scholarly journals Media and basic desires: An approach to measuring the mediatization of daily human life

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stina Bengtsson ◽  
Karin Fast ◽  
André Jansson ◽  
Johan Lindell

AbstractThe extended reliance on media can be seen as one indicator of mediatization. But even though we can assume that the pervasive character of digital media essentially changes the way people experience everyday life, we cannot take these experiences for granted. There has recently been a formulation of three tasks for mediatization research; historicity, specificity and measurability, needed to empirically verify mediatization processes across time and space. In this article, we present a tool designed to handle these tasks, by measuring the extent to which people experience that media reach into the deeper layers of daily human life. The tool was tested in an empirical study conducted in Sweden in 2017. The results show that perceived media reliance is played out in relation to three types of basic desires: (1) (re)productive desires, (2) recognition desires, and (3) civic desires, and is socially structured and structuring. We argue this tool, in diachronic analyses, can measure one important aspect of mediatization.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Suresh Gautam

The paper aims to explore how local epistemologies are emerged from the indeterminacy of the position and momentum of the researcher.  Using the symbol of Mandala, I depict such indeterminacy during the research process, which eventually fosters transformative research space.  I researched on urban youth of Kathmandu and their everyday life during 2012-2016.  During the research, I was engaged with some youth in Kathmandu for understanding their ways of being and living over there.  Despite being guided by particular epistemologies, I sought some local epistemologies from the narratives of my participants, which not only guided my research process but also demonstrated indefinite nature of reality. It helped me to understand the everyday life of urban youth in Kathmandu.  In so doing, here, I reflect the research process which interacts with other epistemic indeterminacy around Mandala.  Mandala in the Eastern (Hindu and Buddhist) tradition is known as a representation of a complex web of human life and activities, which portrays the mesocosm of everyday life of urban youth as integral part of time and space.


Author(s):  
Gheorghita Ghinea ◽  
Oluwakemi Ademoye

Olfaction (smell) is one of our commonly used senses in everyday life. However, this is not the case in digital media, where it is an exception to the rule that usually only our auditory and visual senses are employed. In mulsemedia, however, together with these traditional senses, we envisage that the olfactory will increasingly be employed, especially so with the increase in computing processing abilities and in the sophistication of olfactory devices employed. It is not surprising, however, that there are still many unanswered questions in the use of olfaction in mulsemedia. Accordingly in this chapter we present the results of an empirical study which explored one such question, namely does the correct association of scent and content enhance the user experience of multimedia applications?’


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 4590-4607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stine Lomborg ◽  
Nanna Bonde Thylstrup ◽  
Julie Schwartz

This article conceptualizes the experience of self-tracking as flow, a central technique, utilized by digital media companies to hook their users. We argue the notion of flow is valuable for understanding both the temporal lock-ins of self-tracking practices in sequences and repetition, and the way self-tracking technologies thrive on data sequences for retaining users and creating viable businesses. To substantiate this, we present a qualitative empirical study of how users experience flow when tracking various aspects of their personal lives. Users find self-tracking technology and the metrics they generate to have much more limited relevance and thus guide their attention elsewhere. If they are hooked, they are so in ways different from those projected by the technology. Users find meaning in their self-tracking in moments of registration, allocution, consultation and conversation, but also problematize their attachment to specific temporal tracking regimes.


Author(s):  
Cory Doctorow

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein resonated in 19th century England, and still speaks to us today, because it captures people’s anxieties about the effects of runaway technological change. But technological change is not a force of nature. The way technology changes – and the way it changes us – is the result of choices that we make as makers and users of tools, individually and collectively. Today digital technologies are making mass surveillance a part of everyday life, demonstrating how technologies can be marshalled by people in power to control others. The theory of the “adjacent possible,” which helps explain why certain imaginative technological visions emerge into reality at specific moments, in specific contexts, helps us understand how to understand technological change, prepare for its transformative effects, and decide to build and use technologies in ways that enrich human life, rather than exploit it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Liis Jõhvik

Abstract Initially produced in 1968 as a three-part TV miniseries, and restored and re-edited in 2008 as a feature-length film, Dark Windows (Pimedad aknad, Tõnis Kask, Estonia) explores interpersonal relations and everyday life in September 1944, during the last days of Estonia’s occupation by Nazi Germany. The story focuses on two young women and the struggles they face in making moral choices and falling in love with righteous men. The one who slips up and falls in love with a Nazi is condemned and made to feel responsible for the national decay. This article explores how the category of gender becomes a marker in the way the film reconstructs and reconstitutes the images of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The article also discusses the re-appropriation process and analyses how re-editing relates to remembering of not only the filmmaking process and the wartime occupation, but also the Estonian women and how the ones who ‘slipped up’ are later reintegrated into the national narrative. Ultimately, the article seeks to understand how this film from the Soviet era is remembered as it becomes a part of Estonian national filmography.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Laura Marcu

Abstract The article presents an analysis of the awareness of the population about the kinds of contagious diseases to which it is exposed, as well as ways to prevent known and applied in everyday life. Presentation exposes results of a survey in the Dambovita county of Romania and tries to explain it by reference to information campaigns on contagious diseases. The empirical study reveals the main contagious diseases known and those less known by people, the favourite sources of information, the main measures of prevention known and applied by individuals. Finally some considerations are made regarding the future organization of information campaigns in this area.


2013 ◽  
pp. 160-166
Author(s):  
Izabela Front

The present article seeks to analyze the way in which the blasphemous figure of God in Dolce agonia by Nancy Huston allows the author to describe the sacred element in human life, seen as deprived of transcendental character. This is possible thanks to the three aspects of the text dependent on the type of God’s figure, which are: the contrast between passages marked by the cynical God’s voice and passages focused on man’s life filled with suffering; the tone and the appropriation of time var-iations and, finally, the double character of God who, at the same time, is indifferent to man’s lot while touched by his capacity of love.


Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker

This chapter takes up the themes of Chapter 3—loving beauty’s formative power—in a dialogue with contemporary philosophers Alexander Nehamas and Elaine Scarry, as well as with (to a lesser extent) Iris Murdoch. It explores the nature of love, beauty, and morality through a dialogue across historical–contemporary, theological–philosophical lines. A number of prominent modern criticisms of Augustine focus on a fundamental feature of his thought: that everything in human life is ordered towards the promise of heavenly happiness. This chapter shows some of the resources Augustine offers contemporary discussions of aesthetics by arguing that the way he links beauty and morality accounts for the ethical demands of love elicited by attraction to beauty.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110008
Author(s):  
Maharaj K. Raina

Greatness, a relative concept, has been historically approached in different ways. Considering greatness of character as different from greatness of talents, some cultures have conceptualized greatness as an expression of human spirit leading to transcending existing patterns and awakening inner selves to new levels of consciousness, rising above times and circumstances, and to change the direction of human tide. Individuals characterized by such greatness working with higher selves, guided by moral and ethical imperatives, and possessing noble impulses of human nature are considered to be manifesting spiritual greatness. Examining such greatness is the goal of this article. Keeping Indian tradition in focus, this article has studied how greatness has been conceptualized in that particular tradition and the way in which life and times have shaped great individuals called Mahāpuruşha who exhibited extraordinary moral responsibility relentlessly in pursuit of their visions of addressing contemporary major issues and changing the direction of human life. Four Mahāpuruşha, who possessed such enduring greatness and excelled in their thoughts and actions to give a new positive direction to human life, have been profiled in this article. Suggestions have also been made for studies on moral and spiritual excellence to help realize our true human path and purpose.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Clemenson ◽  
Antonella Maselli ◽  
Alexander J. Fiannaca ◽  
Amos Miller ◽  
Mar Gonzalez-Franco

AbstractGPS navigation is commonplace in everyday life. While it has the capacity to make our lives easier, it is often used to automate functions that were once exclusively performed by our brain. Staying mentally active is key to healthy brain aging. Therefore, is GPS navigation causing more harm than good? Here we demonstrate that traditional turn-by-turn navigation promotes passive spatial navigation and ultimately, poor spatial learning of the surrounding environment. We propose an alternative form of GPS navigation based on sensory augmentation, that has the potential to fundamentally alter the way we navigate with GPS. By implementing a 3D spatial audio system similar to an auditory compass, users are directed towards their destination without explicit directions. Rather than being led passively through verbal directions, users are encouraged to take an active role in their own spatial navigation, leading to more accurate cognitive maps of space. Technology will always play a significant role in everyday life; however, it is important that we actively engage with the world around us. By simply rethinking the way we interact with GPS navigation, we can engage users in their own spatial navigation, leading to a better spatial understanding of the explored environment.


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