Affecting reality

This essay examines how digital games shape human affective repertoires and envisioned dynamics with nonhuman agents such as robots. Entanglements among humans, machines, and technologies impact essential issues in the historical present: from surveillance, climate change, cultural heritage, art, to the elicitation, habituation, and capturing of feelings. Approaching digital games as frontiers of such entanglements, this essay expounds dynamics among gameplay, affects, and gamic materiality through a case analysis of Nevermind (Flying Mollusk), a trauma-themed independent psychological thriller game with affect-sensing technologies. Discussion explores how the game can generatively engage with lived experiences and discourses of grief and trauma; and the relationality among individuals, structures of feelings, and stigmatization. Anchoring the essay is an argument that digital games represent and operate with fundamental tenets of posthumanism, communicating meaning across affective and semiotic dimensions, bodies, machines, and sociocultural contexts. This essay emerged from an ongoing project on affective semiotics and social impact game design, in connection with a transnational research project on human-robot interaction supported by the European Research Council

Content Analysis of 150 Years of British Periodicals

Previous studies have shown that it is possible to detect macroscopic patterns of cultural change over periods of centuries by analyzing large textual time series, specifically digitized books. This method promises to empower scholars with a quantitative and data-driven tool to study culture and society, but its power has been limited by the use of data from books and simple analytics based essentially on word counts. This study addresses these problems by assembling a vast corpus of regional newspapers from the United Kingdom, incorporating very fine-grained geographical and temporal information that is not available for books. The corpus spans 150 years and is formed by millions of articles, representing 14% of all British regional outlets of the period. Simple content analysis of this corpus allowed us to detect specific events, like wars, epidemics, coronations, or conclaves, with high accuracy, whereas the use of more refined techniques from artificial intelligence enabled us to move beyond counting words by detecting references to named entities. These techniques allowed us to observe both a systematic underrepresentation and a steady increase of women in the news during the 20th century and the change of geographic focus for various concepts. We also estimate the dates when electricity overtook steam and trains overtook horses as a means of transportation, both around the year 1900, along with observing other cultural transitions. We believe that these data-driven approaches can complement the traditional method of close reading in detecting trends of continuity and change in historical corpora

Necessitation through Growing Entanglements: Why We “Can’t Live Without” Some Products

Much research has been concerned with what constitute necessities and how they are related to pertinent concepts, such as needs, wants, desires, and luxuries (Belk, Ger, and Askegaard 2003; Duncan 2002; Fraser 1998, Hoyer and MacInnis 2004; Kerin, Hartley and Rudelius 2004; Sheth and Mittal 2004). Using thing-focused approaches, earlier studies are primarily concerned with classification schemes using dichotomies such as need-want and necessity-luxury. Studies that employ a human-focused perspective challenge these divisions and argue that necessities cannot be studied without considering the social and historical contexts (e.g., Buttle 1989; Firat 1987). Notwithstanding the important contributions that these studies have made, they have often explored necessities and necessitation primarily from the perspective of a dominant human subject (i.e., the consumer), where things (i.e., products) primarily serve as vehicles for consumer meaning. The contribution of this research is two-fold. First, a macro narrative that identifies five stages of smartphone necessitation in news consumption is derived from a narrative analysis of consumer texts, in order to better understand how consumers experience product necessitation. These stages are familiarization, transformation, memorialization, (re)integration and reconstruction, and solidification. Necessitation is achieved when consumers come to feel that they cannot live without this product. Second, entanglement theory (Hodder 2012) with its accentuation of dependences is employed. Hodder (2012) argues against the symmetrical nature of relations, suggesting that they are often asymmetrical. This observation translates into the concept of entanglement, which is “the dialectic of dependence and dependency between humans and things” (Hodder 2012, p. 89). Dependence occurs when the use of things is something enabling, while dependency is to be understood as occurring when their use imposes a constraint on humans (Hodder 2012).Tracing the historical increase of entanglements of news consumption leading to the necessitation of the smartphone, this study finds that necessitation emerges as a result of numerous small changes within entanglements over time, which, in turn, produce unexpected problems that need fixing. The solutions further increase entanglements and lead humans and things down the pathway of product necessitation. As the affordances of a product are gradually exploited, they fully entangle with a wide range of humans and things. Eventually a level of entanglements is reached that makes it difficult and expensive to turn back or disentangle, making the product come to be near-universally perceived as necessary

An overview of digital media in Latin America

An overview of digital media in Latin American is a focus and a contribution to emerging debate, international exchanges and the building of global scientific communication as a contribution to development. Contents Editorial introduction; Carlos Arcila Calderón, Mabel Calderín & Cosette Castro Chapter 1: Globalization of the information society; Jorge Hidalgo Chapter 2: Digital and interactive content production as a strategy for development – a brief study on the Latin American experience in digital free-to-air television; Cosette Castro Chapter 3: e-Research: the new paradigm of science in Latin America; Carlos Arcila Calderón, Mabel Calderín, Luis Núñez & Ysabel Briceño Chapter 4: Mobilizing the consumer as a partner in social networks: reflections on the commodification of subjectivities; Gisela Castro Chapter 5: The mediatization of reception by Brazilian online collaborative journalism: rules and protocols to control reader's participation; Paulo César Castro Chapter 6: A contract in transition: online press and its audience; Natalia Raimondo Anselmino Chapter 7: Interactivity in education: social and complex network analysis; Ana María Casnati Guberna, Claudia Ribeiro Santos Lopes, Dante Galeffi & Hernane Borges de Barros Pereira Chapter 8: Media transformations for journalistic practices in regional print media due to new technologies and the implications that shape the agendas of journalists and media companies; Henry Rubiano Daz

Russian Concept of War, Management and Use of Military Power : Conceptual Change

This publication consists primarily of articles presented in the annual Russia Seminar 2022 organised by the Department of warfare of the Finnish National Defence University (FNDU) and titled as “Russian Concept of War, Management and Use of Military Power – Conceptual Change”. The aim of the Seminar was to raise a discussion on Russian military policy and military power. The focus of the seminar was on the Russian concept of ”war” – that is – the use of lethal military force in order to achieve certain political objectives. It should be noted that the publication is not an exhaustive presentation of all the aspects related to the concept of war. This leaves room for themes and questions to be researched also in the future. The use of force is one of the two main functions of the Russian military power, the other one being deterrence, which was discussed at the Russia seminar 2021. The objective of deterrence is to influence the conciousness of the adversary - to change adversary’s behaviour and make it relinquish possible ideas of aggression or threat to use military power against Russia. In the 2021 seminar the main emphasis was on the military aspects and prerequisites of preventing a war. As we know now, at the time of writing these lines, in May-June 2022 – these aspects and methods of deterrence conducted by Russia and its military during the past year were not only aimed at preventing war, but also, they were actual preparations for a war. Furthermore, despite the fact that these means and capabilities were partly escalatory and threatening by nature, they did not enable Russia to achieve its political, military-political or military objectives. Regarding Ukraine, or more broadly the security structure of Europe, they were set by Russia, perhaps, intentionally on a level which was clearly unacceptable. In this manner Russia could justify to Russian people – after the launch of the operation – that there is no other solution than to conduct “a special military operation” in Ukraine. In this introductory chapter I will briefly introduce the articles or presentations of this report which were contributed in the seminar. All the presentations and discussion can be found on the FNDU YouTube-channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?-v=ywyasBuw7vg&t=3263s.CONTENTS Klaus Ilmonen SPEECH BY MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE MANNERHEIM FOUNDATION ON THE EVE OF THE SEMINAR Pentti Forsström 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE PUBLICATION Pentti Forsström 2. INTERPRETATIONS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RUSSIAN CONCEPT OF WAR Dima Adamsky 3. COMMAND AND CONTROL CULTURE À LA RUSSE Leonid Nersisyan 4. NEW RUSSIAN STRATEGIC WEAPONS AND MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEMS – CHANGE OF THE BALANCE? Jukka Viitaniemi 5. STRATEGIC ACTIONS OF THE ARMED FORCES – CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS Jyrki Terva 6. SCHRÖDINGERS CAT IN EASTERN UKRAINE – HOW RUSSIA’S WAR IN UKRAINE CREATES AND DESCRIBES NEW RUSSIA-WEST CONFLICT Juha Wihersaari 7. EVGENY MESSNER’S THEORY OF SUBVERSION WAR VS. HYBRID WARFARE Oscar Jonsson (and Bryce Johnston - absent from the seminar) 8. RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION IN INTELLIGENCE AFFAIRS Rod Thornton and Marina Miron 9. INTERFACE BETWEEN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBER. CREATING REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS? THE RUSSIAN MILITARY’S UTILISATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ENHANCE ITS CYBER OPERATIONS: THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY Jonna Alava 10. REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN SOLDIERS IN RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES 2008–2021 Aristide M. LaVey 11. ADMIRAL USHAKOV: A STUDY OF RUSSIAN POWER PROJECTION Santeri Kytöneva 12. JUSTIFYING THE USE OF FORCE: RUSSIA’S SPIRITUAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY Justin Bronk 13. DEVELOPMENTS IN RUSSIAN COMBAT AIR SPENDING AND LIKELY OPERATIONAL IMPLICATIONS Lester W. Grau (and Charles K. Bartles) 14. RUSSIAN MANEUVER DEFENCE AND THEIR CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENTED BATTLEFIELD Michael Kofman 15. ON PRESENT WAR IN UKRAINE - KEYNOTE

Making Speech-Matter: Recurring Mediations in Sound Poetics and its Contemporary Practice

This thesis produces a critical and creative space for new forms of sound poetics. Through a reflective process combining theoretical research and poetic practice – performances, text-scores and installations – the thesis tests the contemporary terms of intermedial poetics and sound poetry, establishing a conceptual terminology for speech-matter. Beginning with a study of 1960s sound poet Henri Chopin and his relation to the tape machine, I argue that this technological mediation was based on a poetics of analogue sound hinged on bodily engagement. Social and physical properties of the tape machine contribute to a mode of practice that negotiates the body, machine, and effort. Exploring Michel Serres’s concept of parasitic noise and the relation of interference to lyric appeal, via the work of Denise Riley and Hannah Weiner, I understand sound poetics as a product of lyrically active noise. Through an analysis of radio address, a conceptual link is drawn between lyric poetry and technological mediation, which posits the radiophonic as a material effect of transmission and also a mode of hailing. This is tested through sound poems that are investigative of distortion and echo. Addressing the conceptual limits of Intermedia, a new critical model is established for a poetics of sound operating in present-day media technologies. This alternative model, based on a concept of milieu, is a means of negotiating a poem’s materiality and context, in order to posit a work’s multiple connections and transmissions. This model is tested through the text and installation work of Caroline Bergvall, and subsequently realised in my own gallery installation that investigates links between sound, milieu and archive. Through this research into mediated speech, new platforms for intermedial sound poetics are produced. This project offers a model for practice-based research that produces knowledge of speech-matter by way of the ‘black box’ of poetic practice

Focus Mediocene

This issue, following an international conference held at the IKKM in September 2017, is devoted to what may very well be the broadest media-related topic possible, even if it is accessible only through exemplary and experimental approaches: Under the title of the »Mediocene«, it presents contributions which discuss the operations and functions that intertwine media and Planet Earth. The specific relation of media and Planet Earth likely found its most striking and iconic formula in the images of the earth from outer space in 1968/69, showing the earth—according to contemporaneous descriptions—in its brilliance and splendor as the »Blue Marble«, but also in its fragility and desperate loneliness against the black backdrop of the cosmic void. Not only the creation but also the incredible distribution of this image across the globe was already at the time clearly recognized as a media eff ect. In light of space fl ight and television technology, which had expanded the reach of observation, communication, and measurement beyond both the surface of the Earth and its atmosphere, it also became clearly evident that the Planet had been a product of the early telescope by the use of which Galileo found the visual proof for the Copernican world model. Nevertheless, the »Blue Marble« image of the planet conceives of Earth not only as a celestial body, but also as a global, ecological, and economic system. Satellite and spacecraft technology and imaging continue to move beyond Earth’s orbit even as they enable precise, small-scale procedures of navigation and observation on the surface of the planet itself. These instruments of satellite navigation aff ect practices like agriculture, urban planning, and political decision-making. Most recently, three-dimensional images featuring the planet’s surface (generated from space by Synthetic Aperture Radar) or pictures from space probes have been cir-culating on the Web, altering politico-geographical practices and popular and scientifi c knowledge of the cosmos. Today, media not only participate in the shaping of the planet, but also take place on a planetary scale. Communication systems have been installed that operate all over the globe