Digital Arenas: The regulatory framework and other relevant issues on eSports online betting

The contribution of technological development, in an essential and user-friendly way, to the transition of many aspects of the real world to the digital environment, is constantly creating new habits and new fields of activity. This transition, without any shadow of doubt, leads to new and unknown realities, which, apart from the interest they present, they call for thorough investigation and further regulation, where it is needed. The cases of eSports and online gaming, although not new to the user of the digital age, are of high importance to the investment and commercial world, in terms of their further development and exploitation. In this context, although online betting in eSports has been introduced to the Greek market a few years ago, it is unlikely to be developed according to its dynamics, since issues of legal nature are not settled yet. In order to ensure a secure landscape for eSports online betting, the necessity for transparency and integrity and their protection through regulatory action becomes imperative.

Media literacy in video production: An experiment with university students

This article describes an experimental academic e-course during the Covid-19 pandemic, in which 178 undergraduate students were asked to become video creators and narrators through a specific methodology in order to become digitally literate and produce original content.This practical e-workshop took place in the context of the “Video, Image and Audio Editing” course of the Department of Communication, Media and Culture at Panteion University and was adapted to the needs of a distance learning course. Its main aim was the students’ familiarization with literacy in digital tools and techniques that until now was only achieved in an actual laboratory setting. The research is divided into two phases. The first phase concerns this article and analyzes the methodology of video production as well as the students’ acquisition of digital tools. In the second phase, specific factors will be studied, from the videos produced, through qualitative research so as to determine the audience’s interaction with the narrative content, as well as with the factors that students believe contributed to the interaction of that content.Students gained knowledge of digital video tools which was upgraded to the capabilities and needs of each student. They acquired video editing skills based on the content through a specific theme and a theme of each group student’s choice. Students increased their literacy skills in both digital media and video projection on social media and gained knowledge concerning the interaction that was encouraged through these mediums. In this laboratory course, a specific methodology was used that included pre-production, production and post-production. The final product included two videos, the first with a specific theme and the second with a theme of each group student’s choice.

Ad hoc solutions to wicked problems: Pandemics and other challenges in context

Wicked problems are considered to be any social, cultural, or other challenges that are difficult to address and hard to devise an effective and sustainable solution for. The utopic wishful thinking humanity relied on for so many decades, that technology and science alone, like a new Deus ex machina, would ultimately save us from any problematic situation we would ever face, and from any possible catastrophe we would ever confront, proved to be unrealistic. Catastrophe is a compound Greek word, literally meaning “approaching a turn”. If you are heading at full speed toward a turn, you either have to slow down and turn toward the road again to save life, or you are going to crash. Unless, of course, you prefer to rest upon an external magical aid, a Deus ex machina, to rescue you at the edge of the cliff. A Catastrophe can be realized as a bifurcation point in terms of complexity theory, a point of chaos and unpredictability, or a tipping point. Behind fueling wicked problems and deadlocks lies a Newtonian conception of reality, where the universe is realized as a mechanical automaton, a timeless space where an infinite knowledgeable entity can predict and leverage everything.

Artificial Intelligence in the post-COVID-19 era

Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominates the media and has been the focus of public discourse in the last few years. Since last March, however, COVID-19 makes almost everyday headlines because of its huge impact on our highly globalized world. This article has a dual objective. First, it aims to dissolve common misunderstandings and fears regarding AI. Second, by putting AI’s and COVID-19 societal and economic impacts into perspective, it discusses AI applications and research in the post-COVID-19 era. COVID-19 has played a catalytic role in accelerating the use of AI to mitigate the pandemic’s devastating effects. It is up to us to use AI in a responsible and ethical way that includes and benefits the whole humanity.

Socioeconomic changes, digital technologies and neuroeducation during the COVID-19 era

This paper maintains that the management of the pandemic, which relied mainly on digital tools, can become effective when it covers many sectors. Digital technologies enabled us to contain the epidemic on an administrative level and a health care level. Homeschooling is also possible with the help of digital tools and it contributed significantly to the control of COVID-19 spread. Digital technologies can also relieve the mental health problems that are caused or that are aggravated by the lockdown. Psychological support can be provided online even through social media. Neuroeducation had always been an effective approach to teaching. Nowadays, neuropedagogy is even more necessary in order to address the problems that arise because of the excessive use of digital tools in the learning process.

Viral Economies

The article examines the Covid-19 pandemic by investigating the ways in which viruses are mapped out through the biosciences and recognized as threats in informational systems. Two examples are analyzed that, although seemingly unrelated, intersect the assemblages of biological and communicational networks. The first one concerns the speed at which a third of the world's population was quarantined. The second one involves the readiness of the material-technical infrastructure to support, and the political planning to transfer, a multitude of social and labour activities onto digital platforms. The adjective ‘viral’ highlights the metonymic ways in which digital media locate the different economies of gene formation, circulation and communication of subjects, transport of goods and political decision-making, and adapt them in favour of the technologic of the network. And what is suggested is to view the advent of Covid-19 within the cultural logic of new media in order to understand the horizon of an oncoming modernity.

Theatre and Performance Go Massively Online During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications and Side Effects

During the COVID-19 pandemic, theatre groups and companies started massively providing online (filmed) versions of their productions. Theatre performances, live-streamed or recorded, have been shown online before, but mostly as a supplementary strategy, assisting the promotion of a live performance, not as a cultural trend per se, nor to the massive extend it has been happening during the pandemic. However, the consumption of this sort of online content, as this is literally what becomes anything posted on the web’s hypertextual multimedial selves, cannot occur without consideration of the potential implications and side effects. What exactly is it we are watching on our screens, why is it marketed as theatre and performance, and why do we consume it as such? In the paper, the Phelan/Auslander debate is revisited, as this eradication of the distinction between the live and the mediatized may indicate performance’s crucial shift away from independence towards technological, economical and linguistic dependence from mass reproduction. However, before lightheartedly welcoming this hybridity of massively experiencing online performances, which springs out from the collision between live performance (art) and web content (creativity), it is worth considering welcoming first digital performance hybrids emerging within and in between the medial restrictions imposed by the pandemic. These bold, experimental, participatory, ‘transparent’ intermedial forms of expression may prove out to be a source of strength in times of crisis.

Contextualising COVID-19 as a Digital Pandemic

Growing systemic complexity and interdependence have made a large variety of systems (economic, public health, cyber, etc.) susceptible to irreversible and cascading failure. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is indicative of such complexity and currently causing vast human suffering all around the world, but also triggers a global online revolution with new opportunities, risks, threats and dangers. Starting from its description as the world's first digital pandemic, the central aim of this editorial is to contextualise Homo Virtualis's special issue on the COVID-19 disruption to the digital landscape and its societal impact. A concise overview of such disruption is presented and a few examples are given, along with a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives on mediatisation and globalisation, with special emphasis on Globalisation 4.0 and the transition to Artificial Intelligence Society.

Evolution in Education: Chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) programs that simulate interactive human conversation, known as Chatbots, are one of the ongoing trends in the global market. Companies adopt Chatbots in order to offer better services to their customers. Businesses have realized that they are able to enhance the process of customer engagement and operational efficiency through Chatbot technology. Furthermore, most of us have experienced communication of this form in many aspects of our everyday life. This paper examines how Chatbots have evolved over the years, what the advantages and disadvantages of using them are and tries to explain the rise taking place nowadays. Subsequently, it explores the potential of applying this technology in educational settings. Personalized and adaptive learning seems to be imperative today and Chatbot technology can offer invaluable services towards that direction. Finally, it investigates the possibility of using them as virtual teaching assistants relieving teachers from the burden of repetitive tasks and helping them focus more on providing quality education to their students.

Hybrid neighborhoods: From sandlots to social media

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) along with the mass urbanization phenomenon have led to dramatic changes in the ways people create social bonds, form and understand communities and act collectively towards common goals. One important change is that locality and distance is no longer perceived as a key prerequisite for the development of social bonds. Local communities, traditionally based on social grouping by physical proximity, have been seriously affected by technological media (social media and applications). Socio-psychological research shows that the major impact of technology-based communication is the transformation of social bonds between members of local communities and the social capital they accumulate. Within this framework, the research project “GEITONIA” has a dual scope. On a theoretical level, to shed more light on the different ways and degrees local communities use social media and applications in everyday life. On an empirical level, to examine if and in what ways a local social medium mobile application, developed for neighborhoods, can help the understanding of the sense of community and re-strengthen the social cohesion among its members. The article is an attempt to provide a quick glance on the key concepts and theoretical background on which the research project is based.