Digital action campaigns in the global public sphere

<p>This research project undertakes a critical analysis of the use of new media technologies by community activists engaging in local and global communities. Increasingly, community organizations are using digital media to augment their various activities and conduct campaigns. I will consider this development with regard to WorldPulse.com, a global organization whose aim is to foster and facilitate civic engagement. More specifically, the website attempts to function and serve as a global public sphere and vehicle for the expression and discussion of political, social and cultural issues relevant to women. The analysis conducted in this thesis focuses on the website’s digital action campaigns on gender-based violence, girl child education, and women’s access to technology between 2012 and 2014, and its ‘Voices of Our Future’ citizen journalism training program. This project employs digital ethnographic methods using content and discourse analysis, participant observation, online web survey, semi-structured email interviews and a researcher’s journal to examine the potential of worldpulse.com to serve as a global public sphere for women. The research makes use of critical studies theories and data triangulation methodologies in order to identify and evaluate if, and to what extent, the site facilitates public sphere activity and activism. I have developed an inductive typology to assess levels and kinds of civic engagement that is enabled and augmented by the interconnection of online and offline advocacy. This thesis aims to contribute to the body of scholarly literature researching and evaluating the extent to which new media technologies enable and facilitate public sphere engagement.</p>

Digital action campaigns in the global public sphere

<p>This research project undertakes a critical analysis of the use of new media technologies by community activists engaging in local and global communities. Increasingly, community organizations are using digital media to augment their various activities and conduct campaigns. I will consider this development with regard to WorldPulse.com, a global organization whose aim is to foster and facilitate civic engagement. More specifically, the website attempts to function and serve as a global public sphere and vehicle for the expression and discussion of political, social and cultural issues relevant to women. The analysis conducted in this thesis focuses on the website’s digital action campaigns on gender-based violence, girl child education, and women’s access to technology between 2012 and 2014, and its ‘Voices of Our Future’ citizen journalism training program. This project employs digital ethnographic methods using content and discourse analysis, participant observation, online web survey, semi-structured email interviews and a researcher’s journal to examine the potential of worldpulse.com to serve as a global public sphere for women. The research makes use of critical studies theories and data triangulation methodologies in order to identify and evaluate if, and to what extent, the site facilitates public sphere activity and activism. I have developed an inductive typology to assess levels and kinds of civic engagement that is enabled and augmented by the interconnection of online and offline advocacy. This thesis aims to contribute to the body of scholarly literature researching and evaluating the extent to which new media technologies enable and facilitate public sphere engagement.</p>

Where Is This Now, Now?: Gertrude Stein's Literary Innovations and New Sound Media

This article addresses the largely unexplored relationship between Stein's literary innovations and the new sound media of her time. By examining these connections, this article looks at Stein's compositional techniques—in particular her concept of the continuous present and her lifelong interest in speech and dialogue—to examine how new media technologies intersected with her attempt to change the way writing was written, read, and heard. By focusing on sound, and looking specifically at her final work Brewsie and Willie (1946), this article reads Stein's innovative poetics against the backdrop of concurrent changes to audio technologies during her career. Finally, the article argues that by paying attention to the ongoing shifts in media ecologies in relation to modernist innovations, we might gain insight into the larger phenomenological and sensorial sphere that formed the backdrop to modernism.

Death and the virtual: memorialization on social networking websites

"The shift towards online communication has impacted many aspects of our lives, in that we increasingly use the internet in ways that have a lasting impact on our lived experience. One of the ways this impact occurs is through the virtual manifestation of phenomena related to death. Customs related to death - such as funerals and memorials - are being remediated on the internet in ways that are varied and complex. Remediation, a term introduced by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, involves the reinvention of previous forms of media using new media technologies.1 In this way, every form of media is understood to be a new version of a form of media that already existed. Looking at sites of memorialization of all kinds through the framework of remediation illuminates the ways that the manifestation of issues related to death and memorialization on the internet has and will continue to both complicate and enhance the ways these sites are experienced and conceptualized by those that visit them. While traditional physical memorial sites have always existed - and will continue to exist - sites of remembrance that appear on the internet are emerging as a complementary medium of memorialization"--From the Introduction.

Death and the virtual: memorialization on social networking websites

"The shift towards online communication has impacted many aspects of our lives, in that we increasingly use the internet in ways that have a lasting impact on our lived experience. One of the ways this impact occurs is through the virtual manifestation of phenomena related to death. Customs related to death - such as funerals and memorials - are being remediated on the internet in ways that are varied and complex. Remediation, a term introduced by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, involves the reinvention of previous forms of media using new media technologies.1 In this way, every form of media is understood to be a new version of a form of media that already existed. Looking at sites of memorialization of all kinds through the framework of remediation illuminates the ways that the manifestation of issues related to death and memorialization on the internet has and will continue to both complicate and enhance the ways these sites are experienced and conceptualized by those that visit them. While traditional physical memorial sites have always existed - and will continue to exist - sites of remembrance that appear on the internet are emerging as a complementary medium of memorialization"--From the Introduction.

Fashion 2.0: the uses and gratifications of fashion blogs

There has been limited research in the field of fashion blogs. This study attempts to begin filling this void by examining fashion blogs from the user’s perspective as they relate to other forms of fashion media. From the uses and gratifications perspective, this study employs a qualitative investigation to identify the motivational factors for fashion blog use. A two-step process, made up from an initial online questionnaire and in-depth interviews was used. The online questionnaire was answered by 247 women between the ages of 18 and 35. Respondents for the second portion of the study, the in-depth interviews, were made up of 10 women who had previously participated in the questionnaire. Three new motivational factors were identified: habit, entrance, and retrieve/save content. Adhering to the belief that new media technologies supplement rather than succeed one another, these findings have been explained in relation to the use of fashion magazines.

Fashion 2.0: the uses and gratifications of fashion blogs

There has been limited research in the field of fashion blogs. This study attempts to begin filling this void by examining fashion blogs from the user’s perspective as they relate to other forms of fashion media. From the uses and gratifications perspective, this study employs a qualitative investigation to identify the motivational factors for fashion blog use. A two-step process, made up from an initial online questionnaire and in-depth interviews was used. The online questionnaire was answered by 247 women between the ages of 18 and 35. Respondents for the second portion of the study, the in-depth interviews, were made up of 10 women who had previously participated in the questionnaire. Three new motivational factors were identified: habit, entrance, and retrieve/save content. Adhering to the belief that new media technologies supplement rather than succeed one another, these findings have been explained in relation to the use of fashion magazines.

Coda

Wastepaper Modernism concludes by briefly turning towards our current age of new media technologies and networks. Where literature’s first media age of cinemas and radios brought about an acute anxiety about the novel’s status as a print-based medium, by the end of the century this turned into a state of wistfulness towards all things paper. This change exposes what was at stake in wastepaper modernism’s imagination of literature as a decayed medium. Wastepaper modernism marked a brief but vital moment in which literature recognized its own materials as occupying the border between meaning and unmeaning.

Screenshot, save, share, shame: Making sense of new media through screenshots and public shame

This article engages in a qualitative thematic analysis of media discourse about two prominent cases involving screenshots and public shame: the story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who took her own life after years of cyberbullying facilitated by screenshots; and the story of Anthony Weiner, the New York U.S. Congressman whose political career crumbled after screenshots revealed extramarital flirtations. It shows how screenshots violated the assumed boundaries of media environments, and in doing so prompted moments of public sense-making around new media. By focusing on cases where public shaming collides with the introduction of new media technologies, this article also offers an opportunity to understand how public spectacles of emotion, specifically of shame, shape new media technologies’ meanings and uses.

Navigating sociocultural communication spaces from a gendered perspective: An analysis of the use of new media technologies by Kenyan families

New technologies have challenged the established conceptual understanding of time and physical space as we know it and problematized how cultural values and power dynamics between men and women are viewed. This study sought to examine the time–space distanciation and comprehension in the face of increased access to and use of new communication technologies by families in Kenya. The article addresses the following questions: (1) How have new media technologies in Kenya affected individuals’ use of space at the family level? (2) How do women and men navigate through changes in spaces occasioned by the new media technologies? (3) What influence have new media technologies had on gendered power dynamics between men and women in the family set up? A qualitative study was carried out between October 2018 and October 2019 in Uasin Gishu County in Kenya. Interviews and observation techniques were employed with a total of 42 purposively sampled participants taking part. Qualitative techniques were used to analyse the data. The study generated a number of findings that formed the basis of key recommendations thereof.