New Media & Digital Culture

The increasing prevalence of the internet in the lives of young children implies a change in the way information is accessed, selected, valued and consumed. Information transferred online differs from information disseminated through traditional media in content and composition as well as the associated user experience. Current circumstances of Internet use amongst children can lead to information obesity, defined by Andrew Whitworth as “a failure to convert information into knowledge and thus use it to sustain our minds, bodies, lives and communities”. (Whitworth qtd. in Brown, 168)
The phenomenon of information obesity can be analyzed through a comparison with physical obesity amongst children. Much like physical obesity, information obesity presents a complex set of causes and solutions, rather than embracing the computational linearity of overload. This humanized way of thinking about the topic of information consumption allows for a different approach in finding sustainable solutions to the problem at hand, of which information overload is only one factor.
This paper reviews ideas from key works by Shenk, Whitworth and Johnson, on information overload and information obesity in order to differentiate the two concepts and highlight issues connected to information consumption, such as disconnect, information malnutrition and information literacy.
Johnson suggests in his book “Information Diet,” consuming right rather than consuming less is a more feasible solution than disconnecting from the Internet. Dieting in this case, would imply a critical filtering of information. By empowering children through awareness and critical skills, information literacy could contribute to the prevention of information obesity in the same way as with physical obesity. More importantly however information literacy online becomes a vital democratic tool in a consumer democracy, where not information but attention is a scarce commodity. (Terranova, 4; Fuller, Goffey, 154) Searching for, selecting and evaluating information online thus becomes an important element of sustaining high quality content online.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a new format of documentary representation that
departs from traditional, linear documentary film. Interactive documentaries, also dubbed
web documentaries or database documentaries, are nonlinear, multimedia, and interactive
bodies of documentary work, commonly distributed through the Internet. They turn the
user from a passive viewer into an active agent who explores a nonfictional and hypernarrative
story world. Previous research on interactive documentaries has largely focused
on defining and categorising the new media object, or applied postmodernist notions that
call the traditional relation of author and user into question. This thesis suggests to
contextualise interactive documentaries as part of a larger shift in media culture from
cinema to digital media and investigates the implications of that change for documentary
experience, temporal perception, and subjectivity. It is argued that the challenge for
interactive documentary will be to strike a balance between cinematic temporality and the
primacy of instantaneity in new media environments in order to remain powerful means of
nonfictional representation.
The thesis first discusses philosophical approaches to cinema that address the question of
temporal experience and subjectivity in cinematic perception. It will be argued that the
temporality of cinema aligns itself with the subjective perception of time, and thus creates a
form of self-awareness. Based on that, a phenomenology of nonfictional representation is
developed, suggesting that documentary cinema has a particular relation to time, as it is
both a time-based medium and a form of cultural memory. This concept is then set in
opposition to a phenomenology of new media objects, which constitute a shift from
temporal to spatial representation and, by extension, from temporality to absolute
presence. It is then argued that interactive documentaries need to find a narrative form that
allows for temporal representation while also catering for the user’s desire to actively
explore the documentary work. This framework is then applied to the analysis of three case
studies, Bear 71 (2012), Welcome to Pine Point (2011), and Thanatorama (2007), each of
which is characterised by a different way of mediating between cinematic temporality and
hypermedia instantaneity.

This article revisits controversial BBC television film Ghostwatch (1992), a seasonal feature-length television special about a family plagued by a poltergeist and the television crew has entered their home hoping to capture ghostly phenomena on camera. Fictional, scripted, and filmed in its entirety prior to airing, Ghostwatch follows the formal conventions of live, factual television: well-known British media personalities host from the studio and on location, interviewing experts on the paranormal, and periodically inviting the watching public to call the show via the BBC phone-in number, 0818118181, which had both a diegetic and an actual function. The high volume of calls that the BBC received during the program caused the switchboard to jam, leaving reportedly tens of thousands of callers unable to speak to an operator. Typically considered as a media hoax à la Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, this article moves away from such claims to assert that the circumstances of Gho...

The present situation of economic crisis soon enough entailed a state of political crisis as well. Citizens
are losing their faith in the political parties and the institutions who should safeguard them. When
comparing Italy and Spain, it is easy to observe a number of similarities between the two countries: the
economical crisis brought the birth of two political parties whose subtle and skillful exploitation of
means of communication gave rise to their considerable popularity. Podemos and Movimento 5Stelle
could be considered as representatives of a proper revolutionary approach to media and communication
systems.

This article discusses the cultural conceptions of trust underpinning the experimentation of blockchain startup applications beyond the financial sector. Based on qualitative research undertaken in the context of the so-called “Blockchain 2.0” scene, we show how a peculiar conception of trust, which blends the libertarian views of blockchain inventors with the neoliberal culture of competition and meritocracy that is typical of the startup world, underpins these implementations. As a result, we argue that “Blockchain 2.0” entrepreneurs ultimately fail to recognize the eminently social nature of the trust-building process. They emerge from our observation as unable to comprehend the extent to which the implementation of blockchain in a societal (i.e., not purely financial) context cannot do away with considerations about what kind of “social” the technology intervenes within, and find difficult to effectively conceive of how this technology embeds in existing social relations and power structures.

This paper aims to analyze what is the role of Telegram affordances in orienting, amplifying and normalizing the non-consensual diffusion of intimate images (NCII). We focus on the sense of anonymity, the platform’s weak regulation and the possibility to create big male communities, arguing that these affordances are ‘gendered affordances’ (Schwartz & Neff, 2019), as they orient male participants’ harassing behaviours and, in concert with an established misogynist culture, contribute to the reinstatement of hegemonic masculinity (Connel, 2005). The research draws on data collected through an online covert ethnography of Italian Telegram channels and groups.

Blockchain technology enables new kinds of decentralized systems. Thus, it has often been advocated as a 'disruptive' technology that could have the potentiality of reshaping political, economic and social relations, "solving" problems like corruption, power centralization and distrust towards political institutions. Blockchain has been gradually gaining attention beyond finance and is thus applied by a range of different actors. This includes local, regional, and national governments interested in the potentiality of experimenting with blockchain-supported governance. This article contributes to identifying blockchain as a contested socio-political object prone to contradictory political imaginaries regarding its potentialities, particularly when applied to policy. The article explores some of the most praised of blockchain's affordances (e.g. decentralization and transparency) in the context of Estonia, one of the most cited examples of blockchain governmenta...

Online pornography, like other forms of cultural production, is increasingly subject to processes of platformization. While research has focused on the diffusion of online pornography and its broader implications, less attention has been paid to the algorithmic infrastructures through which platforms distribute and manage pornographic content, and how this might reiterate socially embedded views and perspectives. To fill this gap, we consider how Pornhub, currently the leading porn platform, establishes the gender identity of its users, and how this affects the structure of the platform and the distribution and recommendation of content within it. We collected data about 1.600 variations of Pornhub’s homepages, as well as data about 25.000 videos suggested to 10 accounts with differing self-declared gender identities. Through this data and an analysis of the signup procedure, we underline how Pornhub segments, distributes, and manages content based on the profiling of its users, inc...

La época actual de crisis económica ha conllevado una crisis de tipo político también, que tiene como consecuencia una perdida de confianza por parte de los ciudadanos hacia las instituciones y los partidos tradicionales, que supuestamente actuarían como garantes de sus intereses. En Italia y España, dos países que se encuentran en situaciones parecidas, esto ha llevado al surgimiento de dos movimientos que han sabido explotar muchas de las herramientas que la comunicación política ofrece hoy en día, llegando a una considerable popularidad. Podemos y Movimento 5Stelle representan dentro de la comunicación política una autentica revolución y marcan para ella una era completamente nueva.

JIKA ditanya seperti apa pandangan kita sekarang terhadap remaja perempuan masa kini, mungkin kita akan memberikan deskripsi yang tidak jauh dari segi fesyen, model rambut tertentu, atau atribut fisik lain yang melekat pada mereka. Mungkin kita terjebak dalam persepsi tentang anak muda zaman sekarang yang apatis, memuja sesuatu yang instan, dan terpaku pada tren. Jangankan menempatkan remaja perempuan dalam sosok yang berpengaruh dalam masyarakat, kita bahkan masih tak banyak 1 May Lan, Pers, Negara, dan Perempuan: Refleksi atas Praktik Jurnalisme Gender pada masa orde Baru (Yogyakarta: Kalika, 2002).

Now, the term 'art' might be starting to describe that space in society for experimentation, questioning and discovery that religion, science and philosophy have occupied sporadically in former times. It has become an active space rather than one of passive observation. Therefore the institutions to foster it have to be partcommunity centre, part-laboratory and part-academy, with less need for the established showroom function."