scholarly journals Fear time versus science time: discursive disputes over the epidemic of the Zika virus and microcephaly in Brazil

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 113-137
Author(s):  
Simone Evangelista Cunha ◽  
Marcelo Garcia

This article discusses some of the tensions caused by the friction between distinct temporal regimes associated with an epidemic episode. This text is based on the study of the way information related to the Zika epidemic and microcephaly in Brazil was speeded out during the year 2015-2016. Starting with the context of intense mediatization, as well as of the complex temporality produced by digital communication technologies, we sought to analyze the relationship between human and non-human actors that contributed to the social construction of this epidemy. The focus of the text are the videos produced by the “lay” public who also spread rumors which show likely alternative explanations about the epidemy.

Leonardo ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-18
Author(s):  
Michael Punt ◽  
Martha Blassnigg ◽  
David Surman

The authors argue that an interrogation of cinema can reveal the fragility of our knowledge and the underlying imperatives that the social construction of space responds to. A revisionist overview of the issue of professional interfaces in the popular arts is followed by a discussion of the influence of space technology and natural space phenomena on human personal and collective belief systems in order to open the way for an outline of the concept of participatory cultures and the relationship between fiction and science.


Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 470
Author(s):  
Clélia Maria Ignatius Nogueira ◽  
Marília Ignatius Nogueira Carneiro ◽  
Tânia Dos Santos Alvarez da Silva

Resumo: Desde a década de 1990 os surdos vivenciam uma intensa transformação em sua vida social, em função da naturalização da comunicação digital, e educacional, com a mudança de paradigma do oralismo para o bilinguismo. Este artigo apresenta resultados de investigação realizada em três etapas com dez sujeitos surdos, buscando identificar a) a importância atribuída por eles à escrita e a competência na utilização da comunicação digital; b) sua percepção acerca dos equívocos cometidos em suas produções escritas e c) sua competência na interpretação de textos para identificar os limites e as possibilidades de desenvolvimento da língua escrita, pelo uso social das tecnologias de comunicação pelos surdos. Os resultados apontaram a ressignificação do sentido social da escrita do Português para os surdos proporcionada pela comunicação digital, o que poderia ser explorado pela escola.Palavras-chave: Educação de surdos; Comunicação digital; Língua Portuguesa escrita. The social use of communication technologies by the deaf: limits and possibilities for the development of the languageAbstract: From the 1990s the deaf experience an intense transformation in their social life, due to the naturalization of digital and educational communication, with the paradigm shift from oralism to bilingualism. This article presents research carried out through three moments with ten deaf individuals, seeking to identify : a) the importance they attributed to writing and their competence in the use of digital communication; b) their perception about the mistakes made in their written productions and c) their competence in the interpretation of texts and thus identify the limits and possibilities for the development of written language, the social use of communication technologies by the deaf. The results pointed out the re-signification of their social sense of the Portuguese writing for the deaf, provided by the digital communication which could be explored by the school.Keywords: Education of the deaf; Digital communication; Written Portuguese language. 


Author(s):  
Paolo Gerbaudo

Digital communication technologies are modifying how social movements communicate internally and externally and the way participants are organized and mobilized. This transformation calls for a rethinking of how we conceive of and analyze them. Scholars cannot be content with studying the digital and the physical or the online and the offline separately, but must explore the imbrication between these aspects by studying how the elements of social movements combine in a political “ensemble,” an ecosystem, or an action texture, defining the possibilities and limits of collective action. This chapter proposes a qualitative methodology combining analysis of digital media with observations of events and interviews with participants to develop a holistic account of collective action. This methodology is best positioned to capture the changing nature and meaning of protest action in a digital era, producing a “thick account” of the relationship between digital politics and everyday life.


Author(s):  
Nan B. Adams

The multiple intelligences theoretical framework developed by Gardner (1983) is employed to argue for the recognition of the emergence of a new, digital intelligence. Each of the dimensions of a discrete intelligence as described by this framework is satisfied along with a discussion of the nature of knowledge, ways of knowing and the nature of how society describes intelligence. These discussions are then used as further evidence that considerations for the ways digital communication technologies are changing the way we think and learn are imperative to effective educational practice. The desired outcome is recognition of this emerging intellectual preference in the design of responsive educational programs and practices.


2022 ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Gianluca Attademo ◽  
Alessia Maccaro

The formulation of Charts for research ethics and Codes of conduct has been growing in the last few decades, on the one hand due to a renewed awareness of the ethical dimensions of research governance and the relationship between regulators and researchers, and on the other hand for the expansion of possibilities achieved by innovation in information and communication technologies. The voluntary involvement of research participants, risk management and prevention, data protection, community engagement, reflexivity of researchers are some of the centres of gravity of a debate that involves researchers, institutions, and citizens.


Author(s):  
Robert Parent ◽  
Denis St-Jacques ◽  
Julie Bélievau

This chapter reviews recent literature on knowledge and knowledge transfer (KT) and proposes the emergence of a classification system of the core KT concepts, models, and contexts that helps address issues of a strategic nature. The two paradigms that inform most of the KT literature, the positivist and social construction paradigms, and their implications on strategy formulation, are discussed. The positivist paradigm views knowledge as an object that can be passed on mechanistically from the creator to a translator who then adapts and transmits it to the user. The social construction paradigm views knowledge as the dynamic by-product of interactions between human actors who are trying to understand, name, and act on reality. In keeping with this dual paradigm logic, the literature on KT can be categorized as originating either from an information technology paradigm or an organic paradigm. The chapter discusses how most of the past strategy-related KT issues focused on the transfer of explicit knowledge and indicates that the future direction implies a shift in attention towards more tacit knowledge transfer considerations.


2008 ◽  
pp. 26-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Cantoni ◽  
Stefano Tardini

The present chapter provides a conceptual framework for the newest digital communication tools and for the practices they encourage, stressing the communication opportunities they offer and the limitations they impose. In this chapter, Internetbased communication technologies are regarded as the most recent step in the development of communication technologies. This approach helps have a broad perspective on the changes information and communication technologies (ICT) are bringing along in the social practices of so called knowledge society. As a matter of fact, these changes need to be considered within an “ecological” approach, that is, an approach that provides a very wide overview on the whole context (both in synchronic terms and in diachronic ones) where ICT are spreading. In the second part of the chapter, the authors present two examples of relevant social practices that are challenged by the most recent ICT, namely journalism (news market) and Internet search engines.


2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Hope Alkon ◽  
Michael Traugot

This article investigates the relationship between environmental policy and the social construction of place in two neighboring California counties. We examine two counties with dramatic geographic and sociodemographic differences that drew on similar place narratives in order to justify collaborative solutions to agricultural–environmental conflicts. Each narrative trumpets the importance of agriculture to each county's place character and praises the ability of well–intentioned county residents to work together. Our cases illuminate two processes through which place is socially constructed with regard to extralocal factors: place comparison allows residents to highlight potential risks by contrasting their own places with others while place meta–narratives allow actors to draw on culturally available notions of types of places. We conclude by discussing the relationship between place narratives and other factors that can affect policy choice, and therefore, shape the landscape itself.


2003 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Jeolás

Este artigo, baseado em pesquisa sobre o imaginário da aids entre jovens, busca compreender a noção de risco como uma categoria sociocultural, cujos significados se acumulam nos conceitos de várias áreas do conhecimento e nos usos de senso comum. O perigo, o mal e o infortúnio sempre foram moralizados e politizados nas diversas culturas humanas e a história da aids não poderia ser diferente. Os simbolismos culturais sobre contágio, doenças transmitidas pelo sexo e pelo sangue e os valores atuais da sexualidade, incluindo as relações de gênero, estão presentes na forma como os jovens representam o risco do HIV. Além disso, não se pode desconsiderar a ambivalência que os riscos assumem atualmente para os jovens: alguns negados e afastados, outros aceitos e valorizados. No caso da aids, a busca pela vertigem e pelo êxtase, componentes do sexo e das drogas, distancia o discurso dos jovens sobre risco do discurso preventivo, baseado na racionalidade do comportamento individual, assumindo valores distintos ligados a experiências cotidianas. Youngsters and the imagery of AIDS: notes for the social construction of risk This article, based on research about the imagery of AIDS among youth, aims to understand the notion of risk as a social-cultural category, whose meanings are piled upon concepts of several areas of both knowledge and common sense usages. Danger, evil and misfortune have always been moralized and politicized in the different human cultures and it could not be different in the history of aids. Cultural symbolism about infection, sexually and blood transmitted diseases, as well as sexuality’s current values, including here gender relations, are present in the way the youth represents HIV´s risks. Besides, the ambivalence these risks assume for the youth nowadays cannot be disregarded: some are denied and put aside, others are accepted and valorized. In the case of AIDS, the search for vertigo and ecstasy, components of sex and drugs, distances the youth’s discourse about risk from the preventive discourse, based on the rationality of individual behavior, assuming distinct values linked to everyday experiences.


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