scholarly journals THE SHAPE OF PLATFORM STUDIES: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL METHODOLOGICAL MODEL FOR A VICISSITUDINOUS CONCEPT

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Rambukkana ◽  
Gemma De Verteuil
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Internet Studies ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
User Data ◽  
Software Platforms ◽  
Software Code ◽  
Machine Communication

The study of platforms is on the rise in communication studies, science and technology studies (STS), game studies, internet studies, and the study of human-machine communication (HMC). While originally platform studies emerged from hardware studies as an integrated attempt to study the hardware, software, code, marketing, and use of computational technologies—especially, early on, videogame consoles, but never limited to them—its use has been broadened to include the study of software platforms, such as social media sites, and their user affordances, algorithmic decision making, terms of service, background code environments, and embeddedness in neoliberal capitalism: selling user data, acting as advertising mediums, etc. While a fruitful field with much work developed, there is a noticeable dearth of methodological theorising on the topic, even as there are numerous theoretical explorations. How exactly does one $2 platform studies? We propose a multidimensional approach to platform studies, in which work may be located along at least three major axes: computational—sociotechnical, pragmatic—critical, and interpersonal—structural. These three dimensions of platform studies are combinable, provisional, and subject to extension. While the three dimensions offered up for discussion here cannot speak to the entirely of what platform studies $2 or $2 , together and as a starting point these initial three define the shape of platform studies, track the work it has already done, and offer a solid framework and model for future investigations.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

Developing Design Requirements from Cognitive Task Data: Replacing Magic with Methodology

1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-294
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Hale ◽  
Anna L. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Interaction Design ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Ecological Interface Design ◽  
Engineering Data ◽  
User Data ◽  
Design Requirements

This symposium addresses the challenge of translating user data to specifications suitable for interface development. Four methodologies will be presented: Decision requirements tables, ecological interface design, object-view and interaction design and procedural networks. These four methodologies will be contrasted relative to three dimensions: (1) type of data used in analysis, (2) point in the design process at which each methodology focuses its impact and (3) the formalisms each uses for translating psychological data into engineering data suitable for specification development. Our introductory remarks will elaborate on these three dimensions, and present an example design problem. The four session participants then will present their respective methodologies, how each addresses the three dimensions and how each can be used to address the example design problem.

scholarly journals Is Pokémon GO Feminist? An Actor-Network Theory Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carina Assuncao
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Pokémon Go ◽  
Politics And Gender ◽  
And Gender

The Pokémon franchise has been targeted and has been successful with males and females (Tobin, 2004). In it, cute-looking creatures with superpowers fight each other for the fame and glory of their masters (the players). The franchise includes a plethora of entertainment media. This essay will focus on the recent release, Pokémon GO. This particular game and its location-based technology will be analysed using cyberfeminism and actor-network theory to explore the play space as a context for kinaesthetic awareness and embodiment. The cyberfeminism herein exploited is that of “the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender” (Haraway, 2000, p. 292). Actor-network theory, a strong methodological tradition in science and technology studies, sees actors and the networks they create as completely ‘flat’ and non-hierarchical. ANT has been criticised for its lack of concern with politics and gender (Lagesen, 2012) but, in combination with a feminist lens, ANT has the potential to uncover issues that other approaches in game studies cannot. This original framework can help game studies scholars to see gameplay processes in a new light by following the many actors involved in game design and use.

scholarly journals Revisiting Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in an Age of Digital Idealism

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Christopher Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Government

The idealism that Fredrich Engels seeks to defeat in Dialectics of Nature today pervades online discourse and pedagogies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The deterministic view that STEM is dedicated to unleashing the inherent power in objects for the service of privileged societies fails to understand the basic principles that Engels proposed. Engels exposes his contemporaries’ flawed understanding of science and technology and provides interdisciplinary examples that exemplify a different way of thinking. Outside of China, Engels’s ideas have been used suggest that social considerations cannot be a part of science because they limit the free exchange of ideas. Within China, particularly after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, these ideas have been the basis of new thinking about the relationships among developers, the government, and the people. Moreover, readers of Dialectics of Nature who are familiar with the basic tenets of Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as social constructivism and actor-network theory, will not be so impressed with the idea that social theory has no place in understanding science and engineering. This analysis suggests avenues of cooperation for international science studies. In addition, it provides a starting point for pedagogies to promote the development for science and technology that reduces inequality and supports the notion that the liberal arts have an important place in the study of science and engineering, an insight known as STEAM.

scholarly journals Developing A General Framework for National Health Information Network for Developing Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1792
Author(s):  
Hamid Moghaddasi ◽  
Reza Rabiei ◽  
Farkhondeh Asadi ◽  
Ali Mohammadpour
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Health System ◽  
Health Information ◽  
National Health ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Health Information Systems ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Information Network ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Usa

Background: The National Health Information Network (NHIN) is one of the key issues in health information systems in any country. However, the development of this network should be based on an appropriate framework. Unfortunately, the conducted projects of health information systems in the Ministry of Health of Iran do not fully comply with the concept of NHIN. The present study was aimed to develop a general framework for NHIN in Iran. Materials and Methods: In this study, in the first stage, the required information about the concept of the NHIN framework and related NHIN documents in the USA and the UK were collected based on a literature review. Then, according to the results of the first stage and with regards to the structure of the Iranian health system, a general framework for Iranian NHIN was proposed. The Delphi technique was conducted to verify the framework. Results: The proposed framework for Iranian NHIN includes three dimensions; components, principles, and architecture. Over 80% of experts have evaluated all three aspects of the framework at an acceptable scale. In total, the proposed framework has been evaluated by 83.8% of the experts at an acceptable scale. Conclusion: The proposed framework was expected to serve as the starting point for moving towards the design and creation of Iranian NHIN. At any rate, the framework could be criticized, and it could only be used for the countries whose health system is similar to the structure of the health system in Iran. [GMJ.2020;9:e1792]

scholarly journals The politics of user-platform relationships: Co-scripting live-streaming on Twitch.tv

First Monday ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine Ask ◽  
Hendrik Storstein Spilker ◽  
Martin Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Live Streaming ◽  
Script Theory ◽  
Internet Studies ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Course Changes ◽  
Individual Use ◽  
The Relationship

What characterises the relationship between users and platforms? How are use and users configured by platform design, and in turn, how do users accept or reject such efforts? Using the live-streaming platform Twitch, this paper explores the user-platform relationship to answer these questions. Twitch is a highly popular live-streaming platform with an emphasis on gaming, whose rise to fame has been far from streamlined or expected. Based on qualitative analysis of design, discourse and user practices, the paper draws on script theory from science and technology studies and platform theory from Internet studies, to unpack the configuration of use and users. By tracing the development of the platform, we identify a pattern of frequent interaction between platform owners and users, and consequent course changes, which we label co-scription. Finally, we analyse the current Twitch script and propose five dimensions of co-scription that determine the user-platform relationship: 1) Sociality: community or individual use; 2) Audience: specific or general; 3) Moderation: strictly moderated or laissez-faire; 4) Content: user-generated or commercial; and 5) Scope: specialised or multi-feature.

Silicon chemistry in zero to three dimensions: from dichlorosilylene to silafullerane

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (12) ◽  
pp. 1397-1412 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Teichmann ◽  
M. Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Silicon Chemistry

As one of the simplest examples of functionalized Si(ii) species, the SiCl2/[SiCl3]− system is not only fundamentally interesting, but also an important starting point for the assembly of oligosilane chains, rings, and clusters.

Dimensional Quantification of Embedded Voids or Objects in Three Dimensions Using X-Ray Tomography

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Patterson ◽  
Juan P. Escobedo-Diaz ◽  
Darcie Dennis-Koller ◽  
Ellen Cerreta
Keyword(s):  
Digital Imaging ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Post Processing ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Individual Object ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
X Ray Computed ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Processing Steps

AbstractScientific digital imaging in three dimensions such as when using X-ray computed tomography offers a variety of ways to obtain, filter, and quantify data that can produce vastly different results. These opportunities, performed during image acquisition or during the data processing, can include filtering, cropping, and setting thresholds. Quantifying features in these images can be greatly affected by how the above operations are performed. For example, during binarization, setting the threshold too low or too high can change the number of objects as well as their measured diameter. Here, two facets of three-dimensional quantification are explored. The first will focus on investigating the question of how many voxels are needed within an object to have accurate geometric statistics that are due to the properties of the object and not an artifact of too few voxels. These statistics include but are not limited to percent of total volume, volume of the individual object, Feret shape, and surface area. Using simple cylinders as a starting point, various techniques for smoothing, filtering, and other processing steps can be investigated to aid in determining if they are appropriate for a specific desired statistic for a real dataset. The second area of investigation is the influence of post-processing, particularly segmentation, on measuring the damage statistics in high purity Cu. The most important parts of the pathways of processing are highlighted.

scholarly journals Measuring individuals’ concerns over collective privacy on social networking sites

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Jia ◽  
Heng Xu
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Information Access ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Starting Point

With the rise of social networking sites (SNSs), individuals not only disclose personal information but also share private information concerning others online. While shared information is co-constructed by self and others, personal and collective privacy boundaries become blurred. Thus there is an increasing concern over information privacy beyond the individual perspective. However, limited research has empirically examined if individuals are concerned about privacy loss not only of their own but their social ties’; nor is there an established instrument for measuring the collective aspect of individuals’ privacy concerns. In order to address this gap in existing literature, we propose a conceptual framework of individuals’ collective privacy concerns in the context of SNSs. Drawing on the Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory (Petronio, 2002), we suggest three dimensions of collective privacy concerns, namely, collective information access, control and diffusion. This is followed by the development and empirical validation of a preliminary scale of SNS collective privacy concerns (SNSCPC). Structural model analyses confirm the three-dimensional conceptualization of SNSCPC and reveal antecedents of SNS users’ concerns over violations of the collective privacy boundaries. This paper serves as a starting point for theorizing privacy as a collective notion and for understanding online information disclosure as a result of social interaction and group influence.

scholarly journals Levels and Profiles of Functionality as Dimensions of University Quality: An Empirical Study of Universidad Complutense

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Arturo De la Orden Hoz ◽  
Inmaculada Asensio Muñoz ◽  
Chantal-María Biencinto López ◽  
Coral González Barberá ◽  
José Mafokozi Ndabishibije
Keyword(s):  
Total Sample ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Systemic Model ◽  
Global Vision ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
The University ◽  
University Quality ◽  
Function Profile

This study comes out as a step forward in a research line focused on validating empirically a systemic model of university quality. The article defines university quality in terms of three dimensions: functionality, effectiveness and efficiency. The focus of the article is on the analysis of the dimension of functionality as a starting point in the process of identifying and validating indicators for the evaluation of university quality. The core of the article integrates the presentation of the level and profile of functionality of the university for the total sample and for three audiences: faculty, students and employers. For each audience the study emphasizes the evaluation of the extent to which the university accomplishes its functions as a whole institution (level) and for each separate function (profile), as well as the differences among different strata of each audience. Finally, the study points out the differences in the profiles of functionality of the university observed by the different audiences, both as a whole institution and for each function. In the conclusions, a global vision of the level of functionality of the university, evaluated by the three audiences, is established.

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