Notes from Notes on Blindness: The challenges of the in-house1 film production model in independent cinema

Scene ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dusan Petkovic
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Production Model ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Independent Cinema ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Sales Pitch

This article, derived from a larger ethnographic research created around the production of the award-winning independent film Notes on Blindness (2016) and conducted by a researcher active as a film professional, explores the deeper consequences of choosing to pursue a production ‘in-house’. Through participant observation, Actor-Network Theory and negotiation between film practice and research, the researcher finds independent filmmakers caught between the opposing trends of high-end industry and the digital economies. The organization forms observed in this article stand opposite to the prevalent globalized creative labour trends motivated by the internet and new technologies, and can best be described as a revival of Richard Sennett’s craft workshop in the digital era. These are ultra-dense creative spaces where craftspersons nurture their creative impulses and shield them from the negative aspects of the technological and economic upheaval. In the hope that the findings will inform future filmmakers in the role of this specific type of organization in delivering the intended output, this article offers insights beyond the industry self-avowal and sales pitch.

Empowering LIS Professionals and Academic Library Users in a Networked and Digital Environment

2013 ◽  
pp. 251-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Academic Libraries ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Education Programme ◽  
End Users ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Library Users ◽  
Library Resources ◽  
User Education

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the modernisation of academic libraries in the ICT era, changing format of the library resources and types of computer-based services being offered by the academic libraries. In view of this, the present chapter discusses various aspects of LIS training and user education, emphasising the need to empower our LIS professionals and library users so that they benefit from the new technologies by using new ICTs for exploring the world of knowledge for their academic pursuit and excellence in higher education and research. The first part of the chapter discusses the recent development in the areas of application of ICT in academic libraries, availability, and usage of electronic resources by the library users, new services provided by the academic libraries to their end users. The second part of the chapter highlights the need for empowering LIS professionals working in academic libraries and their end users in electronic / digital era, enumerates the role of various agencies that are engaged in making library users aware of printed as well as e-resources, and explains the role of Web 2.0/Library 2.0 in making library users more interactive and well informed about the resources, products, and services of the academic libraries to their clientele. The third part of the chapter discusses the user education programme/user awareness programme being organised and offered to the students and research scholars by the Assam University Library (Rabindra Library, Silchar) as a case study. While concluding the chapter, some suggestions and recommendations are also discussed in brief.

Challenges to ethical publishing in the digital era

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Jessica Curno
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Electronic Publishing ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Publication Ethics ◽  
Electronic Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to lay out some of the more complex issues arising in the area of publication ethics. The impact of electronic publishing and electronic information is a main focus of the paper. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws in particular upon the work of the Committee on Publication Ethics including illustrative cases discussed at the forum, guidelines and discussion documents. Findings – Three areas are highlighted to stimulate discussion around challenges of publication ethics in the digital era. These are the role of the internet in facilitating misconduct, the issue of confidentiality in publishing and how incentives in research assessments drive author behavior. Originality/value – The paper brings together a variety of issues discussed under the broader umbrella of electronic information and new technologies in publishing.

American Electronic Constitution

2009 ◽  
pp. 54-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fortunato Musella
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Private Organizations ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Difference

The chapter is dedicated at analyzing the strategic use of new technologies in the United States. An evident synergy has been noted between the digital policy projects and the neo-liberal ideology wave that has traced origin in the fiscal crisis of the State in the 1970s. About four decades have transformed some political directions in true imperatives: public sector downsizing, cost-cutting in public agencies, decision-making privatization, and the principle of efficiency as a measure of collective action. If new public management has been imposed as a dominant paradigm for administrative restructuring, ICTs programs sustain reform objectives by putting emphasis on the sure advantages of technological applications. In addition to this, administrative reforms seem to be in continuity with some American historical tradition, in reasserting a central role of private actor in public activities and realizing a significant “fusion of political and economic power”. Digital era seems to have added a new chapter to the American corporate liberalism history, with the difference – and the aggravating circumstance – that private organizations have now more powerful instruments to control and regulate society. New technological instruments seem to be used essentially to produce a neo-liberal interpretation of government activities.

Interfaces, Efficiency, and Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Nikolay Rudenko
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Technical Support ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Support Unit ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
The Uk

In the article the author claims that the digital technologies today continue to be good topic for Actor-Network theory (ANT) research because they exemplify many famous Latourian ideas about the role of technological artifacts in moral and political life of society. By drawing upon some key insights from ANT and science and technology (STS) in general, the author tells three stories about how commercial digital application work. The stories are based upon participant observation experience of the author during his 16 months of work at the technical support unit in the UK mobile application. Firstly, the author tells about different digital interfaces in the work of the technical support that vary in how they mediate the communication with users. Second, the author shows that an inequality in the commercial app has a complex and unpredictable nature. Finally, he shows how the efficiency of the app is determined by the multiplicity of actors' ontological models that differently frame and enact their activity. After the (auto-)ethnographic experience of the author it remains open how to conjoin ANT and human-centered position of an ethnographer.

scholarly journals Exploring the Organizational Proliferation of New Technologies: An Affective Actor-Network Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sage ◽  
Chloé Vitry ◽  
Andrew Dainty
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
Zero Carbon

In this paper we explore the role of affective encounters between human and non-human bodies in the proliferation of new technologies within and across work organizations. Our exploration challenges not only the long-standing rationalism within studies of technological innovation but the anthropocentrism of burgeoning studies of technology, innovation and affect. Responding to these proclivities, we propose and elaborate an affective Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as an alternative analytical approach by cross-fertilizing ANT concepts with Deleuze’s reading of the affective philosophy of Spinoza. Our approach is elaborated further with the technological innovation of zero-carbon homes in the United Kingdom. Affective ANT is proposed to explain the profound role of affects in the circulation of technologies and of technologies in the circulation of affects. This theory contributes by challenging: studies of affect, innovation and technology to examine the significance of relational human affects in the proliferation of new technologies; organizational studies to consider the interplay of human and technical affects; and Deleuzo-Spinozian organizational studies to conceptualize how affects are organized to serve managerial interests and agendas, such as technological innovation.

scholarly journals Mainstream digitale e altre immagini urbane. Una ricerca empirica nel sito UNESCO di Palermo

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Caravello
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Urban Image ◽  
World Heritage List ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

The research deepens the role of new technologies in the construction of geographical imaginaries investigating the dimension of the offer related to the cultural heritage of the city of Palermo. The study was conducted using qualitative methods and provided for the application of two research techniques: participant observation and semi-structured interviews. By interpreting the results produced, the contribution aims to highlight the predominance of an urban image, linked to the UNESCO inclusion of the site in the World Heritage List, which is conveyed through new technologies. Developing a reflection on the alternative capacity of new media to dislocate and challenge shared images, the study will also examine the role of technologies in the production of imaginative counter-geographies.

Empowering LIS Professionals and Academic Library Users in a Networked and Digital Environment

2015 ◽  
pp. 1788-1819
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Academic Libraries ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Education Programme ◽  
End Users ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Library Users ◽  
Library Resources ◽  
User Education

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the modernisation of academic libraries in the ICT era, changing format of the library resources and types of computer-based services being offered by the academic libraries. In view of this, the present chapter discusses various aspects of LIS training and user education, emphasising the need to empower our LIS professionals and library users so that they benefit from the new technologies by using new ICTs for exploring the world of knowledge for their academic pursuit and excellence in higher education and research. The first part of the chapter discusses the recent development in the areas of application of ICT in academic libraries, availability, and usage of electronic resources by the library users, new services provided by the academic libraries to their end users. The second part of the chapter highlights the need for empowering LIS professionals working in academic libraries and their end users in electronic / digital era, enumerates the role of various agencies that are engaged in making library users aware of printed as well as e-resources, and explains the role of Web 2.0/Library 2.0 in making library users more interactive and well informed about the resources, products, and services of the academic libraries to their clientele. The third part of the chapter discusses the user education programme/user awareness programme being organised and offered to the students and research scholars by the Assam University Library (Rabindra Library, Silchar) as a case study. While concluding the chapter, some suggestions and recommendations are also discussed in brief.

Struggling for Ordinary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Cavalcante
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Face ◽  
Media And Technology ◽  
Depth Interviews

What was it like to live as a transgender person in a media environment before Caitlin Jenner, Orange Is the New Black, Transparent, and the current transgender reality TV boom? Struggling for Ordinary answers this question by examining the role of media and technology in the everyday lives of transgender people before what some call the “transgender tipping point” in popular culture. It offers a snapshot of how transgender individuals made their way toward identity and a sense of ordinary life by integrating available media into their emotional, cognitive, and everyday experiences. Informed by in-depth interviews and participant observation with transgender communities over the course of four years, the book offers a careful and richly detailed account of transgender media use and world-making. It explores how media and technology operate as arbiters of possibilities, how they franchise what is and is not possible. Struggling for Ordinary shows how transgender people turn to both old and new technologies to cultivate an understanding of their identities and to achieve the common inclusions and routine affordances of everyday life from which they are often excluded. The book also looks at the emotional and affective toll media use takes on transgender individuals, along with their resilience in the face of media disempowerment. Finally, the book complicates the queer/normal binary—recognizing the ways transgender and queer everyday life is “queerly ordinary,” a hybrid of sameness and difference, assimilation and resistance, and ordinariness and queerness.

Awards and prizes as control devices: The case of urban development project awards

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110612
Author(s):  
Alexander Styhre ◽  
Sara Brorström
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Sharp Growth ◽  
Control Devices

In the credential society, a sharp growth of the number of awards and prizes indicate an interest in assuming the authority to define quality, and to identify extraordinary accomplishments within certain jurisdictional domain. This ambition is associated not the least with ex ante awards, awards granted on basis of plans and documents that stipulate forthcoming material contributions, or other projected accomplishments. Drawing on actor network theory, the role of ex ante awards in the field of urban development is examined. Despite being epistemologically fragile entities, ex ante awards are organizationally significant as they operate as actants that provide a variety of benefits for equally award-winning agents and award-giving organizations, but also for the specific industry sector more generally. The article reports empirical data from two urban development projects in a major Swedish city, eventually receiving ex ante awards. Both projects were associated with desirable urban development qualities, boundary–spanning interests and objectives, and a recognition of shared social norms, and the awards given arguably served to strengthen the relationships between the actors included in the project work, at the same time as award-giving organizations advance their authority to define quality. The study contributes to the scholarly literature on awards by presenting an integrated analytical framework that shed light on the direct and indirect effects of formal awards. Awards and prizes are devices that enable control in credential societies, yet being undertheorized to date, and more research that examines how awards and prizes generate a variety of outcomes is welcome.

‘I want to watch movies’: Film activism and Cuban screens

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-395
Author(s):  
Zaira Zarza
Keyword(s):  
Legal Rights ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Independent Cinema ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The notion of independent cinema has generated conversations and controversies around the world as scholars have attempted to demarcate what kinds of productions fit – or do not – into the category. In the absence of major private film companies, independent cinema in Cuba includes those films made without or with minimal support from the state-run Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC). Since its foundation in 1959, ICAIC has been the main and only programmer of all films screened in theatres across the country. This article offers a brief account of the relationship between Cuban independent cinema and mainstream institutions in the last few years. As a starting point, I will consider the decision to exclude the film Santa y Andrés/Santa & Andres (Lechuga 2016) from the programme of the 38th Havana Film Festival and the debates that ensued. I will also discuss the recent cultural policies – a decree that recognizes the legal rights of independent film and audio-visual producers and the introduction of 3G data plans for citizens – that hope to spawn new forms of filmmaking in Cuba and the role of social media as a collective platform for cultural conversations in the public sphere.

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