scholarly journals Religious and Ritual Space in New Media World: A Study of “Internet Zazenkai” in Japan

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duan Yiwen

Zazenkai, also known as Zen meditation or Zen Mindfulness, is held in Japan for the general public, usually with time, place and procedures set by a Buddhist Zen Temple. With the emergence of the Internet and new media, several Zen Temples have started to hold Zazenkai by utilizing these media technologies including online live streaming. This new type of Zazenkai is known as Internet Zazenkai. Compared with traditional Zazenkai that are held at a certain time and place, the application of new media enables Internet Zazenkai to go beyond the spatial and temporal limits of nature, where Zen practitioners in different global locations participate together using webcam. Individuals spatially separated from each other could share the same time and space of Zazenkai on the Internet. While the new media technologies open up new opportunities for Zazenkai, they also invite examinations into religious meanings of time and space for Zen practitioners. This paper is based on the study and examination of Internet Zazenkai regularly held by Treeleaf Zendo, a Soto Zen temple in Tsukuba. Its homepage Treeleaf.org is a virtual space where live streaming of Zazenkai is provided, its recorded videos are kept, web podcast of lectures and talks are heard, and so on. By analyzing the techno-ritual phenomenon, this paper attempts to analyze the role of Zen masters and participants in the process of Internet Zazenkai and to examine the differences and similarities between traditional Zazenkai and Internet Zazenkai. This paper will shed new light on the influence of new media upon religious and ritual space in modern society.

Author(s):  
Hong Guo

Many new media technologies have emerged in modern society. The application of new media technologies has impacted traditional TV news media, which not only faces great challenges, but also brings some lessons for the development of TV news media. New media technology relies on powerful information processing technology and data storage technology to develop and grow continuously. Compared with traditional news, new media technology has more powerful information storage capacity and dissemination capacity. Firstly, this paper briefly introduces the concept of new media technology, summarizes the typical characteristics of new media technology, and analyzes the existing problems in the application of new media technology in the news communication industry based on the necessity of applying new media technology. Finally, some Suggestions are put forward based on this, hoping to provide some reference for the development of news communication industry.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Lee

This paper sets out to consider the use of new media technologies in the city-state of Singapore, widely acknowledged as one of the most technologically-advanced and networked societies in the world. Singapore is well-known as a politically censorious and highly-regulated society, which has been subjected to frequent and fierce insults and criticisms by those hailing from liberal democratic traditions. Indeed, much has been said about how the Singapore polity resonates with a climate of fear, which gives rise to the prevalent practice of self-censorship. This paper examines how certain groups in Singapore attempt to employ the Internet to find their voice and seek their desired social, cultural and political ends, and how the regulatory devices adopted by the highly pervasive People Action's Party (PAP) government respond to and set limits to these online ventures whilst concomitantly pursuing national technological cum economic development strategies. It concludes that the Internet in Singapore is a highly contested space where the art of governmentality, in the forms of information controls and 'automatic' modes of regulation, is tried, tested, and subsequently perfected.


MEDIASI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Putri Surya Cempaka

This article discussed radio broadcasting technology in general and how the industry is relatively resilient amid the development of other media technologies today, such as the Internet. Internet technology is able to present number of social networks through social media that are interactive, direct, and user generated. In addition, the Internet forces conventional broadcasting industries such as radio to penetrate digital mechanisms by practicing radio streaming. Radio broadcasting also add this type of interaction to their listeners, for example through websites, blogs, vlogs (video blogs), Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook accounts. This integrated conventional media technology and new media is often called media convergence. By using qualitative approach and descriptive method, this paper explained a case of media convergence by one of the radio broadcast station in Indonesia that is Delta FM. As a result, Delta FM presents its broadcasts with the help of new media in order to survive in the broadcasting industry amid the current widespread use of new media.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Moberg

This article explores changing discursive practices on the implications of the continuous development of the Internet and information and communications technology (ICTs) within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. The article argues that the development of the Internet and new media technologies has been accompanied by the proliferation of a set of influential and widespread discursive formations on the character of institutional communication and practice in a digital era. These developments have motivated an increasing technologization of discourse within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland that has chiefly involved a conscious redesign of its discursive practices vis-à-vis the Internet and ICTs in accordance with new criteria of communication effectivity and a notable new emphasis on training in these new practices.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder

AbstractVisions of media spanning the globe and connecting cultures have been around at least since the birth of telegraphy, yet they have always fallen short of realities. Nevertheless, with the internet, a global infrastructure has emerged, which, together with mobile and smartphones, has rapidly changed the media landscape. This far-reaching digital connectedness makes it increasingly clear that the main implications of media lie in the extent to which they reach into everyday life. This article puts this reach into historical context, arguing that, in the pre-modern period, geographically extensive media networks only extended to a small elite. With the modern print revolution, media reach became both more extensive and more intensive. Yet it was only in the late nineteenth century that media infrastructures penetrated more widely into everyday life. Apart from a comparative historical perspective, several social science disciplines can be brought to bear in order to understand the ever more globalizing reach of media infrastructures into everyday life, including its limits. To date, the vast bulk of media research is still concentrated on North America and Europe. Recently, however, media research has begun to track broader theoretical debates in the social sciences, and imported debates about globalization from anthropology, sociology, political science, and international relations. These globalizing processes of the media research agenda have been shaped by both political developments and changes in media, including the Cold War, decolonization, the development of the internet and other new media technologies, and the rise of populist leaders.


Author(s):  
Christopher M Bingham

Twitch is an online video distribution platform that allows users to broadcast live video of themselves playing videogames. This distribution infrastructure includes features that allow viewers to financially support their favorite Twitch streamers, creating a new type of media professional: the entrepreneurial Twitch streamer. Like other professionals, Twitch streamers meet regularly to discuss the profession and business of live streaming. This article applies critical discourse analysis to one such venue for insider dialogue on professional Twitch streaming: the weekly talk show, Dropped Frames. On this program, professional broadcasters discuss many aspects of their career, such as Twitch’s corporate presence, production technology, the time and effort required to stream, precarity, their relationship to their community, the data they use to run their channels, the games they play, and their relationship to game developers. Speech within these empirically present categories demonstrates an underlying set of common assumptions about how the streaming industry should function. In other words, professional Twitch broadcasters develop a normative theory of streaming practice that is expressed in their speech. I argue that through their speech, professional Twitch streamers demonstrate a theoretical understanding of professional streaming that is based on their ability to negotiate uncertainty and the responsibility they feel for their communities.


Author(s):  
Giulia Evolvi

The study of religion and new media explores how the contemporary proliferation of technological devices and digital culture impacts religious traditions. The progressive mediation of religion through websites, social networks, apps, and digital devices has created new conditions for religious experiences, practices, and beliefs. From the diffusion of internet technologies in the mid-1990s, scholars have individuated four waves to describe the evolution of religion and new media: (a) The first wave (mid-1990s–beginning 2000s) is characterized by enthusiasm for the potential of the Internet and the establishment of the first websites dedicated to religion, such as the Vatican official webpage and chatrooms where Neo-Pagans celebrated online rituals. These may be considered examples of “cyber-religion,” a term that indicates religious activities in the virtual space of the Internet, usually called in this period “cyberspace.” (b) The second wave (the mid-late 2000s) involves the growth of religious online presences, and is characterized by more realistic attitudes on the potentials and consequences of internet use. For example, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish virtual sacred buildings have been created on the platform Second Life. At the same time, the virtual congregation Church of Fools attracted both positive reactions and criticism. In this period, scholars often talk about “religion online,” which is the online transposition of activities and narratives of religious groups, and “online religion,” a type of religion that exists mainly because of the increased interconnectivity and visual enhancements of the Internet. (c) The third wave (late 2000–mid-2010s) saw the creation of social network platforms and the proliferation of smartphones. Religious leaders such as the Dalai Lama and the Pope established social network accounts, and smartphone developed apps for reading sacred texts, praying, and performing confessions. This type of religion is usually called “digital religion,” a concept that indicates the progressive blurring of the line between online and offline religiosity. (d) The fourth wave (the late 2010s) includes online religious groups circulating narratives beyond religious institutions, and greater academic attention to elements such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, politics. This is the case of veiled Muslim influencers who talk about religion in fashion tutorials, and Russian Orthodox women (Matushki) who use blogs to diffuse patriarchal values. The notion of “digital religion” is employed in this period to explore how religious identities, communities, and authorities change in the internet age. Scholars have approached these four waves through the lens of existing media theoretical frameworks, especially mediation, mediatization, and social shaping of technology, and adapted them to the field of religion and new media. While existing scholarship has often focused on Europe and North America, the study of religion and new media is expected to become increasingly global in scope.


Author(s):  
M. Ryabova

The article touches interrelated complex of problems characterizing visual communication in the digital space of modern society. The idea of forming of visual culture with a special mental constitution is being actualized. It is revealed that visual communication is a key phenomenon of the social and cultural reality of the Internet. The collision of verbal and visual that is exposed to changes in perception between the subject and the other is considered taking into account its specific qualities. If you look at the representational turn as a phenomenon of cultural consciousness opening in the space of the Internet, its quixotic duality could be noticed. The author believes that the conceptual discourse of visualization reveals new meanings and ideas, both in the thinking of some individual (as a part) and in the space of a multicode universe as a whole. It is concluded that an increasing role of visual communication in the perception of the world at all levels leads to a new type of personality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Chalvin Sharon Mongkol ◽  
Aditya Nugroho Pratomo ◽  
Dhita Widya Putri

The development of technology and communication has brought many changes, especially in broadcast industry. Since the internet era, people could listen to music through various media portals that they accessed through smartphones. This trend is known as media convergence, where there is an interlacing between internet and radio. The birth of media convergence in radio industry also gave rise to the term of ‘streaming’, where the content broadcasted live through the internet, in the form of audio and video. One of the streaming radio service providers in Indonesia is JOOX. This scientific work’s aim is to provide an overview and contribution to the era of new media, especially for music and radio industry. The concept of online strategy in music radio programming from Newton and Kaiser is being used. The result showed that JOOX is an audio visual based live streaming program that facilitates musicians to promote their new albums, as well as the place to interact with their fans through the live-chat feature as a form of engagement.


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