Astronomical Analysis: Viral Video of the Sun Rising from the North in Jeneponto

This study aims to conduct an astronomical analysis of the viral video of the Sunrise from the north on Thursday, June 17, 2021, in Jeneponto Regency, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The video shows a man testifying to the Sun's position in the north and associating this phenomenon as one of the signs of the Day of Judgment. It attracts much attention to become a trending topic, both of social, national, and international media. This research is descriptive with a qualitative approach using library research methods and content analysis of location, calculations, and images. Primary data was obtained through the interview, while secondary data came from related articles and books. Data collection techniques used documentations and relevant data or theories to the research question. Furthermore, the collected data were analyzed inductively and comparatively. Location analysis was carried out using the Google Maps application, and it was found that the coordinates of MAN Binamu Jeneponto were at 5.67o South (S) and 119.73 East (E). Through calculation analysis, it is known that day the Sun rose in Jeneponto at 06.08 WITA with an azimuth of 66° 35' 23". The comparative analysis between the video displays and google maps was then applied and found that the north direction shown in the video was not the actual one. The confirmation process concluded that the Sun did not rise from the north but the east (towards the northeast). The misunderstanding of Qiblah leading the west causes the observer's misidentification of the Sun's position.

Demystifying the Hegemony of the English Language: Scrutiny of ‘Gak Bisa Bahasa Inggris!’ Advertisement within a Semiotics Lens

Due to its overarching status and power, the English language has dominated and influenced nearly in various means of communication, and one of which is instantiated in advertisements. However, studies concerning the hegemony of the English language represented in an advertisement were found to be under-explored. Thereby, the present study aimed to scrutinise the domination and power of the English language, particularly in Indonesia, represented in one of the advertisements, which is a remake video of a viral video from 2017 to date, entitled ‘Gak Bisa Bahasa Inggris!’ from a Youtube Channel named Pahamy. Semiotic analysis was employed to analyse the advertisement. The findings revealed only five out of eight types of syntagma found comprising descriptive syntagma, bracket syntagma, episodic syntagma, autonomous shot, and scene. The present study concluded that it seemed not possible to have the eight syntagmatic types in a very short advertisement video, and some signs found in the advertisement could be used to shed light on the hegemony of the English language in Indonesia, which might result in either positive or negative effect; hence, any thoughtful consideration and action through multilingual education was advocated to solve or at least mitigate this issue.

RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN: REMIX AND CO-OPTION IN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY

Media workers use radical remix techniques to produce content for the mainstream media industries. Rather than thinking of piracy as a form of resistance, we identify these practices of remix labor as a renewed commodification of media piracy and remix cultures (Johns 2009; Mueller 2019). Be it wanna-be influencers remaking the latest viral video on TikTok, videomakers producing dozens of rip-o-matic clips that will constitute the storyboard for TV ads, or writers churning out pieces in content farms in the hope they land on a newspaper, the media industry outsources work to and exploits masses of people who use piracy and remix to produce content based on scissor reels composed from existing audio, textual and visual materials.

The Auto-Tuned Self: Modulating Voice and Gender in Digital Media Ecologies

This essay takes the auto-tuned viral video “Can't Hug Every Cat” as a point of entry for a broader analysis of how modulation decisively shapes politics, aesthetics, and gendering in contemporary digital ecologies. It uncovers how the exaggerated exhibitions of feminine vocal modulation in “Can't Hug Every Cat” entangle with generational feminist anxieties over gendered forms of articulation such as “sexy baby voice” and “upspeak.” It argues that the problematic of the modulated voice is both technologically and thematically central to political, technological, aesthetic, and gendered genealogies of media-technical modulation. The modulated voice given such extraordinary staging in “Can't Hug Every Cat” is therefore restored to the longer history of voice modulation, which is itself closely tied to the rise of control societies and digital media. In this perspective, techniques of voice modulation and social modulation are tandem technologies. The voice modulation that has figured prominently in media cultures in recent decades—from the music of Cher to T-Pain and beyond—is not merely a consequence of digital media and control societies but is also integral to their conditions of possibility. In this light, the rise of technologies for the modulation of the human voice since the nineteenth century is intertwined with the rise of new economic, political, and medical systems of control.

THE CASE OF INDONESIAN SUBTITLE ON WE BARE BEAR SEASON 1

The existence of audiovisual translation is quite new in translation studies, especially subtitles. Therefore, this paper is aimed to find the problem of audiovisual translation strategies which focuses on Indonesian Subtitles on We Bare Bears Season 1. The first three episodes or videos are selected as the object of this study. The selected episodes are Our Stuff, Viral Video, and Food Truck. The object of this study is treated by a qualitative approach. Baker theory, non-equivalency in word-level is also used since some problems are found, as such translation by a more general word, the source and target languages make the different distinction in meaning, differences in physical or interpersonal perspective, cultural substitution, and use the more general word.

An Ethnography Study of a Viral YouTube Educational Video in Ecuador: Dealing With Death and Grief in Times of COVID-19

In Western societies, death is a social and educational taboo. Poor education about death and mourning processes and overprotective family and social attitudes move children away from death to avoid “unnecessary suffering.” The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted these shortcomings and the difficult management of grief's complexity under sudden and unexpected scenarios. The need for immediate and constant updates related to COVID-19 benefited from social media coverage's immediacy. The use of YouTube as a digital platform to disseminate/search for knowledge exploded, raising the need to conduct ethnographic studies to describe this community's people and culture and improve the booming social media's educational capacity and quality. The present virtual ethnography studied 255,862 YouTube views/users and their behavior related to “Vuela Mariposa, Vuela,” a children's story available online since 2009 (not monetized) about the cycle of life, death, and disenfranchised grief (not acknowledged by society) that went viral (+>999%) on May. To our knowledge, this case study is the first original research that explores the ethnography of (i) a viral video, (ii) on death and grief taboo topics, (iii) for prescholars, and (iv) before and during the COVID pandemic. The quantitative and qualitative analyses identified a change in the users' profiles, engagement, and feedback. During the previous 11 years, the users were 35–44 years old Mexican and Spanish women. Those in grief used narrative comments to explain their vital crisis and express their sorrow. In the pandemic, the analysis pointed to Ecuador as the virality geographical niche in a moment when the tragic scenarios in its streets were yet unknown. The timeline match with the official records confirmed the severity of their pandemic scenario. The viral video reached a broad population, with normal distribution for age, and including male gender. Engagement by non-subscribers, direct search (traffic sources), and mean visualization times suggested educational purposes as confirmed by the users' feedback with critical thinking referring to the cycle of life's meaning and societal mourning. For the youngest users, the video was part of academic assignments. The ethnography pointed at YouTube as a flexible education resource, immediately reaching diverse users, and being highly sensitive to critical events.

An Examination of Social Media Reportage and Its Impact Towards Promoting School Development in Nigeria: A Study of Success Adegor’s Viral Video

The study investigates Stephanie Idolor’s short video clip on Miss Success Adegor’s school fees payment saga that went viral in social media. The study aims to establish whether discussions on social media have impact on society particularly in the area of school administration. The findings resonated with a high awareness of 78% creating grand means of between 1.556 to 1.784 on all measurable items on knowledge to activate practical experiences at 0.05 level of significant to show that a strong relationship exists between the Stephanie Idolor’s short video clip on Miss Success Adegor and the desire of teachers, parents, and school administrators to intervene in the administration of primary schools in Nigeria. The findings are further substantiated with 2.373 and 0.8499 coefficient scores for awareness and knowledge at positive levels to suggest that both variables have a positive association with the administration of primary schools in Nigeria. Received: 2 January 2021 / Accepted: 21 February 2021 / Published: 5 March 2021

Indonesian Nationalism Discourse on YouTube Video Produced by Young Chinese-Indonesians

YouTube, as a new social media platform, has become “viral” in Indonesia since 2010. Many Indonesian youths have become popular as YouTubers (users of YouTube who actively upload videos on YouTube). Data from Google Marketing indicate that Indonesia is the country with the largest population by viewing time on YouTube in the Asia Pacific in 2015. YouTube is also the most viewed social media site in Indonesia (data by Alexa.com, 2016). One of the famous Indonesian YouTube channels is Last Day Production (also known as LDP), which regularly uploads situational dramas, skits, and parodies. All of the cast members in LDP videos are young Chinese-Indonesians under 30 years old. On the eve of Indonesian National Day of 2016, LDP uploaded the video entitled Tipikal Anak Muda Indonesia (Stereotypes of Indonesian Youths). The video portrayed how Indonesian youth now envisage their nationalism. LDP created this video in collaboration with young famous Indonesian YouTubers and musicians such as Eka Gustiwana, Aulion, and Kevin Anggara. This video later trended in Indonesia around August 2016. This article uses the approach of cyberculture theory and utilizes visualizing methods. Unit analyses of this research are the viral video, text, music, and whatever else the LDP have portrayed in the video.