Constructing the Biography of the Web: An Examination of the Narratives and Myths around the Web’s History

This book chapter is closed access

Rethinking the distinctions between old and new media: Introduction

Recent approaches to media change have convincingly shown that distinctions between old and new media are inadequate to describe the complexity of present and past technological configurations. Yet, oldness and newness remain powerful ways to describe and understand media change, and continue to direct present-day perceptions and interactions with a wide range of technologies - from vinyl records to AI voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. How can one refuse rigid definitions of old and new, while at the same time retaining the usefulness and pertinence of these concepts for the study and analysis of media change? This introduction to the special issue entitled “Rethinking the Distinctions between Old and New Media” aims to answers this question by taking up the notion of biography. We argue that the recurrence of oldness and newness as categories to describe media is strictly related to the fact that interactions with media are embedded within a biographical understanding of time, which refers both to the lifecourse of people or objects and to the narratives that are created and disseminated about them. Employing this approach entails considering the history of a medium against the history of the changing definitions that are attributed to it, and more broadly, to considering time not only as such but also against the narratives that makes it thinkable and understandable

Minding the gap(s): public perceptions of AI and socio-technical imaginaries

Deepening and digging into the social side of AI is a novel but emerging requirement within the AI community. Future research should invest in an “AI for people”, going beyond the undoubtedly much-needed efforts into ethics, explainability and responsible AI. The article addresses this challenge by problematizing the discussion around AI shifting the attention to individuals and their awareness, knowledge and emotional response to AI. First, we outline our main argument relative to the need for a socio-technical perspective in the study of AI social implications. Then, we illustrate the main existing narratives of hopes and fears associated with AI and robots. As building blocks of broader “sociotechnical imaginaries”, narratives are powerful tools that shape how society sees, interprets and organizes technology. An original empirical study within the University of Bologna collects the data to examine the levels of awareness, knowledge and emotional response towards AI, revealing interesting insights to be carried on in future research. Replete with exaggerations, both utopian and dystopian narratives are analysed with respect to some relevant socio-demographic variables (gender, generation and competence). Lastly, focusing on two issues – the state of AI anxiety and the point of view of non-experts – opens the floor to problematizing the discourse around AI, sustaining the need for a sociological perspective in the field of AI and discussing future comparative research

The symbol of social media in contemporary protest: Twitter and the Gezi Park movement

This article explores how Twitter has emerged as a signifier of contemporary protest. Using the concept of ‘social media imaginaries’, a derivative of the broader field of ‘media imaginaries’, our analysis seeks to offer new insights into activists’ relation to and conceptualisation of social media and how it shapes their digital media practices. Extending the concept of media imaginaries to include analysis of protestors’ use of aesthetics, it aims to unpick how a particular ‘social media imaginary’ is constructed and informs their collective identity. Using the Gezi Park protest of 2013 as a case study, it illustrates how social media became a symbolic part of the protest movement by providing the visualised possibility of imagining the movement. In previous research, the main emphasis has been given to the functionality of social media as a means of information sharing and a tool for protest organisation. This article seeks to redress this by directing our attention to the role of visual communication in online protest expressions and thus also illustrates the role of visual analysis in social movement studies

Pioneers as Peers: How Entrepreneurial Journalists Imagine the Futures of Journalism

The article investigates the futures of journalism that pioneering entrepreneurial journalists anticipate. This comprises the different imaginaries that journalists employ to make sense of journalism's present potentials, anticipate its possible futures, and inform their decision-making. By analysing semi-structured interviews with Finnish entrepreneurial journalists, the article identifies a peer-to-peer imaginary on which the interviewees draw and construct to anticipate the potential futures of journalism. In this peer-to-peer imaginary, journalism is produced in journalists' and audiences' peer networks of affinity and shared interests. The imaginary promises elevated audience engagement and increased income from audience members. It also emphasises journalistic work that is often seen as ideal: autonomous, multi-skilled, self-expressive and non-routine. Despite these potentially preferred outcomes, the imaginary risks distancing journalism from its public roles and embracing more individualised and market-oriented approaches. The peer-to-peer imaginary can shape a journalism that is increasingly elitist by orienting it towards serving paying audiences, contributing to the fragmentation of public discussion by its focus on niche interests and playing into the power interests of global social media platforms that govern much of the digital media infrastructure. The imaginary, thus, mirrors the prevailing contemporary tendency to employ emancipatory visions of digital technologies for commercial objectives

Design by Play:Playfulness and Object-Oriented Philosophy for the design of IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) has garnered heightened interest and momentum in recent years. These connected devices have extended the concurrent rise of data collection and processing within the everyday objects that cohabit our human lives. Though technology has always changed the way we live our lives these ‘smart’ devices are adding new challenges—particularly concerning privacy and security—not previously experienced when using their older ‘dumb’ predecessors. These challenges are not always apparent to their human cohabitors and often only come to the fore when something untoward happens as a consequence of the data being collected. These objects are not to blame, they exist in their worlds governed by their own rules established by their creators rather than their users. Designers have traditionally been taught to present these objects as neutral participants in our human lives; there to help, but not supersede. However, these objects exist within many independent and interdependent assemblages of human and non-human actants that go beyond the previously experienced human-object relationship. Through this discourse, I highlight the overall aim of this thesis to ask questions around our traditional practices of design concerning IoT. In particular, this research strives to do many things: it attempts to intertwine philosophical debate with the act of design; it moves towards an argument of rethinking design orthodoxies around human-centeredness in favour of object-oriented-ness; it explores an alternative side to the phenomenon of the IoT, arguing for agency in a post-anthropocentric perspective of the world and its implications; it tries to bridge the gap between practice-based design research and theory by passing through a veil of philosophical intrigue. But at its core, is an advocacy for the presence of a playful attitude within the practice of design, arguing for an attitude of playfulness as an integral part of the design process. How being playfully charged to create artefacts can usher in unique perspectives for design and technology. The research is enacted through an iterative Research through Design ideology, using a transdisciplinary approach of Ludic and Speculative Design practice that explore alternative perspectives towards the design of IoT. It is conducted through an exploration of Object-Oriented Philosophy as a means to enact a metaphorical ‘carpentry’ of artefacts that practice philosophical arguments through their execution. In the process of designing three artefacts—a model for a philosophical view of IoT, a board game, and a bespoke deck of tarot cards—this research builds upon the idea of More-than Human-Centeredness for the design of IoT, by introducing the creation of bespoken method assemblages as a means for playful design exploration. It concludes on a debate around the implications and potential of design thinking in a post-anthropocentric perspective through the inclusion of playfulness and philosophy as assets for design, and, the use of philosophical carpentry as a methodology for understanding the nebulous nature of IoT

Patient-Centred Culturally-Aware Design Approach for e-Health Acceptance

The importance of information and communication technology in healthcare has recently grown to an unprecedented dimension as more people are empowered by technology to participate more actively in their healthcare processes. New online applications for accessing healthcare information and for self-diagnosis have become increasingly available to diverse patient groups of different languages, educational backgrounds, and cultural orientations. However, the design of these applications typically follows Western cultural orientations. This approach has created a gap, which makes it difficult for users, who use the systems within their own cultural contexts, to derive maximum benefits from such use. As a result, the gap impedes the uptake, market success, and effective adoption of these e-Health applications in various cultural contexts. Moreover, as healthcare organisations increasingly seek to interact with patients, often in real-time, through enhanced web-based services, patient experiences often become tied to a largely ‘Western-driven’ style of patient interfaces, interaction, and look and feel that negatively impact the overall acceptance of these services across different cultures. This poses a tremendous challenge to technology adoption, in particular with regard to how to design culturally-aware and patientcentred e-Health applications that reflect the cultural diversity of today’s users and meaningfully empower them to better utilise such tools to enhance their day-to-day life. This research proposes to investigate the impact of a patient-centred culturally-aware design approach on the patient acceptance of e-Health web-based services, in particular, how e-Health web-based applications can be designed in a way that maximises their usability and ‘fits’ them into the cultural fabrics of individuals in different cultural contexts. To address this challenge, this research work examined existing literature in the fields of culture, technology acceptance and HCI, and identified relevant constructs that were used to develop a culturally-aware technology acceptance model for electronic health. Subsequently, the model provided a means for understanding the influence of different factors affecting patient acceptance and usage which were used as a foundation to inform the design of the Patient-Centred Culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach (PCCeDA) framework for e-Health web-based services developments. The novelty in PCCeDA is the notion of cultural awareness, which allows systems to personalise themselves according to a patient’s cultural profile while adhering to usability principles. As a result, the interface and contents presented to a patient are both dynamically tailored to better suit that patient’s cultural preferences, thereby increasing patient adoption. Based on PCCeDA, a proof of concept prototype called i-Diagnose was developed primarily to assess the validity of the framework and to answer the central questions of this research study. Evaluation results show that a patient-centred culturally-aware design approach enhances the effectiveness, usefulness and patient acceptance of e-Health web-based services in different cultural contexts. The main contributions of this work include: (i) a culturally sensitive technology acceptance model for e-Health (‘e-HTAM’) where both technology acceptance model and cultural dimensions are integrated to develop the e-HTAM model. The model highlighted various issues that need to be taken into consideration when designing patient-centred culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach applications; and (ii) a patient-centred Culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach framework that allows systems to personalise both the patient interface and the contents provided to a patient to better suit that patient’s cultural background. The research also includes a number of other minor contributions such as: (i) an approach for solving the static nature of Hofstede’s dimensions’ indexation, through the use of cultural parameters to dynamically model users’ cultural states, (ii) the introduction of personalisation based on cultural factors into the e-Health web-based services domain, and (iii) shed light on the electronic health acceptance state in the UAE as compared to the UK

Shifting media imaginaries of the Web

This exploratory paper sets out a conceptual model for investigating how media imaginaries of the Web shape its design and use over time. We draw from the work of scholars who have devised models for the study of techno-social imaginaries of information and communication technologies, including Patrice Flichy and Robin Mansell. Based on these works, we devise a case study of contrasting media imaginaries of the Web by drawing on textual analysis of statements made by Tim Berners-Lee over more than two decades. Through our analysis of these statements, we show how differing views on the role of creativity — and how it is represented by people and technologies ‘behind the screen’ and ‘in front of the screen’ — lead to competing visions of the past, present, and future of the Web. We conclude with suggestions for some future research questions emerging from this study