scholarly journals “We Demand Better Ways to Communicate”: Pre-Digital Media Practices in Refugee Camps

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Seuferling
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
And Control ◽  
Media Practices

This article provides a historical perspective on media practices in refugee camps. Through an analysis of archival material emerging from refugee camps in Germany between 1945 and 2000, roles and functions of media practices in the camp experience among forced migrants are demonstrated. The refugee camp is conceptualized as a heterotopian space, where media practices took place in pre-digital media environments. The archival records show how media practices of refugees responded to the spatial constraints of the camp. At the same time, media practices emerged from the precarious power relations between refugees, administration, and activists. Opportunities, spaces, and access to media practices and technologies were provided, yet at the same time restricted, by the camp structure and administration, as well as created by refugees and volunteers. Media activist practices, such as the voicing of demands for the availability of media, demonstrate how access to media was fought for within the power structures and affordances of the analogue environment. While basic media infrastructure had to be fought for more than in the digital era and surveillance and control of media practices was more intense, the basic need for access to information and connectivity was similar in pre-digital times, resulting in media activism. This exploration of unconsidered technological environments in media and refugee studies can arguably nuance our understanding of the role of media technologies in “refugee crises”.

scholarly journals Digital materialities in the diasporic mourning of migrant death

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 671-681
Author(s):  
Karina Horsti
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Family ◽  
Digital Objects ◽  
Public Lives ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines memorialization among the family and friends of those who have died at the world’s deadliest border in the Mediterranean Sea. Digital media platforms are central spaces for new, innovative forms of coping with ambiguous loss or the inability to mourn over a dead body. The analysis focuses on the role of digital media technologies and the relationship between digital and material elements in memorialization. I examine the creation and circulation of digital objects of memorialization: visual assemblages in which the material and digital intertwine. The analysis demonstrates that digital media practices are not separate from the material world, nor do they make mourning and memorializing less human or less authentic. On the contrary, in transnational and mobile circumstances, digital technologies facilitate human, ethical engagement with complicated grief. Memorializing is crucial for both the private and the public lives of diasporic communities. In Europe, public recognition of the memorialization of refugee deaths would increase understanding of the human consequences of the border, allowing the dead to be seen as individuals with human relationships rather than as numbers.

scholarly journals “HEY, I LIKE YOUR VIDEOS. RELATE MUCH!”LOCATING SISTERHOOD IN A POSTCOLONIAL PUBLIC ON YOUTUBE

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earvin Charles Borja Cabalquinto ◽  
Cheryll Soriano
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
Foreign National ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Interracial Relationship ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
Government Benefits

As part of a broader project that seeks to investigate the brokering of digitally-mediated intimacies through matchmaking platforms and social media channels, this paper unpacks the formation of ‘online sisterhood’ in a postcolonial intimate public, as evinced in the comments of viewers on selected YouTube videos of Rhaze, a Filipina YouTuber who is married to an Australian man. With a massive following of over 450 thousand followers, Rhaze’s videos typically receive diverse comments from her viewers and subscribers. This exposition is facilitated by collecting, categorising and analysing selected comments from Rhaze’s top videos. The comments were analysed through discourse analysis, paying special attention to the factors that influence digital media practices. The findings reveal that competing comments are shaped by postcolonial views on a gendered, racialized and class-based body in an interracial relationship. We then coin the term ‘online sisterhood’, reflecting the shared support that women nurture with other women through online practices. Ultimately, online sisterhood displays how Filipino women married to a white foreign national generate and negotiate spaces of mutual support in a neoliberal state. Paradoxically, a neoliberal government benefits from such cross-border and mediated mobility of Filipina migrants through the commodification of their everyday life. It is through this point that we argue for a closer evaluation of the role of ‘online sisterhoods’ in the construction of female subjectivity and imaginaries of mobility in the Global South.

Agile Teams in Digital Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 340-359
Author(s):  
Rachel Ralph ◽  
Patrick Pennefather
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Reflective Practitioner ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Master's Program ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Agile Practices ◽  
Media Environments

As we move towards the third decade of the 21st century, the development of emerging technologies continues to grow alongside innovative practices in digital media environments. This chapter presents a comparative case study of two teams (Team A and Team B) in a professional master's program during a 13-week, project-based course. Based on the role of documentation and the reflective practitioner, team blogs representing learner experiences of Agile practices were analyzed. This case study chapter focused on one blog post of a mid-term release retrospective. The results of this case study are framed around Derby and Larson's (2006) Agile retrospectives framework, including: set the stage, gather data, generating insights, deciding what to do, and closing the retrospective. The case study results suggest the need for public documentation of retrospectives and how this can be challenging with non-disclosure agreements. Also, the authors identify the importance of being a reflective practitioner. Future research on educational and professional practices needs to be explored.

Digital visibility and the role of mutual interaction expectations: Reframing the journalist–audience relationship through the lens of interpersonal communication

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482090702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Wilhelm ◽  
Helena Stehle ◽  
Hanne Detel
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Mutual Interaction ◽  
Expectancy Violations ◽  
Expectancy Violations Theory ◽  
Media Environments

In the light of a new level of reciprocal visibility in the digital age, the journalist–audience relationship has fundamentally changed. Mutual expectations become visible or evolve anew. The question arises as to how these expectations and their (non-)fulfillment influence the journalist–audience relationship. Taking an interpersonal communication perspective by following expectancy violations theory, we focus on the level of interactions and propose a theoretical framework explaining how the interplay of journalists’ and audience’s mutual expectations affects their relationship. Our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the journalist–audience relationship in digital media environments—and to provide indications for its functioning or failure.

Staying in, rocking out: Online live music portal shows during the coronavirus pandemic

2020 ◽  
pp. 135485652097645
Author(s):  
James Rendell
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Just In Time ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Live Music ◽  
Spatial Convergence ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
And Control

The 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic has greatly impacted societies around the world, where governmental strategies to curb and control the outbreak have resulted in citizens being unable to attend public businesses and spaces. For musicians who rely on touring as a dominant part of their income, the pandemic has had a hugely negative effect on their finances since they can no longer play face-to-face shows. However, a number of artists have turned to digital media to remedy this, performing online to audiences via Web 2.0 platforms. To better understand this cultural phenomenon, the article introduces the concept of portal shows that employ a converge between traditional live gigs, screen media and new media technologies. Analysing the textual, affective, performative and economic dynamics of portal shows, the article examines three differing case studies: Code Orange’s album release show on Twitch.TV, Beach Slang’s acoustic performance on StageIt and Delta Sleep’s in-store show on Instagram. In doing so, the article argues portal shows offer novel and nuanced ways artists and audiences can engage with one another through spatial convergence afforded by video streaming technologies and digital interfaces. Such live events also offer just-in-time fan engagement but does so within a digital transcultural remit, aiding the support of virtual scenes. As a result, the article expands on what is considered pandemic media and subsequent audience affective registers and enriches the study of the music industry’s engagement with digital media and wider convergence cultures more generally.

scholarly journals The symbol of social media in contemporary protest: Twitter and the Gezi Park movement

2020 ◽  
pp. 135485652093374
Author(s):  
Olu Jenzen ◽  
Itir Erhart ◽  
Hande Eslen-Ziya ◽  
Umut Korkut ◽  
Aidan McGarry
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
Media Practices

This article explores how Twitter has emerged as a signifier of contemporary protest. Using the concept of ‘social media imaginaries’, a derivative of the broader field of ‘media imaginaries’, our analysis seeks to offer new insights into activists’ relation to and conceptualisation of social media and how it shapes their digital media practices. Extending the concept of media imaginaries to include analysis of protestors’ use of aesthetics, it aims to unpick how a particular ‘social media imaginary’ is constructed and informs their collective identity. Using the Gezi Park protest of 2013 as a case study, it illustrates how social media became a symbolic part of the protest movement by providing the visualised possibility of imagining the movement. In previous research, the main emphasis has been given to the functionality of social media as a means of information sharing and a tool for protest organisation. This article seeks to redress this by directing our attention to the role of visual communication in online protest expressions and thus also illustrates the role of visual analysis in social movement studies.

Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-236
Author(s):  
Cherry Baylosis
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Practices

Abstract There is a claim that digital media technologies can give voice to the voiceless (Alper 2017). As Couldry (2008) points out it is now commonplace for people - who have never done so before - to tell, share and exchange stories within, and through digital media. Additionally, the affordances of mobile media technologies allow people to speak, virtually anytime and anywhere, while the new internet based media sees that these processes converge to allow stories, information, ideas and discourses to circulate through communicative spaces, and into the daily lives of people (Sheller/Urry 2006). The purpose of this paper is to discuss a methodological framework that can be used to examine the extent that digital media practices can enable voice. My focus is on people ascribed the status of mental illness - people who have had an enduring history of silencing and oppression (Parr 2008). I propose theories of mobilities, and practice, to critically examine voice in practices related to digital media. In doing this, I advocate for digital ethnographic methods to engage these concepts, and to examine the potential of voice in digital mobile media. Specifically, I outline ethnographic methods involving the use of video (re)enactments of digital practices, and the use of reflective interviews to examine every day routines and movements in and around digital media (Pink 2012). I propose that observing and reflecting on such activities can generate insights into the significance these activities have in giving voice to those who are normally unheard.

The Janus face of social media and democracy? Reflections on Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Mutsvairo ◽  
Helge Rønning
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Current Case ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Political Processes

The purpose of this issue of Media Culture and Society is to discuss the possible role of social media in the struggle for democracy, against authoritarianism, and over hidden power structures. The articles included in this volume are meant to offer empirical interventions to beliefs, some of them unproven, on whether the emergence of new media technologies has driven Africa towards democratic change. Papers in this Special Issue cover a wide variety of African countries delving deep into comparative studies of participatory citizens’ media on the continent. This introduction is an attempt to offer an explanation on African democratisation and authoritarianism before conceptualising the role of social media in political processes with the backing of current case study dispatches in Africa, demonstrating the dilemmas of digital disparities in promoting or denting democratisation in Africa.

scholarly journals Digital media and the affective economies of transnational families

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 639-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raelene Wilding ◽  
Loretta Baldassar ◽  
Shashini Gamage ◽  
Shane Worrell ◽  
Samiro Mohamud
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Specific Role ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Media Practices

Digital media are widely recognised as essential to the maintenance of transnational families. To date, most accounts have focused on the role of digital media practices as producing and sustaining transnational relationships, through, for example, the practices of ‘digital kinning’. In this article, we extend that body of work by drawing attention to the specific role of the emotions that are circulated through digital media interactions and practices. We use data from ethnographic interviews with older migrant adults to consider how people who fled civil wars and resettled in Australia bridge the distances between ‘here’ and ‘there’. Our analysis draws attention to the circulation of affect, arguing that it is the capacity of digital media to circulate emotions and support affective economies that gives substance to and defines the surfaces and boundaries of transnational families, and constitutes the mutuality of being that underpins familyhood at a distance.

Digital masquerading: Feminist media activism in China

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Tan
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Before And After ◽  
State Surveillance ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Practices

In March 2015, five young feminists were detained and accused of “disturbing public order” through their plan to circulate messages against sexual harassment in public transportation. This article focuses on the feminist media practices before and after the detention of the Feminist Five to shed light on the dynamics between state surveillance and incrimination, media activism, and feminist politics in China. Exploring the practices of the Youth Feminist Action School, it argues that the role of media in this new wave of feminist activism can be better understood as a form of “digital masquerading” in three ways. First, this captures the self-awareness and agency of feminists in their tactical use of media to circumvent censorship. Masquerading in the digital era is an active and self-conscious act leveraging the specificity of media practice to set the media agenda, increase public influence, and avoid censorship. Second, masquerading refers to the digital alteration of images in order to tactically represent women’s bodies in public spaces while circumventing censorship and possible criminalization. It highlights the figurative and the corporeal in online digital activist culture, which are oftentimes overlooked in existing literature. Third, while the masquerade in psychoanalytic theory emphasizes individualized gendered identity, the notion of digital masquerade points to the interface between the medium and the subjects, which involves collective efforts in assembling activist activities and remaking publicness.

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