JournalTOCs

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

Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
Number of Followers: 50

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 1354-8565 - ISSN (Online) 1748-7382
Published by Sage Publications

[1176 journals]

Introduction
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan, Avishek Ray, Usha Raman, Martin Webb
  Pages: 1417 - 1421
  Abstract: Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 6, Page 1417-1421, December 2023.
  Expressions of the self as articulated in and through digital media lend themselves to how we might see self-making practices captured, recirculated, monetized, maneuvered and governed. This special section of Convergence explores the proliferation of digital expressions of the self on social media. It explores how digital-audio-visual practices that have become ubiquitous in recent decades are at once shaped by, reproductive of, and a disruption to mass mediated, normative figures of personhood.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-25T04:55:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208132
  Issue No: Vol. 29, No. 6 (2023)
The assemblages of flagging and de-platforming against marginalised
content creators
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Carolina Are
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This study examines how de-platforming and flagging assemble to replicate offline inequalities, making content creators at the margins vulnerable to both online abuse and censorship on Instagram and TikTok. Highlighting gaps in online harms literature surrounding the misuse of this functionality, this paper frames misused or malicious flagging as online abuse through interviews with users who believed they were de-platformed this way, showcasing this practice’s emotional and financial impact on targets and creating a framework to identify it through users’ gossip.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-25T05:02:53Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231218629
‘Do I pray when listening to a recorded prayer'’: Approval and
critique of digital practices in the Russian Orthodox Church
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ekaterina Grishaeva, Alexei Busygin
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Within some religious collectivities, the use of digital media for rituals, gaining religious knowledge and community gatherings may be seen as a challenge to religious identity, thus provoking different attitudes. Drawing on practice theory of Schatzki, we analyse different attitudes to digital practices expressed by members of the Russian Orthodox Church as shaped by their perception of the affordances of digital media and practice normativity. Developing previous studies, we demonstrate that the normative assessment of digital practices becomes significant mainly for developing critical arguments. Approval of digital practices does not depend solely on religious norms, but also on users’ experience of leveraging digital media affordances. We show that acceptance and critique are not mutually exclusive, as both types of argument are intertwined.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-24T10:36:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231216940
The platformisation of software development: Connective coding and
platform vernaculars on GitHub
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Liliana Bounegru
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article contributes to recent scholarship on platform, software and media studies by critically engaging with the ‘social coding’ platform GitHub, one of the most prominent actors in the online proprietary and F/OSS (free and/or open-source software) code hosting space. It examines the platformisation of software and project development on GitHub by combining institutional and cultural analysis. The institutional analysis focuses on critically examining the platform from a material-economic perspective to understand how it configures contemporary software and project development work. It proposes the concept of ‘connective coding’ to characterise how software intermediaries such as GitHub configure, valorise and capitalise on public repositories, developer and organisation profiles. This institutional perspective is complemented by a case study analysing cultural practices mediated by the platform. The case study examines the platform vernaculars of news media and journalism initiatives highlighted by Source, a key publication in the newsroom software development space, and how GitHub modulates visibility in this space. It finds that the high-visibility platform vernacular of this news media and journalism space is dominated by a mix of established actors such as the New York Times, the Guardian and Bloomberg, as well as more recent actors and initiatives such as ProPublica and Document Cloud. This high-visibility news media and journalism platform vernacular is characterised by multiple F/OSS and F/OSS-inspired practices and styles. Finally, by contrast, low-visibility public repositories in this space may be seen as indicative of GitHub’s role in facilitating various kinds of ‘post-F/OSS’ software development cultures.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-20T03:53:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231205867
The different worlds of Google – A comparison of search results on
conspiracy theories in 12 countries
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Gerret von Nordheim, Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Paulina Barczyszyn-Madziarz, Halyna Budivska, Philip Di Salvo, Filip Dingerkus, Liziane Soares Guazina, Kwaku Krobea Asante, Michał Kuś, Sandra Lábová, Antonia Matei, Norbert Merkovity, Fernando Oliveira Paulino, László Petrovszki-Oláh, Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo, Jonas Valente, Alexandra Wake, Viktória Zakinszky Toma
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Search engines play an important role in the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, accentuating the power of global platform companies such as Google to contribute to the digital (information) divide by providing search results of lesser quality in certain countries. We investigated this phenomenon by asking what kind of results users see when they search for information on eleven popular conspiracy theories (CTs) via Google. We analysed links from Google search results (N = 1259) in 12 Western and non-Western countries and 10 languages. Overall, users are more likely to encounter neutral or debunking content when using Google to search for prominent CTs. However, for some CTs, strong country differences in the quality of search results emerge, showing clear correlations between categorical inequalities and unequal access to reliable information. In countries where journalists enjoy less freedom, people enjoy fewer democratic rights and are less able to rely on social elites, Google also provides less enlightening content on CTs than in developed and prosperous democracies. The countries thus disadvantaged are precisely those countries where there is a high propensity to believe in CTs according to comparative survey research. However, in countries where a global language is spoken, for example, English or Portuguese, there is no correlation between structural, country-specific factors and the quality of search results. In this sense, structurally disadvantaged countries seem to benefit from belonging to a larger language community.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-20T03:45:52Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231203102
Workers’ right to the subject: The social relations of data
production
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Phoebe V Moore
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The use of data to profile and make decisions about data subjects for citizenship, targeted advertising, job recruitment and other reasons, has been eminently normalised, which is an emerging threat to protected spaces for personal subjectivation and identity formation. The ‘right to the subject’; or to agency via personal subject formation outside bilateral profiling; is at stake. This is especially true for workers. Algorithmic management infused with worker control mechanisms occurs in structurally and objectively unequal conditions within subjective, and unequal, social relations. Data harms protections in European privacy and data protection law, despite being heralded as the strongest in the world, are insufficient to protect workers’ right to the subject. Indeed, structural features of inequality within the capitalist data political economy mean that workers experience different power relations to consumers and citizens. Analysing the social relations surrounding policy features of ‘consent’, and ‘risk’, with focus on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the negotiations for the AI Act, it is not difficult to see that these policies do not protect all data subjects’ rights to the subject identically. Indeed, workers never have the capacity to truly consent at work; and the risks workers face are different from that of other data subjects, such as consumers. Data subjects do not, across categories, have equal access to equality, within, and because of, the social relations of data production. From a cross-disciplinary perspective and with contributions to sociology, critical theory, media and policy studies, this article argues that workers’ right to the subject is at stake, in datafied social relations.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-17T03:14:42Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199971
Salad Fingers: Pre-YouTube digital uncanny and the ‘weird’
future of animation
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Jessica Balanzategui, César Albarrán-Torres
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In 2004, artist David Firth launched the lo-fi animation Salad Fingers in the user-generated content sharing platform Newgrounds. The series, focused on a strange, unsettling narrative about a character that acts as a child but commits unhinged violent acts, went on to become viral in the earliest days of YouTube. Created with the software Flash (launched by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe), which generates vector images, Salad Fingers is a significant stylistic and generic contribution to the early period of participatory digital cultures. The series operates as a bridge between analogue and digital artforms that privilege the sensorial over narrative cohesion, while also cultivating a distinctive ‘uncanny-weird’ mode tied to early participatory digital cultures, trends that perdure in contemporary animation. We articulate how Salad Fingers operates in the distinctive ‘digital uncanny’, an aesthetic and cultural mode that would become pervasive in visual media cultures on YouTube and beyond.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-15T12:06:24Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208569
Digital inequalities in North Africa: Examining employment and
socioeconomic well-being in Morocco and Tunisia
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Hasnain Bokhari, Evans T Awuni
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The term digital divide refers to disparities in digital access, infrastructure, and opportunities. However, it is important to recognize that information and communication technologies (ICTs) do not operate in isolation. They are influenced by social and structural factors. This study focuses on Tunisia and Morocco to examine access to and usage of digital technologies, factors shaping these patterns, and the impact of unequal access and usage on employment and socioeconomic well-being in the post-Arab Spring era. Using Afrobarometer household surveys from 2013 to 2022, encompassing 9595 respondents, we construct a digital inclusion index and disaggregate results to illustrate the dynamics of digital inequalities. We employ pooled logistic regression to explore the determinants of digital inclusion and examine how disparities shape well-being. Findings show improved digital inclusion in Morocco and Tunisia from 2013 to 2022, yet over 80% of their populations remain partially or entirely excluded. We confirm previous studies suggesting that digitalization mirrors or exacerbates preexisting inequalities, with gender, age, education, and socioeconomic status significantly influencing digital inclusion, indicating persistent inequalities and barriers. Our findings also have broader implications for the MENA region, emphasizing the need to address the complex interactions among sociodemographic factors, including gender, age, education, and socioeconomic disparities, in order to achieve equitable digital inclusion.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-11T03:03:48Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231209673
The porous boundaries of public and private messages: Solidarity networks
of Latin American food delivery workers in NYC
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ambar Reyes
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, I argue that indigenous Latin American food delivery workers organize to defy information and knowledge asymmetries by utilizing technology built to mediate online social interactions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates transnational modes of community-building and network formation and examines how these networks are instrumental for delivery workers in New York City to exercise agency, forge their narrative, and resist platform control by resisting, pushing, and extending a variety of digital and communication technologies. I analyze how public and private means of communication facilitate and constrain social forms of organization by mapping how delivery workers communicate and engage collectively both in the physical and the digital worlds. My research reveals two platforms that workers use to share information: one that operates inwards (WhatsApp) and another that operates outwards (Facebook). These channels represent opposite sides of the spectrum between public and private and synergize to form a transnational distributed knowledge network to shape and interpret the collective identity of Latin American delivery workers. Overall, this article sheds light on how the flow of information through different spaces and times enables delivery workers to construct a place for subversion and negotiation with roles assigned to them by broader socio-political forces.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-10T12:01:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231210984
‘Traffic rewards’, ‘algorithmic visibility’, and ‘advertiser
satisfaction’: How Chinese short-video platforms cultivate creators in
stages
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Yang Huang, WeiMing Ye
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Chinese creators and Douyin (a prominent Chinese short-video platform) are building a strong relationship in cultural production. Based on the social exchange theory, this study tries to explore the process and mechanism of monetization in Chinese platforms. Using the app walkthrough method and in-depth interviews with 19 full-time creators, we contend that Chinese creators and Douyin engage in a repetitive but unequal exchange with the common goal of earning income. Douyin works with creators to cultivate their thirst for revenue over time, while mastering the creative labor, before finally tying them to monetary gains. Douyin not only binds exposure and allocates Internet traffic to new creators, but also develops Dou+, a traffic marketing tool that leverages the affordances of creative work visibility. Douyin first enhances the creators’ income expectations through this step. The platform then directs creators through the Star-Chart content trading system, and establishes the platform-advertiser-creator transaction chain. When the exchange between Douyin and creators becomes stable, the platform sets up an uncertain revenue mechanism. Douyin’s commitment to creating a standardized assembly line of production and financial benefit for creators has established an exchange mode between the platform and creators at the expense of innovation and diversity. We argue that this standardized labor process eliminates the autonomy of cultural production.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-10T07:50:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231211117
Shifting from Web2 to Web3: The adaptive creator experiences on
blockchain-based video-sharing and streaming platforms
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Madis Järvekülg, Indrek Ibrus, Ulrike Rohn
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Blockchains have inspired imaginaries of a new iteration of the internet, hailed as Web3, where the power of centralized platform companies would be limited and the ownership of personal data and content could be retained by their individual owners and creators. Web3 is expected to facilitate the emergence of novel protocols and platforms that enable decentralized coordination of data and digital assets. This article examines critically the experiences and imaginaries of creators working on two blockchain-based video-sharing platforms: Theta.tv and Odysee. Building on the studies of creator culture and institutionalist blockchain economics and based on open-ended interviews with the early adopters of these platforms, the paper investigates how the creators experience these decentralized social media applications in terms of their processes of governance, community creation, and career development. We show how the affordances of blockchains and creator expectations can result in further convergence of community management and career-building functions potentially benefiting creators. We also show that the new wave of decentralization, against optimistic blockchain visions, has not yet led to the distributed ‘ownership’ of social media networks. Rather, while blockchains seem to have increased creator autonomy and added career opportunities, novel forms of platform governance and power have also introduced new perceptions of precarity among creators.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-09T11:30:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231214184
Diamond hands to the moon: Idiocultural mobilization and politicization of
personal finance on r/wallstreetbets
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Andreas Gregersen, Jacob Ørmen
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In January 2021, the shares of the brick-and-mortar video games retail chain GameStop exploded in value. At the same time, billboards on highways and ads in Times Square in New York City used cryptic visuals and seemingly meaningless emojis with diamonds and rockets. Mainstream media soon had an explanation: This was the story of how the subreddit r/wallstreetbets had mobilized thousands of retail investors in a fight against evil hedge funds. Based on a case study of r/wallstreetbets and the GameStop incident, we analyze how idiosyncratic internet culture was incorporated into a broadly resonant and emotionally inflected narrative that lionized the ‘little man’, focusing on both individual profits and collective grievances. Through a theoretical framework combining sociological theories of internet culture and framing analysis, we identify an overall communication structure that drew on three interconnected discursive layers: idiocultural memes, investment-specific information, and a moralized, collectivized injustice frame with heroes and villains. We further argue that the GameStop (GME) incident instantiates a case of the politicization of personal finance, where the investment practices and strategies of ordinary people were transformed into a political issue. As such, the article makes two contributions to the existing literature. First, we contribute to the nascent literature on internet cultures related to personal finance by looking at a specific subreddit devoted to stock trading and investing. Second, we show how idiocultural elements, such as emojis and memes, can function both as contested and exclusionary material aimed at insiders and as flexible components of communications framed for broad mobilization through emotionally resonant notions of grievance and injustice.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-08T03:51:40Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208919
Book Review: The Modem World. A Prehistory of Social Media
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Carlos A. Scolari
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-08T03:46:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231214762
Cinephilia, take three': Availability, reliability, and disenchantment
in the streaming era
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: David McGowan
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article proposes a modified reading of Thomas Elsaesser’s theories of cinephilia, taking into account the new viewing practices established by the rise of online media streaming. Elsaesser characterised early film culture (labelled as ‘take one’) as rooted in celluloid and marked by a longing to view films that were not always easily available. By contrast, his characterisation of the later ‘take two’ era is one in which each new distribution technology (television, VHS, and so on) promises greater abundance and convenience, to the point where this new generation of cinephiles – in response to the widespread success of DVD – were perceived as having to deal with the ‘anachronisms generated by total availability’. Amanda D. Lotz argues that streaming services appear to provide an extension of the ‘take two’ ideal, offering assurances of ‘availability (on-demand libraries with many choices) and reliability (you don’t have to watch it now or it’s gone)’. I suggest, however, that the underlying impermanence of streaming has prompted fears related to both access and ownership, marking a break from the expectations surrounding the DVD (as well as its successors Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD). The impact of content migration – fracturing access between a greater number of paid platforms – and particularly content delisting – the outright removal of access to a given text – can place certain works in a form of limbo. This article proposes the dawn of a new generation of cinephilia – a potential take three – marked by a newfound concern of ephemerality, albeit much more potential and localised than the widespread unavailability of the take one era. In essence, then, take three wrestles with the anachronisms of loss in a media landscape that, in many other ways, offers unprecedented levels of access to film and television content.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-11-04T11:23:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231210721
Your money or your data: Avatar embodiment options in the identity economy
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Andrea Stevenson Won, Donna Z Davis
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In the physical world, choices about self-representation are tied to the body. However, avatar embodiment offers users many more options. These options are often constrained or promoted according to the economic models of the platforms that support different virtual worlds. Still, work on user motivations for avatar embodiment has generally not accounted for these constraints. To help explain users' interest (or lack of interest) in immersive technology, we discuss the mismatch between platform intentions and avatar affordances. We describe how user and platform motivations intersect in the ‘embodied identity economy’, a model in which users either ‘pay’ for access to embodied experiences with data from their physical identity or fund economy with cash payments. We present a framework of avatar embodiment using two dimensions: consistency versus discrepancy with the user’s physical identity, and experiential versus identity-based self-presence. We describe three ways in which avatars can be consistent with the user’s physical body: through appearance, through behavior, and the extent to which avatar data is linked with the user’s identity in the physical world. We relate this concept to recent discussions of a proposed ‘metaverse’ as a hub for life online.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-30T11:24:00Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231200187
Who cares about digital disconnection' Exploring commodified digital
disconnection discourse through a relational lens
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Sara Van Bruyssel, Ralf De Wolf, Mariek Vanden Abeele
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about digital disconnection in marketing communication of digital disconnection products and services. Through a critical discourse analysis, we find that digital disconnection is foremost presented as an individualized responsibility, meaning that the particular responsibility to (re-) gain control, focus and productivity, lies with the individual user. This responsible individual is feminized in most communications, except for highly masculinized, entrepreneurial-oriented forms of commodified digital disconnection. Overall, our analysis highlights how stereotypical gendered caring roles and processes of individual responsibilization are reinforced in commodified digital products and services. To breach this vicious circle, we argue that it is crucial to bring awareness to the essentialness of digital disconnection care work to ensure that disconnection opportunities and responsibilities are not dictated by social inequalities generated by neoliberal logics.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-30T11:12:40Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231206504
Sick kids versus whom' Childhood disability and charitable campaigns
on Instagram
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Daniela Zuzunaga Zegarra, Thomas Abrams
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Platform media are changing the disability charity landscape. This paper employs a hybrid critical disability studies – platform media studies lens to explore the SickKids VS campaign, aiming to ‘fight’ childhood illness and disability. Employing a social media thematic analysis, we analyzed social media content distributed through the campaign, consisting of images, videos, and captions (n=620). We found three dominant narratives: heroic sick kids, crumbling infrastructure, and informational content. Each trend, we argue, emerges within a changing platform mediascape, whereby charitable audiences must be cultivated and curated over a long-term process, rather than in a single moment, as in telethon fundraising. We ask how disability is framed in each of those narratives, and how disability studies might respond to these formulations in the political economy of platform media. We end by exploring the strategies disability studies can take to combat the marginalizing effects of such charitable campaigns.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-30T10:59:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231211310
Invisible, aesthetic, and enrolled listeners across storytelling
modalities: Immersive preference as situated player type
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Judith Pintar
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Immersive storytelling includes narrative experiences that take place in the public spaces of theaters, theme parks, museums, and historical reenactment sites; on tabletops, where role-playing games are collaboratively played; in fictional spaces superimposed on the real world during a live-action role-playing (larping) event; and in hybrid, asynchronous, and transmediated spaces that blend the digital, the virtual, and the real. Understood as a kind of boundary object, a player typology can incorporate multiple perspectives and heterogeneous sources of information, producing ‘ideal types’, which provide a framework for observation and discussion across immersive modalities. This paper offers a typology of situated immersive preference, in which narrative immersion and embodied immersion are understood to vary independently of one another. Along the vertical axis listener-players of immersive storytelling experiences are classified as narratively attached, narratively detached, or narratively opposed. Across the horizontal axis of embodied engagement, listener-players are classified as invisible, aesthetic, or enrolled. Nine ideal types emerge at the intersection of these narrative and embodied preferences. Why someone might fit into one category rather than another reflects comfort rather than personality. Situated immersive types are understood to be fluid and temporary configurations. The degree to which players are willing to engage and are comfortable with what they are being asked to do may differ dramatically from experience to experience and from day to day, and even during a single session, reflecting how they feel at a given moment, which is affected by who they are with and how they are perceived and treated by others. This framework for understanding immersive preferences calls for the design of more widely inclusive story worlds.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-21T08:37:14Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231206505
Catering to the impatient digital listener: Accelerated composition
patterns in popular music, 1986–2020
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Christoph Klimmt, Mareike Sperzel, Jasmin Straßburger, Viviane Winkler, Yannick Schneeweiß, Hubert Léveillé Gauvin
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The present study explored trends of compositional acceleration in top hit songs as a potential consequence of streaming platforms and digital habits of music consumption. Many media users have been shifting towards ‘Permanently online, permanently connected’ (Vorderer et al., 2018) behaviors and are thus likely to face choice overload in many episodes of music consumption. In turn, the creative audio industries seem to adjust strategically to altered audience demands that platforms can identify in their mass data traces. Extending a study by Léveillé Gauvin (2018), we investigate five compositorial features (main tempo, time before voice enters, time before title is mentioned, number of words in song title, and song duration) for Billboard top 10 songs (1986 to 2020) and ‘Spotify’ top 10 songs (2016 to 2020). Across features, long-term trends of accelerated composition have mostly continued in recent years, but only weak evidence was secured for a particular booster effect of the competitive ‘Spotify’ ecology on compositorial acceleration.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-20T08:41:30Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208918
Infinite media: The contemporary infinite paradigm in media
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Guillermo Echauri
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This essay argues that the contemporary media paradigm is defined by an infinite character and scale that emerge from the confluence of infinite-prone economic, technological, and cultural logics. Thus, it discusses the emergence, consolidation, and expansion of a state in which the media landscape and experience are assumed as practically infinite in its different dimensions, from the institutional to the cultural perspective. The argument of this article is based on the analysis of two cases: the deployment of an infinite production model in the media industry, particularly Hollywood; and the implementation of an infinite experience of approaching digital media, especially social media and streaming platforms. The essay maintains that the development of this clearly observable paradigm in media has granted the current possibility of having effectively infinite media and suggests that this propensity towards infinity in media could increase through the implementation of resources such as those offered by generative AI.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-20T08:05:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208135
The narrativization of ludic elements in videogame fanfiction
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Yuhua Hanna Wu, Paul Martin
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Existing scholarship on videogame fanfiction focuses on how these fictions transform game characters and narrative settings. However, this misses out on an important trope in videogame fanfictions, where authors transplant game procedures, systems, mechanics, and play styles into their stories. We term this trope the narrativization of ludic elements. This article examines how three popular fanfictions based on the Chinese MMO Jian 3 narrativize ludic elements in a way that reinforces hegemonic masculinity. The article contributes to a fuller understanding of the rhetorical strategies of fanfiction writers and explores the ideological implications of the intermedial relation between fanfictions and their source texts.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-19T08:03:16Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208925
Book Review: To Know is to Compare: Studying Social Media across Nations,
Media and Platform
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Blake Hallinan
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-19T03:39:17Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231208150
‘Every adventure begins with a cup of coffee’: Black rifle coffee
company, reactionary fandom, and the tactical body
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Anthony Dannar
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines the Black Rifle Coffee Company brand, its fans, and its connection to right-wing violence. By incorporating the literature on brand culture and the concepts and tools from fan studies, I show how Black Rifle merchandise develops into wearable symbols of white supremacy and reactionary politics celebrated by a fan culture and integrated into a tactical ensemble. While both Black Rifle’s promotional content and fans’ actions point to how capitalism provides a permission structure for white masculine supremacy, only by combining these approaches do we reveal the tactical body. I argue that the tactical body is a fannish embodiment of white supremacist conspiracy theories and a playful form of political engagement designed to actualize a revenge fantasy of insurrection. While I focus primarily on how Black Rifle fans play out their tactical canon in online and physical spaces, this case study points to a larger trend of tactical brands profiting from white male grievances and political tribalism.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-13T09:22:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231205868
Restricted but satisfied: Google Maps and agency in the mundane life
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Peter Gentzel, Jeffrey Wimmer
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The study grasps the transformation of agency in the context of mundane production and use of mapping apps. It is asked theoretically and empirically, who produces and maintains Google Maps as cartographic infrastructure and how is this kind of agency being reflected and acted upon from a lifeworld perspective. Firstly, findings are compiled from various interdisciplinary studies on digital cartography, platform capitalism and digital infrastructures. Since these studies focus on agency almost exclusively from a structural perspective, a qualitative study is conducted to explore the use of Google Maps in everyday life. 20 interviews with German users show that digitalization and datafication profoundly change the dynamics of how agency is perceived and reflected. It can be understood as a form of extension of agency because it is deeply rooted in the entanglement of Google Maps’ infrastructure and city dwellers everyday practices.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-11T03:57:38Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231205869
It’s not her fault: Trust through anthropomorphism among young adult
Amazon Alexa users
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Elizabeth Fetterolf, Ekaterina Hertog
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Voice assistants (VAs) like Alexa have been integrated into hundreds of millions of homes, despite persistent public distrust of Amazon. The current literature explains this trend by examining users’ limited knowledge of, concern about, or even resignation to surveillance. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n = 16), we explore how young adult Alexa users make sense of continuing to use the VA while generally distrusting Amazon. We identify three strategies that participants use to manage distrust: separating the VA from the company through anthropomorphism, expressing digital resignation, and occasionally taking action, like moving Alexa or even unplugging it. We argue that these individual-level strategies allow users to manage their concerns about Alexa and integrate the VA into domestic life. We conclude by discussing the implications these individual choices have for personal privacy and the rapid expansion of surveillance technologies into intimate life.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-09T11:01:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231200337
Ride-hailing while female: Negotiating China’s digital public sphere
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Yanjun Cai, JieLan Xu, Scott Drinkall
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This research reveals how social media advances gender responsiveness in the context of China’s digital transformation by exploring ride-hailing services, a fast-growing though often under-regulated sector. Specifically, the rise of ride-hailing has been accompanied by incidents of sexual harassment and gender-based violence, leading to social media outrage. Building on Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, this study – perhaps the first to explore the gender dynamics of ride-hailing policymaking in China – centers on the notion of digital public sphere. This study investigates how citizens, corporations, and government agencies have markedly differed in their discourses on gender and safety. Results exhibit that as corporations and government agencies seek technological and legislative solutions to improve safety, Chinese citizen-based activism efforts have amplified gendered perspectives, addressing gender-responsive policymaking. These actors generate discourses that echo various strands of feminism and further cultivate the policy trajectory, including pressuring government agencies to enforce the social accountability of private corporations. This research addresses a pragmatic perspective to demonstrate how liberal, socialist, and cultural feminisms coexist and negotiate in China’s digital public sphere. It aims to enhance one’s understanding of online civic engagement and resulting policy change in contemporary China, enriching the public sphere theory with emerging technology under a contentious political context.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-10-05T02:28:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231205976
‘Definitely not in the business of wanting to be associated’:
Examining public relations in a deplatformization controversy
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Stephanie Hill
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In August 2019, a mass shooter in the United States posted a violent manifesto to the anonymous forum 8chan prior to his attack. This was the third such incident that year and afterwards hosting and security services conceded to calls to drop 8chan as a client, pushing 8chan to the margins of the accessible internet. This article examines the deplatforming of 8chan as a public relations crisis, contributing to understanding ‘governance by shock’ (Ananny and Gillespie 2016) by examining who is shocked and their power to turn shock into online regulation. Online platforms and media attention created opportunities to study how the deplatforming was justified, drawing on the theoretical framework of economies of worth (Boltanski and Thevenot 2006) and controversy mapping methods. The examination finds: (1) that this case of deplatforming indicates the openness of infrastructure-as-a-service companies to external challenges over content, rather than hegemonic control. (2) That regulatory gaps, including the broadness of U.S. free speech laws, made these companies, rather than legal processes, the relevant authority. (3) That framing responsibility as following the law – as Cloudflare attempted to do – misunderstands the importance of normative principles, voluntary measures, and contestation in governing online content, underselling the value of policy-making at other levels. The success of the campaign to deplatform 8chan affirms the significance of PR crises in the regulation of online content, rewarding deplatforming as a political tactic for civil society groups and online networks pushing for governance in regulatory gaps. However, the significance of normative enforcement in this case underlines the difficulties of this semi-voluntary style of governance. While normative opposition to violence contributed to 8chan’s deplatforming, other normative oppositions contribute to deplatforming vulnerable users, as in the moral panics that drive the deplatforming of sexual content (Tiidenberg 2021) and feed suspicion over the ideological application of deplatforming. The ambivalence of PR crises as a strategy for influencing platform governance underlines the need for clarity in policy-making at multiple levels.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-27T11:40:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231203981
Streaming forward: Adoption considerations for the major recorded music
markets in CARICOM
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Farley J Joseph
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Music Streaming Services (MSS) have recently emerged as the main format for showcasing and monetizing sound recordings by record labels and artists in the international recorded music sector. In the Caribbean, however, stakeholders have been slow to adopt and integrate these digital music platforms into their overall recorded music strategies. Within this context, this paper explores the key economic opportunities and challenges associated with the late adoption of the platform-based streaming music model. Using self-administered structured interviews with nine regional experts from the three major music markets, as well as an analysis of audio-visual and digital materials and review of documents, the information is derived using a qualitative research approach, supported by a grounded theory strategy of inquiry. The findings illustrate that on one hand there is cautious optimism with respect to the potential for the re-construction of revenue streams, due to stronger royalty inflows associated with new uses of music in the digital arena. The extent to which this is realized contends with the quantum of royalty payouts actually received by rights-holders and their overall willingness to licence their rights to MSS. Additionally, MSS provides the platform for rights-owners to reach glocal audiences. However, this is reliant on the content and user-friendly features embedded in the platforms and the readiness of regional artists to be discovered and monetized via third party playlists.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-27T01:59:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231203983
‘Huge fan of the drama’: Politics as an object of fandom
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Peter Allen, David S Moon
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  On June 12th 2019, in the middle of the UK Conservative party’s leadership contest, journalist Marie le Conte tweeted ‘so this is my first proper leadership contest as an actual Westminster person and honestly it’s such a hoot…huge fan of the drama’. This tweet is exemplary of a wider phenomenon. Politics is the activity through which power and resources are allocated across society – who gets what, when and how. Politics, and what it does to all of our lives, is consequential. Yet, despite this, many of those who pay the most attention to politics do so from the position of a fan, engaging with it in the way that others engage with entertainment forms like sport and television shows. Previous studies have paid attention to the fandoms and anti-fandoms that develop around individual politicians and movements – in other words, they maintain a focus on the behaviours and actions of these fans of politics. By contrast, in this paper we explore the construction of politics itself as an object of fandom, asking what happens to politics when it is treated in this way. The activity of politics can be socially constructed by humans to serve some purpose. Thus, who does the constructing and how they do this, affects what it becomes. Our claim is that constructing politics as an object of fandom (i.e. constructing it as ‘the drama’) affects politics itself.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-27T01:54:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231203979
‘Come support the locals!’: mediating peripheral spaces on Google maps
via user-generated content
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Shirley Druker Shitrit, Chaim Noy
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  New media platforms offer diverse modes of mediation of every day and tourist places and communities. Spatial social media now augment older forms of mediation, partly by enabling contributions from ‘ordinary’ users, who create and share spatial discourses. This study examines the discursive construction of peripheral places, produced through user-generated content. Employing qualitative methodology, we sample and analyze 1,053 texts, shared on Google Maps in southern regions of Israel. The key conclusions suggest that compared to traditional media discourses depicting peripheral spaces in Israel, the findings demonstrate a shift from homogeneous depictions to more diverse and multilayered ones. Digital affordances result in more actors and stakeholders partaking in discursive construction, including private and institutional local players, visitors and tourists. Theoretical contributions are offered to the field of digital placemaking, by considering the subjective, evaluative and ideological layers that augment geographical data digital maps provide (‘bottom-up’ perspective), and to the fields of study of marginalized peripheral and rural communities and tourism crisis in peripheral (post-Coronavirus) locations.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-22T11:13:45Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231200827
Book review: The private is political: Networked privacy and social media
by Alice Marwick
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Alexis Shore
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-19T06:46:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231203103
The role of geolocation data in U.S. political campaigning: How digital
political strategists perceive it
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Martin J Riedl, Dariya Tsyrenzhapova, Jessica R Collier, Jacob Gursky, Katie Joseff, Samuel Woolley
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The use of geolocation data by political campaigns is often the subject of media concern. Research has investigated the role of data in and use by political campaigns, but less attention has been paid to digital political strategists largely responsible for decisions behind the assemblage and mining of voter databases to deliver micro-targeted messages on behalf of political campaigns. In this study, we conducted interviews with 14 leading industry professionals in the United States to examine the common scenarios and associated concerns of using geolocation data to target voters. Our findings reveal that geolocation data are an important asset in political campaigns, but their value is contingent on additional factors. Concerns regarding geolocation data, as interviewees suggested, may at times be influenced more by the popular media narratives than the true reality of data, their scope, and associated capabilities. Our results point to geolocation data’s greatest usefulness to campaigns not in their own right, but when data are paired with other insights about voters’ behaviors. Ultimately, the lack of industry regulation reveals discrepancies in best practices and raises concerns over the potential misuse of geolocation data in the political space.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-16T02:28:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199980
Ja’miezing’s Podcast Persona: Intertextual and
Intercommunicative
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Christopher Moore, Jasmyn Connell
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  An online persona is a public presentation of a human or non-human actor such as organisations and locations, digital objects, artificial intelligence, and media texts. This article provides an analysis of the online persona of the Australian satirical comedy podcast, Ja'miezing. Written, directed, performed, and produced by comedian Chris Lilley, Ja'miezing is a narrative podcast series that features the intimate details of the post-high school life of the character Ja’mie. The podcast launched following Lilley’s online cancellation which resulted in his previous mockumentary television shows being removed from Netflix and the Australian Broadcast Corporation’s video-on-demand service, ABC iview. The study builds on the five dimensions of persona – public, mediatised, performative, collective, and value – by drawing on contributions from podcast studies to better understand the unique features and practices of podcast personas. It seeks to untangle the complex interplay between the intertextual and intercommunicative connections of podcast producer, host, character, platform, and audience micropublics as they contribute to the online presentation of the podcast’s persona. The article highlights the potential of podcast personas as a unique form of a non-human online persona that requires further investigation. This approach also has implications for how to consider other forms of mediated communication with online personas.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-15T11:24:29Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231201597
The social robot' Analyzing whether and how the telepresence robot AV1
affords socialization
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Maja Nordtug, Lars EF Johannessen
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Telepresence robots are increasingly used in schools as a way of including students who are unable to be physically present in the classroom with other students. The use of such robots is intended not just to help students follow their education but also to serve a social purpose. However, the extent to which the robots actually afford socializing needs to be explored further. This article analyzes how, to what extent, for whom, and under what circumstances the telepresence robot AV1 affords social contact for the heterogenous group of homebound Norwegian upper secondary school students. Building on Jenny Davis’ mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances, we focus on how AV1 affords for different students in specific circumstances. Our analysis draws on interviews with 11 upper secondary school students in Norway and finds that individual traits and circumstances such as health issues and social networks are important aspects when assessing whether a technology affords socializing. Based on our findings, we argue for expanding the mechanisms and conditions framework to include not just its current focus on perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy, but also the users’ emotions.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-11T03:55:46Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231201774
Arendt in the Metaverse: Four properties of eXtended Reality that imperil
factual truth and democracy
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Morten Bay
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores the democratic implications of the wide adoption of XR (eXtended Reality) technologies, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political theory and her concept of common reality. Arendt argues that the intersubjective construction of a common reality is what enables the establishment of factual truth and that both are prerequisites for a functional democracy. Without them, ideology can be established as truth by anti-democratic forces with power over media outlets, paving a path toward totalitarianism. This article argues that XR technologies can be used to inhibit the construction of a common reality through the same individualization of media experiences that has been shown to impede democratic processes in the social media context. The companies generating increased revenue through individualized micro-segmentation are now also vying for dominance in the XR media arena. It is argued in this article that such individualization can impede the co-construction of a common reality and a factual truth because XR media are hyper-persuasive and capable of altering an individual’s overall perception of reality. The viability of such platform-controlled individualization in XR is demonstrated through an Arendt-based critique of four properties related to XR technologies: Hypertargeted personalization, false memory creation, reality indistinguishability, and predictive processing theory. Based on these analyses, the article concludes that XR policy and regulation must consider how XR gives platforms unprecedented persuasive powers as they become capable of altering a user’s reality perception remotely and how, per Arendt, this may threaten democracy.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-06T12:38:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199957
Making immersive storytelling accessible: Interactive low-tech
implementation in elementary school civic learning
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Irina Kuznetcova, Shantanu Tilak, Ziye Wen, Michael Glassman, Eric Anderman, Tzu-Jung Lin
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Immersive storytelling (IST) is usually conceptualized within the framework of technologically immersive tools such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. While these tools offer some unique features (such as visual fidelity, interactivity, and embodied, first-person perspective), their level of technological immersion (based on the system’s objective qualities) might not directly translate to the psychological immersion experienced by the user. Such tools also tend to require access to digital or financial resources unavailable to many schools. We propose a low-tech alternative approach leveraging storytelling’s power for learning through affordable, accessible, and familiar classroom technology – Google Slides. We used the Participatory Learning framework to generate curricular design principles that aim to create a sense of psychological immersion through active participation in technology-mediated storytelling. In this design case study paper, we describe the design of a 10-day unit on Native American history implemented across nine teachers’ elementary school classrooms in the US. We examine the interplay between pedagogical and technological constraints in the design process, the role of the theoretical framework in the design, and conclude by detailing future directions for research on low-tech immersive storytelling environments.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-06T12:17:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199967
Platformed solidarity: Examining the performative politics of Twitter
hashflags
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Tim Highfield, Kate M Miltner
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper conceptualises platformed solidarity, describing how platforms change their affordances to support particular social justice causes, sometimes temporarily, and often in response to current events. Such actions allow platforms to perform their support of different interests in response to issues such as racial and gender equality or pro-democratic aims, among other examples. In each case, a specific feature of the platform is modified to visibly promote support, altering how their users experience these spaces. In doing so, these interventions highlight how major platforms demonstrate their politics, raising questions about the differences between the politics that they publicly portray and policies they enact. This paper explores platformed solidarity through an extended examination of Twitter hashflags, typically temporary visuals attached to hashtags of particular commercial, social, and political interests and offering affective emphasis to selected content. While the bulk of hashflags are commercial products, created in partnership with brands to encourage engagement and promotion of a campaign or product, there have been a number of hashflags for major events and causes, from elections to selected social justice campaigns. We suggest that examples of platformed solidarity can elucidate what global platforms see as their role and influence in public communication. However, this raises important questions about what causes, events, and groups are deemed worthy of platformed solidarity' What values do they represent and how – if at all – are these supported by platforms’ policy decisions regarding the same issues' We suggest that, whether cynical or well-intentioned, these surface-level interventions do not always necessarily align with higher-order corporate priorities and decision-making. As such, we suggest that platformed solidarity is a corporate tactic that can have overlap with considerations of ‘woke capitalism’, where visible gestures towards causes and issues are made but underpinned by platforms’ missions to maintain high user numbers, grow engagement, and profit.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-09-06T01:31:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199981
The participatory politics and play of canceling an idol: Exploring how
fans negotiate their fandom of a canceled ‘fave’
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Simone Driessen
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  What happens if your favorite artist gets canceled' Can you remain a fan after such a controversy' This study explores how fans – those with a strong affective bond toward their fan object – negotiate their fannish position and practices after the cancellation of their idol. Fans are asked to re-evaluate their fandom, and potentially their participation in it: a political turning point in their fannish career. To better understand this phenomenon, this study examines the fandom of the canceled Dutch singer and The Voice coach Marco Borsato. Doing so, it highlights how fans negotiate, give meaning to and understand the cancellation of their ‘problematic fave’ by drawing on an interview study with twelve Dutch fans of Marco Borsato complemented with an analysis of online fan comments. A thematic analysis of this data shows the complexity of being a fan of a canceled artist. Further, it reveals how fans navigate the everyday political and cultural consequences of being a(n ex-)fan in this situation. Findings illustrate how some fans steadfastly commit to their fandom and dismiss the allegations, while others are more careful in publicly expressing their affection and wish to first learn more about the situation. They feel conflicted about the situation and turn their fandom into something more /private. Based on these findings, this article unfolds what motivates some to step away from this cancel case and Borsato, while others defend him at all costs. Through this lens, we can argue that this might resonate with and help us better understand for example polarized views in society at large. So, seemingly innocent fannish play offers a first look and step toward an understanding of how such processes play out on a macro-level.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-31T10:13:29Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199983
Beautytube: Enacting postfeminism on the YouTube multi-channel network
ICON from 2015 to 2016
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Andrea M. M. Weare
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This production study utilizes postfeminist theory as a lens for seeing ‘beauty work’ on YouTube via the multi-channel network (MCN) ICON Network, a collaboration between the production company Endemol Shine and beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan. By bringing to focus the unique year of 2015–2016 when YouTube beauty production was largely produced within MCNs, the study sets the stage for the proceeding professionalization of YouTube content creation under legacy production and distribution companies in the 2020s. In-depth producer interviews with ICON management and YouTubers illuminated MCN business practices and producer perceptions of YouTube beauty production. Interview data was analyzed for its articulation within ICON as a postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007) through (a) work conditions of beauty video production and (b) best practices of beauty video production. Results indicate that ICON is a site where the markers of feminism, postfeminism, and transnational feminism intersect and collide. These intersections contextualize today’s beauty influencing landscape which pushes for independence from MCNs, transparency, and authenticity.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-31T07:48:35Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231199968
The access control double bind: How everyday interfaces regulate access
and privacy, enable surveillance, and enforce identity
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Daniel L Gardner, Theresa J Tanenbaum
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Access controls are an inescapable and deceptively mundane requirement for accessing digital applications and platforms. These systems enable and enforce practices related to access, ownership, privacy, and surveillance. Companies use access controls to dictate and enforce terms of use for digital media, platforms, and technologies. The technical implementation of these systems is well understood. However, this paper instead uses digital game software and platforms as a case study to analyze the broader socio-technical, and often inequitable, interactions these elements regulate across software systems. Our sample includes 200 digital games and seven major digital gaming platforms. We combine close reading and content analysis to examine the processes of authentication and authorization within our samples. While the ubiquity of these systems is a given in much academic and popular discourse, our data help empirically ground this understanding and examine how these systems support user legibility and surveillance, and police identities in under-examined ways. We suggest changes to the policies and practices that shape these systems to drive more transparent and equitable design.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-19T07:31:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193706
Reassembling #MeToo: Tracing the techno-affective agency of the feminist
Instagram influencer
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Astri Moksnes Barbala
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Political social media influencers are taking increasingly central and agenda-setting roles within contemporary media ecologies; however, little in-depth research has been conducted with regard to their agency and the practices of the specific agents involved. This article examines Scandinavian Instagram feminists’ practices and experiences in light of the #MeToo campaigns. Building on observations and interviews with feminist influencers whose followers exceed 10,000 each, the article seeks to contribute new insights about social media user agency, concentrating on some of the most powerful voices in digital activism. By regarding #MeToo an assemblage of various homogenous and shifting elements, the article highlights how feminist influencers in the Scandinavian context have taken positions as defining agents of feminism through employing Instagram’s user options for performing affective acts of labor. Though they do not utilize Instagram as a means for making money through advertising the way mainstream influencers do, nonprofit influencers such as microcelebrity feminists have large social media followings and are still arguably important players in the platform economy because of their significant reach and ability to influence political agendas.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-11T11:31:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231191261
The (not so) secret governors of the internet: Morality policing and
platform politics
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Zachary J McDowell, Katrin Tiidenberg
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  A growing body of academic work on internet governance focuses on the ‘deplatforming of sex’, or the removal and suppression of sexual expression from the internet. Often, this is linked to the 2018 passing of FOSTA/SESTA – much-criticized twin bills that make internet intermediaries liable for content that promotes or facilitates prostitution or sex trafficking. We suggest analyzing both internet governance and the deplatforming of sex in conjunction with long-term agendas of conservative lobbying groups. Specifically, we combine media historiography, policy analysis, and thematic and discourse analysis of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media) press releases and media texts to show how conservative moral entrepreneurs weaponize ideas of morality, obscenity, and harm in internet governance. We illustrate how NCOSE has, directly and indirectly, interfered in internet governance, first by lobbying for rigorous enforcement of obscenity laws and then for creating internet-specific obscenity laws (which we argue CDA, COPA, and FOSTA/SESTA all were for NCOSE). We show how NCOSE adjusted their rhetoric to first link pornography to addiction and pedophilia and later to trafficking and exploitation; how they took advantage of the #metoo momentum; mastered legal language, and incorporated an explicit anti-internet stance.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-04T08:31:48Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193694
Mechanical meaning: The relationship between game mechanics and story in
ergodic theatre
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Gabrielle M Greig (Lennox)
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Theatre is increasingly exploring the potential of interactivity, especially as the growing experience economy reveals that people actively seek activities that offer new ways to engage with stories. The inclusion of interactive elements akin to game mechanics, which I call ergodic mechanics, shifts these performances into an intermedial sphere between digital games and conventional theatre. I use the term ergodic theatre to classify this specific subgenre of immersive theatre where the traveller works to form their path through the storyworld. Ergodic mechanics are the systems through which the traveller works or interacts. But what impact does the inclusion of ergodic mechanics have on storytelling' This question is critical to producing meaningful ergodic theatre performances and preventing interactive elements from becoming gimmicks, as some theatre reviewers have labelled them (Gardner, 2014). I interrogate the relationship between and impact of ergodic mechanics on the creation of story and meaning by examining narrative moments from The Under Presents, a VR ergodic theatre experience, and What Remains of Edith Finch and Dream, both digital ergodic theatre experiences. Analysing these case studies helps demonstrate the value of weaving ergodic mechanics with the story. When there is harmony between the interactive and story elements, the included ergodic mechanics heighten the traveller’s narrative engagement and emotional connection to the play’s characters or themes. I argue that ludonarrative harmony loops are a powerful tool that can enrich the traveller’s theatrical experience. I present an interdisciplinary approach by applying digital game theory parsed through dramaturgy to address the nuances of telling meaningful and engaging stories in ergodic theatre. Analysing the incorporation and dramaturgical function of interactivity highlights the potential of ergodic mechanics in intermedial ergodic performances. Furthermore, creating ludonarrative harmony is central to ergodic theatre’s continued success and growth as a storytelling medium.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-03T03:36:46Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193120
Exposing the mess in the online kitchen: Bon Appetit and digital
continuities in legacy media’s workplace exploitations
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Emmelle Israel
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Traditional media’s convergence with online media platforms intensifies the already unpaid and unrecognized affective, immaterial and emotional labor expected of women of color and other historically marginalized media workers. This article uses the example of Bon Appetit (BA) and the downfall of their popular YouTube channel to argue that understanding this intensification is critical to envisioning possibilities for media workers to address exploitative working conditions. In the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, Black and Brown women food writers took to social media to point out that while BA profited from portraying a diverse workforce on their YouTube channel, the reality was very different. At the time, popular press and social media discourse largely attributed these issues to entrenched histories of racialized and gendered discrimination in legacy media. However, recent research on online platforms has engaged feminist studies, Black studies, and critical STS epistemologies to demonstrate that intersectional oppressions based on race, gender, class, and sexuality are reinscribed in the labor and technical infrastructures of platforms. Together, theorizations of the racialized and gendered aspects of unpaid and unrecognized labor alongside research on the biases reinscribed into algorithmic and internet platform infrastructures inform my analysis of a variety of texts related to the BA YouTube channel: BA YouTube channel metadata and videos, advertising trades coverage of Conde Nast’s digital media efforts, popular press coverage of the racial reckoning at Conde Nast and BA, and disclosures about BA and Conde Nast workplace cultures shared in public interviews by BA workers. By analyzing these texts together, I argue that the downfall of the BA YouTube channel demonstrates how media convergence and the platformization of legacy media intensifies racialized and gendered inequalities for media workers, but opportunities to publicly disclose these discriminatory workplace dynamics also galvanize worker organizing.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-03T03:28:14Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231193121
Speaking, but having no voice. Negotiating agency in advertisements for
intelligent personal assistants
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Miriam Lind, Sascha Dickel
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  With the popularisation of intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant, natural language-based interaction with machines is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The conceptualisation of these tools as agentive assistants who help with a variety of tasks in both the household and at work is guided by their marketing: When Apple introduced the Siri-technology at their keynote event in 2011, the system responded to the question ‘Siri, who are you'’ with ‘I am a humble personal assistant’. This claim to a speaking subject position while at the same time locating this subject firmly in a servile social role has become a defining feature of the social place of IPAs: Designed to postulate agency, they do so not in equality with humans but as their servants. This paper offers an interdisciplinary analysis of video advertisements for IPAs, combining sociological and linguistic approaches. We treat agency and actors not as something given but as something that becomes visible through communicative acts, suggesting an understanding of these advertisements as socio-technical visions in which the negotiation of agency in human–machine interaction serves two functions: Firstly, the asymmetrical relationship between the human and the machine promises a symmetrisation of human–human relationships. In an imagined diversified world of equal human rights and relationships, social inequality is reconfigured in the relationship between human and non-human entities. Secondly, the negotiation of agency between humans and machines deflects from questions regarding the increasing agency and power of the companies behind these IPAs and their growing access to and influence on people’s private lives. Our paper will thus provide insights into how agency is ascribed in human–human and human–machine interaction considering social practices of symmetrisation and hierarchisation as well as a critical investigation into the triangular relationships between humans’, machines’, and companies’ agency.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-08-02T09:21:40Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231192100
Intelligent Personal Assistants in practice. Situational agencies and the
multiple forms of cooperation without consensus
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: David Waldecker, Tim Hector, Dagmar Hoffmann
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  There are at least two perspectives concerning the role of digital and connected media systems in relation to individual agency. One suggests that individuals have a gain in agency while using digital devices and services while other approaches see that users become dependent on tech companies that use data flows to analyse and manipulate user behaviour. In our paper, we want to examine empirically how those two descriptions of agency work out and relate to each other. We use conversation analysis of face-to-interface interactions with smart speakers and intelligent personal assistants to examine the agency in front of the device and we rely on interviews with smart-speaker users to understand the users’ strategies to curtail the potentially unwanted effects of smart and connected devices and services. With reference to concepts of ‘co-operative work’ and ‘cooperation without consensus’ and a discussion of media and data practices, this paper elucidates how the two agencies of users and of device and service providers are intertwined and distributed.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-24T09:14:11Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231189584
The new normal: Online political fandom and the co-opting of morals
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Natalie Le Clue
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper focuses on the under-studied and complex aspect of toxic fan practices by analysing the discourse surrounding the Twitter hashtags #CrookedHillary and #LockHerUp as used throughout the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States. Based on the analysis of these hashtags, the previously ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ type of discourse has been co-opted into what can, arguably, be termed as toxic rhetoric and fan behaviour on Twitter. The results of this paper point to an acceptance by fans of being immersed in toxic practices despite a paradigmatic relocation of what is ‘normal’ towards more unchecked, unethical, and toxic behaviour.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-24T09:13:29Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231190343
Delivery workers’ visibility struggles: Weapons of the gig,
(extra)ordinary social media, and strikes
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ergin Bulut, Adem Yeşilyurt
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  How do we interpret the extraordinary visibility and ordinariness of social media as delivery workers resist their precarious working lives' Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, photo elicitation, and digital data collection in Turkey with a focus on delivery workers’ strikes in early 2022, we argue that understanding the delivery workers’ movement requires not only considering spectacular strikes and social media protests but also workers’ everyday forms of resistance and their ordinary uses of social media as part of what we call weapons of the gig. Although not as visible as spectacular street action and social media campaigns, these weapons (motorcycle drivers’ solidarity, algorithmic resistance, and social media use for information sharing, as well as production of humor and resentment) enable the subtle formation of a movement. Our contribution lies in reframing social media use as both an ordinary and extraordinary weapon of delivery workers and approaching workers’ solidarity as a question of continuum. Enabling us to look beyond the antagonisms in the labor process and locate affective tensions in the everyday, this approach allows for seeing workers not only as economic but also as political and affective subjects demanding freedom and searching for meaningful connection in their lives.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-18T03:55:17Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231188415
Onboarding and offboarding in virtual reality: A user-centred framework
for audience experience across genres and spaces
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Laryssa Whittaker
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Virtual reality (VR) technology is an emerging medium of experience in many different public-facing entertainment and cultural contexts, such as immersive theatre, live performance, VR film festivals, gaming arcades, escape rooms, and museum exhibitions. The processes of ushering audience members or users into the virtual experience and out again, to which I refer here as ‘onboarding’ and ‘offboarding’, have been considered within some specific contexts, or on a case-by-case basis, but to date no systematised consideration of VR onboarding and offboarding has been produced. One reason for this is that ambiguities in disciplinary and practical definitions of immersion have obscured the relationship between VR technology and users. Clarification of this relationship results in clear evidence of a need for attention to onboarding and offboarding processes in public-facing contexts. In this paper, I define onboarding and offboarding, and present a framework for considering the onboarding and offboarding experiences of virtual reality audiences that helps stakeholders identify both their responsibilities to audiences and the best way to facilitate the immersive experience. This framework is based upon identifying experience goals, centred on the affordances of virtual reality and principles of immersion and presence, and utilises the Immersive Audience Framework developed by StoryFutures in its interdisciplinary research with immersive audiences since 2019.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-17T03:17:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231187329
Community Grievances, personal responsibility, and DIY protection:
Frustrations and solution-seeking among marginalized Twitch streamers
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Christine Tomlinson
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Online spaces offer fan communities and content creators many outlets for expressing their interests, but they also tend to place users in positions where they encounter hostility, toxicity, and gatekeeping. In the case of online streaming on Twitch, users frequently encounter hostility based on identity and seek assistance from fellow users via social media. In this project, I highlight the ways that social media is used to try to organize against discriminatory cultures toward marginalized streamers. Ultimately, I find that much of the onus is placed directly on streamers themselves to circumvent, address, and keep themselves safe despite harassment. In this paper, I will argue that this feeds into the structures and cultures that allow racist and sexist hostilities in online and gaming spaces by placing responsibility – and blame – on individual users from marginalized backgrounds. Although the community is frequently supportive of users who seek advice for addressing hostility and there are attempts at raising awareness through collective online action, the lack of apparent resolution leaves many feeling that these experiences are inevitable, immutable, and within the realm of individual responsibility.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-15T11:31:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231184060
Self-representation as platform work: Stories about working as social
media content creators
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Fabian Hoose, Sophie Rosenbohm
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Blogs and social media sharing platforms like YouTube and Instagram have become increasingly popular in recent years, and they also have become an outlet for income generation. In this paper, we focus on what stories content creators share about their professional activities on social media and what self-image and narratives they draw about their work as content creators. Based on a content analysis of blog and video posts as well as semi-structured interviews conducted with content creators in Germany, we identified a specific ‘professional creator narrative’ that serves the purpose of reconciling contradictory demands from their audience, sponsors and platforms. Our findings indicate that constructing those narratives helps to justify their activities and thus is an essential part of working as a content creator.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-15T09:44:18Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231185863
Re-enacting machine learning practices to enquire into the moral issues
they pose
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Jean-Marie John-Mathews, Robin De Mourat, Donato Ricci, Maxime Crépel
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  As the number of ethical incidents associated with Machine Learning (ML) algorithms increases worldwide, many actors are seeking to produce technical and legal tools to regulate the professional practices associated with these technologies. However these tools, generally grounded either on lofty principles or on technical approaches, often fail at addressing the complexity of the moral issues that ML-based systems are triggering. They are mostly based on a ‘principled’ conception of morality where technical practices cannot be seen as more than mere means to be put at the service of more valuable moral ends. We argue that it is necessary to localise ethical debates within the complex entanglement of technical, legal and organisational entities from which ML moral issues stem. To expand the repertoire of the approaches through which these issues might be addressed, we designed and tested an interview protocol based on the re-enactment of data scientists’ daily ML practices. We asked them to recall and describe the crafting and choosing of algorithms. Then, our protocol added two reflexivity-fostering elements to the situation: technical tools to assess algorithms’ morality, based on incorporated ‘ethicality’ indicators; and a series of staged objections to the aforementioned technical solutions to ML moral issues, made by factitious actors inspired by the data scientists’ daily environment. We used this protocol to observe how ML data scientists uncover associations with multiple entities, to address moral issues from within the course of their technical practices. We thus reframe ML morality as an inquiry into the uncertain options that practitioners face in the heat of technical activities. We propose to institute moral enquiries both as a descriptive method serving to delineate alternative depictions of ML algorithms when they are affected by moral issues and as a transformative method to propagate situated critical technical practices within ML-building professional environments.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-08T03:59:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174584
Expanding the magic circle: Immersive storytelling that trains
environmental perception
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Natalie Doonan, Luana Oliveira, Christopher Ravenelle
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Scholarship on immersion in simulated environments often emphasizes cognitive immersion, or the suspension of disbelief that takes place in an illusionistic space that simulates reality, making the fact of mediation disappear in the experience. Marie-Laure Ryan writes that: “immersivity can be understood in two ways: in a properly VR sense, as the technology-induced experience of being surrounded by data, and in a narrative sense... as being imaginatively captivated by a storyworld” (230). Both of these definitions rest on the notion of cognitive immersion. Grounded in the field of post-dramatic multimedia performance, this paper will focus instead on immersive storytelling that activates the senses in a phenomenological experience. Rather than transporting the spectator into a fictional imaginary space, post-dramatic multimedia performance aims to make participants aware of their presence in the here and now (Klich and Scheer, 128). This paper will describe an immersive storytelling project that integrates virtual reality (VR) into live participatory performance events that take place outdoors. The paper is co-authored by an artist-researcher and two students who are working as research assistants on this project. We recount our creative research process in developing a pervasive game, which Montola defines as a “game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play socially, spatially or temporally” (2005, 3). This game is played in a park and at key moments, inside VR environments that simulate that same park. The purpose of the game is to attune participants to the species in that particular environment.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-07-07T07:07:21Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231178917
Kinwork revisited: The gendered work of keeping up with family through
communication technology
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Lina Eklund
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Kinwork is the maintenance of cross-household kin and family ties through both physical and mediated means and is a type of unpaid labour historically performed by women. However, changing gender norms, new communicative practices such as networked individualism, and internet and communication technologies are changing how kinwork is done. This study explores how these changes affect the gendered nature of kinwork. Swedes from multigenerational, cross-household families residing in Sweden and the United States took part in primarily home-based interviews (n=40). This empirical study explores current practices of kinwork, focusing on three empirical cases, Christmas cards for seasonal greetings, phone calls for birthday well-wishes, and digital communication for everyday contact. Results highlight how kinwork in the sample is performed by both men and women through a wide range of communication technologies. The study shows that due to new gendered norms, women in the younger generations are less willing to do kinwork for men than older generations in the same kinship networks, indicating generational differences rather than family differences. In the study, men use new internet and communication technology to both do and sometimes take responsibility for kinwork while older communication technologies retain a feminine coding, sometimes resulting in abandonment. Contemporary digital communication technology supports a shift to individual communication rather than group-based which further supports men’s increased engagement in kinwork. The study concludes that kinwork in the studied sample is performed by both men and women and that contemporary kinwork can only be understood by looking at the complex entanglements of evolving gender equality norms, trends towards more individual communication patterns, and affordances of communication technology. Together these result in new ways and opportunities for doing kinwork, which becomes less the work of women and more the work of networked individuals, whatever gender.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-29T04:49:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231185864
Gig workers, critical visuality and humour in a digital context: The
graphic representation of riders as a form of social criticism
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Sandra Martorell, Antoni Roig Telo
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article studies social perceptions of gig work and its conditions through the lenses of visual humour created and shared in digital environments. Food delivery services have thrived in cities, and riders – gig workers associated with such services – have become popular urban figures, easily recognisable through light means of transport and backpacks. These iconic elements have spread to forms of visual humour like memes and cartoons in social media. We aim to analyse the depiction of food delivery services and riders through graphic humour in digital environments, and its role as critical stances of gig work conditions. We draw from the literature on gig work, as well as critical humour in the workplace, approaching the phenomenon from the perspective of critical visualities and the memetic qualities of digital visual humour. Thus, we have conducted an analysis of rider memes, and carried out a focus group with Spanish cartoonists to better understand each form. From our analysis, we have observed that a) memes showcase less explicit critical stances but reflect a shared understanding of the hurdles associated to rider work; b) cartoons place riders in a contextualised, wider critique of platform economy and capitalism; c) while most graphic humour on riders takes an external, observational position, there is also an ‘inner look’ to the rider work, emphasising the promises and deceptions associated with the gig economy.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-17T12:16:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231181981
Cooperative solidarity among crowdworkers' Social learning practices on a
crowdtesting social media platform
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Annika Becker, Leonard Ecker, Inga Külpmann, Karen Schwien, Patrick Stobbe
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The paper analyzes social interactions among crowdworkers on Discord. The explored crowdtesting platform uses this social media platform to offer their crowdworkers various opportunities for work-related and private communication and to host events that encourage learning practices. The paper investigates to what extent the interactions on Discord can be analyzed as social learning practices and can be understood as a specific form of solidarity among crowdworkers. In an explorative online ethnographic study, two learning related channels of the platform company’s Discord server were observed: the question channel in which testers can ask for help, and the quiz channel in which a testing related quiz event takes place. Additionally, interviews with moderators and crowdtesters were conducted. The observation of learning practices on Discord makes clear that the social media tool is mostly used by testers for situational and functional information exchange like helping each other with bug classifications or solving technical problems. Testers mostly provide each other with brief information that can directly be applied in the work context. Further information are mainly shared by moderators that offer supplementary explanations as a possibility to self-help. The study highlights that a form of weak cooperative solidarity emerges among testers as they support each other via Discord to fulfill individual work tasks. This differs from resistant solidarity in other contexts of platform work, because in the observed case, platform workers’ solidarity is not directed against the platform company.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-15T02:54:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231183298
Partners or workers' Mexican app deliverers on YouTube and TikTok
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Gabriela Elisa Sued, Arturo Rodríguez Rodríguez
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article seeks to understand how app delivery workers construct their collective identity through the digital platforms of YouTube and TikTok. Said identity construction occurs in the context of the social controversy surrounding their status as workers without labor rights or as independent partners of digital platforms. To this end, we collected 977 videos and their metadata and analyzed them via cross-platform digital methods. The findings reveal that app delivery workers construct their collective identity through the interplay of two factors. The first is the identity narratives created by delivery workers as video bloggers. The second is the recognition narratives created by different associated actors, such as accountants, media, universities and research centers, and content creators. Through these interactions, the narrative of delivery workers as independent partners acquires more algorithmic strength and visibility than those that discuss their status as employees and their lack of labor rights. Audiovisual technology also works as an instrument to reach individual agency and face the precariousness of daily life.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-07T06:43:53Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231179963
New territories for fan studies: The insurrection, QAnon, Donald Trump and
fandom
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Line Nybro Petersen, CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, Anthony Dannar, Natalie Le Clue
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The following roundtable is a recorded and edited discussion between four fan studies researchers that took place in March 2022. Having all worked with QAnon and the insurrection in the context of fan studies, our discussion took its departure from the US insurrection on January 6, 2021, as QAnon fans, Trump fans, and other right-wing groups stormed the US Capitol building while live-streaming their endeavor to social media. The discussion draws out some main perspectives that may guide our future thinking in the context of fandom, complicity, and politics and points toward new cultural and social territories for research into fandom and fan practices. Centrally, as fandom enters into the domain of politics and conspiracy theories, it seems increasingly unfruitful to distinguish between fan practices and participatory culture. Instead, participatory culture’s primary mode seems to be deeply driven by fan practices, that is, textual poaching and enunciative and textual productivity (Jenkins, 2013; Fiske, 1992). Instead, understanding this amalgamation of fan practices into other social domains can help us make sense of current phenomena in the seeming growth of conspiracy theory communities and right-wing movements alike. Participatory culture is a source of great creativity, playfulness, and mobilization of social and political movements, but, as Jenkins pointed out as early as 2006 “has benefited third parties, revolutionaries, reactionaries, and racists alike” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 221). In some instances, it seems that these online communities are driven by fan practices, in other instances fan communities are weaponized in order to serve a political agenda. While research into fandom and politics (see Hinck, 2019; Jenkins et al., 2020, Sandvoss, 2012, etc.) and toxic cultures (Proctor et. al., 2018) is certainly not new, it seems that the current transmedial landscapes drive participation and complicity in very specific ways that fan studies would do well to focus on in the coming years.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-07T04:06:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174587
Audio for extended realities: A case study informed exposition
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Justin Paterson, Oliver Kadel
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  An area of immersive storytelling in rapid evolution is that of extended reality. This emergent mode of experience employs spatial mapping, and both plane and object detection to superimpose computer-generated images in the volumetric context of a physical space via a head-mounted display. This in turn produces a unique set of challenges and opportunities for associated audio implementation and aesthetics. Creative development of this audio is often a function of evolving toolsets, and the associated workflow is far from standardized. This paper forms a context for such audio workflow, one that draws from precursor technologies such as audio for games and virtual reality and develops this into an outline taxonomy that is both representative of the state of the art, and forward facing towards evolution of the technology stack. The context is framed through a series of case studies. Between 2019 and 2021, BBC and Oculus TV commissioned Alchemy Immersive and Atlantic Productions to produce virtual reality and mixed reality experiences of several classic documentary series by Sir David Attenborough: Museum Alive, Micro Monsters, First Life VR, Museum Alive AR and Kingdom of Plants. This portfolio received numerous award nominations and prizes, including from the Raindance Festival and a double Emmy. The sound design, audio postproduction and spatial audio for these experiences were implemented by the company 1.618 Digital, and drawing from first-hand-creator involvement, the workflows are deconstructed and explored with reference to tools, technologies, techniques and perception. Such an exposition forms the basis for an analysis of both this and broader creative practice in the field of audio for extended reality, and this is subsequently used to present a speculative vision of audio in the future of immersive storytelling.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-05T03:40:42Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231169723
Influencers’ Instagram imaginaries as a global phenomenon: Negotiating
precarious interdependencies on followers, the platform environment, and
commercial expectations
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Vanessa Richter, Zhen Ye
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Instagram has become a place of work for many content creators, including influencers; however, the inherent power imbalance between creator and platform dictating influencers’ success, requires creators to negotiate user expectations and the platform environment for their potential (commercial) success. Therefore, this article proposes approaching the influencer industry from the framework of platform imaginaries by developing a mixed qualitative method approach to visualize the precarity of Instagram influencers through their Instagram imaginaries with a cross-national comparison of US, German, and Japanese influencers. The results reflect a constant renegotiation of their own positions in relation to platform features and algorithms, follower interaction, as well as commercial partners, within three main imaginaries around Instagram’s use, namely, Instagram as a social space, Instagram as a workplace, and Instagram as a marketplace. The analysis highlights the interdependencies with and situatedness within Instagram’s platform environment, which need to be considered to understand the precarious working conditions of influencers.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-03T01:26:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231178918
Creanalytics: Automating the supercut as a form of critical technical
practice
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Daniel Chávez Heras
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Based on the notion of critical technical practice and its resonances with recent debates in digital film and media scholarship, in this article I outline a type of computational practice that aims to couple the relational-analytic powers of machine learning with the explanatory-creative powers of visual narrative. I provisionally call this approach creanalytics. To enact this coupling, I designed a system to annotate and classify a large corpus of film clips, automatically extract fragments from this corpus, and edit them into new compositions, rendered into a computational supercut, which I go on to argue can be understood as the minimal expression of a broader emergent form of media: the computational video essay. Below I describe the most salient technical aspects of this system, analyse the principles of its design, and discuss the methodological and conceptual possibilities of its use as a format that mediates between critics and their networked environments, and between individual media artefacts, their parts, and the larger collections to which they belong.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-03T01:24:35Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174592
Participatory conspiracy culture: Believing, doubting and playing with
conspiracy theories on Reddit
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Lars de Wildt, Stef Aupers
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The popularization and normalization of conspiracy theories over the last decade are accompanied by concerns over conspiracy theories as irrational beliefs, on the one hand; and their advocates as radical and extremist believers on the other hand. Building on studies emphasizing that such accounts are one-sided at best, and pars pro toto stigmatizations at worst; we propose to study what we call “participatory conspiracy culture”—the everyday, mundane online debates about conspiracy theories. Based on a 6-month ethnography on Reddit’s r/conspiracy subreddit, an analysis of 242 selected discussions, and supported by digital methods tool 4CAT, this article addresses the question of how people participate in online conspiracy culture. It shows that among the plethora of conspiracy theories discussed online, discussions are heterogeneous, and their participants relate to each other primarily through conflict. Three epistemological positions occur: belief (particularly leading to constant discreditation of others’ beliefs), doubt (particularly as opposed to belief), and play (particularly with the fun of entertaining conspiracy theories without taking them too seriously). We conclude that the participatory conspiracy culture of r/conspiracy is not a homogenous echo chamber of radical belief, but a heterogeneous participatory culture in which belief is fundamentally contested, rather than embraced.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-02T09:10:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231178914
Civic culture in the Supernatural fandom: Misha Collins, Destiel, and the
2020 US presidential election
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ashley Hinck, Carolyn Hardin
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In the 2020 US presidential election, Misha Collins, star of the show Supernatural, endorsed Joe Biden for president and worked to support Biden’s campaign through interviews with campaign surrogates on Instagram Live and by phone banking on Zoom. In this study, we examine how fans made sense of Misha’s political action. While the political science and advertising literature on celebrity endorsements evaluates endorsements by the number of votes earned, we found that fans’ experience of Misha’s political advocacy was far more complicated than that. Our interviews with fans suggest that fans were ambivalent about Misha’s endorsements but enthusiastic about how Misha went about doing politics. Fans described a civic culture they co-constituted with Misha, defined by accepting and caring for other people, being authentic and genuine, and respecting disagreements. Fans described how these values were enacted both inside the fandom (in discussions of LGBTQ representation) and outside the fandom (in the 2020 US presidential election). Ultimately, fandom should be read as an important site of civic culture building—with implications for how fan cultures influence contemporary notions of citizenship, civic values, and political outcomes.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-02T02:54:48Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174585
Predicting streaming audiences for a channel’s on-demand TV shows:
Discerning the influences of choice architecture, consumer agency, and
content attributes
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Neil Thurman, Antonia Klatt, Hritik Raj, Harsh Taneja
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Contemporary corporate discourse asserts that viewers have a high degree of control over what they watch on video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, echoing early academic assumptions about online users’ autonomy. Such beliefs are now being interrogated, an endeavour this study continues by analysing data on the consumption and characteristics of television programmes viewed on a channel’s VOD service and – for comparison – via its linear broadcast. Crucially, our analysis incorporates characteristics – like programmes’ prominence on the channel’s VOD interface – that represent how platforms seek to steer users’ attention. Our analysis also incorporates other programme characteristics, like genre – which serves as a proxy for the deliberate viewing choices users make. Our results lend empirical weight to ideas about the limits of online users’ agency. This study is also of relevance to television scholars and executives who are interested in the specific predictors of television programmes’ success, both on VOD platforms and on linear television.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-06-01T04:55:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174590
Virtual narratives, physical bodies: Designing diegetic sensory
experiences for virtual reality
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Daniel Harley
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article presents a reflection on four virtual reality (VR) research projects to foreground questions about how physical and sensory interactions are incorporated into VR narratives. The four projects explore a range of experiences, from interactions with digitally mediated and found objects, to sensory interactions and outdoor play. Bringing these projects together here offers an opportunity to contribute insight into conceptualizations of diegetic design and the ‘design space’ of VR, providing questions and considerations towards designing sensory experiences for narratives in VR.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-31T05:53:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231178915
Instagrammable feminisms: Aesthetics and attention-seeking strategies on
Portuguese feminist Instagram
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Sofia P Caldeira
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article presents an exploratory analysis of feminist practices on Portuguese Instagram, questioning how online feminisms are represented on Instagram, in light of its conventions, aesthetics, and popularity logics. Starting from a theme-oriented dataset – collected using the hashtags #feminismoportugal (feminism Portugal), #igualdadedegénero (gender equality), #naopartilhes (don’t share it), and #portugalmaisigual (a more equal Portugal) – this research analyses 294 posts, created by 101 users. Combining a qualitative close reading with the use of digital tools for visual analysis, this article explores how these Instagram feminist practices look like, what dynamics they encompass, and how they relate to the aesthetics and popularity logics of Instagram. Within this plural hashtag landscape, the aesthetics of online feminism goes beyond the dominant cultural imaginaries that link Instagram to photographic content, with long written text emerging as a key site for sharing feminist knowledge – both in captions and in graphic compositions. These graphic compositions have become part of the popular cultural imaginary of a feminist ‘genre’ on Instagram, combining Instagrammable aesthetics with educational content for accessible informal learning. Yet, feminist practices on Instagram are also subjected to the dominant social media logic of popularity, leading to a strategic mobilisation of attention to seek visibility and engagement, albeit to limited success.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-30T02:43:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231171048
Adapting global methodologies to digital inequalities research in a
multicultural Arab environment
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Fahed Al-Sumait, Ellen J Helsper, Miriam Rahali
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  As Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), such as the internet and mobile phones, facilitate the spread of knowledge and interactions across borders in previously unimagined ways, questions are being asked about whether the benefits of this digitization process are equally distributed between and within countries. Motivated by the way technology adoption and usage patterns may differ in the Arab Middle East, this paper examines how the Kuwaiti context shapes people’s understanding of a survey instrument used for evaluating digital inequalities, as they relate to access, skills and engagement, and outcomes of ICT use. Specifically, it discusses the adaptation and validation of the survey measures of socio-digital inequalities through a process of cognitive interviewing and provides insight into the theoretical and empirical linkages between cultural conceptions of digital and traditional inequalities in ways that explore both their universal and contextual aspects, or denotative and connotative meanings. Evidence suggests that important cross-cultural complications relate to language issues, socio-economic conditions, citizenship, and differing perceptions of social desirability. These findings offer important considerations for improving the reliability and validity of future survey-scale adaptations in the broader MENA region, especially in countries containing significant multicultural populations. Simultaneously, they call into question the extent to which global conceptualizations of digital inequalities and their measures reflect complex local realities.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-23T04:30:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174594
The digital divide in the journalism sector
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Noha Mellor
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article argues that the digital sphere has maintained the offline hierarchal forms of political, economic, and cultural powers, taking the Arab journalism sector as a topical case study. The article explores the potential of digital platforms as a new source of revenue for Arab news media and a new site for disseminating informative content that helps push the freedom of speech in the region. It demonstrates the difficulty of achieving either goal partly due to the monopoly of Big Tech over the digital advertising market and partly due to the competition among Arab media outlets to use clickbait content to lure audiences and hence increase superficial metrics such as clicks and shares. The article draws on different forms of evidence, including articles penned by Arab journalists, in which they reflect on their experiences in the digital sphere, papers by Arab scholars, in addition to informal conversations with selected Arab journalists.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-20T01:34:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231176186
Museum exhibition co-creation in the age of data: Emerging design strategy
for enhanced visitor engagement
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Izabela Derda
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Development and popularisation of creative technologies have resulted in changes to creative processes in the art and museum sector, and have redefined consumer and producer roles. The design practises that emerge when exhibition designers integrate new technologies to promote visitor engagement and co-creation are investigated in this article. This study delves into a novel design strategy for exhibition co-creation that acknowledges each interaction as a potential data point and involves connections between exhibition space, narrative, technology, interaction, and visitor, as well as a distinction between aware and unaware co-creation.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-19T10:12:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174597
‘Azadi’s political until you’re pressing play’: Capitalist
realism, hip-hop, and platform affordances
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Debarun Sarkar
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  The article delves into the hip-hop scene in India, by locating its particular relationship with digital platforms, Instagram, YouTube and music streaming services such as Spotify, SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Because of hip-hop’s self-referentiality and its peculiar form of realism, discourses around platform capitalism have inadvertently entered the culture at large. Cultural artefacts produced by the scene reflect on the condition of music’s interaction with platforms and in turn, lay bare the evaluative tendencies vis-à-vis platforms. The article argues that digital platforms are productive in giving form to culture wherein the audio track is accompanied by a range of other trans-textual and trans-medial linkages of texts, audio, images and videos, that is, discourses which circulate outside of the audio form creating a crisscross of lines which come to form the cypher of hip-hop culture. It isn’t merely the offline cyphers then which are crucial in giving form to the community but also the digital platforms and their affordances.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-19T10:02:58Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174598
When digital inequalities meet digital disconnection: Studying the
material conditions of disconnection in rural Turkey
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Veysel Bozan, Emiliano Treré
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Digital inequalities research has lacked a focus on voluntary non-use and its consequences, whereas digital disconnection studies have focused on non-use but neglected the material implications of digital inequalities. Located at the intersection between these two approaches, this article relies on twelve semi-structured interviews, observations and informal dialogues to examine digital media uses, inequalities and the meanings of disconnection in a village of rural Turkey. The findings show that the main inequalities are due to infrastructure, geography and socio-economic conditions. These inequalities shape the practices and meanings of digital disconnection, revealing obstacles, frustrations and a forced kind of disconnection that is very different from the romantic portrayal of detox retreats that dominate the literature in the Global North. The insights of this research illuminate the unexplored area of intersection between digital inequalities and disconnection, engaging a fruitful conversation that enriches both fields of inquiry and unfolds future research opportunities.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-17T08:12:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174596
Achieving agency within imperfect automation: Working customers and
self-service technologies
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Christian Pentzold, Andreas Bischof
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, we propose to treat agency as something which is accomplished in the entanglement of humans with technologies. This redirects our attention away from the question of what distinguishes humans from smart machines and towards querying how people and automated apparatuses join in processes of mutual sociomaterial engagement. To further our argument, we look at self-service kiosks, which are ubiquitous yet largely overlooked components of mediated environments. We reflect on a participant observation in groceries stores and interviews with customers familiar with self-checkout facilities. They make us aware that operating this equipment is not an individual affair but a joint activity by default, taking place in a temporally regimented setting prone to human errors and malfunction when people try to respond to the terminals’ protocol. This sort of imperfect automation has ambivalent ramifications which rely on the capabilities of users and the capacities of an interface and its underlying operations. Agency, we conclude, thus becomes a matter of viable performance in which humans may act machine-like while machines perform an expanding share of activities.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-17T08:07:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174588
Fluid agency in relation to algorithms: Tensions, mediations, and
transversalities
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Ignacio Siles, Edgar Gómez-Cruz, Paola Ricaurte
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper argues for a fluid approach to the study of agency in relation to algorithms, one that promotes crossing the boundaries of established analytical positions and breaking away from dualistic forms to frame its study. Building on various intellectual traditions, we develop three sensibilities for implementing such an approach: (a) working with tensions as an alternative to thinking about algorithmic power and human agency as an either/or binary; (b) examining mediations to reverse the tendency to treat algorithms as an ahistorical and universal force; and (c) exploring transversalities to navigate the spaces that emerge between various temporalities and levels of analysis. To make our case, we examine a crucial tension in the study of agency and algorithms, namely how scholars have either attributed power to algorithms or agency to users of algorithmic systems. The conclusion situates our argument for fluidity within larger historical debates in the study of technological power and human agency.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-05-17T08:01:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231174586
Know(ing) Infrastructure: The Wayback Machine as object and instrument of
digital research
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Jessica Ogden, Edward Summers, Shawn Walker
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  From documenting human rights abuses to studying online advertising, web archives are increasingly positioned as critical resources for a broad range of scholarly Internet research agendas. In this article, we reflect on the motivations and methodological challenges of investigating the world’s largest web archive, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (IAWM). Using a mixed methods approach, we report on a pilot project centred around documenting the inner workings of ‘Save Page Now’ (SPN) – an Internet Archive tool that allows users to initiate the creation and storage of ‘snapshots’ of web resources. By improving our understanding of SPN and its role in shaping the IAWM, this work examines how the public tool is being used to ‘save the Web’ and highlights the challenges of operationalising a study of the dynamic sociotechnical processes supporting this knowledge infrastructure. Inspired by existing Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches, the paper charts our development of methodological interventions to support an interdisciplinary investigation of SPN, including: ethnographic methods, ‘experimental blackbox tactics’, data tracing, modelling and documentary research. We discuss the opportunities and limitations of our methodology when interfacing with issues associated with temporality, scale and visibility, as well as critically engage with our own positionality in the research process (in terms of expertise and access). We conclude with reflections on the implications of digital STS approaches for ‘knowing infrastructure’, where the use of these infrastructures is unavoidably intertwined with our ability to study the situated and material arrangements of their creation.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-31T02:30:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231164759
Delivery riders’ cultural production in Spain: A thematic analysis of
their self-representation on YouTube
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Fernanda Pires, José M Tomasena, Martina Piña
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This study analyses YouTube videos about delivery riders in Spain as well as the channels in which the videos were uploaded. The aim is to understand the ways that riders are represented in the videos and determine the labour imaginaries that emerge in the context of platformization, which includes work that depends on platforms that use computer architecture and automation systems to arrange exchanges between people, goods, and corporations, such as the work of delivery riders. This article shows how platformization of labour intersects with cultural production because delivery riders’ work has become a video theme in the YouTube platform. Moreover, in some cases riders (or aspiring ones) use YouTube and other social media to interact, share knowledge and organize their job. Based on a thematic analysis of delivery riders' YouTube videos (n = 40) from 26 channels mined with YouTube Data Tools, this study presents a typology of channels in which riders appear. It also categorizes the main representations of riders as well as the imaginaries that emerge about this type of labour in YouTube videos. The analysis indicates that delivery riders’ work has a transitory nature, which is expressed in the analysed videos. Moreover, the study demonstrates that immigrants are the people who tend to do this type of work in Spain, and shows how being an immigrant plays a particular role in the way riders are represented or gain their social conceptions and aspirations about this kind of work.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-28T09:14:26Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231161252
Politicizing witnessing: Testimonial user-generated content in the
aftermath of Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazil
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Marcelo Santos
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This research presents the concept of testimonial User-Generated Content (tUGC): media content generated by ordinary citizens that witness an extraordinary event and publish it on their own channels. Rooted on the crossroads of UGC and Witnessing studies, this article provides a definition and a proposition of operationalization of tUGC in a case analysis, using two protests against former Brazilian president Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016 as case of study. Results suggest three main patterns of tUGC production, named as political, journalistic and expressive. Quantitative analysis points to a high frequency of production but to low levels of diffusion of tUGC overall in the context of the analysed case. Finally, results suggest external factors seem to have effect on general patterns of tUGC production and circulation. Discussion and further developments are offered.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-25T05:43:53Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231164760
Technoliberalism and the Complementary Relationships between Humanitarian,
Conservation, and Entrepreneurial Dronework in Indonesia
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Adam Fish
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Criticism of commercial drones as violators of personal privacy or unsafe public annoyances continues to influence public and academic discourse. At the same time, the commercial drone’s benefits for humanitarian, conservation, industry, and emissions-reduced delivery have also become evident. That such a powerful technology which enhances vision, movement, and force-from-afar could have ambivalent properties appears contradictory. Drawing from the physics and diplomatic work of Niels Bohr, the article argue that drone dualities are complementary rather than contradictory. This theory of complementarity is supported by Bernard Stiegler’s theories including technicity, which argues for hominization or the coevolutionary complementarity of humans and technology, and pharmacology, a bifurcation of technicity into complementary sanitive and poisonous possibilities. This article brings complementarity into the present by linking it to the theory of technoliberalism which situates technicity’s bifurcation in the context of liberalism, namely, the complementary relationship between social liberalism for the collective good and economic liberalism for market benefit. This theory of technoliberal complementarity is examined through ethnographic research into humanitarian, conservation, and economic dronework on the Indonesian islands of Bali, West Papua, and Java in 2018. Complementarity does not elide the importance of dissonance. Instead, it reframes it as a result of interdependent tensions, not their opposition. In this manner, complementarity is a synthetic theory about the generative frictions inherent in technocultural production.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-22T08:10:25Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231161254
Machinic agency and datafication: Labour and value after anthropocentrism
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Jernej Markelj, Claudio Celis Bueno
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, we reassess Marxist notions of labour and value for our datafied societies, where data is allegedly becoming one of the dominant sources of economic value. Our contention is that the existing accounts of value, which assume that value is produced exclusively by human labour, are unable to fully account for the processes of exploitation that take place in our digital platform dominated economy. We begin addressing these shortcomings by critiquing the anthropocentric notion of agency that informs the Marxist account of labour. This notion of agency locates productive activity exclusively in human intentionality. After offering an overview of anthropocentric concepts of labour that still dominate (post-)Marxist theories today, we draw on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to develop a post-anthropocentric account of agency that we term machinic agency. Machinic agency sees activity as a matter of connectivity between different human and nonhuman actors (technologies, organisms, minerals etc.), which productively combine and amplify their capacities to act. These affective connections precede and shape, but often also completely bypass, human consciousness. We make a case for the concept of machinic agency by comparing it with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), an established theory that conceptualises agency as arising from compositions of both human and nonhuman elements. Our contention is that, unlike ANT, machinic agency is able to collapse both, the distinction between human and nonhuman, and that between mechanism and vitalism. We conclude by suggesting that machinic agency allows us to demonstrate that data capitalism exploits and appropriates not only the surplus value produced by conscious human effort, but also the co-production of affective, technological, and ecological aspects of our existence.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-20T02:52:13Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231166534
What is so funny about platform labour in Brazil' Ride-hailing drivers’
use of humour and memes on Facebook groups
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Fernanda Pires, Tugce Ataci, Willian Fernandes Araujo
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, we focused on data drawn from two Brazilian Facebook groups that discuss on-demand driving (Uber and 99Pop). We focus particularly on the use of humour in the stories that on-demand drivers (ride-hailing) share, as it was identified that humour is widely used within these groups. This article has three objectives: (1) to detect the types of stories shared by on-demand drivers in the Facebook groups; (2) to determine the relationships these stories have with the work of on-demand driving; and (3) to understand the dimensions of professional identity and negotiation of platform labour conditions. Therefore, three dimensions of the stories shared by on-demand drivers were identified: the relationships they establish with their clients, their relationships with the platforms (the affordances and limitations the platforms provide and represent), and the everyday work relationships among the drivers developed by establishing Facebook as a digital workspace. These dimensions lead to the formation and negotiation of their professional identity and reveal how they deal with precarity through humour.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-03-01T05:54:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231160622
Depression representations on the most popular Russian-language YouTube
channels
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Oxana Mikhaylova
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This article analyzes the mental health discourse on the most popular Russian-language channels on YouTube. The main research focus is depression representations. In total 345 videos were examined, issued since 2015 and till 2021. Using theoretical thematic analysis, the content creator types are identified, and these types are compared in terms of their portrayals of depression. The findings demonstrate that the most popular Russian-language content was made by (1) specialists on mental health, (2) influencers and celebrities, (3) documentalists, and (4) experientialists. The channels of popular science, those with TV recordings, religious, esoteric, and artistic channels were found to be watched less, despite also featuring mental health. The results regarding depression representations showed that most content creators describe depression as an illness. Additionally, the depression portrayals from the contemporary, popular Russian-language YouTube channels generally correspond with contemporary medical perspectives on depression, and the authors discussed depression using words and collocations from the medical discourse. Therefore, it could be assumed that the Russian-language representations of depression on this platform are based on the medical explanatory model of depression and are highly medicalized. The paper contributes to studies of mental health discourse reception across cultures and media, as well as the literature on depression representations.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-02-28T12:31:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231160887
Digital methods as ‘experimental a priori’ – how to navigate vague
empirical situations as an operationalist pragmatist
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Anders Koed Madsen
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Digitalisation and computation presents us with a vague empirical world that unsettles established links between measurements and values. As more and more actors use digital media to produce data about aspects of the world they deem important, new possibilities for inscribing their lives emerge. The practical work with digital methods thus often involves the production of social visibilities that are misfits in the context of established data practices. In this paper I argue that this dissonance carries the distinct critical potential to design data experiments that (a) uses the act of operationalisation as an engine for creating intersubjective clarity about the meaning of existing concepts and (b) takes advantage of algorithmic techniques to provoke a reassessment of some of the core assumptions that shape the way we pose empirical problems are normally framed. Drawing on the work of Kant, Peirce, Dewey and C.I. Lewis I propose to think of this critical potential as the possibility to practice what I term 'experimental a priori' and I use qualitative vignettes from two years of data experiments with GEHL architects to illustrate what this entails in practice. Faced with the task of using traces from Facebook as an empirical source to produce a map of urban political diversity, the architects found themselves in a need to revisit inherited assumptions about the ontology of urban space and the way it can even be formulated as a problem of diversity. While I describe this as a form of obstructive data practice that is afforded by digital methods, I also argue that it cannot be realised without deliberate design interventions. I therefore end the paper by outlining five design principles that can productively guide collective work with digital methods. These principles contribute to recent work within digital STS on the recalibration of problem spaces and the design of data sprints. However, the concept of ‘experimental a priori’ can also serve as a philosophical foundation for knowledge production within computational humanities more broadly.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-02-24T11:02:24Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565221144260
The mutual configuration of affordances and technological frames: Content
creators in the Chilean influencer industry
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Arturo Arriagada, Ignacio Siles
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  Examining the case of the Chilean influencer industry, this paper argues for situating affordances within a wider context in which the features of platforms acquire meanings. Our analysis focuses on two dynamics. On the one hand, we examine how the Chilean influencer industry is shaped by a ‘technological frame’ that structures the valence of affordances. We show that affordances are neither ‘naturally’ nor ‘neutrally’ imagined by actors but rather culturally located within technological frames that shape the discourses, values, and practices from which they obtain cultural meaning. On the other hand, we analyze how affordances provide a material support for the temporal and spatial expansion of these technological frames. Thus, cultural contexts and platforms’ features mutually configure each other in ways that have not always been recognized in the scholarly literature about affordances. We situate negotiations about what it means to be an influencer in Chile, the role of intermediaries (eg branding agencies), communication with followers, and the global influencer industry as part of this mutually constitutive relationship.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-02-15T09:09:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231157364
Cooperative affordances: How instant messaging apps afford learning,
resistance and solidarity among food delivery workers
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Tiziano Bonini, Emiliano Treré, Zizheng Yu, Swati Singh, Daniele Cargnelutti, Francisco Javier López-Ferrández
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2015) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances-in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solidarity. We argue that these workers ‘enact’ the affordances of instant messaging apps, to supplement – from below – the affordances of food delivery apps that were denied or ignored by food delivery companies. We argue that these affordances constitute cooperative affordances. This concept captures the cooperative nature of peer-to-peer communication that occurs within the informal online chat groups created by the workers themselves. Finally, this article contributes to affordance theory by highlighting how affordances are not immanent properties of artifacts, or ‘invariants’, as argued by Gibson (1979), but can be ‘enacted’ by specific users, like food delivery workers, within specific social and cultural contexts.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-01-25T12:00:10Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565231153505
Mediatisation, digital spaces and live performance: Understanding Indian
stand-up comedy and evolving performance landscapes
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Madhavi Shivaprasad
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper is a reflection on the points of convergence between live performance and the media within Indian stand-up comedy. Traditionally, live performance has been seen in opposition to the media. While the former is defined by spatial and temporal co-presence of the audience and spectators, the latter has neither (Auslander, 2012). While stand-up comedy is primarily live, digital and mass media are used extensively by comedians to build a professional reputation for themselves through their presence and participation on social media. However, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, much of performance art – including stand-up comedy – has moved online. That is, comedians are experimenting with the online media: Zoom, Instagram Live, Facebook Live and so on, to put up live performances that would otherwise have been performed within a comedy club or café. This paper derives its theoretical basis from Philip Auslander’s postulation of liveness in a mediatised culture and digital liveness which ‘results from our conscious act of grasping virtual entities as live in response to the claims [technology makes] on us’ (2012: 13). The paper attempts a theoretical reflection on how to ‘read’ a stand-up comedy performance for pedagogical purposes in these different contexts as the idea of liveness, mediatisation and our experience of the live evolves with time and context.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-01-19T08:10:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565221148111
(De)constructing machines as critical technical practice
- Free pre-print version: Loading...
  Rate this result: What is this?
  
  Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
  A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
  
  Authors: Winnie Soon, Pablo R Velasco
  Abstract: Convergence, Ahead of Print.
  This paper discusses the role of technology under the framework of Critical Technical Practice specifically in the form of constructing artefacts and deconstructing tools in order to produce what Philip Agre would describe as ‘reflexive work of critique’ (Agre, 1997:155). By presenting the activities and methods used in the teaching and shaping of undergraduate courses, this paper aims to show how technical objects, such as data, datasets, application programming interfaces and machine learning models, can be considered as discursive subjects, demonstrating pedagogical understanding across fields. The courses operate in the humanities tradition and take critical technical practice as a didactic approach, insofar as software and data are understood and manipulated on an instrumental level, while encouraging critical engagement and embodied reflection that bridge the technical and social/cultural domains. Within this pedagogical approach, critical is not only understood as a paradigm of rationality or quantitative, data-driven argumentation, but as adopting a critical position – that is, to research and reflect on the social structures and cultural phenomena entangled with digital objects, bodies, tools, methods and software production. By embracing work-in-progress and reflexive exploration, we aim to extend the notion of critical technical practice by unfolding how (de)constructing machines can be achieved beyond thinking of technology as neutral instrumentalisation. The challenge is how to find a balance, not only as researchers but as educators, unfolding aspects of both formality and functionality as well as questioning and understanding technology at a discursive and critical level. We argue that learning technical practice in an educational setting is not an end, but rather a means to question existing technological structures and create further changes in socio-technical systems.
  Citation: Convergence
  PubDate: 2023-01-12T03:44:20Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13548565221148098