scholarly journals A TOPOGRAPHY OF VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Berryman ◽  
Crystal Abidin ◽  
Tama Leaver
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Video Games ◽  
East Asia ◽  
First Century ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Recent Commentary ◽  
Celebrity Status ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Web Research

Informed by my first six months of doctoral research, this paper offers a topography of virtual influencers that at once acknowledges their continuation of and breaking with the precedents of a lineage of “virtual beings” who have achieved celebrity status. Responding to the ahistoricism of much recent commentary, it draws on archival press and web research to situate virtual influencers at the intersection of technological advancements, discourses, and anxieties similarly characterising Hollywood’s “synthespians” at the turn of the twenty-first century; the legacy of “virtual idols” in East Asia (also known as “Vocaloids” in Japan); and the latter’s recent democratisation by a new generation of “vTubers” across video-sharing sites. Recognising this cross-medium migration of virtual celebrity—from anime, video games and blockbuster cinema to the participatory web—this paper adopts a platform-specific lens to highlight the affordances, cultures and vernaculars of specific social media as essential to virtual influencers’ aspiration to, and attainment and maintenance of, attention and fame.

Families at Play

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinem Siyahhan ◽  
Elisabeth Gee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Intergenerational Play ◽  
The World

Video games have a bad reputation in the mainstream media. They are blamed for encouraging social isolation, promoting violence, and creating tensions between parents and children. In this book, Sinem Siyahhan and Elisabeth Gee offer another view. They show that video games can be a tool for connection, not isolation, creating opportunities for families to communicate and learn together. Siyahhan and Gee offer examples of how video games, like smartphones, Skype, and social media, help families stay connected. Further, they describe how families express their feelings and share their experiences and understanding of the world through playing video games like Sims, Civilization, and Minecraft. When designed intentionally to support families, video games can also create conversations around such real-world issues and sensitive topics as bullying and peer pressure. Siyahhan and Gee draw on a decade of research to look at how learning and teaching take place when families play video games together. With video games, they argue, the parents are not necessarily the teachers and experts; all family members can be both teachers and learners. They suggest video games can help families form, develop, and sustain their learning culture as well as develop skills that are valued in the twenty-first century workplace. Finally, Siyahhan and Gee share recommendations for educators and game designers who are interested in supporting intergenerational play around video games.

Wykorzystanie mediów społecznościowych w komunikacji z klientem na przykładzie firm sektora piwowarskiego

2015 ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Szamrowski ◽  
Adam Pawlewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
Brewing Industry ◽  
Video Sharing ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Regional Character

The main objective of this paper is to identify the platforms and social media tools utilized by the brewing industry in communication with the stakeholders, mainly with potential clients. In addition, the study sought to determine the nature of the published content, identify those responsible for their management, and present the advantages and disadvantages of their conduct in communication and creating the image of the company. The results indicate that only 25% of the surveyed companies do not use social media in PR. This applies only to small enterprises, with regional character. All the major brewing companies in their public relations activities use at least one type of social media, focusing in most cases on social networking (Facebook) and Video Sharing (YouTube). In addition, some of the largest brands included in the individual equity groups have their own social media channels used to communicate with the stakeholders. General promotion of company products and, what is very important, creating a dialogue with social media platform community, were seen as the most important benefits of using social media.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
East Asia ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Cold War

Until recently, East Asia was a boiling pot of massacre and blood-letting. Yet, almost unnoticed by the wider world, it has achieved relative peace over the past three decades.1 At the height of the Cold War, East Asia accounted for around 80 percent of the world’s mass atrocities. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it accounted for less than 5 percent....

The Twenty-first Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
First Century ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Species Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Open Question ◽  
New Generation

The cumulative environmental challenge of sustainable development in the twenty-first century is larger than anything humanity has ever had to deal with in the past. The good news is that solid progress is being reached in the understanding of issues in scientific terms and understanding what needs to be done. The bad news is twofold. First, although many of the environmental problems of earlier centuries are now being confronted, a new generation of difficulties is eclipsing what were the older difficulties. Secondly, much of the progress is being achieved by the wealthier parts of the planet, rather than the developing world. From population growth to climate change to unprecedented habitat and species loss, whether environmental sustainability can be achieved in the twenty-first century is an open question.

scholarly journals The evolution of Darwinian sexualities

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Gay Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Sexual Preferences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sexual Behaviours ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract Charles Darwin's Descent of Man was suffused with questions of courtship, mating and sex. Following in his footsteps, biologists throughout the twentieth century interrogated the sexual behaviour of humans and animals. This paper charts the fate of evolutionary theories of sexuality to argue that – despite legal and social gains of the past century – when biologists used sexual selection as a tool for theorizing the evolution of homosexual behaviour (which happened only rarely), the effect of their theories was to continuously reinscribe normative heterosexuality. If, at the end of the nineteenth century, certain sex theorists viewed homosexuality as a marker of intermediate sex, by the late twentieth a new generation of evolutionary theorists idealized gay men as hyper-masculine biological males whose sexual behaviours were uncompromised by the necessity of accommodating women's sexual preferences. In both cases, normative assumptions about gender were interwoven with those about sexuality. By the twenty-first century, animal exemplars were again mobilized alongside data gathered about human sexual practices in defence of gay rights, but this time by creating the opportunity for naturalization without recourse to biological determinism.

#GomorraLaSerie: Converging audience and enhanced authorship on twenty-first-century Italian screens

Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierluigi Erbaggio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Screen Viewing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform

Based on Roberto Saviano's book Gomorra (2006), production of the TV series Gomorra – La serie (2014) was met with scepticism as many feared it would glamorise organised crime and, consequently, attract young people toward Camorra affiliation. The series' bleak portrayal of criminals and criminality was offered as a response to such concerns. Despite the preoccupations, Gomorra – La serie was hugely successful and, because of its quality, was sold to other countries. In Italy, the series' success can be measured by the popularity of its Twitter hashtag #GomorraLaSerie. Engaged with Henry Jenkins' theories of media convergence and based on a corpus of tweets bearing this official hashtag, this article proposes a quantitative analysis and advances conclusions regarding the Italian TV audience and second-screen viewing practices. Additionally, through a qualitative study of Saviano's tweets about the series, it examines the writer's use of the social media platform as a tool of narrative continuity. Finally, the article highlights a few examples of fan-generated media and concludes with remarks regarding Saviano's problematic position at the centre of a transmedia object.

THATCampQueensU: Bringing Digital Humanities to Queen's

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Bielinski
Keyword(s):  
Digital Humanities ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Skill Levels ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Queen's University ◽  
New Generation

There is a new generation of scholarship in the humanities, and it is rooted in twenty-first century technology. In response to what some have called the "crisis in humanities," scholars have begun to tackle their research questions armed with digital tools and a strong sense of collaboration in order to think across disciplines, allow for greater accessibility, and ultimately to create bigger impact. Digital Humanities, or DH, is this exciting and growing field--or maybe methodology--used by humanities scholars to share and create scholarly content.Despite the growing fervour for DH across Canada, many scholars at Queen's have yet to take advantage of the opportunities for research and teaching afforded by DH. I believe that by bringing together Digital Humanities practitioners at Queen's University, more scholars, faculty, and students would learn about and engage in dialogue about fostering and furthering DH scholarship across all disciplines. The best way to begin, I believe, is by hosting THATCamp at Queen's. The Humanities and Technology Camp is an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.

Google Plus as a Contentious Field of Revolutionary Identity

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-416
Author(s):  
Amirhossein Teimouri
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Iranian Revolution ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Media Data

Abstract Social media platforms have been increasingly reinvigorating extreme movements, especially rightist movements. Utilizing unique Google Plus data, the author shows the rise and fall of the 2015 rightist anti-Nuclear Deal movement in Iran. He argues that the Google Plus platform in 2015 provided the new generation of revolutionary Islamist rightist activists with a contentious space of mobilization, enabling them to develop a new revolutionary rightist identity. This revolutionary identity and its corresponding language and discourse did not fully unfold in Iranian mainstream rightist media, even though rightist groups, compared to liberal groups, are not censored and repressed. The new generation of rightist activists perceived the Nuclear Deal as an existential threat to revolutionary principles of the country, and thus played out their outrage and identity anxieties on Google Plus. The author contends that this online outrage, due to the activists’ identity bond with the regime and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, did not translate into any massive offline mobilization against the Nuclear Deal. He also discusses the methodological implications of using social media data, especially the discontinuation of Google Plus.

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