Mass Self-Isolation and the Imaginary World of the Future: Visions and Time Spans Reflected in Memes

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Maxim Latu
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Imaginary World ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Isolation Period ◽  
Future Visions

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic as well as the restrictions and measures that were taken to fight it had a great effect on the society. Thus, a lot of memes were created the authors of which frequently related their visions and ideas about mass self-isolation to a particular time span within and after this period. This paper focuses on such polycode texts and considers the ideas and visions that are expressed in them. As the results of the research demonstrate, the image of the world during and after the mass self-isolation period depicted in memes is often opposed to the familiar reality people were accustomed to. The very first days, weeks and months of social isolation, the post-mass-self-isolation months that followed, years of the near and distant future were put into context. The authors mentioned the changes that they thought occurred or would occur in relation to the behaviour, habits, appearance and psychological state of a person, social interaction, etc., expressing concerns, mentioning problems and joking about them. Some of these visions were not far from the truth, while others were far from reality. Due to the exaggeration and hyperbolization of these ideas and metaphorical and figurative perception of the observed phenomena, an image of alternative conceivable reality and imaginary world was constructed, parts of which might be distorted or merely fictional. From the early days of mass self-isolation and after it, vaccines were considered to be a means of getting the world back to normal. The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic as well as the restrictions and measures that were taken to fight it had a great effect on the society. Thus, a lot of memes were created the authors of which frequently related their visions and ideas about mass self-isolation to a particular time span within and after this period. This paper focuses on such polycode texts and considers the ideas and visions that are expressed in them. As the results of the research demonstrate, the image of the world during and after the mass self-isolation period depicted in memes is often opposed to the familiar reality people were accustomed to. The very first days, weeks and months of social isolation, the post-mass-self-isolation months that followed, years of the near and distant future were put into context. The authors mentioned the changes that they thought occurred or would occur in relation to the behaviour, habits, appearance and psychological state of a person, social interaction, etc., expressing concerns, mentioning problems and joking about them. Some of these visions were not far from the truth, while others were far from reality. Due to the exaggeration and hyperbolization of these ideas and metaphorical and figurative perception of the observed phenomena, an image of alternative conceivable reality and imaginary world was constructed, parts of which might be distorted or merely fictional. From the early days of mass self-isolation and after it, vaccines were considered to be a means of getting the world back to normal.

scholarly journals Effects of physical activity and exercise on well-being in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Marques de Abreu ◽  
Roberta Andrade de Souza ◽  
Livia Gomes Viana-Meireles ◽  
J. Landeira-Fernandez ◽  
Alberto Filgueiras
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Virus Transmission ◽  
Well Being ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Isolation Period

AbstractBackgroundA disease discovered in China, COVID-19, was characterized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a pandemic in March 2020. Many countries in the world implemented social isolation as a strategy to contain the virus transmission. The same physical distancing which protects society from COVID-19 from spreading may have an impact on the mental health and well-being of the population This study aims to shed some light on this phenomenon by assessing the relationship between physical activity and SWB among individuals in the social isolation period of COVID-19.MethodsData were collected in Brazil between March 31st and April 2nd, 2020. All volunteers agreed to participate by digitally checking the option of agreement right after reading the Consent Terms. The inclusion criteria were participants over 18 years old who had been in social isolation for at least one week and agreed to the Consent Terms. Three instruments were used: a questionnaire was built for this study which aimed to assess the participants’ exercise routine. The second instrument called Psychosocial Aspects, Well-being and Exercise in Confinement (PAWEC) was also created by these researchers and aimed to assess the relationship between well-being and physical activity during the social isolation period. And the third measure was the Brazilian Portuguese-adapted version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).FindingsA total of 592 participants reported being in social isolation for an average of 14.4 (SD=3.3) days. The amount of participants who reported strength training as exercise increased from 31 (5.2%) before isolation to 82 (13.9%) during quarantine. The study shows that well-being related to the practice of physical activity during quarantine is linked to an established routine of physical activity prior to the social isolation period.InterpretationPeople who already practiced physical activity feel more motivated to continue practicing during this period and this causes the appearance of positive affects, unlike people who are only now starting to exercise; according to the study, negative aspects can occur for those who are only just starting. In a period of social isolation, it is important that the practice of physical activity is closer to previous habits, also finding that an obligation to exercise during this period when this was not a reality for the person can contribute to an increase in malaise.

scholarly journals COVID-19 update: the first 6 months of the pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Novelli ◽  
Michela Biancolella ◽  
Ruty Mehrian-Shai ◽  
Caroline Erickson ◽  
Krystal J. Godri Pollitt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the world and will feature prominently in all our lives for months and most likely for years to come. We review here the current state 6 months into the declared pandemic. Specifically, we examine the role of the pathogen, the host and the environment along with the possible role of diabetes. We also firmly believe that the pandemic has shown an extraordinary light on national and international politicians whom we should hold to account as performance has been uneven. We also call explicitly on competent leadership of international organizations, specifically the WHO, UN and EU, informed by science. Finally, we also condense successful strategies for dealing with the current COVID-19 pandemic in democratic countries into a developing pandemic playbook and chart a way forward into the future. This is useful in the current COVID-19 pandemic and, we hope, in a very distant future again when another pandemic might arise.

scholarly journals Ustadz Abdul Somad and the Future of Online Da’wa in Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Miftahur Ridho
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Rapid developments in the area of information technology have transformed the nature of social interactions among people in the world. Da’wa, as a form of social interaction aimed at conveying the teachings of Islam towards all people in the world, changes as the platform of undertaking the Da’wa itself, the available media of interactions, change. The aim of this paper is to analyze the strategy of Ustadz Abdul Somad (UAS), the currently most popular preacher in Indonesia, in utilizing the internet for the purpose of Da’wa (Islamic propagation). Findings reveal that UAS’s success lies on his ability to persuade his audience to record his sermons and post them individually to the internet, especially on video-sharing platform of youTube.com. Abdul Somad even claimed himself as a preacher of million viewers. However, his sermons are mostly uploaded to the internet by his audiences. Abdul Somad does not rely on professional team to craft his sermons and post them online. This strategy of allowing his audience to create and share user generated contents is proven to highly successful. Not only that Abdul Somad is able to secure millions of viewers online, it also helps him to multiply the proliferation of his sermons with relatively no cost.

scholarly journals Transnational Co-Operation in Food, Agriculture, Environment and Health in Historical Perspective: Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORNELIA KNAB ◽  
AMALIA RIBI FORCLAZ
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crises ◽  
Millennium Development Goals ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Global Food

In September 2000, the United Nations (UN) presented the ‘Millennium Development Goals’, a universal political agenda to tackle what it perceived to be the most pressing problems of the coming century. The Millennium Development Goals featured strategies for the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition, the improvement of public health, the protection of the environment and the build-up of global developmental structures and partnerships. The achievement of these goals was scheduled, somewhat optimistically, for 2015. The brief time span was intended to illustrate the urgency of the issues and to spur the world into action. Just over a decade after their announcement, and not unexpectedly, the realisation of these goals has proved to be fraught with problems and by now the prospect of their universal achievement has receded into the distant future. Despite huge publicity and public endorsement, the UN's expectations for progress or at least alleviation of major problems are now difficult to maintain as the situation has been exacerbated by global food, economic and financial crises. Comprehensive global success stories, such as the eradication of certain infectious diseases, are rare. As the UN's progress review shows, the close and complex entwinement of these problems within the context of globalisation remains a major challenge.

Who Watches the Watchmen? Law Diving into “Speaking Clouds”

Pólemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-305
Author(s):  
Luca Salvadori
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Learning Tool ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
Unusual Association ◽  
The World ◽  
Infinite Variety

Abstract Comics are an extremely popular, though sometimes underestimated, medium. Yet they are able to convey the image of reality in a potentially infinite variety of genres and styles. Their explicitly fictional approach sends simple and direct messages to the reader, allowing him or her to move into a dimension where original rules, free of superstructures and compromises, apply. In fact, the cultural, political and social interaction between object and subject, which comics inevitably represent, eventually involves the theme of the rule and its relationship with society. The encounter between the comic and the legal often takes place in an almost inevitable and unplanned way and determines a synergy capable of producing original results not only from a narrative point of view. The inherently visual embodiment of the rule ends up enhancing the plot, and the rule’s many expressive potentialities. For this reason, the unusual association between comics and law has also earned the growing and curious attention of the world of the legal profession and may acquire, in the not-too-distant future, a further and absolutely unpredictable possibility of use as an atypical learning tool.

scholarly journals The Artificial Intelligence Era its Seismic Potential to Create a Job Displacement Conundrum

2019 ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Rishabh Patrawala
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effective ◽  
Job Displacement ◽  
Deep Dive ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Block Chain ◽  
Ibm Watson ◽  
Trade Wars

The AI era research paper takes a deep dive into the other spheres of work apart from tech that AI and machine learning will impact. For the paper, I have taken a top down approach,by understanding the global scenario of how AI is working its ways through the world in general before moving onto AI in India in particular. The intention was mainly to signify the employment plight that will be a concerning matter for all of us in the not too distant future. The reforms of digital India and the continued development of the AI institute of Hyderabad coupled with increased competitiveness in market would ensure that automation may become a daily adversary of ours. It is important to understand the principles of automation by supercomputers like IBM Watson or basic AI software that are efficient and cost effective in cases. The census shown that in a need to gain more market share the companies would not hesitate to cut any loose ends.The global factors of brexit, trade wars and especially tech start-up growth have ensured technology a more AI centric approach. Other technology also works hand in hand with AI in the form of block chain, IoT or even big data analysis will be the future pillars driving nation-wide growth. Such changes are especially harmful to people with blue-collar jobs, not mention the fact that India is predicted to grow as the largest economy in the future and have the highest population in the world. An AI imprint will certainly become a recipe for disaster in this case. Thereby I considered what could be the macro as well as micro implications of this in all our major sectors and finance in particular.

scholarly journals Where Are We? The State of Education

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-135
Author(s):  
Sharon Rich
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Public Education ◽  
The State ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Today the questions that should be asked about schools and schooling are those that take into account the social context in which we live. We need to attend to the world outside of the closed context of the "system" and recognize the ways in which the world is interrelated. We need to understand that each and every student comes to the classroom with a biography and a way of being in the world. For today’s young learners that world is a wired one in which social interaction can be conducted anywhere, any place, or anytime. A key challenge for educators is to adapt the institutions in which they work to meet the emerging reality of the connected environment. If we do not manage to make this adaptation, then the future of public education is bleak.

scholarly journals Architecture of the future in the eastern europe: reality and illusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Victor Proskuryakov ◽  
Yuliya Bohdanova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
First Century ◽  
Architectural Education ◽  
Distant Future ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
National University ◽  
The City

This paper presents the outcomes of two international conferences: ‘On the way to architectural education and the profession of the future’ and ‘Genesis and development directions of the future architecture in the Eastern Europe’, which took place on 28 November 2018 and 28 November 2019, respectively, at the Lviv Polytechnic National University. During the conference, educationalists, researchers, experts from architectural and artistic schools of Ukraine from Lviv, Kyiv, Odessa, Chernivtsi, Dnipro, Lutsk; Poland - from the city of Kielce; Germany - from Dresden University of Technology; Canada - from the city of Toronto, discussed what had to be done and done unquestionably so that we could not only dream about an architecture of the future but also actively create it. Not asking a formal request of the speakers to present what came out of the predictions of the architects / futurists of the twentieth century directed, according to their understanding, into close (the 1970s and 80s), non-distant (the 1990s) and distant future (the turn of the twenty-first century). Instead, they wanted to plant into the architectural reality of modern Eastern Europe, and Ukraine, Poland, Germany in particular, those sprouts of the new in architecture which are associated with ‘the architecture of the future’ and that are currently being born and their blooming can be expected in the Eastern Europe and the world in the future.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

Knowledge and the world of the future

1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willis W. harman
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
The Future
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document