Russian-Speaking Digital Buddhism: Neither Cyber, nor Sangha

The paper presents the results of a study that implemented a mixed methods approach to explore the question of correlation between online and offline activities of Buddhist organizations and communities in Russia. The research was carried out in 2019–2020 and addressed the following key issues: How do Buddhist websites and social media communities actually interact with offline organizations and Russian-speaking Buddhist communities? How do the ideological specifics of Buddhist organizations and communities influence their negotiations with the Internet and strategies towards new media technologies? Within the methodological frame of the religious–social shaping of technology approach by Heidi Campbell, we used the typology of religious digital creatives to reveal the strategies created by the Russian-speaking Buddhist communities developing their own identity, authority, and boundaries by means of digital technologies. In the first stage, we used quantitative software non-reactive methods to collect data from social media with the application of mathematical modeling techniques to build a graph model of Buddhist online communities in the vk.com social network and identify and describe its clusters. The second stage of the research combined biographical narratives of Buddhist digital creatives and expert interviews.

Mediated Catholic Mass During the COVID-19 Pandemic: On Communication, Technology and Spiritual Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted Catholic churches in Indonesia to conduct physical distancing, close their doors and move mass to online media or television. This situation is something extraordinary for the Catholic church which is known to adhere to tradition in the implementation of its worship. This study aims to determine the experience of Catholics in conducting mediated worship using Religious-Social Shaping of Technology examining and concepts, namely social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, and digital media law. This qualitative research is done by interviewing six informants using descriptive phenomenological approach. The results of the study indicate four main findings. First, informants have the freedom to choose the tools or channels to attend the mediated mass. Second, the interactivity in the mediated mass is lost. Third, the atmosphere of the mediated mass can have an impact on the solemnity of worship. Fourth, the use of technology for mediated mass cannot absolutely be paralleled with physical worship, but some informants still hope that the mediated mass will be held after this pandemic. This research concludes that mediated mass during a pandemic is not as ideal as a physical mass because the experience gained is not optimal, but it opens up wider opportunities to reach people who may not be physically present in church from anywhere. Academically, this research is expected to increase the wealth of knowledge about mediated worship during a pandemic. Meanwhile, in practical terms, this research can be a reference for the church to improve its overall quality. Pandemi COVID-19 membuat gereja Katolik di Indonesia melakukan physical distancing bahkan menutup pintunya dan mengalihkan misa ke media daring atau televisi. Keadaan ini merupakan sesuatu yang luar biasa bagi gereja Katolik yang terkenal memegang teguh tradisi dalam pelaksanaan ibadahnya. Penelitian ini memiliki tujuan yaitu ingin mengetahui pengalaman umat Katolik dalam melakukan ibadah termediasi dengan menggunakan Religious-Social Shaping of Technology serta beberapa konsep lain, yaitu social affordance, religion-online/online-religion, dan hukum media digital. Adapun pelaksanaan penelitian kualitatif ini adalah dengan mewawancarai enam informan menggunakan pendekatan fenomenologi deskriptif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan empat temuan utama. Pertama, informan memiliki kebebasan untuk memilih alat maupun kanal untuk mengikuti misa termediasi. Kedua, interaktivitas dalam misa termediasi menjadi hilang. Ketiga, suasana misa termediasi bisa berdampak pada kekhusyukan saat beribadah. Keempat, pemanfaatan teknologi untuk misa termediasi memang tidak bisa mutlak disejajarkan dengan ibadah fisik namun sebagian informan tetap mengharapkan misa termediasi dilakukan setelah masa pandemi ini. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa misa termediasi selama pandemi memang tidak seideal misa fisik karena pengalaman yang diraih tidaklah maksimal, namun membuka peluang lebih luas untuk menjangkau orang-orang yang tidak mungkin hadir secara fisik di gereja dari mana saja.Secara akademis penelitian ini diharapakan dapat meningkatkan khazanah pengetahuan tentang ibadah termediasi pada saat pandemi. Sementara secara praktis, penelitian ini dapat menjadi acuan bagi gereja untuk meningkatkan kualitas secara menyeluruh.

A Comparative Study on South African Users’ Perception to Use, Choose, and Purchase a Smartphone Device through the Lens of the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) Theory

Mobile technologies are increasingly making important contributions to the lives of many users. Various factors are said to influence the decision of users to remain connected and be in constant interaction with other users from the same or different social networks. This paper used the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) theory to assess the influence of users’ social networks on their decision to use, choose and purchase a smartphone device. The study used a quantitative research method to analyse data. Data were collected from a sample of young adults aged between 15 and 35 years residing in Durban, South Africa. The study revealed that social networking sites influence users’ decision to use, choose, and purchase a smartphone device. The findings also revealed factors that are perceived as influential in the perceptions of users about their social networks and their interactions with users from the same social networks.

Conclusions

This chapter draws conclusions based on empirical evidence concerning the why, how, and effects of mobile news consumption. A new type of news consumer emerges—one who prefers to seek news over the phone rather than the PC, who tends to engage with the news, and who learns something about currents affairs from it. The increased consumption of news via the mobile phone reveals a process in which Asia’s civically motivated young generations seek to be informed. Our findings offer insights into the debate over technological determinism in that technological innovations matter in early stages of a technology’s diffusion. However, as the technology matures and its use becomes routinized, it is increasingly subject to societal constraints and impositions of political power. Consumption of mobile news among college students in the four studied Asian cities represents an illuminating case of social shaping of technology.

Influencers as socio-technical actors: mapping the paths of influence and the traces of the digital influencers’ system in Italy

In recent years, digital influencers or digital opinion leaders have emerged as a global phenomenon, one providing a rich field of investigation for several disciplines from sociology to marketing. The goal of the paper is to study this phenomenon by adopting an ecological approach, not focusing only on a single dimension but observing the influencer system as an environment with its own rules and subjects, examining the other components of the system and tracing the relationships between them. The original contribution of this paper is to conceptualize influencers as socio-technical actors, i.e. as social subjects that operate within technological platforms, and to adopt an interdisciplinary approach, starting from sociological and marketing studies on the influencer phenomenon and then moving on to STS studies that have focused on the social shaping of technology to shed light on how the influencers are transforming the (social) media system in which they are inserted and then the chain of communication industry. The argument will therefore start by reviewing the theories that address this phenomenon and by sketching a genealogy, tracing its roots in the cultural and social context of the participatory web and web 2.0. It will move, then, to investigate the dynamics of shaping social media platforms, reviewing the studies that have investigated them, from the Social Shaping of Technology approach to platform studies. The paper will apply the analysis to the Italian context, unfolding the dynamics of influence with the support of the case study of ClioMakeUp (the leading beauty creator in Italy), examples, and grey literature from the Italian context. In the final part, the paper will map the traces of the influencer system in Italy and the communication chain, focusing on the processes of mutual shaping between brands, communication agencies, influencer enterprises, regulatory bodies, media, and of course platforms. The STS approach proved to be useful in disentangling the several actors of the system, but as platforms evolved the opportunities for mutual shaping have gradually diminished as the balance of power seems to be tending in favor of the platforms. More research is needed to further understand the concepts of closure, script, and relevant social groups within social media platforms.

Socially inclusive renewable energy transition in sub-Saharan Africa: A social shaping of technology analysis of appliance uptake in Rwanda

Rural off-grid renewable energy solutions often fail due to uncertainties in household energy demand, insufficient community engagement, inappropriate financial models, policy inconsistency and lack of political will. Social shaping of technology (SST) of specific household electric appliances provides a critical lens of understanding the involved socio-technical drivers behind these constraints. This study employs an SST lens to investigate appliance uptake drivers in Rwanda using the EICV5 micro dataset, such that these drivers can aid in policy design of a socially inclusive renewable energy transition. The methodology includes a systemic and epistemological review of current literature on the drivers of appliance uptake in the Global South. These drivers were then analysed using binary logistic regression on 14,580 households. Results show that appliance uptake is highly gendered in Rwanda and the type of appliance determines its diffusion across the welfare categories, commonly referred as to Ubudehe categories. Regression results show that mobile phones, radios and TV-sets have a higher likelihood of ownership than welfare appliances (refrigerator and laundry machine) by low-income households. There is also a high likelihood of uptake of power stabilisers in urban areas, indicating poor power quality. Policy implications were drawn using the lens of disruptive innovation.

Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review

Background: Many of the discussions surrounding Open Access (OA) revolve around how it affects publishing practices across different academic disciplines. It was a long-held view that it would be only a matter of time before all disciplines fully and relatively homogeneously implemented OA. Recent large-scale bibliometric studies show, however, that the uptake of OA differs substantially across disciplines. We aimed to answer two questions: First, how do different disciplines adopt and shape OA publishing practices? Second, what discipline-specific barriers to and potentials for OA can be identified? Methods: In a first step, we identified and synthesized relevant bibliometric studies that assessed OA prevalence and publishing patterns across disciplines. In a second step, and adopting a social shaping of technology perspective, we studied evidence on the socio-technical forces that shape OA publishing practices. We examined a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to, publisher policies and guidelines, OA mandates and policies and author surveys. Results: Over the last three decades, scholarly publishing has experienced a shift from “closed” access to OA as the proportion of scholarly literature that is openly accessible has increased continuously. Estimated OA levels for publication years after 2010 varied between 29.4% and 66%. The shift towards OA is uneven across disciplines in two respects: first, the growth of OA has been uneven across disciplines, which manifests itself in varying OA prevalence levels. Second, disciplines use different OA publishing channels to make research outputs OA. Conclusions: We conclude that historically rooted publishing practices differ in terms of their compatibility with OA, which is the reason why OA can be assumed to be a natural continuation of publishing cultures in some disciplines, whereas in other disciplines, the implementation of OA faces major barriers and would require a change of research culture.