202 research outputs found
Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication / transl. from Eng. A. Paukova, V. Chumakova
This article develops a new theory of polymedia in order to understand the consequences of digital media in the context of interpersonal communication. Drawing on illustrative examples from a comparative ethnography of Filipino and Caribbean transnational families, the article develops the contours of a theory of polymedia. We demonstrate how users avail themselves of new media as a communicative environment of affordances rather than as a catalogue of ever proliferating but discrete technologies. As a consequence, with polymedia the primary concern shifts from the constraints imposed by each individual medium to an emphasis upon the social, emotional and moral consequences of choosing between those different media. As the choice of medium acquires communicative intent, navigating the environment of polymedia becomes inextricably linked to the ways in which interpersonal relationships are experienced and managed. Polymedia is ultimately about a new relationship between the social and the technological, rather than merely a shift in the technology itself
Ethics of Mediation and the Voice of the Injured Subject
In this chapter I argue that understanding the workings of mediation â a structurally different condition to face-to-face communication â is a prerequisite to any discussion of ethics of media. Drawing on OâNeillâs earlier critique of rights-based models of media ethics, I argue that a sociological analysis of the symbolic power of mediation highlights an additional reason why freedom of expression â an individual right â cannot be applied to media institutions. Drawing on the witness statements at the Leveson inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the UK Press among other narratives of individuals who found themselves inadvertently exposed in the media I illustrate the asymmetries of mediation and observe that technological convergence can even heighten the symbolic power of mediation. Cases of mediated harm can even contribute to the problem of materialisation (Butler, 2005) and annihilation of voice
Smart, social, flexible and fun: Escaping the flatlands of virtual learning environments
© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This paper describes the development of intelligent, social, flexible and game-based pedagogic approaches and their applications in Virtual Learning Environment based Education. Applications of computer science technologies and techniques can enable, facilitate and change educational approaches, allowing scalable approaches that can address both individual student needs whilst managing large â sometimes-massive - cohort sizes. The benefits of these information systems include supporting the wide range of contexts met in education, in terms of individual needs and specific subject and curriculum requirements. Technologies and approaches that are considered range from the representation of knowledge and the use of intelligent systems, the use of social computing, through to the enabling opportunities of ubicomp and the practical application of game mechanics (gamification). This paper concludes with practical illustrations in the context of undergraduate computer science didactics
Mobile phone parenting: Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina migrant mothers and their left-behind children
The Philippines is an intensely migrant society with an annual migration of one million people, leading to over a tenth of the population working abroad. Many of these emigrants are mothers who often have children left behind. Family separation is now recognized as one of the social costs of migration affecting the global south. Relationships within such transnational families depend on long-distance communication and there is an increasing optimism among Filipino government agencies and telecommunications companies about the consequences of mobile phones for transnational families. This article draws on comparative research with UK-based Filipina migrants - mainly domestic workers and nurses - and their left-behind children in the Philippines. Our methodology allowed us to directly compare the experience of mothers and their children. The article concludes that while mothers feel empowered that the phone has allowed them to partially reconstruct their role as parents, their children are significantly more ambivalent about the consequences of transnational communication
Negotiating daughterhood and strangerhood: retrospective accounts of serial migration
Most considerations of daughtering and mothering take for granted that the subjectivities of mothers and daughters are negotiated in contexts of physical proximity throughout daughtersâ childhoods. Yet many mothers and daughters spend periods separated from each other, sometimes across national borders. Globally, an increasing number of children experience life in transnational families.
This paper examines the retrospective narratives of four women who were serial migrants as children (whose parents migrated before they did) . It focuses on their accounts of the reunion with their mothers and how these fit with the ways in which they construct their mother-daughter relationships. We take a psychosocial approach by using a psychoanalytically-informed reading of these narratives to acknowledge the complexities of the attachments produced in the context of migration and to attend to the multi-layered psychodynamics of the resulting relationships. The paper argues that serial migration positioned many of the daughters in a conflictual emotional landscape from which they had to negotiate âstrangerhoodâ in the context of sadness at leaving people to whom they were attached in order to join their mothers (or parents). As a result, many were resistant to being positioned as daughters, doing daughtering and being mothered in their new homes
Photography, care and the visual economy of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations
This article examines transnational kinship relations between Gambian parents in the United Kingdom and their children and carers in The Gambia, with a focus on the production, exchange and reception of photographs. Many Gambian migrant parents in the U.K. take their children to The Gambia to be cared for by extended family members. Mirroring the mobility of Gambian migrants and their children, as they travel between the U.K. and The Gambia, photographs document changing family structures and relations. It is argued that domestic photography provides insight into the representational politics, values and aesthetics of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations. Further, the concept of the moral economy supports a hermeneutics of Gambian family photographic practice and develops our understanding of the visual economy of transnational kinship relations in a number of ways: it draws attention to the way in which the value attributed to a photograph is rooted in shared moral and cultural codes of care within transnational relations of inequality and power; it helps us to interpret Gambianâs responses to and treatment of family photographs; and it highlights the importance attributed to portrait photography and the staging, setting and aesthetics of photographic content within a Gambian imaginary
International journalism and the emergence of transnational publics: between cosmopolitan norms, the affirmation of identity and market forces
Much has been written about transnational public spheres, though our understanding of their shape and nature remains limited. Drawing on three alternative conceptions of newswork as public communication, this article explores the role of international journalists in shaping transnational publics. Based on a series of original interviews, it asks how journalists are oriented in their newswork (e.g. are they cosmopolitan or parochial in their orientation) and how they âimagineâ the public. It finds that interviewees imagine a polycentric transnational public and variously frame their work as giving voice to those affected by an issue (imagining the public as a cosmopolitan community of fate), performing and reaffirming a particular kind of identity and belonging (imagining the public as a nation) or pursuing audiences wherever they may be (imagining the public as the de facto audience)
Digital volunteer networks and humanitarian crisis reporting
Digital technologies and big data are rapidly transforming humanitarian crisis response and changing the traditional roles and powers of its actors. This article looks at a particular aspect of this transformation â the appearance of digital volunteer networks â and explores their potential to act as a new source for media coverage, in addition to their already established role as emergency response supporters. I argue that digital humanitarians can offer a unique combination of speed and safe access, while escaping some of the traditional constraints of the aid-media relationship and exceeding the conventional conceptualizations of citizen journalism. Journalists can find both challenges and opportunities in the environment where multiple crisis actors are assuming some of the media roles. The article draws on interviews with humanitarian organizations, journalists, and digital volunteer networks about their understanding of digital humanitarian communication and its significance for media coverage of crises
Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia
Migrants and their transnational families represent children on social networking sites, documenting child-rearing practices to enhance social mobility. This article identifies a new group of migrant childrenâthose sent home to parentsâ countries of origin for an imagined âgood childhood.â It demonstrates that social networking sites (SNS) sustain these children and create new norms for publicness and visibility in transnational parenting. Exploring how families document child-raising across international boundaries, it shows how the trajectories of parenting relationships remain open ended. The article counters the predominant focus on transnational parenting as a kind of abandonment attached to left-behind children. Instead, it refocuses research on the opportunities polymedia affords to families to create and sustain intimacies, making the trajectories of migrant families and children increasingly dynamic. The article thus documents important shifts within the global migrationâa transformation that requires changes in the way scholars approach transnational families and long-distance parenting
âI'm from Europe, but I'm not Europeanâ: Television and children's identities in England and Bulgaria
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Children and Media on 5/11/2012 available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17482798.2012.740416This article examines the role television (TV) plays in the development of primary school children's European knowledge and identities in England and Bulgaria. It compares the media coverage on Europe and the European Union with pupils' European perceptions and identities. The article reports data from 174 qualitative interviews with children and the content analysis of seven TV programmes. It concludes that TV plays a strong role in collective identities when a topic is salient on the agenda. TV raises awareness and knowledge and sets the direction of understanding. Yet, despite the higher salience of Europe on the Bulgarian media agenda, Bulgarians feel less European than English children. The article provides an explanation to this phenomenon, thus filling an important gap in the literature about the media's role in collective identities formation from an early age. It also adopts an innovative approach in the study of agenda-setting theory by investigating its application among children
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