Search

In dieser Dissertation wird ein mediensoziologisches Konzept journalistischer Autorschaft entwickelt. Der Aufstieg digitaler Medientechnologien wie Suchmaschinen, Social Media, Analytics und Sprachgenerierungs-Algorithmen haben die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen journalistischen Akteuren, Medienprodukten und Publika grundlegend verändert. Die digitale Revolution hat auch etablierte Formen der journalistischen Autorität und der damit verbundenen Handlungsfähigkeit journalistischer Akteure in Frage gestellt. Durch einen interdisziplinären Ansatz, der auf Autorschaftstheorien beruht, nähert sich die Arbeit dieser Problemstellung. Autorschaft ist ein klassisches Konzept der Geisteswissenschaften von wo aus es auch Theoriebildung in den Rechts-, Film-, Medien- und Kunstwissenschaften sowie der Wissenschaftsforschung beeinflusste. In diesen Fächern diente Autorschaft oftmals als zentrales Element, um die Beziehungen und Bedeutungsprozesse zu erfassen, die zwischen Autoren, Text (oder anderen Medien) und Lesern (oder dem Publikum) entstehen. Dennoch ist journalistische Autorschaft, insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit digitalem Wandel, bisher nicht umfassend theoretisch erfasst worden. Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht daher, diese Lücke zu schließen, indem sie ein besseres Verständnis dessen vermittelt, was journalistische Autorschaft ist und wie sie funktioniert, insbesondere im Kontext des digitalen Journalismus. In einer explorativ-kritischen, medientheoretisch fundierten Analyse wird die historische Ko-Evolution zwischen journalistischer Autorschaft und Medientechnologien untersucht. Der Entwicklungsverlauf der journalistischen Autorschaft wird für das Print-, Rundfunk- und Digitalzeitalter analysiert. Während dieses umfangreichen Zeitraums hat sich die journalistische Autorschaft vor allem auf der sozio-materiellen Ebene erheblich weiterentwickelt. Dennoch sind auch einige Muster bemerkenswert stabil geblieben. Diese Erkenntnisse werden genutzt, um einen theoretisches Konzept zu formulieren, das auf drei Determinanten beruht: Agency, Autorität und Signatur. Diese Thesis argumentiert, dass unabhängig von der historischen Periode oder dem Medientyp die Manifestierung der journalistischen Autorschaft durch die Spezifizierung dieser drei Determinanten erklärt werden kann. Um diese These zu validieren, wurden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit auch zwei empirische Fallstudien durchgeführt, die das Verhältnis zwischen journalistischer Autorschaft und sozialen Medien betreffen. In einer feldtheoretischen Analyse der Reaktion von US-Nachrichtenverlagen auf eine Anpassung des Facebook News Feeds wird gezeigt, dass solche externen strukturellen Interventionen die Handlungsfähigkeit und schließlich die Autorität journalistischer Akteure rekonfigurieren. Es wird auch gezeigt, dass Social-Media-Plattformen durch Profil-Verifikationen journalistische Akteure mit einer gesonderten Signatur ausstatten, die ihnen eine höhere Autorität verleiht., This dissertation develops a media sociological concept of journalistic authorship. The rise of digital media technologies, such as search engines, social media, analytics, and natural language generation algorithms have fundamentally reshaped the relationships between journalisms actors, media products, and audiences. The digital revolution has also challenged established forms of journalistic authority and associated agency of journalistic actors. A mixed-methods approach, this thesis approaches these developments by applying a theoretical lens grounded in authorship theory. The concept of authorship exhibits a long history of explanatory power in the humanities, law, and studies of film, media, art, and science. In each of those fields, authorship has served as a powerful conceptual lens to capture the relationships and processes of meaning generated between authors, text (or other media), and readers (or audiences). Yet, journalistic authorship, particularly in the context of digital media technologies, has so far not been comprehensively theorized. Therefore, this thesis seeks to address this gap by better understanding what journalistic authorship is and how it works, particularly in the context of digital journalism. Through an explorative critical analysis that is grounded in media theory, the thesis assesses the historical co-evolution between journalistic authorship and media technologies. It analyzes the trajectory of journalistic authorships evolution through the print, broadcasting, and digital era. Throughout this extensive period, journalistic authorship has significantly evolved, notably at the socio-material level. Nonetheless, several patterns have also remained remarkably stable. These and further insights are used to formulate a theoretical framework of journalistic authorship that is based on three determinants: agency, authority, and signature. This thesis argues that irrespective of the historical period or media type, the manifestation of journalistic authorship can be explained by specifying those three determinants. To validate the explanatory power of this framework, the thesis also presents two empirical case studies that concern the relationship between journalistic authorship and social media. In a field theoretical analysis of U.S. news publishers reaction to a tweak of the Facebook News Feed, it is shown that such external structural interventions reconfigure authorial agency and, eventually, authority. Also, it is shown that social media platforms, through the feature of verified accounts, endow journalistic actors with an enhanced signature, through which they achieve a higher level of authority.

This paper revises the category of the emergent reader in the light of the media theory of reading. The purpose is to find a solution to the long-occurring problems of the readers from the age of the television and the digital age, among which are easier reading refusal ,reading incomprehension and susceptibility to manipulation when reading. Methods: Systematic and critical analysis was applied to the studies of the new theory of the First Thousand Days of Life, as well as to the effects of the preliteracy and emergent literacy programs. We also took into account the findings and the recommendations for future research on the developing readers, formulated in the “Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading” published in January 2019. The results show that reading foundations are laid much earlier before it was ever thought – a circumstance that is underestimated by parents, politicians, educators and even researchers. Taking into account the increasing risks in the global reading medium, we propose the development of policies for expert trainings on “future image” of the child, professional mentor son home and family reading and personal tutors for reading culture. The authors would like to thank the students for their participation in the survey. This article is the result of a collaboration made possible by the support by the Sofia University Science Fund (contract number 80-10-205/17.04.2019).

This article reviews the “practice turn” (PT) in sociology, social theory, and media studies. In addition, it develops a sociological perspective on turns in general. As other turns, PT presents itself as heterogeneous and interdisciplinary phenomenon lacking clear conceptual and institutional boundaries. In order to grasp this fuzziness inherent to PT, I regard PT as a “sign-post” (Wittgenstein 1984) giving rather vague directions and thus “assembling” (Latour 2005) a heterogeneous research community. Thus, my main question is as follows: How does PT guide research and how do researchers follow PT? Drawing on interviews with researchers involved in PT, I distinguish two major ideal-typical ways of following PT. Revolutionary approaches aim for overcoming existing ways of doing research by turning to practice. In contrast, reformative approaches aim for a renewal of disciplines. Whereas revolutionary approaches mainly arise in interdisciplinary fields and various “studies”, reformative approaches flourish on the margins of sociology. In exploring this pattern, the article develops a sociological way of reflecting PT and turns in general. Thereby the article establishes an institutional perspective drawing on the work of Boltanski and Chiapello (2007).

Our networked condition under capital relations continues to open pathways to tap into new sources of value. Since the social media turn, the expansion of capital in the digital realm has successfully tapped into body data by way of products like Fitbit. More recently, the proliferation of psy data is underway with chat bots, backed by artificial intelligence to harvest the last remaining and intimate part of expressiveness that neoliberal subjects are producing: mental health apps are at the last frontier of capital’s attempts to profitably govern its subjects. To understand these processes, a recap of Marxian theory and the use of some tools created by Félix Guattari will be undertaken.

The mediality of transmission and the materiality of communication result today more than ever in “acting at a distance” – an action whose agency lies in a medium. This book provides an overview into this crucial phenomenon, thereby introducing urgent questions of human interaction, the binding and breaking of time and space, and the entanglement of the material and the immaterial. Three vivid inquiries deal with histories and theories of mediality and materiality., Florian Sprenger: Temporalities of Instantaneity: Electric Wires and the Media of Immediacy John Durham Peters: A Cornucopia of Meanwhiles Christina Vagt: Physics and Aesthetics: Simulation as Action at a Distance

This contribution argues that with the emergence of affective media, affect or emotion regulation is undergoing a decisive transformation, because it is increasingly facilitated by automated systems that process users’ affect expressions and encourage certain behaviors to maximize their happiness. It further develops the notion that affective media regulation itself demands regulations in a legal and sociopolitical sense. This argument is developed in four stages. (1) A brief overview of the terms “affect regulation“ (Norbert Elias) and “emotion regulation“ (Allan Schore; James Gross) in sociology and psychology provides some insight into the increasing centrality of these concepts and their position within the Foucauldian genealogy of the “security principle“ (Frédéric Gros). (2) The term “affective media“ is defined with recourse to Kittlerian/Winklerian media theory as pertaining to affect-responsive media, or media capable of processing affect. (3) The near-total reliance of present affective computing applications on Paul Ekman’s contested, if not outright refuted, theory of universal basic emotions leads to some serious doubts about its possible effects on users and their “emotional granularity“ (Lisa Feldman Barrett). (4) Picking up on arguments made by critical algorithm studies, Shoshana Zuboff’s critique of “surveillance capitalism,“ and legal scholars’ fight for a “right to reasonable inference“ by automated systems (Sandra Wachter and Brent Mittelstadt), a wide-ranging discussion of the dangers and pitfalls of blackboxing emotional life through affective media is encouraged.

The Affective Turn has lost its former innocence and euphoria. Affect Studies and its adjacent disciplines have now to prove that they can cope with the return of the affective real that technology, economy, and politics entail. Two seemingly contradictory developments serve as starting points for this volume. First, technological innovations such as affective computing, mood tracking, sentiment analysis, and social robotics all share a focus on the recognition and modulation of human affectivity. Affect gets measured, calculated, controlled. Secondly, recent developments in politics, social media usage, and right-wing journalism have contributed to a conspicuous rise of hate speech, cybermobbing, public shaming, “felt truths,” and resentful populisms. In a very specific way, politics as well as power have become affective. Affect gets mobilized, fomented, unleashed. When the ways we deal with our affectivity get unsettled in such a dramatic fashion, we have to rethink our ethical, aesthetical, political as well as legal regimes of affect organization., Bernd Bösel: Affective Transformations: An Introduction Paul Stenner: Affect: On the Turn Gabriele Gramelsberger: Algorithm Awareness: Towards a Philosophy of Artifactuality Bernd Bösel: Affective Media Regulation: Or, How to Counter the Blackboxing of Emotional Life Oliver Leistert: From Social Data to Body Data to Psy Data: Tap, Tap, Tap Marie-Luise Angerer: Affective Milieus: Intensive Couplings, Technical Sentience, and a Nonconscious In-between Pierre Cassou-Noguès: Synhaptic Sensibility Dawid Kasprowicz: Encoding Proximity: Intuition in Human–Robot Collaborations Irina Kaldrack: Autonomous Dwelling: Smart Homes and Care IT Serjoscha Wiemer: Happy, Happy, Sad, Sad: Do You Feel Me? Constellations of Desires in Affective Technologies Andrew A. G. Ross: Mediated Humanitarian Affect Michaela Ott: Affection and Dividuation Matthias Fuchs: Attuning to What? The Uncanny Revival of the Aestheticization of Politics Jean Clam: Witnessing the Dismantlement of a Proven Structure of Belief: The Challenge of Populism and Alternative Facts to Liberal Democracy Markus Rautzenberg: Alien Thinking: On the Return of the Sublime as an Affective Medium

The paper follows the thesis, that the perception of real or virtual media shares the anthropological state of "Ausdruckswahrnehmung" or perception of expression (Ernst Cassirer). This kind of perception does not represent a distant, neutral point of view, but one that is guided by feelings or "vitality affects" (Daniel N. Stern). The prerequisites, however, for triggering these feelings/"vitality affects" are not recognizable objects or motifs, but rather their sensually evaluable “abstract representations” or their formal logical structures. In contrast to aesthetic feelings, however, they affect not only our feelings of lust or unlust or our knowledge (formal aesthetics) but also our actions (semiotics). So, when I extend aesthetic experiences to semiotic effects, I will talk about vitality semiotics. This new concept is of consequence, because the thesis of the responsibility of the producer is based on these effects. This is to be carried out by analyzing and presenting the approach of the Bauhaus master Josef Albers.

Media organize things into patterns and relations. As intermediaries among people and between people and worlds, media shape sociotechnical orders. At the same time, media are organized: while they condition different organizational forms and processes, they, too, are formed and can be re-formed. This intimate relation of media and organizing is timeless. Yet arguably, digital media technologies repose the question of organization—and thus of power and domination, control and surveillance, disruption and emancipation. Bringing together leading media thinkers and organization theorists, this book interrogates organization as an effect and condition of media. How can we understand the recursive relation between media and organization? How can we think, explore, critique, and perhaps alter the organizational bodies and scripts that shape contemporary life?Organize will be of interest to scholars and students of new and old media, social organization, and technology. Moreover, the dialogical form of these essays provides a concise and path-breaking view on the recursive relation between technological media and social organization. The book therefore establishes and maps “media and organization” as a highly relevant field of inquiry, appealing to those with a critical interest in the technological conditioning of the social.

Im März 1926 hat Siegfried Kracauer einen in der Frankfurter Zeitung veröffentlichten Artikel under dem Titel “Kult der Zerstreuung: Über die Berliner Lichtspielhäuser”. Dieser Text ist keine Verteidigung der derzeitigen Unterhaltungsindustrie, sondern ein Versuch, den Begriff der Zerstreuung von seinem üblichen pejorativen Sinne zu retten, um zu verstehen, wie die Massen ihre Emanzipation durch den Film erleben können. Wir werden untersuchen, wie diese kritische Stellungnahme auch eine Antwort auf die Steigerung der Propaganda in Europa durch die Staatsapparate ist, die im Gegensatz zu Kracauers Zerstreuung die Massen unausweichlich entfremden. Wir werden deshalb auch diesen Artikel von 1926 mit dem 1942 von Kracauer geschriebenen Text über die Nazipropaganda (“Propaganda und der nazistische Kriegsfilm”) verknüpfen. Letztendlich möchten wir zeigen, wie der “Kult der Zerstreuung” ein politisches Werkzeug für unsere Zeiten ist, in denen Politiker wie etwa Donald Trump oft durch Zerstreuung regieren, in dem sie die Massen von ihren wirklichen Alltagsproblemen entfernen.

This article provides a meta-theoretical overview of the central research questions, concepts, and lines of conflict at the nexus between media and emotions. It interrogates key terms such as affect and emotion, discusses a variety of influential approaches in emotion research, and identifies debates and tensions in the field of study. Within this vast and complex interdisciplinary field and the broad range of affective phenomena it covers, we concentrate primarily on various types of media-induced emotions, with a focus on the development of ideas about screen media and spectatorship.

From TIFF files to TED talks, from book sizes to blues stations—the term “format” circulates in a staggering array of contexts and applies to entirely dissimilar objects and practices. How can such a pliable notion meaningfully function as an instrument of classification in so many industries and scientific communities? Comprising a wide range of case studies on the standards, practices, and politics of formats from scholars of photography, film, radio, television, and the Internet, Format Matters charts the many ways in which formats shape and are shaped by past and present media cultures. This volume represents the first sustained collaborative effort to advance the emerging field of format studies., Axel Volmar et al.: Format Matters: An Introduction to Format Studies Control, Access, Infrastructure Axel Volmar: Reformatting Media Studies: Toward a Theoretical Framework for Format Studies Wanda Strauven: Let’s Dance: GIF 1.0 versus GIF 2.0 Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas: Formats and Formalization in Internet Advertising Florian Hoof: Liveness Formats: A Historical Perspective on Live Sports Broadcasting Archaeologies of Success and Failure Markus Stauff: Formatting Cross-Media Circulation: On the Epistemology and Economy of Sports Highlights Alexandra Schneider: Viewer’s Digest: Small Gauge and Reduction Prints as Liminal Compression Formats Roland Meyer: Formatting Faces: Standards of Production, Networks of Circulation, and the Operationalization of the Photographic Portrait Erika Balsom: Instant Failure: Polaroid’s Polavision, 1977–1980 Formats in Transition Marek Jancovic: Fold, Format, Fault: On Reformatting and Loss Antonio Somaini: The Screen as ‘Battleground’: Eisenstein’s ‘Dynamic Square’ and the Plasticity of the Projection Format Oliver Fahle and Elisa Linseisen: HD’s Invention of Continuity and SD’s Resistance? A Historiography of Cinema and Film to (Be)come and Formats to Overcome Kalani Michell: Pod Fictions

In a world undergoing constant media-driven change, the infrastructures, materialities, and temporalities of remains have become urgent. This book engages with the remains and remainders of media cultures through the lens both of theater and performance studies and of media archaeology. By taking “remain” as a verb, noun, state, and process of becoming, the authors explore the epistemological, social, and political implications., Ioana B. Jucan: Introduction. Remain × Remain(s) Jussi Parikka: Remain(s) Scattered Rebecca Schneider: Slough Media

In a world undergoing constant media-driven change, the infrastructures, materialities, and temporalities of remains have become urgent. This book engages with the remains and remainders of media cultures through the lens both of theater and performance studies and of media archaeology. By taking “remain” as a verb, noun, state, and process of becoming, the authors explore the epistemological, social, and political implications.

In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine.

This paper shall be understood as an interdisciplinary attempt to combine mathematics, especially the field of Operations Research, with the dramatic theory and media science. The present document is resumption and further stage of development of the model, published in a research paper with the german title: Das Drama in Analogie zu einem dynamischen Programm. Entwicklung eines Metamodells zur Strukturierung szenischer Handlung. (Doi: 10.18725/OPARU-2410, VTS-71501), deutschen Nationalbibliothek idn: 1016388918 unter http://d-nb.info/1016388918 in 12/16/2009 on the Open Access Repository (former VTS) of the University of Ulm and its english translation: The drama considered as a dynamic program : an analogous comparision and the development of a metamodel to structurize story lines. (Doi: 10.18725/OPARU-9508) published in 06/22/2018. It makes the attempt to use the model, presented in this former paper to try to test the usability of the Bellman model, exactly the Bellman equation adapted to a specialized score value model, also described in this paper. The intention is to get an optimized storyline in screenplay- especially TV and web series development. It should help people involved in these kind of colaborative work, especially ”showrunner” and ”storyliner” to get their work better organized and make the right decisions about structure and content. This paper shows the development of these extension of the primary model and the basic work with it (shown by a simple example). This paper is the english translation of the german paper: Das PCM-EM Schema in der Anwendung, Drehbuchschreiben für Serien (Theoretischer Teil und praktischer Ansatz). DOI: 10.18725/OPARU-7312

This paper shall be understood, as an interdisciplinary attempt to combine mathematics, especially the field of Operations Research with the dramatic theory and media science. The approach is, to draw an analogy between a storyline and a dynamic program, described by Richard Bellman with all the needful restriction to draw the comparison. The intention of this approach is, to obtain schemata, to describe and controll the process of script development in the dramatic arts. This paper is the english translation of the german paper: Das Drama in Analogie zu einem dynamischen Programm. Entwicklung eines Metamodells zur Strukturierung szenischer Handlung. DOI: 10.18725/OPARU-2410 https://oparu.uni-ulm.de/xmlui/handle/123456789/2437 First published in: 2009-12-16

Ob Neokybernetik, Computer-, Sprach- oder Sound-Experiment, ob Brainstorming, Lernumgebung oder Konferenz, Gruppendynamik oder Umweltschutz - zahlreiche populäre Verfahren der 1960er und 1970er Jahre erzählen von medialer und humaner Transformation. Der Band geht der ästhetischen und politischen Genealogie dieser Bildungs-, Erziehungs- und Regierungsprogramme nach, indem er Verhaltenslehren der europäischen Literaturgeschichte mit medien- und designtheoretischen Diskursen konfrontiert. Dabei erlaubt er auch einen Blick hinter den 'eisernen Vorhang' aktueller Programme, die unter dem Diktum von Kreativität, Katastrophe oder Komplexität weiterhin bilden, erziehen und regieren. Mit Beiträgen aus Designtheorie, Literatur-, Medien-, Kultur- und Bildwissenschaft., Jeannie Moser und Christina Vagt: Verhaltensdesign. Technologische und ästhetische Programme der 1960er und 1970er Jahre Katja Müller-Helle: Transgression als Passion. Akustische (Selbst-)Überschreitungen in Kunst- und Popkultur seit 1960 Florian Sprenger: Ökologische Imperative. Richard Nixon, Jean Baudrillard und environmental design um 1970 Christina Vagt: Education Automation. Verhaltensdesign als ästhetische Erziehung Hans-Christian von Herrmann: Theater und Kybernetik. Zu Brechts Realismus der Relationen und Funktionen Marcus Krause: Dichtungsmaschinen und Subjektprogramme. Literarische Regelkreisphantasien in den 1960ern Benjamin Peters: The Computer Never Was a Brain, or the Curious Death and Designs of John von Neumann Sophie Ehrmanntraut: Benutzerfreundlichkeit. Idiosynkrasie der Personal Computer-Industrie Bernd Bösel: Emotionsdesign. Zur Emergenz eines neuen Dispositivs der Affektregulation Jeannie Moser: Futurologische Vorübungen. (Dis-)Simulation, Szenario und Misstrauen in Graciáns Handorakel Anja Lemke: Verhaltensdesign avant la lettre. Kontingenz und Potentialität im »Bildungs«-Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts mit Blick auf Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Claudia Mareis: Brainstorming. Über Ideenproduktion, Kriegswirtschaft und ›Democratic Social Engineering‹ Ulrike Bergermann: Konferenzdesign, Liebe und Selbstbeobachtung um 1968

Why do we play games and why do we play them on computers? The contributors of »Games and Rules« take a closer look at the core of each game and the motivational system that is the game mechanics. Games are control circuits that organize the game world with their (joint) players and establish motivations in a dedicated space, a »Magic Circle«, whereas game mechanics are constructs of rules designed for interactions that provide gameplay. Those rules form the base for all the excitement and frustration we experience in games. This anthology contains individual essays by experts and authors with backgrounds in Game Design and Game Studies, who lead the discourse to get to the bottom of game mechanics in video games and the real world - among them Miguel Sicart and Carlo Fabricatore., Beat Suter et al.: Introduction Play Motivation Beat Suter: Rules of Play as a Framework for the “Magic Circle” René Bauer: Games as a Special Zone. Motivation Mechanics of Games Miguel Sicart: Play Computers. A Letter to the Reader Game Mechanics Imre Hofmann: Requirements for a General Game Mechanics Framework Carlo Fabricatore: Underneath and Beyond Mechanics. An Activity-theoretical Perspective on Meaning-making in Gameplay Guidance Systems Hiloko Kato and René Bauer: Hansel and Gretel. Design and Reception of Orientation Cues in Game Space René Bauer and Hiloko Kato: The Spectacular Space. Rules and Guiding Principles of Irrational Spaces in Games Francine Rotzetter: Nonverbal Guidance Systems. Seamless Player-leading in Open-world Games Ethics Wolfgang Walk: Ethics as a Game Mechanism Hiloko Kato and René Bauer: The Player as Puppet. Visualized Decisions as a Challenge for Computer Games Wolfgang Walk and Mark L. Barrett: The Ethical Avatar Game Spaces Ulrich Götz: Rules Shape Spaces – Spaces Shape Rules Mela Kocher: Game Mechanics of Serious Urban Games. Designing for the Ludic City NPC and Non-Human Game Design Günter Hack: NPC and Me. How to Become a Non-Player Character Michelle Westerlaken: When Game Mechanics Come Crawling out of Ant Colonies

In his numerous writings on archives, technologies, and time media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst indefatigably interrogates the ways in which technical and digital media do not only exist in time but produce temporalities – and temporealities – of their own. This interview sheds light on media archaeology as a discipline emerging within a relatively codified academic institutional framework (rather than in the more organic domain of the arts) and closely associated with Humboldt University’s Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, where Ernst is Professor of Media Theories.

The essay tries to make sense of the iconography and monumentalism of Göbekli Tepe by way of a comparison with recent ›hunting ideologies‹ in forager situations of abundance or ›super-abundance‹. The article refers to two North Ameri- can situations of super-abundance (North-West Coast societies based on seasonal aquafaunal abundance; and the seasonal congregations of large-scale Bison hunting groups on the Plains) to demonstrate how foragers coping with a situation of seasonal super-abundance are still able to ritually perform the rever- sibility of prey and predator inherent in hunting ideologies. The radical iconography of predators at Göbekli Tepe may likewise point to the ritual function of turning ›hunter into prey‹, and the monumentalism of Göbekli Tepe may be interpreted as a ritual setting celebrating the unity of a hunting congregation quite for- eign to – and even deliberately pitted against – later regional developments.

Computer simulations are omnipresent media in today’s knowledge production. For scientific endeavors such as the detection of gravitational waves and the exploration of subatomic worlds, simulations are essential however, the epistemic status of computer simulations is rather controversial as they are neither just theory nor just experiment. Therefore, computer simulations have challenged well-established insights and common scientific practices as well as our very understanding of knowledge. This volume contributes to the ongoing discussion on the epistemic position of computer simulations in a variety of physical disciplines, such as quantum optics, quantum mechanics, and computational physics. Originating from an interdisciplinary event, it shows that accounts of contemporary physics can constructively interfere with media theory, philosophy, and the history of science., Anne Dippel and Martin Warnke: About Waves, Particles, Events, Computer Simulation, and Ethics in Quantum Physics Kristel Michielsen and Hans de Raedt: Discrete-Event Simulation of Quantum Physics Experiments Lukas Mairhofer: Observing the Unobservable. Quantum Interference of Complex Macromolecules Mira Maiwöger: Simulating Patterns, Measuring Fringes. Simulating Matter with Matter Frank Pasemann: Event-Based Simulations. Is there a Need for New Physical Theories? Arianna Borrelli: Quantum Theory. A Media-Archaeological Perspective Wolfgang Hagen: On Nature, its Mental Pictures and Simulatabilty. A Few Genealogical Remarks Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: Intervention John Durham Peters et al.: Round Table

The article is an attempt to confront Lev Manovich’s soft technological determinism with two contemporary media - the smartphone and the mobile application called Instagram. The analysis is based on the characteristics of a term called “new media” identified by Manovich, with emphasis on variation and cultural transcoding. The verification of accuracy and the use of the soft technological determinism in the context of selected new media has varied by the discourse on contemporary new media and constitutes an interesting point of view. The evolution and the development of both variation and cultural transcoding (two elements conditioning their universality which continually shows an upward trend) regarding mobile media, give an opportunity to forecast their productive potential.