JournalTOCs

Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.521

Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
Number of Followers: 51

Hybrid journal * Containing 1 Open Access article(s) in this issue *
ISSN (Print) 1354-8565 - ISSN (Online) 1748-7382
Published by Sage Publications

[1090 journals]

Gamifying fake news: Engaging youth in the participatory design of news
literacy games
- Authors: Ioana Literat, Yoo Kyung Chang, Shu-Yi Hsu
  Pages: 503 - 516
  Abstract: Convergence, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 503-516, June 2020.
  This article discusses the potential of participatory game design to encourage and capture youth reflection, discussion, and participation around news literacy topics. Based on data obtained during a game design workshop with youth participants, we analyze two youth-produced games about fake news and discuss the personal, social, and cultural dimensions of youth attitudes and practices in relation to news literacy, as manifested through the process of game design. Our findings paint a rich picture of the ways in which youth understand and engage with fake news, their attitudes toward news literacy, and their playful approaches to collaboratively designing and prototyping news literacy games. This research sheds light on the opportunities and challenges related to the use of games and participatory game design for news literacy research and education, while also contributing to our understanding of the emerging processes that can support youth’s roles as designers, and not only consumers, of educational games about the news.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-06-02T11:25:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520925732
  Issue No: Vol. 26, No. 3 (2020)
The symbol of social media in contemporary protest: Twitter and the Gezi
Park movement
- Authors: Olu Jenzen, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Umut Korkut, Aidan McGarry
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  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.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-07-06T11:07:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520933747
Pedagogy of Difference 2.0: Interactive documentary practices and
participatory research with young people
- Authors: Danai Mikelli
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The Glowing Divide (2015) is an interactive documentary exploring the topic of social isolation in young people. Created by a group of young adults at Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol, the project follows three teenagers with the aim to change perceptions of social isolation. This interactive documentary was used as a resource in a Critical Media Literacy intervention which deployed the methodology of Participatory Action Research and took place in Coventry in partnership with the creative production company Imagineer. Based on the outcomes of this research, I argue towards a Pedagogy of Difference 2.0, which is a new and more nuanced approach to teaching and learning with interactive media in complex environments. This innovative pedagogy embraces the limitations of interactivity on young people’s media production and does not take young people’s familiarity with technology for granted. In this regard, Pedagogy of Difference 2.0 acknowledges the contextual nature of teaching and learning, moving beyond the often abstract discourse of Critical Pedagogy.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-07-01T11:06:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520934724
Predictable policing: New technology, old bias, and future resistance in
big data surveillance
- Authors: Xerxes Minocher, Caelyn Randall
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Within this article, we explore the rise of predictive policing in the United States as a form of big data surveillance. Bringing together literature from communication, criminology, and science and technology studies, we use a case study of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA to outline that predictive policing, rather than being a novel development, is in fact part of a much larger, historical network of power and control. By examining the mechanics of these policing practices: the data inputs, behavioral outputs, as well as the key controllers of these systems, and the individuals who influenced their adoption, we show that predictive policing as a form of big data surveillance is a sociotechnical system that is wholly human-constructed, biases and all. Identifying these elements of the surveillance network then allows us to turn our attention to the resistive practices of communities who historically and presently live under surveillance – pointing to the types of actions and imaginaries required to combat the myth and allure that swirls around the rhetoric of big data surveillance today.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-06-30T11:01:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520933838
Playing with meaning: Productive frictions between gaming and dancing in
Bound
- Authors: Kate Mattingly
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Research into gaming and dancing has tended to highlight educational benefits, such as positive effects on problem-solving, creativity, and motivation (Hutton E and Sundar S, 2010. Can video games enhance creativity' Effects of emotion generated by Dance Dance Revolution. Creativity Research Journal 22(3): 294–303.). This article focuses on a game called Bound (2016), developed by Plastic Studios for PlayStation 4 and VR, to show how dancing can be defined as an embodied epistemology and a form of creative exploration that contributes to emotional intelligence. Using methodologies generated by Brendan Keogh, I show how and why dominant understandings of gameplay are insufficient to analyze the experience and meaning produced by playing Bound. Keogh’s theories are relevant to both game studies and dance studies and allow us to examine the fruitful intersections of game studies and screendance. Ultimately I introduce ‘choreographic thinking’ as a mode of engagement that is activated by gameplay and that resonates with Keogh’s theories: by calling attention to the choreographic potential of Bound, I demonstrate the value of noncompetitive gaming models for producing embodied knowledge.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-06-26T08:39:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520933192
Ageism in the era of digital platforms
- Authors: Andrea Rosales, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Ageism is the most invisible form of discrimination. While there is some awareness of gender, racial, and socioeconomic discrimination on digital platforms, ageism has received less attention. This article analyzes some tools that are frequently embedded on digital platforms from an old-age perspective, in order to increase awareness of the different ways in which ageism works. We will firstly look at how innovation teams, following homophilic patterns, disregard older people. Secondly, we will show how ageism tends to be amplified by the methods often used on digital platforms. And thirdly, we will show how corporate values contradict the usability issues that mainly affect people with a low level of (digital) skills, which is more common among older people. Counterbalancing the abusive power control of the corporations behind digital platforms and compensating for the underrepresentation of groups in less favorable situations could help to tackle such discrimination.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-06-25T11:37:11Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520930905
Connecting to nature through tech' The case of the iNaturalist app
- Authors: Soledad Altrudi
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Self-defined as ‘an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature’, iNaturalist is a mobile application whose primary goal is ‘to connect people to nature’, closely followed by the secondary goal of ‘generating scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters’, which the founders believe can be achieved simultaneously with the primary goal in a self-reinforcing logic. Following an approach informed by media studies on wildlife photography and film, and science and technology studies as well as insights from interviews with users and participant observation in the Los Angeles area, this article makes the case that mobile applications such as iNaturalist sit at a tension because while they can ignite interest in the natural environment, they also prescriptively describe and normalize a ‘nature’ and an epistemology that are particular to the natural sciences.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-06-24T11:29:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520933064
Marvinter: A case study of an inclusive transmedia storytelling production
- Authors: Jenny Brusk, Henrik Engström
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines how the unique characteristics of Marvinter, an inclusive transmedia Advent calendar, affected its production and the individual media workers involved in this. In the native transmedia Marvinter project, a radio series and a mobile game were created and released simultaneously. Using ‘partly shared’ resources, the project was developed by two collaborating, non-profit organisations. Each chapter of the digital game had to match the corresponding radio episode. The whole had to be designed to provide a shared cultural experience that included people with hearing or visual impairments. The authors of the present article were part of the game development team and thus directly experienced the complexity of developing a digital game as part of a transmedia project. This article presents the results of a case study with an insider perspective. It is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with key people in the project. The transmedia nature of Marvinter was justified by the need to include people with complementary disabilities. Although sometimes associated with negative connotations of ‘naked commercialisation’ in transmedia contexts, the marketing strategy was here an important element in promoting inclusivity. However, owing to the concurrent work processes, game production became overly complex.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-28T09:33:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923972
‘Hey Alexa, what did I forget'’: Networked devices, Internet
search and the delegation of human memory
- Authors: Paul Atkinson, Richie Barker
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines how we increasingly delegate the task of memorisation to networked devices and associated applications, such as Google search. Human memory is supplemented by the proliferation of voice assistants embedded in mobile, wearable and situated devices that provide ready access to common knowledge as well as reminders for procedural tasks. Previous research in the field of transactive memory, investigating how search engines and networked information discourage memorisation, underpins the examination of these emergent technologies. However, the article extends the argument further by examining not just access to information but when it is interpolated into everyday activity and how this is facilitated by voice interfaces. At stake is deciding which aspects of our networked technology should be developed in order to support rather than supplant human memory in conscious decision-making.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-26T10:09:21Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520925740
Social media-enhanced learning in a small island developing states (SIDS)
setting
- Authors: Gounshali Vaghjee
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The rapid and ongoing advances in technology are leading to significant transformations in the world, making it even more connected. The educational sector is also responding by developing new models to face and adopt these changes. Learners are exposed to new media technologies which have set the scene for more collaboration, participation and engagement in the learning environment. As research points towards an eagerness for the acceptance of social media in developing countries, there is a need to further explore its implication for education. In an era of globalization which creates more association among universities from developed nations and small island developing states (SIDS), the significance of investigating learners’ social media engagement level is even greater. This article documents the development of a Learner Social Media Engagement Level model for higher education institutions in SIDS based on a research in Mauritius. The analysis results in the identification of five main levels of participation, namely Curator, Consumer, Communicator, Collaborator and Producer. The article concludes with the social profile of each category of learner and highlights how the small state experience could be significant for a wider international community.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-19T10:56:42Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923968
The occidental otaku: Portuguese audience motivations for viewing anime
- Authors: João Gonçalves, Catarina Navio, Pedro Moura
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Japanese animation, widely known as anime, has a global reach. It is simultaneously broadcasted by traditional media and easily distributed and discussed among fans in the digital and online realms. However, non-Japanese audiences’ motivations for watching this kind of content remain almost unstudied in some countries, with Portugal being one of them. This article presents and discusses the outcomes of an online survey completed by 568 respondents, most of them young and regular watchers of anime. A scale by Rubin and Perse (1987), originally used in regard to the audiences of soap operas, was adapted in the scope of this article. Five main motivations were found for anime viewing, with entertainment being the strongest. Age and gender are relevant predictors for the sample’s motivations and also influence audience preferences regarding genres. The survey’s outcomes are complemented by nine in-depth interviews conducted during an anime convention, further exploring the motivations derived from the survey.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-15T10:42:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923966
Book Review: Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked
protest
- Authors: Eleonore Fournier-Tombs
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-14T11:17:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923965
Whose dystopia is it anyway' Deepfakes and social media regulation
- Authors: Aya Yadlin-Segal, Yael Oppenheim
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This study explores global journalistic discussions of deepfake applications (audiovisual manipulating applications based on artificial intelligence (AI)) to understand the narratives constructed through global coverage, the regulatory actions associated with these offered narratives, and the functions such narratives might serve in global sociopolitical contexts. Through a qualitative–interpretive narrative analysis, this article shows how journalists frame deepfakes as a destabilizing platform that undermines a shared sense of social and political reality, enables the abuse and harassment of women online, and blurs the acceptable dichotomy between real and fake. This phenomenon is tied to discussions of dis/misinformation, manipulation, exploitation, and polarization in the media ecosystem these days. Based on these findings, the article then provides broader practical and theoretical insights about AI content regulation and ethics, accountability, and responsibility in digital culture.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-11T11:47:39Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923963
Book Review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human
Future at the New Frontier of Power
- Authors: Daniëlle Flonk
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-29T11:03:49Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918721
Tactical agency' Young people’s (dis)engagement with WhatsApp
and Facebook Messenger
- Authors: Justine Gangneux
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Drawing on empirical data, this article examines the ways in which young people negotiated messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp in their everyday lives, focusing in particular on the read-receipt feature embedded in the applications. While it is important to continue exposing and critically examining the power structures and socio-technological relations in which young people’s everyday engagement with social media platforms and messaging applications are entangled, the article argues that it is also crucial not to overlook the possibilities and forms of agency that can exist in this complex environment. Combining insights from Foucault and de Certeau, the article seeks to shed new light on the ways in which tactical agency can be enacted and cultivated by young people. This article contributes to current debates about agency, resistance and power in contemporary digital society as well as makes recommendations to foster more responsive digital literacies.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-22T11:35:38Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918987
Hey Siri, tell me a story: Digital storytelling and AI authorship
- Authors: Sarah Thorne
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Surveying narrative applications of artificial intelligence in film, games and interactive fiction, this article imagines the future of artificial intelligence (AI) authorship and explores trends that seek to replace human authors with algorithmically generated narrative. While experimental works that draw on text generation and natural language processing have a rich history, this article focuses on commercial applications of AI narrative and looks to future applications of this technology. Video games have incorporated AI and procedural generation for many years, but more recently, new applications of this technology have emerged in other media. Director Oscar Sharp and artist Ross Goodwin, for example, generated significant media buzz about two short films that they produced which were written by their AI screenwriter. It’s No Game (2017), in particular, offers an apt commentary on the possibility of replacing striking screenwriters with AI authors. Increasingly, AI agents and virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant are incorporated into our daily lives. As concerns about their eavesdropping circulate in news media, it is clear that these companions are learning a lot about us, which raises concerns about how our data might be employed in the future. This article explores current applications of AI for storytelling and future directions of this technology to offer insight into issues that have and will continue to arise as AI storytelling advances.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-16T05:57:11Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520913866
‘Weekends became something other people did’: Understanding and
intervening in the habitus of video game crunch
- Authors: Amanda C. Cote, Brandon C. Harris
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  ‘Crunch’ – a period of unpaid overtime meant to speed up lagging projects – is a common labor practice in the video game industry and persists despite many costs to developers. To understand why, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of Game Developer magazine (2000–2010) to explore how industry members perceive and discuss gamework (1) in a publication for developers, by developers and (2) during the first decade in which serious conversations about labor emerge in the games industry. Our analysis found that many gameworkers treat crunch as ‘inevitable’ due to three specific themes: games as an unmanageable creative industry, an anti-corporate ethos, and a stereotypical developer identity based on passion and perfectionism. These constructions – combined with the industry’s project-based nature and cultures of passion and secrecy – build crunch into the habitus of gamework, helping reproduce exploitative labor practices. However, habitus can and does change over time, providing interested employees, companies, and labor organizers a means to intercede in existing work practices. We suggest a multipronged intervention that could build a healthier, more sustainable habitus of gamework.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-03-26T10:15:38Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520913865
What smartness does in the smart city: From visions to policy
- Authors: Burcu Baykurt, Christoph Raetzsch
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines what smartness does on the ground by examining how its anticipatory media visions have been interpreted and acted on in policy decisions and local implementations since the early 2000s. Using a comparative-historical analysis that draws on fieldwork in aspiring smart cities in the United States and Europe, we argue that the visions of smartness are neither singular nor fixed across time and space. Instead, the role of smartness in diffusing new technologies is recruited and reshaped in the present to lend legitimacy to future public and private interventions. We first demonstrate that the narrative of crisis, often associated with smartness, shifted from a pre-2008 emphasis on sustainability and climate change to a post-financial crisis engagement with entrepreneurship and platformization. We then discuss how the development of smart city initiatives has followed divergent paths in the United States and Europe, with big tech companies dominating in the former and the ‘living lab’ model prevailing in the latter. Our analysis highlights the importance of investigating the complex relationships between anticipatory media visions of smartness and their varying, down-to-earth implementations in the built environment rather than solely focusing on the discursive appeal of techno-idealism. It also explains the enduring appeal of smartness as an urban vision, despite its various shortcomings, by revealing its adaptability to the changing social and political–economic shifts.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-03-25T10:50:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520913405
When the ‘Messiah’ went to ‘Mecca’: Envisioning and reporting the
digital future at the CeBIT tech fair (1986–2018)
- Authors: Christian Schwarzenegger, Gabriele Balbi
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  At consumer and tech fairs, the future of digital technologies has always been imagined. In this study, we investigate how the annual CeBIT tech fair (held in Hanover, Germany, from 1986 to 2018) and a keynote speech given there by Bill Gates in 1995 have been constructed, framed, and substantiated through media coverage and in mediated memory. Thanks to a qualitative content analysis, based on more than 500 articles published in general interest media and technology magazines, the ways the future of digitization was, and partially still is, imagined and narrated at tech fairs emerge. It is a quasi-religious future, predicted in quasi-religious gatherings (the ‘Mecca’ of digital futures), where gurus (Messiahs) and new ideas emerged, are celebrated, criticized, or rejected. During fairs, there is also a political and strategic use of the future because the ways digitization is forecast can shape and drive its future through investments and obliged visions.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-03-20T01:26:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520909528
Sculpting digital voids: The politics of forgetting on Facebook
- Authors: Benjamin N. Jacobsen
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In an age where modes of storing and retaining data have become a ubiquitous presence in society, the issue of forgetting is becoming increasingly problematic. This piece figures as a theoretical contribution to the issue of forgetting in relation to social media platforms by looking at the Facebook memory app, Year in Review. Drawing on Terry Eagleton’s notion of ‘sculpting voids’, it explores the conceptual implications of digital archiving on memory, forgetting and, ultimately, the self. I argue that there is an emerging politics of forgetting and invisibility on Facebook, exploring the Eric Meyer incident on Year in Review in 2014. This incident resulted in Facebook seeking to automatically and algorithmically prevent media traces that might evoke painful memories of deceased family members and ex-partners from resurfacing on users’ yearly Year in Review videos. This practice of sculpting digital voids is conceptualized as an algorithmic mode of classification, a way of sorting people’s media objects such as photos on Facebook depending on the inferred emotional response these memory traces will elicit. Because of their ‘imagined’ nature and generative force, these practices need to be understood in relation to power. Sculpting digital voids, therefore, figures as a critical and conceptual framework for better understanding of how (in)visibilities and power relations are shaped on social media platforms.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-02-26T12:59:16Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520907390
Fans as e-participants' Utopia/dystopia visions for the future of
digital sport fandom
- Authors: Damion Sturm
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Media technologies and digital practices are reshaping and redefining the future of sport fandom. This article points to some of the utopian and dystopic transformations for fandom presented by (post)television, digital/social media and the anticipated virtual technologies of the future. Specifically, three distinct phases of fan participation are charted around existing and futuristic visions of technology-as-sport. First are the current televisual technologies that attempt to engage and retain traditionally “passive” viewers as spectators through pseudo-participatory perspectives that will carry over to new screens and technologies. Second, the assumed interactive participation afforded by social and digital media is considered, positing the future amplification of connectivity, personalisation and networking across digital fan communities, albeit undercut by further impositions of corporatisation and datafication through illusory forms of “interactivity”. Finally, the fusion, intensification and continual evolution of technology-as-sport is explored, asserting that forms of immersive participation will be significant for future virtual technologies and may ultimately re-position fans as e-participants in their own media-tech sport spectacles. Collectively, it is anticipated that the creation of new virtual worlds, spaces and experiences will amplify and operationalise forms of immersive participation around augmented spectatorship, virtual athletic replication and potentially constitute the sport itself. Indeed, a new model of the fan-as-immersed-e-participant is advanced as such futuristic virtual sporting realms may not only integrate fans into the spectacle but also project them into the event as participant and as the spectacle.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-02-25T12:40:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520907096
Book Review: Automated Media
- Authors: Jill Walker Rettberg
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-02-17T01:33:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520906610
Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of
Instagram influencers
Open Access Article
- Authors: Loes van Driel, Delia Dumitrica
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  While Instagram influencers may have started out as ordinary people documenting their everyday life through a stream of photographs, they are increasingly emerging as an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. This study examines the professionalization of Instagram influencers, combining data from 11 interviews with travel influencers with a visual and textual content analysis of their 12 most recent Instagram posts (N = 132). We show how the increasing professionalization of the influencer steers their relationship with their audience, the advertisers they work with, and the platform Instagram. We argue that, for the Instagram influencer to be perceived as successful, they need to negotiate a tension: they need to appear authentic, yet also approach their followers in a strategic way to remain appealing to advertisers. Although Instagram influencers are seen as more trustworthy than traditional forms of advertising, this tension ultimately leads to a standardization of the content shared by influencers.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-02-11T11:29:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520902136
Credibility by automation: Expectations of future knowledge production in
social media analytics
- Authors: Juho Pääkkönen, Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, Mikko Jauho
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Social media analytics is a burgeoning new field associated with high promises of societal relevance and business value but also methodological and practical problems. In this article, we build on the sociology of expectations literature and research on expertise in the interaction between humans and machines to examine how analysts and clients make their expectations about social media analytics credible in the face of recognized problems. To investigate how this happens in different contexts, we draw on thematic interviews with 10 social media analytics and client companies. In our material, social media analytics appears as a field facing both hopes and skepticism – toward data, analysis methods, or the users of analytics – from both the clients and the analysts. In this setting, the idea of automated analysis through algorithmic methods emerges as a central notion that lends credibility to expectations about social media analytics. Automation is thought to, first, extend and make expert interpretation of messy social media data more rigorous; second, eliminate subjective judgments from measurement on social media; and, third, allow for coordination of knowledge management inside organizations. Thus, ideas of automation importantly work to uphold the expectations of the value of analytics. Simultaneously, they shape what kinds of expertise, tools, and practices come to be involved in the future of analytics as knowledge production.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-02-05T11:39:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520901839
Book Review: Opting Out of Digital Media
- Authors: Kelechi Okechukwu Amakoh
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-01-29T03:23:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520902430
Augmenting autonomy: ‘New Collar’ labor and the future of tech
work
- Authors: Christopher M Cox
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This essay maps IBM’s attempts to construct a typology of high-tech ‘New Collar’ work and leverage policymaking outcomes to underwrite IBM corporate ventures capable of materializing this work. Through a discursive analysis of IBM corporate texts, webpages, and the 2017 New Collar Jobs Act, I argue for New Collar work to be understood through the lens of autonomy, as IBM recasts notions of ‘autonomous’ technology onto humans by downplaying dystopic associations of technological autonomy and transferring notions of autonomy to human workers. In doing so, I account for IBM’s use of ‘augmentation’ to situate human intelligence as the cognitive force uplifted by work performed with artificial intelligence. By pairing human augmentation with posthumanist conceptions of ‘distributed cognition’, IBM centers human intelligence through a redistributed cognition that reverses posthumanism’s decentering of human supremacy. Following from this, I unpack ‘New Collar’ as a reinvention of ‘white’ and ‘blue’ collar dichotomies and New Collar work as the grounds for tech workers to reinvent themselves. In this way, by minimizing the necessity of 4-year college degrees as pathways to economic and professional mobility, IBM constructs ‘New Collar’ with embedded notions of enlarged self-determination for applied worker intellect, vocational training, and employability. Under the aegis of creating, training, and employing New Collar workers, IBM pursues policy outcomes to underwrite corporate ventures related to New Collar work and bolster its institutional autonomy amidst marketplaces of cognitive capitalism. By outlining how tax relief provisions of the New Collar Jobs Act correlate with neoliberal ideologies of legislators and IBM investments in public–private vocational models and cybersecurity platforms, I account for IBM’s elongated ‘economy of learning’ that enables the company to more thoroughly capture, underwrite, and commodify New Collar cognition from training to market outputs.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-01-28T03:19:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856519899083
Art museums and the incorporation of virtual reality: Examining the impact
of VR on spatial and social norms
- Authors: Eryn Parker, Michael Saker
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Art museums implicate established spatial and social norms. The norms that shape these behaviours are not fixed, but rather subject to change as the sociality and physicality of these spaces continues to develop. In recent years, the re-emergence of virtual reality (VR) has led to this technology being incorporated into art museums in the form of VR-based exhibits. While a growing body of research now explores the various applications, uses and effects of VR, there is a notable dearth of studies examining the impact VR might be having on the spatial and social experience of art museums. This article, therefore, reports on an original research project designed to address these concerns. The project was conducted at Anise Gallery in London, United Kingdom, between June and July 2018 and focused on the multisensory, and VR-based, exhibition, Scents of Shad Thames. The research involved 19 semi-structured interviews with participants who had just experienced this exhibition. Drawing on scholarly literature that surrounds the spatial and social norms pertaining to art museums, this study advances along three lines. First, the research explores whether the inclusion of VR might alter the practice of people watching, which is endemic of this setting. Second, the research explores whether established ways of navigating the physical setting of art museums might influence how users approach the digital space of VR. Third, the research examines whether the incorporation of VR might produce a qualitatively different experience of the art museum as a shared social space.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-01-08T10:35:04Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856519897251
Playful approaches to news engagement
- Authors: Raul Ferrer-Conill, Maxwell Foxman, Janet Jones, Tanja Sihvonen, Marko Siitonen
  First page: 457
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  From crossword puzzles and quizzes to more complex gamification strategies and serious newsgames, legacy media has long explored ways to deploy playful approaches to deliver their content and engage with the audience. We examine how news and games fit together when news organizations, game creators and news audiences welcome gameful forms of communication and participation. Moreover, we reflect on the theoretical and empirical significance of merging news with games as a way to reformulate normative assumptions, production practices and consumption patterns. As a result, the boundaries between journalism and game’s logics start to erode, and they begin to find new ways of converging.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-14T11:28:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520923964
The discursive construction of the gamification of journalism
- Authors: Tim P Vos, Gregory P Perreault
  First page: 470
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This study explores the discursive, normative construction of gamification within journalism. Rooted in a theory of discursive institutionalism and by analyzing a significant corpus of metajournalistic discourse from 2006 to 2019, the study demonstrates how journalists have negotiated gamification’s place within journalism’s boundaries. The discourse addresses criticism that gamified news is a move toward infotainment and makes the case for gamification as serious journalism anchored in norms of audience engagement. Thus, gamification does not constitute institutional change since it is construed as an extension of existing institutional norms and beliefs.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-03-26T10:11:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520909542
Producing newsgames beyond boundaries: Journalists, game developers, and
the news business
- Authors: Christoph Plewe, Elfriede Fürsich
  First page: 486
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Creating successful newsgames requires effective boundary work between journalists and game developers. Both groups come to the job with different professional vocabularies, technical know-how, and work cultures. Our goal was to understand how they approach these challenges as they create a product that satisfies their professional expectations and the demands of media organizations and audiences. This article presents the results of semistructured expert interviews with pioneers in German newsgame production. We found that effective newsgame creation entailed complex coordination efforts. However, expected clashes between the different professional cultures did not occur. Conflicts were eased by a general agreement on news as a public service and by emphasizing nonhierarchical decision-making in teams. Our interviews detail the economic and technical obstacles that have resulted in newsgames not making major inroads. The decline of newsgames was related to the development of other digital media forms that matched journalistic conventions more closely. These findings led us to extend the model of journalistic boundary work to a more interactional concept that highlights the contributions of both sides while acknowledging the obstacles of operating in a larger media system.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-01T10:18:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918076
When journalism and games intersect: Examining news quality, design and
mechanics of political newsgames
- Authors: Alba García-Ortega, José Alberto García-Avilés
  First page: 517
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The use of games to convey the news involves wrestling with two different narrative logics: the professional culture of journalism, based on the verification of information and the standards of objectivity and truthfulness, and the culture of games, characterized by the creation of imaginary worlds, the persuasive potential of entertainment and the mechanics of the gaming experience. This article examines a sample of eight newsgame designs and the mechanisms through which they transmit information on issues related to political activity. We designed a qualitative analysis tool to examine the journalistic and gaming quality of the newsgames by analysing 28 parameters in four categories: formal parameters, content parameters, quality of use and architecture and design. Our results show that the use of playful elements is compatible with the fulfilment of journalistic quality standards and the choice of mechanics and dynamics determines how the user perceives and interacts with the information. However, the balance between both aspects does not guarantee that a newsgame provides the narrative resources to understand the information autonomously. Thus, newsgames are a genre with great journalistic potential when using the correct choice of mechanics and dynamics that allows communicating information according to news standards.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-29T11:01:24Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918081
Endless mode: Exploring the procedural rhetoric of a Black Lives
Matter-themed newsgame
- Authors: Allissa V Richardson
  First page: 537
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  A week after the back-to-back police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in early July 2016, a game developer, who goes by the screen name Yvvy, sat in front of her console mulling over the headlines. She designed a newsgame that featured civilian–police interactions that were plucked from that reportage. She entitled it Easy Level Life. The newsgame is fashioned in what developers call ‘endless mode’, where players are challenged to last as long as possible against a continuing threat, with limited resources or player-character lives. This case study explores the procedural rhetoric of Easy Level Life to investigate how it condemns police brutality through play. Using Teun van Dijk’s concept of ‘news as discourse’ as the framework, I found that this newsgame followed the narrative structure of a traditional newspaper editorial very closely. I explain how the situation–evaluation–conclusion discursive model best describes how Easy Level Life conveys its political ideologies. I conclude by suggesting that this discursive model should perhaps become a benchmarking tool for future newsgame developers who aim to strengthen their arguments for social justice.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-05-04T10:34:46Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918072
Rethinking framing and news values in gamified journalistic contexts: A
comparative case study of Al Jazeera’s interactive games
- Authors: Rana Khaled Arafat
  First page: 550
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Declining consumption rates of traditional news have led media outlets to search for innovative ways for engaging their audiences. News gamification emerged as a way to offer a more personalized news experience and a playful content by employing tools like badges, points, and leaderboards. As we are beginning to understand the benefits and pitfalls of gamifying news, the influence of the gamification on the news reporting techniques and news delivery structures is still not fully explored. The current study analyzes two games: Pirate Fishing: An Interactive Investigation and #Hacked Syria’s Electronic Armies, for the main generic news frames employed within interactive gamified contexts. Drawing on the integrative framing analysis approach, the study employs an innovative qualitative content analysis to investigate the multimodal – structural, textual, and visual – generic frames each game involves. By revisiting a contemporary list of news values, the study provides a further discussion about changing news values in the gamified setting.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-27T08:34:32Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918085
Curiosity Journalism, or the First Decades of Newsgames
- Authors: Ian Bogost
  First page: 572
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  As a veteran developer of newsgames and a coauthor of the book Newsgames: Journalism at Play, I revisits the origins, past promise, and current reality of the form. Like many other interventions in games outside entertainment, newsgames have great promise, but that promise has not yet been realized. Rather than ignoring these lessons, the next generation of scholars, researchers, critics, journalists, and developers should learn the difficult lessons from the past and incorporate them into their future efforts.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2020-04-27T08:32:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/1354856520918075