scholarly journals In Search of Meaning: Why We Still Don't Know What Digital Data Represent

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Rebekah Tromble
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Bulletin Boards ◽  
Social Media Platforms

In the early years, researchers greeted the internet and digital data with almost wide-eyed wonder and excitement. The opportunities provided by digital media such as websites, bulletin boards, and blogs—and later by social media platforms and mobile apps—seemed nearly endless, and researchers were suddenly awash in data. The bounty was so great that it required new methods for processing, organizing, and analysis. Yet in all the excitement, it seems that the digital research community largely lost sight of something fundamental: a sense of what all these data actually represent. In this essay, I argue that moving forward, researchers need to take a critical look into, be more open about, and develop better approaches for drawing inferences and larger meaning from digital data. I suggest that we need to more closely interrogate what these data represent in at least two senses: statistical and contextual. In the former instance I call for much greater modesty in digital social research. In the latter, I call for heuristic models that permit bolder, more robust comparisons throughout our work.

scholarly journals Children’s digital playgrounds as data assemblages: Problematics of privacy, personalization, and promotional culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395171880521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Louise Smith ◽  
Leslie Regan Shade
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Privacy Rights ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Data Flows ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Digital Spaces

Children’s digital playgrounds have evolved from commercialized digital spaces such as websites and games to include an array of convergent digital media consisting of social media platforms, mobile apps, and the internet of toys. In these digital spaces, children’s data is shared with companies for analytics, personalization, and advertising. This article describes children’s digital playgrounds as a data assemblage involving commercial surveillance of children, ages 3–12. The privacy sweep is used as a method to follow the personal information traces that can be expected to be disclosed through typical use of two children’s digital playgrounds: the YouTube Kids app and Fisher-Price Smart Toy plush animal and companion app. To trace the data flows, privacy policies and other publicly available documents were analyzed using political economy and privacy informed indicators. This article concludes by reflecting upon the dataveillance and commercialization practices that trouble the privacy rights of the child and parent when data assemblages in children’s digital playgrounds are surveillant.

scholarly journals Political Parties in Indonesia and the Internet: A comparative analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Sigit Andhi Rahman ◽  
Ella S Prihatini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Website Features ◽  
Use Of Internet

<p>This is the first such study of the use of Internet by political parties in Indonesia. It also documents parties’ websites performance index and online popularity for campaigning in 2019. The purpose of this comparative study is to look at how the Internet was used by Indonesian political parties approaching the 2019 elections. Internet campaign consists of two parts: online presence through political party website, and political marketing through social media. Total of 16 parties participating the elections next year were examined for how they are utilizing official websites and social media platforms. We created an index based on list of website features (scoring system) and then classify it into 4 variables (information provision, mobilization, engagement, and technological sophistication) containing 43 features. We also visualise the descriptive statistical analysis on parties’ social media accounts using RStudio software. The study found that despite half of Indonesian national population is using the Internet, political parties were not yet achieving their maximum potential in using the digital media to disseminate political messages and propaganda. The quality of most of the websites have been subpar. In addition, the quality seems to have no relationship with the financial resources and the current parliamentary size of political parties. On average, official social media accounts run by parties has only been used in the last 3.25 years. Well-established older parties in Indonesia continue to engage with their constituents without heavily relying on social media. Yet, this situation is very likely to change in the future as parties’ elites are now beginning to look into this platform as they seek out to the millennials for electoral support.</p>

scholarly journals Digital Transformation, Big Data and Research Landscape in Digital Communication

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Imam Syafganti
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Media Research

The digitization of communications technology has led to an intense interaction between human and digital-based technology. A large number of digital data traces produced by humans as a result of that activity. Such data is commonly referred to Big Data. The availability of Big Data as a digital data source in turn, opens opportunities for communication scientists to be able to use that data to get the patterns and trends of human activities that have been done through social research. It is necessary to understand the basic concept of the Big Data, using appropriate tools and adequate access to the data, and appropriate research method in order to be able to conduct research by using such digital data. This paper aims to describe the potential of Big Data for the purposes of communication research, the use of appropriate tools, techniques and methods and to identify potential research directions in the digital realm. Some limitations and critical issues related to the research validity, population and sample, as well as ethics in digital media research method were also discussed.

scholarly journals THE AFTERLIVES OF MEMORIAL MATERIALS: DATA, HOAX, BOT

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjorn Nansen ◽  
Larissa Hjorth ◽  
Stacey Pitsillides ◽  
Hannah Gould
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Research Network ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Diverse Field ◽  
De Vries ◽  
The Dead

The study of death online has often intersected with questions of trust, though such questions have evolved over time to not only include relations of trust between individuals and within online communities, but also issues of trust emerging through entanglements and interactions with the afterlives of memorial materials. Papers in this panel attend to the growing significance of the afterlives of digital data, the circulation of fake deaths, the care attached to memorial bots, and the intersection of robots and funerals. Over the last twenty years the study of death online developed into a diverse field of enquiry. Early literature addressed the emergence of webpages created as online memorials and focused on their function to commemorate individuals by extending memorial artefacts from physical to digital spaces for the bereaved to gather (De Vries and Rutherford, 2004; Roberts, 2004; Roberts and Vidal, 2000; Veale, 2004). The emergence of platforms for social networking in the mid-2000s broadened the scope of research to include increasingly knotted questions around the ethics, politics and economics of death online. Scholars began investigating issues like the performance of public mourning, our obligations to and management of the digital remains of the deceased, the affordances of platforms for sharing or trolling the dead, the extraction of value from the data of the deceased, and the ontology of entities that digitally persist (e.g. Brubaker and Callison-Burch, 2016; Gibbs et al., 2015; Karppi, 2013; Marwick and Ellison, 2012; Phillips, 2011; Stokes, 2012). Scaffolding this scholarship are a number of research networks, including the Death Online Research Network and the DeathTech Research Network, who encourage international collaboration and conversation around the study of death and digital media, including supporting this AoIR panel. This panel contributes to the growing field of research on death and digital media, and in particular poses challenges to focus on the commemoration of humans to encompass broader issues around the data and materiality of digital death. Digital residues of the deceased persist within and circulate through online spaces, enrolling users into new configurations of posthumous dependence on platforms, whilst at the same time digital afterlives now intersect with new technologies to create emergent forms of agency such as chatbots and robots that extend beyond the human, demanding to be considered within the sphere of digital memorialisation. Questions of trust emerge in this panel through various kinds of relationality formed with and through digital remains. These extend from relations of trust in the digital legacies now archived within platform architectures and how we might curate conversations differently around our personal data; to the breaking of trust in the internet when creating or sharing a hoax death; to the trust involved in making and caring for a posthumous bot; to the trust granted to robots to perform funerary rites. It is anticipated that this panel will not only appeal to scholars interested in the area of death and digital media, but also engage with broader scholarly communities in which questions of death now arise in larger debates around data, materiality, and governance on and of the internet. References Brubaker, J. R. and Callison-Burch, V. (2016) Legacy Contact: Designing and Implementing Post-mortem Stewardship at Facebook. Paper presented at CHI Workshop on Human Factors in Computer Systems, San Jose California. de Vries, B. and Rutherford, J. (2004) Memorializing Loved Ones on the World Wide Web. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49(1), 5-26. Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., Nansen, B., and Carter, M. (2015) #Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media and Platform Vernacular. Information Communication and Society, 18(3): 255-268. Karppi, T. (2013) Death proof: on the biopolitics and noopolitics of memorializing dead Facebook users. Culture Machine, 14, 1-20. Marwick, A. and Ellison, N. (2012) “There Isn’t Wifi in Heaven!” Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 56(3), 378–400. Phillips, W. (2011) LOLing at Tragedy: Facebook Trolls, Memorial Pages and Resistance to Grief Online. First Monday 16(12). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org Roberts, P. (2004) The Living and the Dead: Community in the Virtual Cemetery. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 49(1), 57-76. Stokes, P. (2012) Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook? Philosophy and Technology, 25(3), 363-379. Veale, K. (2004) Online Memorialisation: The Web as a Collective Memorial Landscape For Remembering The Dead. The Fibreculture Journal, 3. Retrieved from http://three.fibreculturejournal.org  

scholarly journals Digital Media and Counter Narrative of Radicalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Athik Hidayatul Ummah
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Online Media ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Public ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Different Characteristics

This article aims to describe the meaning of narratives are used by digital media or online media to counter the narrative of radicalism. The research method used is discourse analysis to find the meaning in the text. The theoretical framework used is narrative theory to explain process audience can trust about a narrative because of the consistency and truth of narrative or story. Narratives are analyzed using a framework of identity prism theory. The identity prism describes that online media as a brand has a strategy to build and promote it is unique among other brands. The results of the study are Islami.co and Ruangobrol.id have different characteristics or uniqueness and segmentation to convey the counter-narratives to the public. The narratives are built is to fight or deconstruct the narratives of radicalism-terrorism as an effort to prevent radicalism and the recruitment of new members through the internet. The counter-narrative also has coherence and truth as important standards for the public to select and judge that the narrative is consistent and credible. In the digital age, digital media have an important role in the counter-narratives of radicalism. It’s because radical-terrorist groups using the internet and social media platforms to spread their thoughts and their actions.

Preacher Playlist: Reception and Curation of Celebrity Pastors in the Korean Diaspora

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyemin Na
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Korean Diaspora ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Worship Services ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Korean megachurches use digital media to distribute religious content across transnational boundaries. Megachurches upload sermons, livestream worship services and publicise events on websites, mobile apps and social media platforms. Studying the reception side reveals a fuller picture of how religious content circulates and how it is interpreted, curated and used. This chapter provides insights into how Korean- American Christian women in the U.S. incorporate religious digital media produced in South Korea into their everyday lives. The study finds that Korean-American women 1) gather knowledge of popular pastors and develop expertise on their preaching styles, 2) diagnose their own spiritual needs as well as those of others, and access religious digital media content in order to address these needs, and 3) use online religious content to curate daily routines that adhere to their conceptions of a faithful life. The women exercise a form of spiritual authority as curates of digital media content.

Buddhism and Media Technologies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Price Grieve ◽  
Daniel Veidlinger
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Bulletin Boards ◽  
Usage Patterns

Buddhism is flourishing on the Internet and digital media. However, the form and usage patterns of Buddhist media technologies have varied considerably from the earliest oral texts to the latest online versions of the Buddhist canon. Do such media transformations merely transmit the old dharma in a new bottle, or do they change Buddhism’s message? Are these changes to be welcomed or shunned? This chapter explores how various media technologies tend to promote particular aspects of Buddhism, and also how different Buddhist worldviews shape how these media are used. First, it sketches a short genealogy of Buddhist media technologies. Second, it concentrates on contemporary digital media, briefly describing Buddhist bulletin boards, email lists, websites, computer apps, virtual worlds, and video games. Third, the chapter explains digital media’s procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial affordances. Finally, it illuminates how digital media affordances are shaped by the technological worldview of convert Buddhism.

scholarly journals A Fine-Grained Analysis of Misinformation in COVID-19 Tweets

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Kumar ◽  
Raj Ratn Pranesh ◽  
Kathleen M. Carley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Language Models ◽  
The Internet ◽  
False Information ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Abstract In the past few years, there has been an expeditious growth in the usage of social media platforms and blogging websites which has passed 3.8 billion marks of active users that use text as a prominentmeans for interactive communication. A fraction of users spread misinformation on social media. As Twitter has 330 million monthly active users, researchers have been using it as a source of data for misinformation identification. In this paper, we have proposed a Twitter dataset for fine-grained classification. Our dataset is consists of 1970 manually annotated tweets and is categorized into 4 misinformation classes, i.e, “Irrelevant”, “Conspiracy”, “True Information”, and “False Information” based on response erupted during COVID-19. In this work, we also generated useful insights on our dataset and performed a systematic analysis of various language models, namely, RNN (BiLSTM, LSTM), CNN (TextCNN), BERT, ROBERTA, and ALBERT for the classification task on our dataset. Through our work, we aim at contributing to the substantial efforts of the research community for the identification and mitigation of misinformation on the internet.

scholarly journals Watermarking Schemes for High Security with Applications and Attacks: Research Challenges and Open Issues

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 4163-4169
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Challenges ◽  
The Media ◽  
Day By Day ◽  
Open Issues

Recently, the growth of the internet is increased day by day also the digital data such as videos, images and audio availability to the public get increased rapidly. The society required intellectual property protection. To protect the media from other attack intruders and avoid business loss is the requirement of digital media produced. Introducing watermarks can be useful to safeguard copyright. In this review an effort is made to explore various aspects of watermarking, algorithms used, and to carry out a comparative study of these techniques based on their classifications.

scholarly journals Absent Data: Engagements with Absence in a Twitter Collection Process

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrine Meldgaard Kjær ◽  
Mace Ojala ◽  
Line Henriksen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Missing Data ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Automated Data Collection ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Collections

This paper considers the ways in which silences and absences are a central part of research that relies on automated data collection from social media or the internet. In recent years, automated data collection driven or supported research methods have gained popularity within the social sciences and humanities. With this increase in popularity, it becomes ever more pertinent to consider how to engage with digital data, and how both engagement and data are situated, messy, and contingent. Based on experiences with “missing” data, this paper mobilizes the framework of hauntology to make sense of what relationships may be built with missing data and how silences haunt research practices. Ultimately, we argue that it is possible to reimagine absent data not as a limitation but as an invitation to reflect on and establish new methods for working with automated data collections.

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