Communication and Language Learning in Virtual Environments through an Eco-semiotic Lens

The paper explores the interface between the new theoretical approach of ecolinguistics and language educational practices in the new digital environments that we have plunged into during 2020-2021. From the standpoint of ecological communication and eco-semiotics, the exploration highlights its impact on language learning and education in general, as re-contextualized in the new digital spaces we have all been experiencing as educators and learners. The theoretical input from semiotics and conceptual linguistics on the one hand, and educational ecology on the other hand, is paired with a direct empirical analysis of the students’ language learning experience at the USAMVBT University of Timisoara, Romania, the University of Tetova, North Macedonia, and Lomza State University from Poland. Our aim is to better understand how to sustain students’ communicational skills and their overall adaptation to the emerging digitalised educational environment across fields of study.

Youth Activism for Climate on and Beyond Social media: Insights from FridaysForFuture-Rome

The FridaysForFuture movement (FFF), launched by Greta Thumberg's school strikes in 2018, has led a new wave of climate activism worldwide. Young people are at the forefront, with social media serving both as mobilizing tools and expressive spaces. Drawing upon literature on youth and digital activism with a generational, situated approach, we account for how both the climate struggle and social media are appropriated by FFF-activists as part of their own youth grassroots politics. Moreover, we explore the activities they mix and the strategies they adopt when moving across online and offline environments. From July 2020 to January 2021, we carried out 6 months of ethnographic work with(in) the FFF-Rome group by blending participant observation of assemblies and protests with digital ethnography on the homonym WhatsApp group. Results’ thematic analysis shows that FFF-activists believe climate activism to be their own fight and social media their own battlefield. A generational understanding of digital climate activism emerges at the intersection of the appropriation of the dispute (climate change) and the digital environments (social media). Findings also account for broader logics and strategies adopted by FFF-activists, on and beyond social media. They move seamlessly between online and offline, spanning across and negotiating with different platforms according to political goals and target audiences. These results contribute to overcoming reductive or marginalizing approaches to youth activism, to legitimizing and situating young activists’ social media usage practices within an array of grassroots political practices, and to understanding how generational belonging affects such practices in the Italian context.

VERBUM – virtual enhanced reality for building modelling (virtual technical tour in digital twins for building conservation)

The digital transformation of the construction sector is also involving cultural and architectural heritage conservation management to solve criticalities of information exchange in refurbishment/restoration, from the preliminary steps until the execution and monitoring of interventions. Nevertheless, time and resources required to complete digital models (point clouds, 3D meshes and HBIM model) are extensive and this can cause interruption of knowledge communication among professionals. The VERBuM project (Virtual Enhanced Reality For Building Modelling) aims at investigating how a central Virtual Technical Tour (VTT), would guarantee a continuous stream of information when other disruptive technologies are integrated in the process and their related products are linked to the VTT. The use of a VTT, based on 360° photos, may fill time and resources gaps as it is a rapid up-to-date and high-fidelityto-reality tool. The fostering of the paradigmatic change in refurbishment/restoration process requires the development of all-in-one digital environments for digital twinning of cultural and architectural heritage and its assessment, aware of potentialities and criticalities to be overcame. The research moves from stakeholders’ information requirements to implement the VERBuM process supported by the central VTT, editable via cloud-based platform (VERBuM product) to exchange digital contents, uploaded in different file format, but consulted in VR by all the involved actors via web services, without any software product installation. The tool has been evaluated via SWOT analysis supported by Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model and users’ perceptions. The results provide mitigation measures of threats related to distrust in use of VTT within working groups and fruition of point clouds, meshes and BIM models, possible via WebGL-based libraries.

Going Digital

The digital society is a research object that still lacks a clear and shared definition, as it is always in progressive and whirling transformation. From a methodological point of view, digital society is then a fruitful ground for experimentation and innovation. However, the unceasing flourishing of online social practices and the innovative ways to frame into data the online activities of individuals make the knowledge drawn from the web always uncertain, revisable, and at high risk of obsolescence. Social research tried to face the challenges posed by the digital society first by adapting the established social research methods to the new digital environments and then creating new ones. Neither approach has been able to define which are the most valid and reliable methodological tools to study the digital society, nor to draw a shared vision that would allow social research to advance. This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities that the digital society poses to social research methodology and reflects on the need for new epistemological and methodological positions.

Methodology of Teaching Law Disciplines in Russian and English to Law Students: A Digital Form and Traditional Content

The research problem addressed in this paper is to substantiate the most optimal forms and methods of teaching the law disciplines both in Russian and in English in a law school in the context of the introduction of digital forms of learning into traditional educational environment of a law school. The research applies the methods of the concept of professional training in advocacy. Professional training in advocacy is one of the practice-oriented areas of advocacy that includes the methodology of training students in a law school covering the statistical method, systematic method, historical and legal method, method of participatory observation, method of analysis and synthesis. The paper describes new areas of work and new opportunities that have become available to students in 2020–2021, including new master’s programs and additional in-person and online courses of students’ practice-oriented training. The paper examines how students of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL) can acquire necessary knowledge and practice skills in order to pass the qualification examination for the status of an advocate and be able to practice law in the Russian Federation and abroad. The authors of the paper believe that the development of digital technologies has made it possible to move to a qualitatively new level of teaching. Along with classical teaching methods, the faculty have started implementing digital technologies in the learning process, focusing on practice-oriented types of work, including practice-oriented projects. A partial transition to distance learning has contributed to creation and development of the common educational environment that will enable international cooperation in student education and development of other digital environments, such as an integrated information system for the Russian Advocacy as well.

Epävarmuudesta arvokkaaseen lopputulokseen - serendipisyys tiedonhankintakäyttäytymisessä

A serendipitious event in everyday life is common: it means unexpected information that yields some unintended information and potential value later on. Serendipity as a word has been around for hundreds of years. As a studied concept it is rather recent. Serendipity is not just the unexpected information or experience but rather the ability to recognize and do something with it. Serendipitious discovery of information is different from purposive or known item search as it is more complicated and lasts much longer. The discovery of information by chance or accident is still looking it’s explicit place in models and frameworks of information behaviour. It is still not clear what constitutes the core of the research area of serendipity in information behaviour.The qualities of interaction among people, information, and objects differ in physical vs. digital environments. The bisociation, a creative association between different peaces of information may be computer supported.This article presents an overview of the research study of serendipity in information seeking behaviour. We explore serendipity mainly in the digital information environment. As a setting for our study we use six main drivers of serendipity research relating to digital enviroments presented in McCay-Peet and Toms (2017). The drivers are: 1. Theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of serendipity, 2) physical vs digital, 3) information overload, 4) filter bubbles, 5) user experience, and 6) user strategies.A new refined temporal model of information encountering by Erdelez and Makri (2020) is also presented in this article. The model presents a framework for better understanding of the temporal dimension of the information acquisition. At a macro level the model positions information encountering within contextual factors related for user, information, task and environment related characteristics.

Sustaining Democracy

Democratic spaces must also be durable. Durable spaces facilitate our attachments to our communities and to other members; they help us sustain communities. Chapter 3 draws from Alexis de Tocqueville’s writing on democracy to explain how the durability of the built environment can be a powerful resource for generating the attachments that sustain democratic communities by (1) continually reminding citizens of their social obligations and (2) facilitating repeated interactions between citizens. The chapter then turns to the example of Twitter—particularly the mechanism of hashtags—to explore these dynamics in a digital environment. Hashtags provide temporary boundaries that are useful for mobilizing, but not sustaining, communities of interest; as a result, Twitter is not a platform well suited for cultivating the attachments required for longer-term cooperative activity. The chapter concludes with suggestions as to how we might design more durable spaces—and sustainable communities—in digital environments.

Democracy for Profit?

This chapter evaluates Facebook and Twitter’s algorithms using the framework of democratic space. Prominent critiques highlight their opacity and users’ lack of control; tools like Gobo “fix” these algorithms by increasing their flexibility. But while these solutions might cede more control to individual users, they are insufficient for building democratic communities; the more pressing concern for both Facebook and Twitter is their lack of clear boundaries, which undermines users’ ability to recognize their communities. The chapter concludes by showing how we might “democratize” these algorithms in ways that not only increase user control over their digital environments and the algorithms that structure them, but also help to generate and sustain the communities required to exert that control democratically. Ultimately, the chapter argues that questions of ownership and control must be placed alongside considerations about the communal effects of algorithmic design if we are to build environments supportive of democratic politics.

“Make No Little Plans”

The concluding chapter turns back to wider questions of democracy, taking up some of the challenges associated with the book’s project of democratizing digital environments. In particular, it addresses the authoritarian impulses of architecture—and the corresponding lack of faith in citizens that leads us to cede the work of building to others in the first place—as well as the “proper” role of experts in any project of democratization. It responds to these challenges by reaffirming a democratic faith in citizens’ capacities and highlighting the role of the built environment in nurturing them; by redesigning our digital environments, it argues, we can create conditions for these currently under-realized capacities to flourish. The chapter concludes by outlining strategies through which experts and citizens might collaborate to rebuild digital spaces democratically.