scholarly journals “MY MINIMALIST JOURNEY:” NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF YOUTUBE MINIMALISM STORIES

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizhen Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
Lower Social Class ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Constant Improvement

The recent minimalist lifestyle is often claimed to be a way to change your life by minimizing your spending, possessions, tasks, relationships, etc. YouTube is an important venue where minimalist content is published and shared (Meissner, 2019). The current study focuses on “minimalist journey" narratives, where people tell their stories of "encountering" the minimalist lifestyle. I collected “minimalist journey" stories from 40 YouTube videos with their comments and analyzed them using narrative analysis methods, both thematic and structural (Labov & Waletzky, 1997; Riessman, 2005). By closely examining these narratives, this study sheds light on how people experience and make sense of the minimalist lifestyle within the context of anti-consumerism and neoliberalism in digital space. This study also contributes to digital culture studies by showcasing how personal life narratives are constructed on video-sharing platforms like YouTube. Two themes emerged in the analysis. In the “Hoarder to Minimalist” narrative, narrators were once over-consuming hoarders and now minimalists. Minimalism facilitates discursive rejections and behavior disruptions of consumerism. The "transformational" stories, however, reinforcing the neoliberal sense of self that needs constant improvement. In the “Always been a Minimalist” narrative, narrators have always been frugal due to underprivileged social status. Minimalism empowers them by providing a set of vocabulary for recreating meanings. It, however, downplays the class divisions in capitalist society as merely an issue of “framing”; the struggles of lower social class people just need to be beautified as “minimalism.”

Evaluating the quality of YouTube videos on fibromyalgia (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takumi Kawashita ◽  
Sara Shu ◽  
Teevit Dunnsiri ◽  
Andrew Fung ◽  
Brian Bui ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Physical Therapists ◽  
H Index ◽  
Academic Affiliation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Academic Publications ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
Default Setting

BACKGROUND YouTube is a popular American video-sharing platform that has been accessible to the public since 2005. Previous studies have shown that YouTube is potentially beneficial to medical education, but the quality of videos still need to be determined. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study is to understand the quality of the YouTube videos by evaluating the characteristics of physicians and the total number of views on videos regarding fibromyalgia. METHODS The term “fibromyalgia” was searched on the YouTube search engine by relevance, the default setting. Information from the first 100 videos were analyzed. A search was performed on Scopus to determine the h-index and fibromyalgia-related publication for any physician who was featured in the videos. RESULTS Of the top 100 videos, there were 64 academic videos, 18 vlogs, 5 interview videos, and 13 miscellaneous videos. Out of the 64 academic videos, 30 physicians, 7 Doctors of Philosophy (Ph.D.), 5 physical therapists, and 5 chiropractors were identified. The majority physicians have an adequate academic affiliation such as h-index and academic publications. CONCLUSIONS Residents and medical students will encounter a large number of academic videos on fibromyalgia on YouTube. This study suggests that many videos were posted for academic purposes and that the quality of the videos can be ensured to some degree. However, developing a better systemic evaluation of the quality of YouTube content is still necessary.

scholarly journals Crosstalk between Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapy and Neurological Sciences in Mood and Anxiety Disorders

Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 340
Author(s):  
Lehel Balogh ◽  
Masaru Tanaka ◽  
Nóra Török ◽  
László Vécsei ◽  
Shigeru Taguchi
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Biological Treatment ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Neurological Damage ◽  
Mood And Anxiety Disorders ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Brain

Psychotherapy is a comprehensive biological treatment modifying complex underlying cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and regulatory responses in the brain, leading patients with mental illness to a new interpretation of the sense of self and others. Psychotherapy is an art of science integrated with psychology and/or philosophy. Neurological sciences study the neurological basis of cognition, memory, and behavior as well as the impact of neurological damage and disease on these functions, and their treatment. Both psychotherapy and neurological sciences deal with the brain; nevertheless, they continue to stay polarized. Existential phenomenological psychotherapy (EPP) has been in the forefront of meaning-centered counseling for almost a century. The phenomenological approach in psychotherapy originated in the works of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, and Viktor Frankl, and it has been committed to accounting for the existential possibilities and limitations of one’s life. EPP provides philosophically rich interpretations and empowers counseling techniques to assist mentally suffering individuals by finding meaning and purpose to life. The approach has proven to be effective in treating mood and anxiety disorders. This narrative review article demonstrates the development of EPP, the therapeutic methodology, evidence-based accounts of its curative techniques, current understanding of mood and anxiety disorders in neurological sciences, and a possible converging path to translate and integrate meaning-centered psychotherapy and neuroscience, concluding that the EPP may potentially play a synergistic role with the currently prevailing medication-based approaches for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.

scholarly journals The hamster wheel: a case study on embodied narrative identity and overcoming severe obesity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Natvik ◽  
Målfrid Råheim ◽  
Randi Sviland
Keyword(s):  
Weight Loss ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Weight Loss Surgery ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Body ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Severely Obese ◽  
Eating Practices ◽  
And Control

AbstractBased in narrative phenomenology, this article describes an example of how lived time, self and bodily engagement with the social world intertwine, and how our sense of self develops. We explore this through the life story of a woman who lost weight through surgery in the 1970 s and has fought against her own body, food and eating ever since. Our narrative analysis of interviews, reflective notes and email correspondence disentangled two storylines illuminating paradoxes within this long-term weight loss process. Thea’s Medical Weight Narrative: From Severely Obese Child to Healthy Adult is her story in context of medicine and obesity treatment and expresses success and control. Thea’s Story: The Narrative of Fighting Weight is the experiential story, including concrete examples and quotes, highlighting bodily struggles and the inescapable ambiguity of being and having one’s body. The two storylines coexist and illuminate paradoxes within the weight loss surgery narrative, connected to meaningful life events and experiences, eating practices and relationships with important others. Surgery was experienced as lifesaving, yet the surgical transformation did not suffice, because it did not influence appetite or, desire for food in the long run. In the medical narrative of transforming the body by repair, a problematic relationship with food did not fit into the plot.

Learning to Resist: Educational Counter-Narratives of Black College Reentry Mothers

2013 ◽  
Vol 115 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Original Study ◽  
Black College ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Reentry Women ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Counter Narratives

Background College reentry women are often older than the traditional college student, and in this study are distinguished from other students because of their parental status as mothers (Johnson-Bailey, 2000; Sealey-Ruiz, 2007). As one of the the fastest growing populations in colleges and universities across the nation, it is alarming that many Black college reentry women, despite their educational gains, continue to face stereotypes about who they are socially, politically, and educationally. Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the schooling experiences of Black college reentry mothers (n = 5) and explicate the ways in which they theorize and make meaning of the complexities of their lives, particularly in regard to the intersections of race, college reentry, and motherhood. Research Design Employing qualitative case study and narrative analysis methods, the larger study from which some data for this article derive (Sealey-Ruiz, 2005) examined the educational narratives of Black college reentry women. The original study investigated the influence the participants’ college reentry had on their lives and their daughters’ educational choices. The study reported in this article, then, includes data from individual interviews with the 5 mothers from the original study as they focus on their college reentry experience and motherhood. Findings/Results Contrary to what some researchers assert about schools not providing welcoming spaces for Black women to develop an optimistic sense of self, the reentry mothers in this study viewed college enrollment as a crucial step toward positive self-definition. Their efforts to become educated represent their resistance to public stereotypical images of themselves as Black mothers. In other words, they believed their college reentry served as counterpoint to the three stereotypes about Black mothers discussed in this article: the mammy, the matriarch, and the welfare mother/welfare queen. Conclusions/Recommendations The counter-narratives these mothers offered to the three stereotypes suggest that there are psychological barriers (fear of belonging, self-doubt, fear of marginalization, racism, sexism, negative stereotyping) to their academic success. This conclusion has the strong potential to move educational researchers toward a deeper investigation of challenges to the college reentry experienced by Black mothers, in the hope of creating institutional support structures, systems, and policies that can propel the academic success of this population.

scholarly journals Platformization of the Unlikely Creative Class: Kuaishou and Chinese Digital Cultural Production

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Lin ◽  
Jeroen de Kloet
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Creative Class ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Creative Workers

This article studies the platformization of cultural production in China through the specific lens of Kuaishou, an algorithm-based video-sharing platform targeting second- and third-tier cities as well as the countryside. It enables the forming of an “unlikely” creative class in contemporary China. Kuaishou’s platform business fits into the Party State’s socio-economic agenda of “Internet+” and “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” and is also folded into the state’s demand for cultural censorship and social stability. As we will show, this state-commerce relationship largely shapes Kuaishou’s interface and its affordances as encoded in its algorithm. Nevertheless, Kuaishou enables the diverse, often marginalized, Chinese living outside the urban centers of the country to become “unlikely” creative workers, who have become self-employed creative, digital entrepreneurs. For these “grassroots individuals,” creativity, life, and individuality are constantly mobilized and calculated according to the workings of the platform. This grassroots entrepreneurship, in tandem with the institutional regulation and censorship of the Internet, contributes to the transformation of Chinese economy and the production of social stability and a digital culture permeated with contingency and negotiation.

scholarly journals The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988865
Author(s):  
Peter Chonka
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Still Images ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Shed Light

In 2015, a series of memes appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #HumanitarianStarWars. Combining still images from the original Star Wars movies with ironic references to humanitarian/development jargon and institutions, the memes presented a humorous reflection on the modern aid industry. While memetic content has become an increasingly scrutinized area in digital culture studies—particularly with regard to unbounded and anonymous online communities, and popular discursive contestation—this article examines #HumanitarianStarWars to shed light on the possibilities and problematics of social media auto-critique undertaken by “insiders” in a particular professional realm. Keeping in mind critiques of the racial and imperial connotations of the (Western) pop-culture mythology itself, the article explores the use of the Star Wars franchise as a vehicle for commentary on an industry at work in the “Global South.” It highlights an ambiguous process of meaning-making that can be traced through the memes’ generation, circulation, and re-mediation. Although the memes provide a satirical self-reflection on practitioners’ experiences and perspectives of power relations in the global development industry, certain tendencies emerge in their remixing of this Hollywood universe that may reinforce some of the dynamics that they ostensibly critique. The article argues that examination of the ideological ambivalence of an institutional micro-meme can yield valuable insights into tensions playing out in professional social media spaces where public/private boundaries are increasingly and irrevocably blurred.

Self-Affirmation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoquan Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Health Communication ◽  
Risk Communication ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Risk Groups ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
The Self ◽  
Defensive Response ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Message Acceptance

Self-affirmation theory posits that people are motivated to maintain an adequate sense of self-integrity. It further posits that the self-system is highly flexible such that threats to one domain of the self can be better endured if the global sense of self-integrity is protected and reinforced by self-resources in other, unrelated domains. Health and risk communication messages are often threatening to the self because they convey information that highlights inadequacies in one’s health attitudes and behaviors. This tends to lead to defensive response, particularly among high-risk groups to whom the messages are typically targeted and most relevant. However, self-affirmation theory suggests that such defensive reactions can be effectively reduced if people are provided with opportunities to reinforce their sense of self-integrity in unrelated domains. This hypothesis has generated substantial research in the past two decades. Empirical evidence so far has provided relatively consistent support for a positive effect of self-affirmation on message acceptance, intention, and behavior. These findings encourage careful consideration of the theoretical and practical implications of self-affirmation theory in the genesis and reduction of defensive response in health and risk communication. At the same time, important gaps and nuances in the literature should be noted, such as the boundary conditions of the effects of self-affirmation, the lack of clarity in the psychological mechanisms underlying the observed effects, and the fact that self-affirmation can be easily implemented in some health communication contexts, but not in others. Moreover, the research program may also benefit from greater attention to variables and questions of more direct interest to communication researchers, such as the role of varying message attributes and audience characteristics, the potential to integrate self-affirmation theory with health communication theories, and the spontaneous occurrence of positive self-affirmation in natural health communication settings.

Chinese Energy Companies’ Relations with Russia and Kazakhstan

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 673-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
The Body ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
The Third ◽  
National Oil Companies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Energy Relations ◽  
And Behavior

This article concerns Chinese energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, surveying the foreign direct investment (fdi) behavior of Chinese National Oil Companies (nocs) in Kazakhstan and Russia. The first section provides a schematic overview of the general development of Chinese fdi strategy and behavior from the disintegration of the Soviet Union up until the present day. It systematically explains how that development occurred in three phases and gives some key indicators for distinguishing among the phases and the transition between successive phases. The second section looks more closely at the fdi strategy and behavior of the Chinese nocs specifically regarding Kazakhstan and Russia, periodizing it according to the first two of the three chronological phases distinguished in the first section. The third section of the article examines still more closely the phenomenon regarding Kazakhstan and Russia from the end of the last decade up until the present day, dividing the third above-mentioned phase into three subphases and inspecting the first two, of which the second is still ongoing. The fourth section of the article evaluates the conduct of Chinese nocs with regard to Kazakhstan and Russia from the standpoint of motives of corporate behavior and comparative incentive structures. The fifth section of the article concludes by introducing some caveats on the basis of a glance at recent behavior with respect to another large resource-rich country, Canada, where Chinese nocs have made massive fdi for some years now, but which has a rather different economic and social structure from Kazakhstan and Russia. The last section of the conclusion also includes a few final comments on the prospects for Chinese energy and Chinese nocs during the remainder of the decade and into the 2020s, on the basis of the analytical framework employed to structure the narrative analysis in the body of the article.

Making a Killing: On Race, Ritual, and (Re)Membering in Digital Culture

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonia Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Archival Studies ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Interactions ◽  
Brown Bodies

Abstract:This paper investigates cultural, social, and technological issues created by the increasingly widespread circulation of digital records documenting the deaths of black Americans in the United States. This research takes as its foundation questions about ritual, embodiment, memorialization, and oblivion in digital spaces. Further, it examines the interplay between the permanence of the digital sphere and the international human rights concept of the “right to be forgotten,” paying particular attention to black and brown bodies as records and as evidence. Methodologically, the work engages critical race theory, performance studies, archival studies, and digital culture studies, asking how existing technologies reflect the wider social world offline, how they create new cultural interactions, and how those new interactions reshape the real (non-virtual) world.

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