New Media and Society

Play is social. However, the operation of play is often a physically solitary act (Brand et al., 2014: 18). Notwithstanding this fact, the creation of the gaming experience is inherently social. Co-creating Videogames and Battlefields of Negotiation deal with the collective creation of this communal experience. With their entrance into classical museums, video games have come far along their long road toward legitimization as a leisure activity and a cultural object. Envisioned as a cultural object, video games are now being studied as such and, therefore, relationships among the actors of this creation are being analyzed. These books adopt a distinct standpoint about this topic. Reading Co-creating Videogames takes you behind the screen for an industry viewpoint, whereas Battlefields of Negotiation puts you in the shoes of a player of World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004). The processes described recall Plato's idea of human life as a pilgrimage from appearance to reality. Indeed, participants in the creation of the video gaming experience seek to make their ideas come true. By shedding light on this collective committed creative activity, these works commonly argue that sharing playing activity enriches the gaming experience in which players get engaged. The profiles of the two researchers differ in age, experience and field of expertise. As an experienced sociologist, John Banks gives priority to his field, displaying thrilling case studies of a few titles run by Auran, mainly Trainz and Fury. Calling on complementary sources from manifold disciplines to analyze the discourses he collected, Banks' work goes beyond the scope of sociology and succeeds in bringing new knowledge. René Glas' doctoral dissertation is entrenched in the game studies tradition and its references. Descriptions displayed throughout the book richly help the reader to get into the core experience of playing the famous game. The data collection ranges from a myriad of sources, but little is said about how the data were analyzed.

This article explores how mobile phones function as an affective technology for young adults, by adapting the self-expansion model to understand attachment to mobile phones. In an online survey, 272 smart phone users reported on their recalled responses to loss/separation from their mobile phone (not by choice), as well as their use of the mobile phone for self-expansion. Results show that self-expansion via mobile phone was associated with greater inclusion of the mobile phone in the self-concept and greater subjective well-being. Most respondents reported negative feelings, such as loneliness/disconnection, anxiety, and boredom, when without their mobile phone, but others felt relieved to be out of touch with others. The use of the mobile phone for self-expansion was associated with more negative emotion and less positive emotion (relief) in response to loss/separation from the phone. Interpretations of the findings are discussed.

Surveillance-based reality television has emerged as a resurgent programming genre in the US and Western Europe during a time when the online economy is becoming increasingly reliant upon surveillance as a form of economic exploitation. The portrayal of surveillance through 'reality TV' as a form of entertainment and selfexpression can thus be understood as playing an important role in training viewers and consumers for their role in an 'interactive' economy. This article relies on interviews with cast members and producers of MTV's popular reality show 'Road Rules', to explore the form of subjectivity that corresponds to its implicit definition of 'reality'. This form of subjectivity reinforces the promise of the interactive economy to democratize production by relinquishing control to consumers and viewers. Surveillance is portrayed not as a form of social control, but as the democratization of celebrity -a fact that has disturbing implications for the democratic potential of the internet's interactive capability.

The scale, volume, and distribution speed of disinformation raise concerns in governments, businesses, and citizens. To respond effectively to this problem, we first need to disambiguate, understand, and clearly define the phenomenon. Our online information landscape is characterized by a variety of different types of false information. There is no commonly agreed typology framework, specific categorization criteria, and explicit definitions as a basis to assist the further investigation of the area. Our work is focused on filling this need. Our contribution is twofold. First, we collect the various implicit and explicit disinformation typologies proposed by scholars. We consolidate the findings following certain design principles to articulate an all-inclusive disinformation typology. Second, we propose three independent dimensions with controlled values per dimension as categorization criteria for all types of disinformation. The taxonomy can promote and support further multidisci...

The ability of communication technologies to favor certain societal concerns, such as privacy, is widely recognized. This paper argues a central factor in how a technology favors a societal concern stems from its institutional origin. A case study of the cookies technology, which allows web sites to maintain surveillance on their visitors, shows the differing influences of universities, firms, and consortia. Each of these institutions acted according to their own norms and processes and differentially shaped the cookies technology. The result suggests societal institutions act in a systematic and predictable fashion in shaping how communication technologies affect fundamental societal concerns.

For families with limited opportunities for face-to-face interaction, social media can be a vital communication medium to help shape the family identity, maintain bonds, and accomplish shared tasks. This mixed-methods systematic review of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method empirical studies published between 1997 and 2019 uses a convergent data-based framework to explore how long-distance families engage in family practices using various modes of social media. Fifty-one papers were synthesized into four domains: (1) doing family in a social media environment, (2) performing family through stories and rituals, (3) the nature of online communication practices, and (4) privacy, conflict, and the quality of family relationships. Given the value of patterned routines to families, research into the role of family kinkeepers is suggested. Finally, families use chat (messages) extensively for both assuring behaviour and conflict resolution so further investigation of the impact of ...

Because of the growing amount of information on the internet and people’s increasing dependence on information, internet skills should be considered as a vital resource in contemporary society. This article focuses on the differential possession of internet skills among the Dutch population. In two studies, an in-depth range of internet skills are measured by charging subjects assignments to be accomplished on the internet. Subjects were recruited by applying a random stratified sampling method over gender, age, and education. While the level of operational and formal internet skills appeared quite high, the level of information and strategic internet skills is questionable. Whereas education appeared an important contributor to all skill levels, age only appeared a significant contributor to operational and formal skills. The results strengthen the findings that the original digital divide of physical internet access has evolved into a divide that includes differences in skills to ...

Sweden, with a high level of political participation and an avant-garde position regarding internet access, broadband and social media penetration in the population, is a critical case for studying social media in relation to political participation. Three types of users -members of political parties, members of interest organizations, and non-members -are interviewed in focus groups about their attitudes to political content in the social network site Facebook. The discussions show that although practices and attitudes vary, using social network sites alone does not drive previously inactive respondents to political participation. Respondents who are members of interest organizations view social network sites as valuable tools for participation, whereas respondents who are not refrain from sharing political views with their friends. They are exposed to political content and requests for participation, but prefer generally to remain passive.

This article explores how the internet is being studied and conceived of as a sacramental space. The internet as sacramental space demonstrates how religious users see the internet as a viable place for presenting their beliefs and practices. In order to understand this model, several other dominant conceptions of the internet are offered: information space, a common mental geography, an identity workshop and a social space. Each of these accents a specific use of the internet. The internet as sacramental space is further investigated by considering several typologies of online spiritual communities emerging from a recent online community study. Each typology highlights how the internet as sacramental space encompasses traits of the previously stated models and illustrates how the internet is used as a spiritual tool, religious identity, a space for personal spiritual pursuits and a social spiritual support sphere. A survey of current CMC research on religion is also presented.

This study provided a comparative analysis of three social network sites, the open-to-all Facebook, the professionally oriented LinkedIn and the exclusive, members-only ASmallWorld.The analysis focused on the underlying structure or architecture of these sites, on the premise that it may set the tone for particular types of interaction.Through this comparative examination, four themes emerged, highlighting the private/public balance present in each social networking site, styles of self-presentation in spaces privately public and publicly private, cultivation of taste performances as a mode of sociocultural identification and organization and the formation of tight or loose social settings. Facebook emerged as the architectural equivalent of a glasshouse, with a publicly open structure, looser behavioral norms and an abundance of tools that members use to leave cues for each other. LinkedIn and ASmallWorld produced tighter spaces, which were consistent with the taste ethos of each network and offered less room for spontaneous interaction and network generation.

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers, and policymakers, making strategic claims as to what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform,’ reveals the contours of this discursive work. ‘Platform’ has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches – sometimes as technical platforms, sometimes as platforms from which to speak, sometimes as platforms of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms with which they hope to be judged.

This study explores how norms on social network sites evolve over time and how violations of these norms impact individuals' self-presentational and relationship goals. Employing Expectancy Violations Theory (Burgoon, 1978) as a guiding framework, results from a series of focus groups suggest that both the content of the violation and the users' relationship to the violator impact how individuals react to negative violations. Specifically, acquaintances who engage in minor negative violations are ignored or hidden, while ...

This article applies a media geneaology perspective to examine the operative logic of Google Translate. Tracing machine translation from post–World War II (WWII) rule-based methods to contemporary algorithmic statistical methods, we analyze the underlying power structure of algorithmic and human collaboration that Translate encompasses. Focusing on the relationship between technology, language, and speakers, we argue that the operative logic of Translate represents a new model of translation, which we call uniform multilingualism. In this model, the manifest lingual plurality on the user side is mediated by lingual uniformity on the system side in the form of an English language algorithm, which has recently given way to an artificial neural network interlingual algorithm. We conclude by considering the significance of this recent shift in Translate’s algorithm.

The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification Abstract Data from 574 participants were used to assess perceptions of message, site, and sponsor credibility across four genres of websites; to explore the extent and effects of verifying web-based information; and to measure the relative influence of sponsor familiarity and site attributes on perceived credibility.The results show that perceptions of credibility differed, such that news organization websites were rated highest and personal websites lowest, in terms of message, sponsor, and overall site credibility, with e-commerce and special interest sites rated between these, for the most part.The results also indicated that credibility assessments appear to be primarily due to website attributes (e.g. design features, depth of content, site complexity) rather than to familiarity with website sponsors. Finally, there was a negative relationship between self-reported and observed information verification behavior and a positive relationship between self-reported verification and internet/web experience. The findings are used to inform the theoretical development of perceived web credibility.

What's new about the new media? This apparently simple question is often answered by listing new technological developments. For example, if we consider domestic screen media, the oldest screen medium is television which, as terrestrial, national broadcasting, has been thoroughly incorporated into domestic routines for several generations and is only now at the point of substantial change with the advent of digital poly-channel television. Screen media now current are the video recorder, satellite television, computer games, teletext, being familiar items in British households for at least a decade. 1 More recent are cable television, the camcorder and, most important, the personal computer -all currently being adopted by a growing minority of households, and thus moving from early adopter status towards mass adoption. 2 Last, and most obviously recognisable as new, are prospective technologies such as interactive teletext, multimedia computing, home shopping, and, attracting by far the most interest, the Internet, all of them likely to become widely adopted in the coming decade, subject to a host of economic, technical, regulatory and sociocultural factors. In this paper I argue that if social science is to understand 'what's new for society about the new media?' it must locate technological developments within the cultural processes and associated timescale of domestic diffusion and appropriation. While 'what's new for society' represents the scope of this journal, in this paper I shall begin to map some of the issues relating specifically to media audiences.

This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans and bloggers, news media and even corporate advertising. Our analysis of the ‘Jesus phone’ clarifies how different groups may appropriate the language and imagery of another to communicate very different meanings and intentions. Intertextuality serves as a framework to unpack the deployment of religion to frame technology and meanings communicated. We also reflect on how religious language may communicate both positive and negative aspects of a technology and instigate an unintentional trajectory in popular discourse as it is employed by different audiences, both online and offline.

A survey among 2052 primary and secondary school children reveals that cyberbullying among youngsters is not a marginal problem. However, there are discrepancies between the prevalence figures based on direct measurement versus indirect measurement of cyberbullying. Youngsters who have bullied someone via the internet or mobile phone during the last three months are younger, and are more often victims and bystanders of bullying via the internet or mobile phone, and are more often the perpetrators of traditional bullying. Youngsters who have been bullied via the internet or mobile phone during the last three months are more dependent upon the internet, feel less popular, take more internet-related risks, are more often a bystander and perpetrator of internet and mobile phone bullying, and are less often a perpetrator and more often a victim of traditional bullying. The implications for future research into cyberbullying and for cyberbullying prevention strategies are discussed.

This study examined the relationships between cyber and traditional bullying experiences regarding gender differences. Also, the contributions of frequent and risky usage of internet to cyberbullying experiences were examined. The participants were 276 adolescents (123 females, 151 males and 2 unknown) ranging in age from 14 to 18 years. The results revealed that 32 percent of the students were victims of both cyber and traditional bullying, while 26 percent of the students bullied others in both cyber and physical environments. Compared to female students, male students were more likely to be bullies and victims in both physical and cyber-environments. The multivariate statistical analysis indicated that cyber and traditional bullying were related for male students but not for female students. Moreover, the multiple regression analysis revealed that both frequent and risky usage of internet account for a significant variance of cyberbullying but their contributions differ based on genders.

This article puts on the agenda one of the fundamental theoretical questions within the emerging field of website history: how can the object of historical study — the website — be delimited? Its focus is on the 'website' artefact as a medium and a text. After elaborating a definition of the website, as well as discussing how the website is distinct from other possible analytical web objects (the web as a whole, web sphere, webpage and textual web element), the article addresses the challenges of delimiting the archived website. Finally, it outlines some of the key issues in a general discussion of website history.

In this article, the website infrastructures of both pro science climate change and climate denier websites are examined. The focus is on the backstage of the website, defined as the use of widgets, ad trackers, beacons, and analytics and not the website content, or what might be described as the front stage. This research addresses questions about the presence and use of trackers within the commodification of user attention, the audience economy. The study concludes that organizations on both sides of the climate issue use similar strategies in monetizing their websites and tracking user behavior. Moreover, the infrastructure that is created among the platforms reflects the major role that big tech plays in developing an interconnected web of tracker technologies. While website transparency may remain an ideal, the study advocates for a responsible approach to website development, one that acknowledges the complexity of the issue within a stronger regulatory environment.

This article analyzes the evolution of the internet, with special emphasis on its impact on older media in their struggle to survive. The analysis is based on a 6-stage, natural life cycle model of new media evolution, comprising birth (technical invention), penetration, growth, maturity, self-defense, and adaptation, convergence or obsolescence. Our universal model melds several elements of previous theories and analyses from disparate fields such as media history, marketing, technological diffusion and convergence, while adding a few new aspects as well. The model's three contributions lie in expanding the scopequantitatively and qualitatively-of new media's development stages (beyond the three or four stages noted by others); emphasizing the interaction and struggle between old and new media; and analyzing 'functional-life after appliance-death' of media transformed/co-opted into something old/new. Applying this model to the internet enables us to better understand its future evolution and the survival chances of older mass media.

This article reviews the social potential of digital storytelling, and in particular its potential to contribute to the strengthening of democracy.Through answering this question, it seeks to test out the relative strengths and weaknesses of two competing concepts for grasping the wider consequences of media for the social world: the concept of mediatization and the concept of mediation. It is argued that mediatization (developed, for example, by Stig Hjarvard and Winfried Schulz) is stronger at addressing aspects of media textuality, suggesting that a unitary media-based logic is at work. In spite of its apparent vagueness, mediation (developed in particular by Roger Silverstone) provides more flexibility for thinking about the open-ended and dialectical social transformations which, as with the printed book, may come in time to be articulated with the new form of digital storytelling.

While much attention is given to young people's online privacy practices on sites like Facebook, current theories of privacy fail to account for the ways in which social media alter practices of information-sharing and visibility. Traditional models of privacy are individualistic, but the realities of privacy reflect the location of individuals in contexts and networks. The affordances of social technologies, which enable people to share information about others, further preclude individual control over privacy. Despite this, social media technologies primarily follow technical models of privacy that presume individual information control. We argue that the dynamics of sites like Facebook have forced teens to alter their conceptions of privacy to account for the networked nature of social media. Drawing on their practices and experiences, we offer a model of networked privacy to explain how privacy is achieved in networked publics.

Abstract This article explores how language is used to build community with the microblogging service, Twitter (www.twitter.com). Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL), a theory of language use in its social context, is employed to analyse the structure and meaning of 'tweets' ...

Implementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and wellbeing in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs, and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalized the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing, entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces.

This article puts on the agenda one of the fundamental theoretical questions within the emerging field of website history: how can the object of historical study — the website — be delimited? Its focus is on the 'website' artefact as a medium and a text. After elaborating a definition of the website, as well as discussing how the website is distinct from other possible analytical web objects (the web as a whole, web sphere, webpage and textual web element), the article addresses the challenges of delimiting the archived website. Finally, it outlines some of the key issues in a general discussion of website history.

This article demonstrates the need always to consider change against continuity and continuity against change in the analysis of mnemonic technologies. It does so by exploring what has happened in the move from analogue to digital photography, looking, in particular, at how this has affected the meanings of personal photographs and the practices of remembering associated with them. In contrast with technologically determinist perspectives which have been, however latently, manifest in writing on new media, the value of exploring vernacular photography as a specifically mnemonic practice is that it turns our attention to the ways in which photographic practices are bound up with longer term social uses and cultural values. Our analysis focuses on changes in four key categories of photographic practice that relate to the analogue/ digital shift: photo-taking, photo-storing, photo-viewing, photo-sharing -all of which have consequences for the uses of photography as a mnemonic resource. They have all been altered in varying degrees by the advent of digital technologies, but with people continually making comparative evaluations of old and new, drawing on the former as a key aspect of learning how to use the latter.

Research on digital activism has gained traction in recent years. At the same time, it remains a diverse and open field that lacks a coherent mode of inquiry. For the better or worse, digital activism remains a fuzzy term. In this introduction to a special issue on digital activism, we review current attempts to periodize and historicize digital activism. Although there is growing body of research on digitial activism, many contributions remain limited through their ahistorical approach and the digital universalism that they imply. Based on the contributions to the special issue, we argue for studying digital activisms in a way that traverses a two-dimensional axis of digital technologies and activist practices, striking the balance between context and media-specificity.

Two studies were conducted in this investigation to compare college students' interpersonal interaction online, face-to-face, and on the telephone. Our first study, a communication diary, assessed the relative amount of social interactions college students conduct via the internet in comparison to face-to-face conversation and telephone calls. Results indicated that the internet was used nearly as often as the telephone, however, face-to-face communication was far more frequent. The second study, a survey, compared reported use of the internet within local and long distance social circles to the use of other media within those circles, and examined participants' most recent significant social interactions conducted online, face-to-face, and on the telephone in terms of purposes, contexts, and quality. Major findings included that online interaction was perceived as high in quality, but slightly lower than telephone calls and face-to-face conversations. Use of the internet was positively correlated with the use of other modes of interpersonal communication. Together, results show that the internet is integrated into social life, but face-to-face remains the dominant mode of interpersonal communication. the School of Communication Studies at Kent State University. Her research focuses on intergenerational communication in cross-cultural contexts, and older people's age identity in language use. Her research draws on theories of social identity, and communication accommodation theory.

The interest in social virtual worlds with multiple functions has mushroomed during the past few years. The key challenge social virtual worlds face while attempting to anchor and serve the masses is to reflect the core beliefs of their users. As existing research lacks insight into these core beliefs, this study aims to contribute to the existing knowledge base by proposing and testing a model grounded on the decomposed theory of planned behavior. Predicated on the multipurpose nature of social virtual worlds, the model proposes medium-specific attitudinal, normative and control beliefs as determinants of continual use intention. The model is tested with a sample of 2175 users who inhabit Habbo Hotel -one of the largest social virtual worlds in the industry. The results indicate significant though different influences of attitudinal and control beliefs. The most fundamental finding is the irrelevance of normative beliefs, which puts the social character of social virtual worlds into perspective.

This paper assesses the main findings and dominant modes of inquiry in recent scholarship on online news consumption. The findings suggest that the consumption of news on the Internet has not yet differed drastically from the consumption of news in traditional media. The assessment shows that the dominant modes of inquiry have also been characterized by stability rather than change (because research has usually drawn on traditional theoretical and methodological approaches). In addition, these modes of inquiry exhibit three systematic limitations: the assumption of a division between print, broadcast, and online media; the notion that the analysis should treat media features and social practices separately; and the inclination to focus on ordinary or extraordinary patterns of phenomena but not on both at the same time. On the basis of this assessment, this paper proposes an integrative research agenda that builds on this scholarship but also contributes to solve some of its main limitations.

In this article, we argue that social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter have facilitated an emergence of “digitized narratives” of sexual violence. These narratives are rooted in historical ways in which feminists have discursively articulated sexual violence, yet are shaped by distinctive “platform vernacular” or the conventions, affordances, and restrictions of the platforms in which they appear. Drawing on a qualitative content and critical discourse analysis of 450 texts from the Tumblr site Who Needs Feminism? and the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, we argue that digital platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter produce new vernacular practices which shape how “digitized narratives” of sexual violence are not only disclosed and known, but felt and experienced across digital networks.

Abstract This research conceptualizes behaviors in online commercial transactions as communication acts intended to reduce uncertainty between interactants. Uncertainty reduction theory and predicted outcome value theory are used to contextualize individuals' motivations and behaviors in the risky and uncertain environment of online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. Data from 6477 randomly-selected auctions conducted over eBay.com indicate that more commodity information leads to more, and higher, final bids; higher seller reputation results in fewer bids for less money; and greater system security features result in fewer bids. Additionally, holding item type constant, much more variance in final bid price and bid activity can be explained by these factors as item value increases, although important differences in the direction of relations emerge as well. Based on these findings, current theoretical perspectives on uncertainty reduction are extended to the environment of computer-mediated communication and interpretations are offered to explain individuals' behaviors in initial encounters in online auctions. 401 new media & society Key words CMC • computer-mediated communication • internet • new technologies • online auctions • uncertainty reduction

Information and communication technology innovations (ICT) are considered to be of central importance to social and economic developments. Various innovation theories offer classifications to predict and assess their impact. This article reviews the usefulness of selected approaches and their application in the convergent communications sector. It focuses on the notion of disruption, the comparatively new distinction between disruptive and sustaining innovations, and examines how it is related to other innovation-theoretical typologies. According to the literature, there is a high frequency of disruptive changes in the field of internet protocol-based innovations in combination with wireless technology. A closer analysis reveals that these classifications and assessments not only differ in detail but are even contradictory. The article explains these differences by highlighting delicate choices that have to be taken by analysts applying the disruption concept. It argues that its applicability is comparatively low in the convergent communications sector and generalizations of single-firm assessments are hardly valid.

This article looks at how the logic of big data analytics, which promotes an aura of unchallenged objectivity to the algorithmic analysis of quantitative data, preempts individuals’ ability to self-define and closes off any opportunity for those inferences to be challenged or resisted. We argue that the predominant privacy protection regimes based on the privacy self-management framework of “notice and choice” not only fail to protect individual privacy, but also underplay privacy as a collective good. To illustrate this claim, we discuss how two possible individual strategies—withdrawal from the market (avoidance) and complete reliance on market-provided privacy protections (assimilation)—may result in less privacy options available to the society at large. We conclude by discussing how acknowledging the collective dimension of privacy could provide more meaningful alternatives for privacy protection.

Social media can be a double-edged sword for political misinformation, either a conduit propagating false rumors through a large population or an effective tool to challenge misinformation. To understand this phenomenon, we tracked a comprehensive collection of political rumors on Twitter during the 2012 US presidential election campaign, analyzing a large set of rumor tweets (n = 330,538). We found that Twitter helped rumor spreaders circulate false information within homophilous follower networks, but seldom functioned as a self-correcting marketplace of ideas. Rumor spreaders formed strong partisan structures in which core groups of users selectively transmitted negative rumors about opposing candidates. Yet, rumor rejecters neither formed a sizable community nor exhibited a partisan structure. While in general rumors resisted debunking by professional fact-checking sites (e.g. Snopes), this was less true of rumors originating with satirical sources.