Coping with digital market re-organization: How the hotel industry strategically responds to digital platform power

How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlight the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation. This paper expands this view to investigate also strategies at the organizational level. It draws on the algorithmic game studies of strategic responses to environmental changes to study how organizations strategically respond to the rise of digital platforms. To show organizations’ capacities to cope with the new digital market environment, we use a qualitative case study of the Swiss hotel sector and its reactions to so-called online travel agencies, based on interviews with hotel managers and professional representatives. We distinguish between three types of hotels—small family-run, luxury, and chain hotels, and identify three types of strategic responses: bypassing, optimizing, and mitigating. Contrary to a platform power perspective, we find some evidence for organizations’ capacity to keep platforms at bay, by limiting dependence through mitigation, and platforms’ reach through bypassing. Hotels also learn to “play the algorithmic game” and take advantage of platforms’ technological affordances, but such strategies seem to accommodate platform power rather than countering it. Finally, we find that hotels with fewer resources (small family-run hotels) are less equipped to counter platform power, suggesting that platforms risk fostering existing hierarchies and segmentation in markets.

Dancing someone else's movements through someone else’s body

In this article, we will describe the uneven conditions in which dance practices are being extracted and circulated by looking at how online gaming platforms have digitised and commodified human movement. The study of these controversial cases contextualised within the legal aspects of dance copyright are the basis to offer speculative courses for both dance practitioners. The first section explores the issues of digitisation and ownership of bodily movement within virtual spaces by looking at notions of disembodiment and dance as a commodifiable object. The second section illustrates the complexities of copyrighting choreography through a critique on how intellectual property regimes disregard collective and social practices. Finally, we will present alternatives for dance practitioners going forward by looking at how to protect dance as a digital object; the current initiatives to engage dancers with technological affordances; and the decentralising potential of blockchain networks to build new collaborative landscapes for the circulation of creativity.

Single Motherhood, Media, Methods, And Messiness: Exploring Virtual Reality As A Tool For Autobiographical Expression

<div>This research/creation project documents my experiences of living as a single mother with minimal financial, family, and social support. Since research suggests that virtual reality (VR) can generate heightened empathetic response in users, I chose to develop my story using VR as the primary creative tool. This study required engagement with the creative and methodological approaches of arts-based research—a process of learning-by-making that prompts questions and reflections on ethics, techniques, aesthetics, value, and subjectivity. The finished project, then, is an exploration of my journey not only as a single mother, but also as a researcher exploring emerging technological affordances and their capacity to engender empathy and serve as tools of autobiographical expression. In this way, the work could further be understood as contributing to the emerging field of autotheory, in which the researcher’s subjective and embodied experience is integrated with theoretical and philosophical approaches.</div><div><br></div>

Single Motherhood, Media, Methods, And Messiness: Exploring Virtual Reality As A Tool For Autobiographical Expression

<div>This research/creation project documents my experiences of living as a single mother with minimal financial, family, and social support. Since research suggests that virtual reality (VR) can generate heightened empathetic response in users, I chose to develop my story using VR as the primary creative tool. This study required engagement with the creative and methodological approaches of arts-based research—a process of learning-by-making that prompts questions and reflections on ethics, techniques, aesthetics, value, and subjectivity. The finished project, then, is an exploration of my journey not only as a single mother, but also as a researcher exploring emerging technological affordances and their capacity to engender empathy and serve as tools of autobiographical expression. In this way, the work could further be understood as contributing to the emerging field of autotheory, in which the researcher’s subjective and embodied experience is integrated with theoretical and philosophical approaches.</div><div><br></div>

Resolving Dilemmas in ICT-Enhanced Interventions: A Cross-Platform-Mediated Strategy

Face-to-face interventions in social care settings are severely disrupted under COVID-19. Previous studies support Information and communication technology (ICT) enhanced intervention as an effective alternative. While difficulties older adults experienced in using ICT were examined extensively, there are fewer discussions on how innate medium characteristics of the delivery mode influence therapeutic interactions. This study explored these embedded challenges in ICT-enhanced psychosocial interventions and possible solutions. We conducted on-site observations and focus groups with 12 participants from two teleconferencing-aided intervention groups for chronic pain with exercise and psychotherapy elements. Observation notes and transcriptions of focus groups recordings were analyzed using thematic analysis. We identified three overarching themes: empowerment, dilemmas, and cross-platform mediated strategy. ICT empowered participants by promoting autonomy and self-management, yet two dilemmas that stemmed from technological affordances undermined the quality of communication. A screen-camera dilemma occurred when participants tried to observe instructions from interventionists while demonstrating their posture in front of the camera for guidance. The blurring boundary between therapy and home settings presented another dilemma. Although teleconferencing increased flexibility and comfort in participation, interruptions from the background environment and intersections of family living spaces disrupted audio-visual communication and jeopardized the sense of security. As a solution, interventionists adopted a cross-platform mediated strategy to bypass the dilemmas. They communicated and delivered supplementary materials through different media, including printed materials and video streamings. Interventionists could consider the unique structural features in different media and the potential impact of participants’ sociodemographic factors, especially those associated with digital literacy.

Rapport Management in Online Racial Humor

The present paper aims to investigate how racial humor, posted on Twitter affects rapport between interlocutors at both the interpersonal and intercommoned levels. Thus, the main problem this thesis attempt to address is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) users' potential lack of awareness of the racially sensitive issues and how to deal with them in (online) intercultural communication. The paper aims to advance the understanding as to how the social and technological affordances of the medium (Herring, 2007) can shape the contexts in which racial humor is morally perceived and attitudinally assessed (in terms of politeness and impoliteness) by the audience on Twitter. After in-depth reading and a systematic coding process, a dataset totaling (312) racial jokes and (956) responses from various users, racial jokes circulated online were found to orient rapport either towards challenge or enhancement. These two rapport orientations were found to be (im)politeness-implicative on two different levels; the interpersonal level between the account administrator and his/her followers, and the societal level between social groups targeted by racial humor and the dominant social group in the society.

CHAT framework to study affordances in CALL environments

This paper proposes to explore the theory of affordances in the light of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to study affordances in complex Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) environments. The term ‘affordance’ designates an action possibility that is offered by an environment or an object to an actor in the environment either “for good or ill” (Gibson, 1979). It depends not only on the inherent characteristics of the environment but also on the users’ perception and action capabilities. CALL affordances are said to be a unique combination of social, educational, linguistic, and technological affordances (Blin, 2016a). However, there is limited research to date that looks at affordances from an ecological perspective linking the micro moment-to-moment interaction levels with the macro level within which they are embedded in educational contexts (Blin, 2016a). This paper explores the analytical tools of CHAT (Leontyev, 1978; Engeström, 1987) as particularly suitable to investigate affordances at the macro, meso and micro levels of technology-mediated sociocultural educational contexts in CALL.

Does the platform matter? Social media and COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs in 17 countries

While the role of social media in the spread of conspiracy theories has received much attention, a key deficit in previous research is the lack of distinction between different types of platforms. This study places the role of social media affordances in facilitating the spread of conspiracy beliefs at the center of its enquiry. We examine the relationship between platform use and conspiracy theory beliefs related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on the concept of technological affordances, we theorize that variation across key features make some platforms more fertile places for conspiracy beliefs than others. Using data from a crossnational dataset based on a two-wave online survey conducted in 17 countries before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that Twitter has a negative effect on conspiracy beliefs—as opposed to all other platforms under examination which are found to have a positive effect.

Internet blackouts in Meghalaya: A case of emerging complexities in the digital age

The paper is rooted in the observations from the two internet blackouts witnessed in Meghalaya in 2018 and 2019. The state is located in the North Eastern region of India and this study focuses on the Khasi population residing in the East Khasi Hills District. The study explores the complex role social media has played in information dissemination in the digital age. India currently leads the world in terms of internet blackouts and it has been imposed 538 times in the country. This phenomenon has become a reoccurring trend over the last few years with the rise in digital communications and technological affordances. The paper addresses the dualistic nature of social media and how it can be empowering on the one hand, and can also be a key contributor to mis(dis)information on the other. The study offers a non-digital centric approach by adopting digital ethnographic methods and offers insights into the social media practices and experiences of the Khasi participants as well as delving into the problematic nature of internet blackouts with respect to Meghalaya. Evidently, social media has become a space in which most individuals carry their identity, aspirations, views, history, and opinions.

Forced Empowerment and the Paradox of Mobile Dating Apps

New women-focused mobile dating apps purport to empower women by having them “make the first move” and disrupt traditional male-dominated dating norms. Drawing on feminist approaches and technological affordances, we examine how heterosexual cisgender women and men experience this “empowerment” and contrast it to other mobile dating app use. We used a multimethod approach to conducting app walkthroughs, focus groups, and interviews to contrast the mobile dating apps, Tinder and Bumble. The findings reveal that perceptions of free choice and action determine empowerment experiences. Our study reveals that the “forced empowerment” on Bumble was still strongly shaped by heterosexual gender norms that encouraged “good” girls and guys to use the app to look for long-term relationships but continue to use Tinder to hook up, despite the popular misogyny on Tinder identified by both men and women in our study. We conclude by discussing the empowerment paradox of dating apps through popular feminism and misogyny.