The Internet and the 2008 Election

Presents results of a survey on the use of the Internet to get news about or engage in the campaign, the use of email and text messaging to discuss it, the role of online video and social networking sites, and the Internet's impact on politics

Six emerging trends in media and communications - occasional paper

This paper examines six emerging trends in media and communications, which highlight that consumers are increasingly using personalised access pathways to communications and content services that cut across different networks, devices and services. Introduction The ACMA monitors industry and consumer data to identify changes in the media and communications environment and their impact on regulatory settings. Previous ACMA research, such as Broken concepts1 and the Emerging issues2 series of papers, has identified areas of regulatory strain resulting from changes in this environment. The ACMA’s 2014 data collection program highlighted six further trends that are of particular interest as they indicate challenges to the regulatory frameworks within which the ACMA works. These trends illustrate how developments in communications device technologies and over-the-top (OTT) services and content offer both: new opportunities for businesses and individuals as consumers and citizens potential challenges to confident and optimal use of these new services. The evolving media and communications environment offers new ways to understand and achieve policy objectives, and may expose alternatives to ’black-letter’ regulation. However, changes in media and communications can also strain the effectiveness and efficiency of existing regulatory settings designed in an environment where content and communication services have been delivered by network owners over dedicated networks and devices. The selected trends highlight that consumers are increasingly using personalised access pathways to communications and content services that cut across different networks, devices and services. This paper looks at the implications of these six trends for existing regulatory settings

The Demographics of Mobile News Habits Men, College Grads and the Young are more Engaged

In the growing realm of mobile news, men and the more highly educated emerge as more engaged news consumers, according to this new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, in collaboration with The Economist Group. These findings parallel, for the most part, demographic patterns of general news consumption. But there are some important areas of difference between mobile and general news habits -- particularly among young people. While they are much lighter news consumers generally and have largely abandoned the print news product, young people get news on mobile devices to similar degrees as older users. And, when getting news through apps, young people say they prefer a print-like experience over one with high-tech or multi-media features.These are key findings of an analysis of mobile news habits across a variety of demographic groups. This report builds off an earlier PEJ and The Economist Group report, The Future of Mobile News, which found that half of U.S. adults now own mobile devices and a majority use them for news. Both reports are based on a survey of 9,513 U.S. adults conducted from June-August 2012 (including 4,638 mobile device owners). Men, especially young men, are heavier mobile news consumers than women. More than 40% of men get news daily on either their smartphone and/or tablet, compared with roughly 30% of women. On the tablet specifically, men check in for news more frequently and are more apt to read in-depth news articles and to watch news videos. Women, on the other hand, are more likely than men to use social networks as a way to get news

Foucault, exhibitionism and voyeurism on chatroulette

Sexuality, understood as a Foucauldian discourse that expresses itself through our passions and pursuits and contributes massively to our socially- constructed identity formation, has from the outset been a major factor in the growth of the internet. As the ultimate look-but-don‘t-touch medium, the computer screen has offered us a pornographic emporium in the privacy of our homes, fed first by the producers of material in the standard broadcast mode, then more and more by ourselves, to each other, in the social media context of online sexual social networking. The recent shift of sexual video material from broadcast to social media mode highlights the fundamental exhibitionism/voyeurism dyad at the core of all this activity, and finds its most impersonal, anonymous apotheosis in the phenomenon that is ChatRoulette, where visual discourse-objects are deployed in a nexus of online sexual power relations

Liberate your avatar; the revolution will be social networked

This paper brings together the practice-based creative research of artists Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon, culminating in a collaborative interactive installation that investigates new forms of social and political narrative in multi-user virtual environments. The authors' artistic projects deal with the ironies and stereotypes that are found within Second Life in particular. Paul Sermon’s current creative practice looks specifically at the concepts of presence and performance within Second Life and 'first life', and attempts to bridge these two spaces through mixed reality techniques and interfaces. Charlotte Gould’s Ludic Second Life Narrative radically questions the way that users embody themselves in on-line virtual environments and identifies a counter-aesthetic that challenges the conventions of digital realism and consumerism. These research activities and outcomes come together within a collaborative site-specific public installation entitled Urban Intersections for ISEA09, focusing on contested virtual spaces that mirror the social and political history of Belfast. The authors' current collaborative practice critically investigates social, cultural and creative interactions in Second Life. Through these practice-based experiments the authors' argue that an enhanced social and cultural discourse within multi-user virtual environments will inevitably lead to growth, cohesion and public empowerment, and like all social networking platforms, contribute to greater social and political change in first life

New media practices in India: bridging past and future, markets and development

This article provides a review of the academic and popular literature on new media practices in India, focusing on the country’s youth's use of mobile phones and the Internet, as well as new media prosumption. One particular feature of the Indian case is the confluence of commercial exploitation of new media technologies and their application for development purposes in initiatives that aim to bring these technologies to marginalized segments of the Indian population. Technology usage in turn is shaped by the socioeconomic location of the user, especially in regards to gender and caste. The potential of new media technologies to subvert such social stratifications and associated norms has inspired much public debate, which is often carried out on the Internet, giving rise to an online public sphere. In all of the writings reviewed here, the tension surrounding new media technologies as a meeting place of the old and the new in India is paramount