10 research outputs found

    A Study of Social Reflexivity among Youths in City of Yazd

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      Introduction   Living in a modern and global age has many crucial consequences for contemporary social actors. Transnational society or global culture is considered as a consequence of the modernization process, with a dynamic and mobile base, which is reflexivity in social life. Social life is encompassed with this fact that individuals' functions become continuously evaluated, modifying by fresh data, and the elements become fundamentally changed. Reflexivity about self and various aspects of life as well as choosing among different alternatives is an opportunity that modern society offers to people. Therefore, in modern society, humans review continuously their self as how, and what it should be. Reflexivity is a process of self-definition and redefinition by observing and focusing on information about possible ways of life. Reflexivity is a mechanism in human thinking and behavior which sets human action and controls it, of course, this mechanism is different in traditional culture in comparison to modern culture. This paper addresses reflexivity and the related factors among young citizens of Yazd city.     Materials and Methods   The research Approach used in the study was quantitative and the method was survey, with an analytical and descriptive goal. Data was collected by using researcher-designed questionnaire. Sample size was determined to be 384 cases, using Cochran's sample size formula. Multiple cluster sampling was used to sample, dividing the city into different areas of north, south and center area. Research validity is formal validity in which the items were evaluated by sociology professors. The reliability of the scale was evaluated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient which showed that the items are in an internal correlation with each other. The data was analyzed in SPSS software.     Discussion of Results & Conclusions   According to descriptive results, the Mean of reflexivity among respondents was 19/16 which is above of the scale mean (15). Most of respondents had a modest reflexivity ratio. Results showed that it is not significantly different between men and women. But there is a significant relationship between education and income with reflexivity. Mass media and cultural globalization with reflexivity are in a direct relationship, that is, as use of mass media is increased, the ratio of reflexivity increases too. There is a significant relationship between religiosity and reflexivity. Multivariate regression results showed that cultural globalization and religiosity are the most important predictors of reflexivity. These two variables alone explained 17 percent variance of reflexivity variable.   Generally, with respect to research results it can be said that Iranian society is a changing society and is experiencing fast changes in different aspects. This change, which has been accompanied by current structural and cultural transformations in a global scale, have led to a pluralism in the youths' social world life and consequently have formed new attitudes and values among them. One consequence of this situation is the formation and growth of a special kind of personal identity, which has reflexivity at its core. Information and communicative technologies have led people in different areas of the world to become more informed about different lifestyles, values and behavioral norms. The result of this process is the creation of new identities among youth.     Keywords:

    About Time Too: Online News and Changing Temporal Structures in the Newspaper Industry

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    We examine how changes in information and communication technologies (ICTs) become implicated in temporal shifts within organizations. Specifically, we explore how the established temporal structures associated with the production of news are changing as news organizations expand their strategies from only printing traditional newspapers to also publishing online news. We identify a number of shifts in temporal structures in such organizations, and describe how these reflect neither technological necessity nor autonomous managerial strategy, but are constituted in and through the everyday work practices of editors and journalists, as these are shaped by the online medium. Our analysis suggests a number of important implications for understanding the temporality of ICT-mediated change in organizations

    Tijd en de stad

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    Architectuur en stedenbouw maken gebruik van ruimte. Als wij architecten iets bouwen, dan blijft dat er staan. Punt. Wanneer het over de architectonische ruimte gaat, zijn wij echter niet gewend te denken in tijd. Wij hebben te maken met objecten, of beter, met gebouwen in de ruimte. Ik zou dit essay willen beginnen met mij aan te sluiten bij de oproepen uit verschillende domeinen  sociale geografie, filosofie, stedenbouwkunde en stadsontwikkeling en sommige architectuurtheorieĂ«n  tot verder onderzoek van de ruimte in combinatie met, of naast, of vervlochten met de tijd. Zoals Jon May en Nigel Thrift in het door hen samengestelde boek, Timespace: Geographies of Temporality schrijven, is er een groeiende ontevredenheid vast te stellen met de dichotomische benadering van de categorieĂ«n ruimte en tijd. Architecten en andere beroepsbeoefenaren die met steden van doen hebben, hebben de neiging het probleem voornamelijk te zien als een probleem van de ruimte: ruimtelijke planning, zonering, bouwlocaties. Historici, sociologen en stedenbouwkundigen stellen daarentegen de tijd boven de ruimte, dat wil zeggen huldigen in de eerste plaats een lineaire opvatting van de tijd. Door zo’n hard en blijvend onderscheid te maken tussen ruimte en tijd, worden de complexiteiten – en zeker de rijkdom – van beide zelden aangesproken. Niettemin willen wij hier niet pretenderen een afdoende theoretische analyse te geven van de laatste stand van het vraagstuk van tijd en ruimte. Wat de laatste jaren steeds duidelijker is geworden, is eerder dat er veel ruimtelijkheden en veelvoudige temporaliteiten bestaan, elk verschillend van de andere maar toch met elkaar verbonden. Omdat deze beschouwing zich specifiek met het thema `tijd en de stad’ bezighoudt, wil ik kort enkele van de tijdruimtelijke lagen verklaren die mogelijk van belang zouden kunnen zijn voor de analyse van de dynamische ontwikkeling van de stedelijke omgeving. Zoals wij allemaal weten, veranderen en muteren steden met de tijd. EĂ©n manier om een begin te maken met ze op een

    Chat and instant messaging : the risks of secondary orality

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    The synchronous nature of chat and instant messaging (IM) make them unique among computer-enabled communications technologies in that their real-time exchange of data allows for rich media experiences, even though users can only use text symbols to trade messages. Chat and IM are also important in that they enable secondary orality, or the merger of the most beneficial aspects of orally-based cultures with the well-documented benefits of print and text. Where print in the modem day has fostered contemplative behavior and inward thought among human beings, chat and IM breathe vitality into print and, in a sense, allow print to be spoken. Chat and IM have provided well-documented benefits for business, academia and everyday human socialization. However, when the tools are used beyond these narrow contexts they not only lose their effectiveness; they also pose credible threats to society. Because chat and IM provide anonymity to their participants, the virtual communities they support are typically loosely governed, driven by stereotype, and replete with social deviance. Further, the more attractive online environments become, the less time and energy people will invest in the physical world, thereby threatening that the habitats of humans will ultimately wither and decay. Finally, as humans become less able to extricate themselves from their computer-enabled habitats, they will increasingly rely on the computer as a social prosthetic--if not evolve to the point where human beings and computers become indistinguishable

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    Architectures of Freedom: Literary Collaboration in Contemporary American Poetry

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    The dissertation, “Architectures of Freedom: Literary Collaboration in Contemporary American Poetry” uses the praxis of the U.S. third world feminists to analyze literary collaborations from a contemporary cohort of writers. As developed by Chela Sandoval, the defining aspect of the praxis of the U.S. third world feminists is differential consciousness. Differential consciousness is the ability to form coalitions within and beyond different communities not just for personal survival, but through personal survival to transform social oppressions. This dissertation animates Sandoval’s apparatus, which she calls a methodology of the oppressed, to analyze how a current cohort of writers are using literary collaboration to decolonize globalization. The three collaborations the dissertation analyzes are the artblog PĂ«nz (It’s Pronounced Pants), conceptual artists Mendi+Keith Obadike, and Encyclopedia Project, an editorial collaboration. Taken together these three collaborations offer a powerful blueprint for decolonizing globalization for PĂ«nz decolonizes time, M+K decolonizes space (geographic and digital), and Encyclopedia decolonizes knowledge

    The Facebooked organisation: a critique of corporate social media in New Zealand

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    The research illustrates that people on Facebook communicate with organizations as though the organisations are people too. Furthermore, organisations induce this behaviour through promotional materials that persuaded the follower to engage with them as friends. I began my research as it appeared that organisations hid potentially ruthless profit motives behind a smiling face of friendship on social media networks, particularly on Facebook, which I used daily. Facebook may be a relatively new technology, having been first developed only a decade ago, but it has dramatically changed the way the global society communicates. In New Zealand alone it is estimated half the population uses the tool. Due to this, Facebook is surrounded by a kind of hysteria: in one form or another Facebook makes the news on a near-daily basis, from the celebrification of its founder, to panics over privacy. The dramatic impact Facebook has had in such a short period of time means many remain curious, uninformed and often fearful of how this tool will impact the future. In the last few years, Facebook has added functionality that now enables businesses to have a presence in this forum, which has made it possible for customers to interact with businesses in an entirely new way. This has resulted in hype in the business world, over the untapped potential of this new marketing tool. The aim of my research was to critically explore the relationships between “Facebooked” organisations and the private individuals who interact with the businesses online and with this purpose in mind, I established four research questions to guide the thesis. The first investigates the nature of Facebook interactions between corporations and followers, and the second investigates the multiple realities on the Facebook Pages of the three corporations. The third research question asks how corporations use their Facebook Pages to build follower identification, and the final, overarching research question asks—what is the nature of the ”Facebook effect”? My research uses three New Zealand corporations well-known for their social media use as case studies; ASB Bank New Zealand Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Ltd and Air New Zealand Limited. The research takes a critical perspective and is divided into two parts. The first uses thematic analysis to code and categorise both followers’ comments on the business Facebook Pages and the response to the comments from the corporations. The second part of the research reviews the promotional materials that feed into the Facebook Page and which encourage follower participation, by conducting both a Monin-style close reading (2004) and also a rhetorical analysis using Cheney’s (1983a) rhetorical identification typology. The research indicates that followers are exhibiting extremes of emotion in their comments in a way that appears specific to the online forum of Facebook; individuals speak to the business as if it were a person and show attachment as though it were a friend. Within the Page, the corporation does not encourage such attachment, or respond in like fashion, however the promotional elements they use do so. Such campaigns gave visitors a promise of connection, of friendship and sharing. In my conclusion, my research found that Facebook, though created to achieve utopian ideals of genuine human connection, has, through its focus on profit generation, delivered dystopian results in terms of business-to-individual interaction

    The social imaginary in Thai society: globalization, cultural dimensions and education

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    This study investigates the notion of the social imaginary in relation to Thai society as influenced by the effects of globalization. Using a theoretical framework derived from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions it explores education policy and practice in Thailand with a view to understanding how the development of a new social imaginary, based on social creativity in everyday life, can be fostered through reform to curriculum, teaching methods and the reworking of traditional ways in education and social life. The research project uses a mixed method, case study approach to ‘ground’ theoretical understandings about globalization, social imaginaries, and cultural dimensions in the practice of education and the reality of Thai society. Current policy and practices in education are explored and assessed to argue for reform that will enable citizens to participate in new ways of learning to envision a different kind of social imagination for existing (day to day) in Thai society under the benefits of globalization. Data was collected by surveying undergraduate sociology students at two universities in Bangkok, and by interviewing social science academics, school principals, education policy makers, and high ranking Thai government officials responsible for social and education policy. In addition, a range of government policy in the areas of education and social development was read, interpreted and critiqued to provide context for the empirical data collected from the fieldwork. The analysis of the data used statistical software for correlation and regression analysis of survey results and qualitative techniques for transcript coding for interpretation of interviews. The results indicate that the role of the cultural dimensions power distance, individualism, and long term orientation are important in developing social imaginaries in Thai society. Furthermore, educational policies are essential and to fostering a new ways of learning to increase social creativity in Thai society. The development of new social imaginaries is bound up with the reinvention of cultural dimensions under the effects of globalization. Education is the means through which Thai young people can develop the social creativity needed to bring change and new visions for society in Thailand

    When local routines meet global technology: a case study on the role of context in application development in Kampala

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    The growth in mobile ownership and increase in Internet connectivity has led many developing countries to actively pursue the creation of application development sectors within their economies. Application development appears as a feasible option to even the less developed regions, as most of the technological resources needed in application development can be accessed with relative ease and low cost, no matter the location. What is more, in addition to economic benefits the applications can also have a role in solving societal challenges. Although technologically application development seems relatively straightforward, what remains less well understood is how contextual factors, such as norms and cultures, impact the application development process within these countries. This thesis approaches the research area through the concept of societal routines. Societal routines are seen as proxies to local context, and the aim of this research is to analyse how these routines affect application development throughout the application development process. The research takes the form of a case study and studies the topic from the perspective of application development that occurs in Kampala, Uganda. Although the local developers and start-ups are generally comfortable with the technological affordances provided by the technological resources, the local context poses certain conditions, which not only impact how applications are built, but also what kinds of application are developed. The results show how existing societal routines form the basis for the applications, and how technology that originates from outside carries meanings and structures that may or may not fit with local realities. Overall, the research proposes a framework for understanding context and its impact on application development. With this, it aims to contribute to our understanding on local technology production, technology implementation and digital divide in developing countries. Furthermore, it also questions the role often given to technology in addressing societal challenges

    The Web of Time and the Dilemma of Globalization

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