Communication and Media Studies

Past research suggests that the mobile device can be experienced as a relational artefact, and also, as a technology for cyborgization, questioning the boundary between the mobile device and humans. This paper examines the question in the context of Japanese young people. More specifically, the present study seeks to identify various patterns of the way people make sense of their mobile device in Japan, suggesting some possible future research questions where the notion of social robots, mobile device, and emotions intersect. Based on the results of focus group interviews conducted in 2010, the paper explicates how humans start blurring the distinction between their relational partners and the mobile device that affords the sense of perpetual contact. This is indicative of how a mobile device has gone through the process of anthropomorphization, turning into a quasi-social robot. Furthermore, the paper discusses how some experience their own mobile device as a part of their body. This suggests how a mobile device is perceptually incorporated into the body, turning humans into quasi-social robots. Connecting the results to the notion of electronic emotions, the paper conceptualizes the idea of quasi-social robot as a metaphor that conveys the extent to which humans are now equipped with advanced technologies, making us more powerful but also simultaneously more vulnerable. It concludes that the heightened complexity in the relational dynamics, and the emotions that are triggered and exchanged deserve further investigation to see how their emotional experiences are changing. Such future research promises to foster our understanding of the transcending boundary between humans and the mobile communication device, informing the question of social robots and emotion.

Place is fundamental to protest movements who in turn manipulate and are manipulated by the sites in which they protest. Given its socio-political importance, place increasingly functions as a both a site for, and source of, meaning making for protest movements. This essay explores the symbolic and material significance of "the encampment" in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement as it "staged" (and made manifest) the problem of the corporate colonization of the public sphere and its solution-the re-appropriation of public spaces, discourses, and subjectivities.

The uniquely global phenomenon of climate change requires a radical rethinking of dominant categories of social belonging and responsibility. One barrier facing policy-makers, activists, and scientists alike in their attempts to combat climate change is the lack of a coherent and persuasive discourse of global identification that connects geographically, culturally, and economically diverse communities. This essay explores one successful attempt at creating climate change awareness, Al Gore's 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, in terms of its rhetorical appeals to global forms of identification, noting specifically how the film articulates common places wherein the audience might locate more global forms of identity and community. RESUMEN: el fenómeno global el cambio climático requiere una reconceptualización radical de las categorías dominantes de adscripción social y responsabilidad. Uno de los obstáculos con los que se encuentran los legisladores, activistas y científicos en su empeño por combatir el cambio climático consiste en la ausencia de un dis-curso persuasivo y coherente de identificación global, capaz e apelar a comunidades geográfica, cultural y económicamente diversas. Este artículo explora el documental Una verdad incómoda (2006), una de las manifestaciones exitosas en promover la concienciación sobre el cambio climático, en especial las figuras retóricas encami-nadas a conseguir modelos globales de identificación, así como la articulación de tropos que permitan al público conectar con construcciones globales e identidad y comunidad. Palabras clave: identificación y adscripción, globalización, retórica visual, cambio climático.

La crisis económica ha tenido efectos dispares sobre el empleo y la tasa de paro en diferentes países. Así, en el conjunto de la UEM, en los dos últimos años se ha destruido un 2,6% del empleo, situándolo en los niveles registrados a comienzos de 2006, mientras que la tasa de desempleo ha repuntado hasta el 10,1%, una cifra que no se alcanzaba desde finales de la década de los noventa. En España, en el mismo período la destrucción de empleo ha sido del 9,2%, y la tasa de paro ha aumentado en 13 puntos porcentuales (pp), hasta llegar al 20,1% en el segundo trimestre de 2010, 4 pp menos que el máximo alcanzado en la crisis de principios de la década de los noventa 1 .