about the experience of death and have contributed to the emergence of new social practices.Conclusions: Users’ interaction in digital environments, on the account of death, generates new broader social relationships, while the operating terms of digital media enable the emergence of new death-related practices that probably substitute traditional rituals, having though the same purpose. At the same time, the continuing presence of the deceased in the digital world ensures a form of "immortality" for him/her, even if not preselected, while at the same time it seems to contribute to the maintenance of a relationship between the living and the deceased.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.A. Sharonova ◽  
E.V. Avdeeva

The rapid development of information technologies in the formation of online or digital environments has a significant impact on the transformation of society contributing to the development of Smart society. This is largely due to the formation of a Smart environment based on the introduction of new technologies. In changing the patterns of social life, these new technologies require and stimulate the transformation of social norms and values. For example, simplified communication between people, expressed in the transfer of instant messages through mobile applications (messengers) gains popularity. Such messages replace verbal communication through mobile devices. The use of modern digital technologies contributes to developing new characteristics of activities, for example, multitasking, which is expressed in the ability to conduct several conversations and perform several actions in parallel. The aim of this study is to find the main trends and differences, and predict the behavior patterns of different age groups in the process of forming a Digital society. Changes can happen swiftly or slowly, in part determined by the speed of release of new information products. There is a latent transformation of generations’ existence in modern society from natural to imposed forced skills against the backdrop of these technological transformations. This research has identified the differences in the perception and attitude of different age groups to this transformation. Keywords: Smart society, Digital society, smart environment, digital media


Visualidades ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lurdi Blauth ◽  
Alexandra Eckert Nunes

O estudo aborda conceitos relacionados à mediação e à convergência de novas tecnologias, mídias digitais e fenômenos socioculturais presentes em produções da arte atual. Trata da interação de formas de comunicação e de informação operada pela internet e redes sociais, enfocando nos meios de troca de ideias e conceitos antecipados pela Mail Art ou Arte Postal.AbstractThe study approaches concepts related to mediation and to the convergence of new technologies, digital media and socio-cultural phenomena that can be found in present days art productions. It is also about the interaction of communication forms and of information operated through the internet and social media, focusing on ways of exchanging ideas and concepts that were anticipated by Mail Art or Postal Art.ResumenEl estudio aborda conceptos relacionados con la mediación y la convergencia de nuevas tecnologías, medios digitales y fenómenos socioculturales presentes en producciones del arte actual. Se trata de la interacción de formas de comunicación e información operadas por Internet y en las redes sociales, centrándose en los medios de intercambio de ideas y en los conceptos anticipados por el Mail Art o Arte Postal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Szulc

AbstractThe practice of profile making has become ubiquitous in digital culture. Internet users are regularly invited, and usually required, to create a profile for a plethora of digital media, including mega social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Understanding profiles as a set of identity performances, I argue that the platforms employ profiles to enable and incentivize particular ways and foreclose other ways of self-performance. Drawing on research into digital media and identities, combined with mediatization theories, I show how the platforms: (a) embrace datafication logic (gathering as much data as possible and pinpointing the data to a particular unit); (b) translate the logic into design and governance of profiles (update stream and profile core); and (c) coax—at times coerce—their users into making of abundant but anchored selves, that is, performing identities which are capacious, complex, and volatile but singular and coherent at the same time.


2021 ◽  
pp. 170-195
Author(s):  
Elena I. Rasskazova ◽  
Galina V. Soldatova ◽  
Yulia Y. Neyaskina ◽  
Olga S. Shiriaeva

Relevance. The modern society creates the image of a successful person as actively interacting with different information flows, including an impressive stream of news content. This paper assumes that there is a personal need for tracking and spreading news that develops in the interaction between person and digital world. The individual level of this need could explain the interaction with information (its critical and uncritical dissemination) and the subjective experience of its redundancy and inaccuracy, including those experiences and actions in a pandemic situation. The aim of the study was to reveal the relationship of the subjective need for news with personal values, beliefs about technologies (“technophilia”) and the dissemination of news about the pandemic. Method. 270 people (aged 18 to 61) filled out The short (Schwartz) Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), Beliefs about New Technologies Questionnaire, Monitoring of Information about Coronavirus Scale as well as items on the subjective need for receiving and disseminating news, readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of news about pandemics, subjective experiences of redundancy and distrust of pandemic-related information. Results. According to the results, the Need for News Scale allows assessing the subjective importance of receiving news and discussing them with other people and is characterized by sufficient consistency and factor validity. The need for regular news is more pronounced among men, older people, people with higher education, married people, people who have children, while the need to discuss news is not related to sociodemographic factors. For people, who are more prone to technophilia, it is more important to regularly receive and discuss news information with others, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between technophilia and monitoring news about coronavirus. The need for news dissemination mediates the relationship between technophilia and readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of information about the pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie McGuinty

The practice of crisis communication has evolved since the rise of digital technologies and social media. Defined as an unexpected and non-routine event with high levels of uncertainty, crisis management plans and strategies are essential for organizations’ successes. Failure to strategically manage crises through both traditional and digital media may result in significant damages and losses. This MRP examines a recent corporate crisis - the case of Chipotle Mexican Grill during the 2015-2016 E. coli outbreak across the United-States - and looks at how the social media strategy (namely Twitter) influenced the outcome of the case. Using a combination of data analytics, company financials, and theoretical frameworks, this research brings to light the importance of measuring online data, and makes suggestions on how companies may use social media to manage various types of crises. Keywords: crisis communication, crisis theory, crisis management, crisis strategies, image repair, social media, crisis and technology, brand equity


Author(s):  
Kamil Demirhan

This chapter analyzes the capacity of social media usage and the social media strategies of political parties that became the members of Turkish Parliament after 2011 election. The social media usage increases in parallel to the improvements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and it becomes an important tool with its communicative functions to realize activities in social, political, and economic fields. In the globalization process, developments in ICTs and changes in the meaning of democracy have been realized parallel to each other. Politics has become more open to interaction and the participation of different actors. ICTs have created new opportunities to interaction and participation of social actors. These improvements require transformations in the role and functions of political parties. They have to arrange their programs and structures according to participative understanding of democracy and new technologies. Social media usage is seen as a requirement for political parties and party leaders for adaptation to these developments, and it is also seen as a device with its potential for realizing participation, communication, and interaction to adapt to the changes in the understanding of politics.


2015 ◽  
pp. 1196-1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamil Demirhan

This chapter analyzes the capacity of social media usage and the social media strategies of political parties that became the members of Turkish Parliament after 2011 election. The social media usage increases in parallel to the improvements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and it becomes an important tool with its communicative functions to realize activities in social, political, and economic fields. In the globalization process, developments in ICTs and changes in the meaning of democracy have been realized parallel to each other. Politics has become more open to interaction and the participation of different actors. ICTs have created new opportunities to interaction and participation of social actors. These improvements require transformations in the role and functions of political parties. They have to arrange their programs and structures according to participative understanding of democracy and new technologies. Social media usage is seen as a requirement for political parties and party leaders for adaptation to these developments, and it is also seen as a device with its potential for realizing participation, communication, and interaction to adapt to the changes in the understanding of politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-607
Author(s):  
Werner H. Kunz ◽  
Gianfranco Walsh

PurposeDigital media has revolutionized societies and changed forever how we do business. This paper aims to determine the current scope of service research in the area of digital media, identifying research gaps and introducing new research contributions to complement our knowledge of digital media.Design/methodology/approachBased on all service articles of the SERVSIG literature alert system from 2016 to 2019, a subset of digital media articles was identified and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) text-mining methods were used on the abstracts and titles of the articles for topic modeling of the field. Dominant research topics were identified and depicted in a two-dimensional space.FindingsThe study identifies eight distinct topic areas of digital media in service research and shows their relationship to each other in a two-dimensional space. A clear tendency in service research towards taking primarily a customer (versus business perspective) of digital media can be observed. Further, for some journals, a trend towards specialization on particular topics could be detected.Research limitations/implicationsThis article advocates for more digital media research with a stronger business perspective. Further, although particular new technologies are exciting to discuss, it seems that the importance of customer relationship topics in digital media is not reflected in the current digital media research as needed.Originality/valueThe article uses a quantitative–explorative approach to determine the current state of research in regard to digital media in services. The authors introduce 11 new studies that aim to close the knowledge gap in critical areas of digital media.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-811
Author(s):  
Silvia Dibeltulo ◽  
Sarah Culhane ◽  
Daniela Treveri Gennari

Abstract Is there a way to ensure older adults can bridge the digital divide and engage with online cultural heritage? How can cinema-going memories encourage cross-generational engagement? This article proposes to address these issues by using the Italian Cinema Audiences research project as a case study, and specifically cinema-going memories as intangible cultural heritage (Ercole et al., 2016, Cinema heritage in Europe: preserving and sharing culture by engaging with film exhibition and audiences. Editorial. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 11(Summer): 1–12. Web. ISSN: 2009-4078). It aims to tackle the difficulty of engaging the older generation with the digital world, by proposing and testing new ways to resolve it. Through a mixed-methods ethnographic approach, this article investigates different strategies: the use of social media platforms; a cross-generational activity involving Historypin, a digital, user-generated archive of crowdsourced historical material; an online dedicated archive built in collaboration with the older adults involved in the project. These different solutions aim not only at increasing digital engagement among older adults, but also at furthering younger generations’ involvement in shared cultural heritage in an online context. By focusing on the memories of cinema-going in 1950s Italy, the article explores the implications of the advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches. It also tests Anja K. Leist’s research findings (2013, Social media use of older adults: a mini-review. Gerontology, 59(4): 378–84) on the key role of moderators (the younger generation) to help novice users (the older generation) in the ‘continuous engagement’ in digital environments. We conclude that in order to bridge the digital divide two components are necessary simultaneously: the creation of digital platforms in which the older generations are both curators and users, and the support of and interaction with younger generations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-178
Author(s):  
Alina R. Latypova ◽  

The following paper considers the immanent principles of digital media evolution. The features of the evolutional route of digital objects are conditioned by glitches, errors and bugs, which appear in media functioning, what in its turn gives birth to the new forms, structures and configurations of digital reality. The glitches are considered not only as a kind of digital mutations, but also as a sign of activity of media. Decisions elaborated from the programs’ failures enlarge the resolution capacity of new technologies. The paper provides an analysis of certain errors and glitches, which engineers, programmers, game designers faced with during their work with digital environment. The theoretical framework includes Henri Bergson’s theory of creative evolution, Gram Harman’s object-oriented philosophy, media philosophical approach to the problem of the activity of object proposed by Valery Savchuk and the theory of self-organisation and autopoiesis of the social systems worked out by Niklas Luhmann. The analysis of digital objects activity demonstrates two levels of functioning. The first one, fictional level, reveals mainly (but not only) in the computer games and concerns the content of media, when we gain a habit to interact with digital objects/characters as if they are real. The second level, operational, realises in the digital environment in general and concerns the form of media. On this level, glitches and bugs have crucial meaning, because they might evoke the changes in the digital world organisation, starting from the local decisions for the certain program (e.g. the elaboration of the new ways in solving locomotional tasks in simulations, which might be later use in other projects) and ending with the replacement of practices and representations typical for the human of digital era. The paper shows that it is possible to talk about digital evolution not in terms of the history of technological inventions, but in terms of the changes in digital objects caused by the inner logic of media, independently from the human will and expectations.


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