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Drawing on evidence from literature in branding, marketing, digital media, and communications, this article finds that museums' branding strategies are framed within marketing disciplines and therefore create simplistic dichotomies between "internal" and "external" actors, as well as between "physical" and "digital" spaces. This marketing frame inevitably led museums to create their identities by placing higher value on their physical attributes (collection and building) as well as to the stakeholders (curators and visitors) who either managed or engaged with these physical attributes. Therefore, when museums began using social media, their approach was to instrumentalise these platforms as communication tools and to reflect the identity they had built "offline" through marketing or broadcasting-style online posts. This approach to social media is limiting because it does not acknowledge the role of the platform and that of the user within these online spaces. Based on a systematic review of literature, this article argues the need for a different approach to museums' digital identities by proposing an approach based on Actor-Network theory and a new media frame. In doing so, it addresses the need for an integrated approach that connects mission and social practices to create value for online audiences and that is open to the active participation of networked users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When governments mandated lockdowns to limit the spread of the coronavirus, the resulting reduction of face-to-face communication threatened many people's psychological well-being by fostering feelings of loneliness. Given social media's eponymous social nature, we study the relationship between people's social media usage and their loneliness during these times of physical social restrictions. We contrast literature highlighting the social value of social media with a competing logic based on the "internet paradox," according to which increased social media usage may paradoxically be associated with increasing, not decreasing, levels of loneliness. As the extant literature provides opposing correlational insights into the general relationship of social media usage and loneliness, we offer competing hypotheses and offer novel longitudinal insights into the phenomenon of interest. In the empirical context of Germany's initial lockdown, our research uses survey panel data from February 2020 (before the lockdown) and April 2020 (during the lockdown) to contribute longitudinal evidence to the matter. We find that more usage of social media in the studied lockdown setting is indeed associated with more, not less loneliness. Thus, our results suggest a "social media paradox" when physical social restrictions are mandated and caution social media users and policy makers to not consider social media as a valuable alternative for social interaction. A post-hoc analysis suggests that more communication via richer digital media which are available during physical lockdowns (e.g., video chats) softens the "social media paradox". Conclusively, this research provides deeper insights into the social value of social interactions via digital media during lockdowns and contributes novel insights into the relationship between social media and loneliness during such times when physical social interaction is heavily restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Religious and secular pilgrimages present rich opportunities for investigating information activities in an original and intriguing context. While the Information Science community has previously shown interest in digital expressions of religion and spirituality, discussion on pilgrimage is at a nascent stage. The purpose of this study is to conduct an in situ investigation of how pilgrims record, curate, and share their experiences. Design/methodology/approach: A field ethnography was conducted while walking with, observing and interviewing pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago, a popular European pilgrimage and UNESCO World Heritage route. Data collected from 25 semi-structured interviews and participant observations were thematically analysed within a theoretical framework combining Stebbins' contemplation and Nature Challenge Activity in serious leisure and Hektor's model of information behaviour. Findings: This study expands the interpretation of pilgrimage by introducing new insights into pilgrims, different types of mobilities, spaces and objects, and social interactions. By using field ethnography and close-up observations of praxis, pilgrimage is analysed as a socio-technical process and discussed literature within and beyond Information Science. The work presents new understandings of the interplay between spirituality, embodied information practices, physical and online social interactions, analogue and digital media before, during and after these journeys and legacy aspirations. Originality/value: The study is original in its combination of theoretical models and their ethnographic in situ application. It contributes to a more in-depth, in-the-field understanding of how pilgrims document their experiences via a rich palette of old and new media, the dynamics of using digital technologies during such physical and inner journeys and pilgrims' sharing practices. Implications for serious leisure and information practices are discussed, from theoretical to practical challenges and opportunities offered by pilgrimage experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we expand upon the conceptual framework of Félix Guattari's 1989 essay, The Three Ecologies. Here Guattari examines changes in subjectivity that have come about due to scientific and technological advances which, as he sees it, brought about an "ecological disequilibrium" ([1989]2000, 27) and deteriorated individual and collective modes of being. In response to this Guattari proposes a kind of holistic therapy or 'ecosophy' between three ecological registers: "the environment, social relations and human subjectivity" (ibid., 28). Guattari cautions that we not only take note of these macro determinations, but also heed the libidinal impulses of desire – what captures it, what directs it, and what shuts it down. Since the publication of The Three Ecologies, the rise of digital technologies has dramatically influenced the ways in which people think, live and communicate. Technological infrastructures, for instance, are used to spread disinformation at a vast speed and scale, and because social networks are often homophile many people infrequently encounter critical disagreement and debate. The increase in media and digital communications usage has also led to new forms of social inclusion and exclusion, the most exacerbated form of which is probably the phenomenon known as hikikomori – acute, prolonged social withdrawal. Taking hikikomori as our focus, we describe what we see as a general set of symptoms of society and trace its myriad intersections with an ever-increasing algorithmic ubiquity, which we posit as the new form of hyper-modulation following from Foucault's disciplinary societies and Deleuze's control societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does the increased reliance on digital communication technologies by migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, migrant communities, governments and researchers reveal about the benefits, limits and politics of everyday mobile and immobile experiences during the pandemic? This introduction to the special issue on cultures of (im)mobile entanglements addresses this inquiry, alongside ten articles covering themes of governance and surveillance, agency and negotiated subjectivities, translocal and transnational solidarity, as well as doing research in pandemic times. Critically engaging with both mobility and immobility in the intersecting field of mobilities and migration research, the special issue centres a multidimensional and multi-scalar perspective on the deep interlinking of various modes of mobilities and stasis in and beyond spatial and temporal conditions mediated by politically and culturally structured digitalization. It endeavours to create a vantage point to critically examine the mobility–immobility continuum as informed by power relations, hierarchies and inequalities in a networked and global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how social media platforms can facilitate greater visibility of Tunisian women in political communication activism to survive male politicians' domination and the conventional media's boycott. The authors chose to focus on the case of Tunisian activist Abir Moussi to investigate how she uses Facebook for political mobilization and self-branding purposes. A monographic approach to the content of the Facebook page was carried out, along with a semiotic analysis of the speech given by Moussi on the decisions announced by President Kais Said on 25 July 2021. The results revealed a Facebook-Live-based communication strategy to address audiences as well as a large number of photos and videos. Besides, The Tunisian political activist used several linguistic elements in her discourse to make her political discourse effective, such as contrast, intertextuality, metaphor, etc. Unlike President Said, who uses Standard Arabic, the Tunisian political activist speaks the Tunisian dialect; Abir's tone ranges from humorous, enthusiastic, provocative, menacing and promising; she provides her propaganda speech with legal texts and arguments to convince her audience, claiming to enlighten minds by simplifying ordinances and complex political terms. Moreover, she revealed several political and economic 'hot issues' that led to the Tunisian crisis. The authors conclude that social media does not create new ways of activism but rather amplifies traditional ones; they suggest enhancing the political efficacy of social media to boost political activism and emphasizing the concept of 'online political efficacy' in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing predominance of the use of digital artifacts, fast technological evolution, and the inherent complexity of the digital era, studies on how to communicate information are relevant since the beginning of the Information Society in the 1990s. With the efficiency of information communication as its central focus, Information Design (ID) can be an important area in the construction of knowledge about digital media. This article presents a systematic review of the Brazilian scientific production of digital media through the look of Information Design to record the development of ID in the country since the first CIDI+CONGIC event in 2003. The review pointed to some prominent themes in these decades, such as infographics and interfaces used for science and education. It also revealed some universities with an emphasis on the type of scientific production investigated. In addition, some difficulties were noticed at the conception of a registry of Brazilian science due to the change in terminologies and the evolution of theoretical approaches over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These days, digital art has substantially improved painting art in China's new media period through modern technology and specialized software, which has generated various digital artworks with painting effects, demonstrating their aesthetic, commercial, and cultural worth. As a result, designers must actively investigate intelligently linked and content-diverse techniques to innovate and improve digital media art. This investigation will allow the extraction of pivotal role of digital media communication and drives visual art to new heights in the modern digitized era. Based on this motivation, this paper tries to analyze the application of new media digital technology in painting creation using big data. The major goal is to obtain insights into artists' behavior using behavioral habits and a morphological algorithm in digital painting. The study investigates the design process of digital painting by analyzing the habitual forms displayed by diverse painting user groups and integrating them with user experience design concepts. Two experimental methodologies are used to investigate painting user behavior: the interview method and the observation method. The observation approach collects comprehensive user behavior data to develop a habit form model that includes a both virtual and real activity. This model employs a hierarchical scheme emphasizing various behavior aspects and concepts throughout user interactions and painting system operations. The interview method, on the other hand, captures the psychological activities involved in user behavior decision-making. The study discovers and decomposes the traits specific to these characters by defining painted characters, developing their behavior sets, and making interactive decisions. The learned information and experience are then applied in interactive decision-making processes. Based on these findings, prototype development includes explicit and implicit interaction prototypes, with usability tests determining whether specific roles are included in the design. Throughout the study process, fuzzy mapping associations are built, and behavior mappings are labeled with varying relationship proportions, providing critical data for the habit form model's construction. The paper uses new digital media technology to create paintings and experiments with 50 randomly selected persons. Forty-four participants are well-known authors on major painting websites, with the remaining six being interviewed as professional painters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social protests of 2019 and 2021 in Colombia marked a turning point in the political culture of protest. From the perspective of the processes of mediatization, digitalization, and democratization that digital convergence confers on political participation, a reflection is made around the concept of participatory culture as the axis of analysis of the transformations of social protest, its media construction, and its individual and collective experimentation. Sixteen digital communicative pieces produced by native digital media were analyzed, which, supported by resources of digital communication, evidence a political and media culture of protest, supported by the logic of social media, with a strong counter-hegemonic and discursive opposition component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of new technologies applied to social interaction currently reproduces actions that violate human rights; meanwhile, they limit the capacity of the democratic State to unite in a fair way the diverse human ways of being. In consideration, the validity of equitable relationships of coexistence requires guaranteeing the prevalence of dignity in the situations that digital mediation presents. Consequently, the research has the purpose of analyzing the ethical limits of digital communication media; considering the relationship between the Extracontractual Civil Liability System and the violation of privacy in social networks. The type of inquiry is descriptive-explanatory, with a descriptive correlational design. The study considers a sample of 110 judges, prosecutors and lawyers from the Judicial District of Lima. It is about enabling legal strategies that guarantee the capacity of surveillance and control of the ways in which social mediations take place as a guarantor of common equitable provisions. It concludes that all interaction must be ethically regulated to make possible democratic arrangements for coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channel selection is a critical trade-off for digital products firms whose products are characterized by network externality. This work develops the models of consumers' utility impacted by the network externality for two channel strategies of the digital product firms in the two-sided market: direct channel strategy and platform channel strategy. Deriving from the consumers' utility, the optimization models of the two channel strategies are presented. The optimization models are solved through the Lagrangian method, and the comparative statics analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of network externality on optimality. Mathematical results show that if the intensity of network externality in the online platform surpasses that in the direct channel, the platform channel strategy dominates the other channel strategy; otherwise, the direct channel strategy is the firms' optimal decision. In addition, the two channels share the equal optimal price, and the firms' profit (and demand) would be positively impacted by the network effect and the products' features but negatively impacted by the consumers' learning cost. This work provides decision support for the digital product firms on channel selection in the context of the two-sided market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to make a cross-disciplinary synthesis by conducting a bibliographic analysis of international articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, etc., written on transparency. In line with this, the research aims to identify transparency practices implemented through digital communication channels and address the following guiding questions: 1) What are the goals of transparency for the public sector, private sector, or citizens? 2) Who benefits from transparency? 3) What are the sub-concepts related to transparency? 4) What are the issues emphasized in the literature on transparency? 5) What are the obstacles to transparency? 6) What are the dangers, violations, and risks in cases of excessive transparency or, conversely, no transparency? Method: In this research, data obtained from studies published between 2001 and March 2022 in Web of Science, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, ScienceDirect, and JSTOR databases were analyzed using the PRISMA 2020 statement. The data were coded and categorized using a "data collection form" developed by the authors of this study and analyzed using the MAXQDA 20 software. Findings: Only 255 of the 4681 studies identified by the database search were eligible for systematic review. Almost half of these studies were concentrated in two regions, Northern Europe and North America, but a lack of transparency research was observed in Latin America, Australia, Asia, and Africa. Document analysis was identified as the most common method of qualitative and quantitative data collection, with a weak trend in the use of experimental designs. In addition, it was determined that web-based studies on digital media research topics are regularly studied each year. It is also predicted that these studies may shift to areas such as blockchain, the Internet of Things, augmented reality, and virtual reality with technological developments. Most researchers focus on transparency studies where information flows to citizens, with the idea that this can improve public sector performance. A large body of research also shows that greater transparency in digital communication positively affects democratic action. Implications: This study provides an important contribution to transparency research in the field of communication sciences by presenting an interdisciplinary perspective. This work will also be useful for future research by clarifying the relationship between digital communication channels and the concept of transparency. The results of this study show that transparency is important in a democratic environment and emphasizes the importance of digital communication channels in this context. However, other important aspects of digital communication channels, such as privacy and data protection, should also be considered. Therefore, there is a need to raise awareness of transparency and to conduct more research on the effects of digital communication channels. This research can help to better understand the concept of transparency and make transparency practices more effective. There is also a need to address data protection and privacy issues in digital communication channels. Such studies can contribute to a better understanding of the concept of transparency and enhancing transparency practices. Additionally, data protection and privacy issues in digital communication channels should be addressed. All of these steps are crucial for creating a more transparent and secure social communication environment. Originality: An in-depth analysis of the theoretical and conceptual literature on the connection between digitalization and transparency highlights the significance of this study. In addition, it is believed that the study can significantly contribute by identifying potential areas for future research and filling existing knowledge gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s, I conducted two studies of large landowners and peasant farmers in Colombia. After 61 years in the profession, I see the theme of those studies and most of my subsequent research to be public relations as a means of social inclusion: allowing individuals and groups to take part in society. This essay describes social inclusion and public relations theories of publics, symmetrical communication, strategic management, and relationships. The essay concludes by discussing digital media as both a tool of inclusion and de facto social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the many distinct conceptions of labor at play in the digital media and communication literature. Joining recent studies, it critiques the scarcity of research on the gendered dimension of digital labor and suggests communication as a missing link to understanding the role of everyday interactions in the digital economy. In doing so, it specifies relational communication as a particularly important but also under-researched aspect of social reproductive labor and argues for a re-conceptualization of the sociological concept of "the second shift", by introducing "the digital shift". Lastly, the article charts the implications of increasingly datafied digital communication, and debates if and how the commodification and monetization of relational communication can be understood as exploitation that reproduces and reinforces existing inequalities. Thereby, the article pushes feminist critiques from the outskirts to the center of critical data studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the two-sided market where the third-party platforms connect the providers and consumers, the online platforms become the significant distribution channel of digital products; therefore, the digital product firms face the hybrid channel pricing problem in the two-sided market in which the products are launched through the platform channel and the existing direct channel. Because the network externality effect is the significant economic characteristic of digital products and services, the current work presents the models of consumers' utility obtained by adopting digital products from the direct and platform channels, and the utility models use the network effect in the direct and platform channels as the parameters. The optimization model on pricing is derived from the utility models and solved mathematically. The closed-form solutions show that the price in the direct channel is supposed to be lower than that in the platform channel, while the prices of digital products would be affected by the network effect only when the products are distributed through the direct channel. The comparative statics analysis on the network effect illustrates that the network effect in the direct channel and the platform channel would, respectively, have the positive and negative impact on the products' prices and the firms' profit. The current work explores the hybrid channel pricing problem and provides insights for the digital product firms on the optimal pricing decision in the context of the emerging platform economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured every social, political, economic and cultural aspect of modern society. Millions of people have been stuck in lockdown within and across borders, national and regional terrains, in their homes and worse places. At this time of unprecedented change and 'stuckedness', digital communication technologies have served as a lifeline to forge and nurture communication, intimate ties and a sense of continuity and belongingness. But being stuck and simultaneously virtually mobile has brought many difficulties, tensions and paradoxes. In this paper we discuss first insights from a study with 15 members of the older Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) population in Victoria, Australia to explore experiences of being physically stuck and virtually mobile. We find practices of translocal care – ways of caring for distant others through digital technologies, has been made more complex by the pandemic and shaped by two dynamics: networked collective 'existential mobility', and a quantification of feeling that we call 'intimacy 5.0'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will investigate how a microcelebrity YouTuber named Rius Vernandes became a symbol for the birth of civil power in a digital society. His criticism vlog for Garuda Indonesia's business class services has drawn criticism from the airline, which has led to a legal case. Through the power of social media networks and YouTube, Rius Vernandes did what came to be called self-institutionalizing, by then breaking down the limits of social control through a new force; I am a YouTuber. This article uses an exploratory approach to the development of the case to the conclusion that the case was stopped reporting by related parties. Through a theoretical study of the technique of self-representation, this paper examines how the cultural logic of the celebrification process of Rius Vernandes, led to the "victory" of civil power. The phenomenon of micro-celebrity in this paper is assumed as the construction of identity and self image in front of peer-users, to get public sympathy and attention for the freedom of criticism. The exploration is emphasized on how the strategic steps taken by Rius Viernandes by placing themselves as part of a critical digital community. The case has become one of the contemporary phenomena of the revolutionary power of criticism, breaking the border of social control by the new form of civil power through the internet in the era of digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People adopt geographical strategies to distance themselves from digital sociality. Rather than merely turning off devices, they engage in a broader, more durable project of disentangling. This effort responds to the homogenizing, standardizing forces of connective media and their coercive entanglements: socially normalized routines of personal media use, hybridizations of human agency with communication technologies, and digitally mediated activities that generate predictive and prescriptive products. Geographical attention to disentangling is merited by the fact that it comes in local variants and brings questions of place and human territoriality back onto the agenda in significantly new ways as part of a postdigital territoriality. We offer two vignettes revealing place's role as protective, with its territoriality drawing a line around the self. We argue that postdigital territoriality inevitably reflects a differentiated terrain of gender, income, profession, and other elements of positionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on my experience over two decades as part of an early generation of scholars who graduated with a PhD in sociology into a career as a researcher and teacher in the multidisciplinary field of digital media. I reflect on my experiences to offer an assessment of the state of digital media scholarship within sociology and the field of communication. The study of digital media remains underdeveloped within sociology. In part, this is due to disciplinary failures, an array of relevant, specialized areas within sociology have yet to fully realize the role of digital media. Sociological perspectives are also constrained through a dominant 'communication perspective' at the center of the field of communication. Communication is home to most digital media scholars and uses its institutional dominance to arbitrate what qualifies as scholarship. Whereas communication serves as a plural disciplinary catch-all for the subjects of the social sciences, it often does so without crossing the boundaries of a relatively homogeneous, epistemological framework. That framework does not adequately represent sociological perspectives on digital media. I point to key differences between sociology and communication that tend to marginalize sociological perspectives. These differences have also served to render the field of communication less relevant to sociology (and likely to other disciplines in the social sciences). I stress the importance of building institutions and practices that support (multi)disciplinary representation in the field to strengthen sociology and other perspectives and avoid a myopic lens on our understanding of digital media and social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital native media have gone through different stages since their emergence in the last decade of the twentieth century under the shadow of the evolution of the ‘network of networks’ and digital transformation. Despite the influence that legacy media have exerted on the models of many digital media, the efforts they have made to find their own way in the digital communication ecosystem have resulted in the introduction of new practices and strategies that have fuelled renewed debates on journalistic frontiers. The aim of this paper is to review the birth, evolution and current landscape of digital native media with special attention given to research in this field. This is an object of study with its own and differential characteristics in relation to legacy media, which attracts the focus of more and more digital communication researchers every day. To offer a current assessment of such research, a systematized review of articles published in scientific journals included in the Web of Science and Scopus databases was carried out. The results show that the conceptualization of digital native media, their mapping in media ecosystems and comparison with legacy media, the study of their typology and characteristics, research on their economic and organizational models, the analysis of their content, and their relationship with audiences are among the main objects of research. These media constitute a fundamental sector in the current media ecosystem, which will require multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives in their research to face the challenges of digital media, digital native media and digital journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks have become essential means of communication and have modified the concept of political communication. Social media have nowadays an increasingly important impact on election campaigns worldwide, and, therefore, the latest election processes within the Latin-American context are ideal environments for this analysis, due to both the volatility and the richness of the political-electoral competition, and their capacity to influence the exchange of political information through the different emotions of the audiences. This paper presents a systematized study of the communication that took place in social media during the first round of the 2022 Costa Rican electoral process (February 6th). The information has been collected from the data available at the Digital Media Communication Observatory of the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, using the social listening tools Minerva Data, Kantar IBOPE Media's Adspend and Mention, with the objective of revealing the digital conversation trends in this campaign, an unprecedented electoral process with 25 presidential candidates. The reports from the Digital Communication Observatory show the evolution of the electorate's behavior in terms of interaction, sentiment, topics and voting intention, during the first round of the 2022 electoral process, as well as the general dynamics perceived in the social media and public web environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolvement in digital media and information technology over the past decades have purveyed the internet to be an effectual medium for the exchange of data and communication. With the advent of technology, the data has become susceptible to mismanagement and exploitation. This led to the emergence of Internet Security frameworks like Information hiding and detection. Examples of domains of Information hiding and detection are Steganography and steganalysis respectively. This work focus on addressing possible security breaches using Internet security framework like Information hiding and techniques to identify the presence of a breach. The work involves the use of Blind steganalysis technique with the concept of Machine Learning incorporated into it. The work is done using the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) format because of its wide use for transmission over the Internet. Stego (embedded) images are created for evaluation by randomly embedding a text message into the image. The concept of calibration is used to retrieve an estimate of the cover (clean) image for analysis. The embedding is done with four different steganographic schemes in both spatial and transform domain namely LSB Matching and LSB Replacement, Pixel Value Differencing and F5. After the embedding of data with random percentages, the first order, the second order, the extended Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Markov features are extracted for steganalysis.The above features are a combination of interblock and intra block dependencies. They had been considered in this paper to eliminate the drawback of each one of them, if considered separately. Dimensionality reduction is applied to the features using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Block based technique had been used in the images for better accuracy of results. The technique of machine learning is added by using classifiers to differentiate the stego image from a cover image. A comparative study had been during with the classifier names Support Vector Machine and its evolutionary counterpart using Particle Swarm Optimization. The idea of cross validation had also been used in this work for better accuracy of results. Further parameters used in the process are the four different types of sampling namely linear, shuffled, stratified and automatic and the six different kernels used in classification specifically dot, multi-quadratic, epanechnikov, radial and ANOVA to identify what combination would yield a better result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay, the editors consider the current challenges in understanding a networked China. We consider how the digital media landscape has changed just since an earlier collection of research in 2015, subtitled 'global dynamics of digital media and civic engagement.' We take up this orienting concept of civic engagement to explore emerging mediated spaces for cultural production through global connectivities. Beyond an area studies contribution, we focus on China more broadly as a complex global assemblage: an intersection of technology, norms, and socio-cultural structures. Our contributors were invited to consider 'what' and 'where' is China, and 'how do we know China?' Along with logistical challenges of fieldwork involving constraints of geopolitics and pandemic, we encouraged an epistemic reflexivity around reliance on certain paradigms, concepts and kinds of data. This research is further complicated by sensitivities around by the very vocabulary often involved, including public, civil society, and civic engagement itself. In the search for digital China, contributors consider how to think about China and how to locate a digital China. In exploring digital production and performance of and in China, we include analyses of fandom, idols, and the curation of collective pandemic memories. Together, this collection provides a rich set of deeply researched cases and imaginative new strategies to understand how the contradictions of digital China – between connectivity and control – are playing out, with important implications for the changing nature of public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the questions of digital communication and theatre during the lockdown in 2020-2021. With the example of the National Kaunas Drama Theatre, Lithuania, it is revealed that COVID-19 pandemic forced the cultural sector to experiment and use digital products in new conceptual ways. National Kaunas Drama Theatre proposed their audience an online platform Theatre Onl1ne TV (originally in Lithuanian: Teatras Onl1ne TV), and developed performances which were adapted to the digital environment of the lockdown period: some of the performances were transmitted on Zoom Video Communications platform, especially those for children and adolescents, some of them, such as The Flickering, tested new ways of integrating audiences digitally into theatrical action. The latter performance was created for Facebook users, lasted for four evenings and invited them to become co-creators of the story. The analysis reveals that digital theatre communication attracted audiences of younger generations and can be a useful creative tool in developing a relationship with the new generation of theatre-goers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of the author's PhD research and analyses the performance of black women youtubers and its potential to ensure Communication Rights in digital media. The theoretical frameworks are the Brazilian laws about communication and broadcasting, the perspective of mediatization and mass self-communication, potentialized by new media, and black feminism studies. Videos and comments of four YouTube channels were analyzed based on methods as exploratory analysis and netnography. The main results were the importance of the approach of topics as beauty and aesthetics to achieve media visibility, the potential of the platform in ensure a space of dialogue to its users and lack of knowledge about racism in Brazil. These aspects are interpreted as guarantors of Communication Rights and open a path to other social groups in Latin America to exercise their citizenship through new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public communication channels and digital broadcasting media are increasingly diverse, one of which is podcasts. In addition to being relatively new, podcast content is increasingly in demand, especially since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public relations departments at government institutions began to use podcasts as a new medium for disseminating information and public communication then. This study explores the trend of using podcasts. Meanwhile, research on podcasts, especially on their use in government institutions, is still very limited. This research, using a descriptive method, seeks to contribute to the development and optimization of podcasts in government institutions. The results show that podcasts play an important role as a public communication channel and digital broadcasting medium. This research is expected to be helpful for government public relations and researchers in the podcast sector interested in optimizing their use in government sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies on digital media and labor seldom pay attention to youth in vocational education (VE), nor do they consider the use of and attitudes towards digital media in connection with labor subjectivity. This research fills the gap by exploring how patterns of digital communication relate to each other in exerting influence on labor knowledge and attitudes in the setting of a vocational school. We present findings from a unique survey dataset (N = 1761) collected in Shaanxi, China. Aided by fieldwork, interviews, and observations of online discussions among students, we constructed reliable composite variables for behavioral and attitudinal patterns of digital communication and found that (a) participation in online forum discussion enhances labor-rights knowledge and predicts more consumerist usage of WeChat, but it does not encourage more reflections on gaming or achieve more labor-related attitudes; (b) reflective attitudes does not increase labor knowledge, but it is positively correlated with work-related attitudes; (c) there is no significant relationship between consumerist usage on the one hand and labor knowledge or attitudes on the other; and (d) labor knowledge indeed helps enhance labor attitudes. Contributions and implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the world's information and communication revolution, technological and digital advances represented by the Internet and various social media that have made an important shift in communication and communication between different peoples and cultures, government agencies have made a contribution to social media to communicate with their audiences and to publicize their various objectives, missions and communication activities, whether local, regional or international, and the role of digital public relations no longer limited to be based on improving the image, introducing the organization's mission and objectives at the local or regional level, but its role has even emerged in the international field through the role of the internet and various social media to promote soft power and the national image of the international community, and because of the political, economic, cultural and tourism power of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saudi Arabia has established a new communication and media center that monitoring, analyzing and making digital content on social media in more than twenty-two languages . This study seeks to find out the most common digital means to highlight Saudi Arabia's efforts to strengthen its soft power through the new Communication and Information Center at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the study relied on the descriptive approach, using questionnaire as a tool for collecting data and information from Saudi society, and the study reached a range of results, the most prominent of which are : • The least used digital tool to highlight Saudi Arabia's efforts and strengthen its soft power at the State Department's new call and media center is the Facebook platform . Highlights of the study include : • Researchers recommend the new Call and Media Center intensify digital communication activities to enhance soft power through Facebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's modern communication society, the authenticity of digital media has never been of such importance as it is now. In this aspect, the reliability of digital images is of paramount importance because images can be easily manipulated by means of sophisticated software, such as Photoshop. Splicing tampering is a commonly used photographic manipulation for modifying images. Detecting splicing tampering remains a challenging task in the area of image forensics. A new multitask model based on attention mechanism, densely connected network, Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) and U-Net for locating splicing tampering in an image, AttDAU-Net, was proposed. The proposed AttDAU-Net is basically a U-Net that incorporates the spatial rich model filtering, an attention mechanism, an ASPP module and a multitask learning framework, in order to capture more multi-scale information while enlarging the receptive field and improving the detection precision of image splicing tampering. The experimental results on the datasets of CASIA1 and CASIA2 showed promising performance metrics for the proposed model ( F 1 -scores of 0.7736 and 0.6937, respectively), which were better than other state-of-the-art methods for comparison, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed AttDAU-Net in locating image splicing tampering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The research is devoted to the determination of effective display frequency of advertised communication messages to consumers in representative samples of the brewing industry to optimize the media budget. Materials and methods. The study is based on the scientific research of scientists on the development of beer market and digital economy, theories of advertisement message frequency, marketing research of brewing enterprises and their brands to determine the minimum range of effectiveness of advertised messages to beer consumers. Results and discussions. The frequency of displaying the communication message determines not only the effectiveness of appeals to the consumer, but also spending on media budget, however, currently there is no single point of view to this problem in scientific research. Both an insufficient amount of appeals and an excessive frequency lead to insufficient budget using. Effective frequency of the message influences not only on consumer's purchasing behaviour and indicators of brand's health but also allows to optimize media budget. Certainly, most media planners use the effective frequency strategy «three plus». In order to determine the frequency of communication with consumers for instruments of online-advancement of beer the modified Matrix of Ostrow is given. The blocks of factors of influence on beer promotion on the consumer market are improved, they are «Market factors», «Factors of quality of advertisement message», «General media factors». «Online media factors» block is added, where such indexes as description of placement the resources, use of social media, use of video formats, use of non-standard displays and formats, coverage of media channel, type of placement, accordance to general content of campaign are considered. Adaptation of the improved matrix took place on the example of the most beer brands of the market, for this reason the effective frequency of repetition of communication message and comparing to actual is carried out, that allowed to group brands into 4 groups from position of strategy of further charges to placement of advertised messages in the Internet. Conclusions. For planning the frequency of communication messages it is suggested to use the adapted matrix for determination the effective frequency communication with consumers of beer brands in order to optimize the media market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media currently occupy an increasingly central communicative space during electoral campaigns. Specifically, Twitter is one of the leading platforms in digital political communication, as it offers an overview of the discursive lines and strategies of parties and candidates. This becomes even more important during the COVID-19, which makes impossible to hold a traditional campaign. This is the case of the regional elections for the Community of Madrid on 4 May 2021. This research analyses the Twitter campaign of the main parties: PP, Más Madrid, PSOE, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos. Through a quantitative content analysis, 1760 tweets are examined and its thematic agenda, functions, emotions, COVID-19 and references to the candidates are studied. The results indicate the predominance of the Game Frame in the thematic agenda, combined with the criticism of the opponent as the main strategy. Negative emotions take a central place and COVID-19 is used as a political element during the campaign, with the PP candidate, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as the protagonist of the campaign. Finally, the references to the candidates suggest a communicative strategy in a national key to attack political rivals, particularly the Spanish Prime Minister. Overall, this campaign opens a new communication strategy on Twitter that we have called digital negativity and that is based on the attack on political rivals as the main element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subscription economy was born because the relationship between creators and customers is different than it used to be. The era of the creator economy seems to be filled with boundless promise, but at the end of the day, creators are just slaves to tech giants. Neither the control of the content created, nor the money made in their pockets is in complete control of the creator. The blockchain can completely solve these injustices monopolized by enterprises. In the blockchain era, all kinds of creations from music, and video-to-text can be turned into assets that can be purchased and traded through smart contracts. In the music industry, for example, creators do not need to share profits with streaming platforms and record labels and get all the benefits directly. In addition, when the content created is on the chain, every transaction will be recorded on the blockchain, and everyone can inquire about it, avoiding opacity or causing disputes in the future. However, with the structure of the standard blockchain, as long as the registration is successful, each role in the chain will have permanent data access rights, and the flexibility of access control is poor. Therefore, this study proposes a digital media subscription mechanism based on the Hyperledger blockchain architecture combined with proxy re-encryption. We use symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, smart contracts, and algorithms to design our protocol. When the licensee violates the agreement with the creator, the creator can revoke the access rights to the digital media of the licensee at any time, to realize more secure and convenient digital media transmission. The proposed scheme meets various security requirements of blockchain architecture, and we have also applied the BAN logic proof model to evaluate the correctness of the proposed scheme. This study also proposes an arbitration mechanism when the dispute occurs, and performed well in terms of communication and computational costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present summary describes the book "Digital Writing Registers: Contexts, Forms, and Metapragmatic Reflections" by Florian Busch. The book deals with the use of language in digital media, particularly in social media and messenger services. The author examines various register concepts and analyzes the use of writing and graphic elements in digital communication. The book offers a synthesis of different theoretical approaches and examines the socio-situational contexts, graphic-segmental forms, and metapragmatic ideologies in digital writing registers. Florian Busch examines the pragmatic-literal behavior of young people and their writing registers. The high usage of smartphones, especially the messenger service WhatsApp, plays a crucial role in this. Busch develops a three-stage data collection and analysis procedure to examine the writing registers. The significance of WhatsApp conversations is emphasized due to their specific conversational patterns. Various forms of digital writing are analyzed, including phonostylistic and graphostylistic variations, as well as misspellings and typos. The young people also reflect on the socio-cultural and socio-communicative reasons for certain writing structures. The book offers a comprehensive analysis and is recommended for those interested in linguistics. [Extracted from the article]

Much contemporary social mobilization is digitally enabled. Digital media may provide the communication platforms on which supporters deliberate movement goals, share information, discuss tactics, and generate discourses in response to ongoing happenings. Yet digital media's capability to serve these functions should depend on platform-specific affordances and movement dynamics. Based on such premises, this article examines how the online forum LIHKG became the central communication platform in the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Empirically, digital media and content analysis data help establish the forum's prominence during the first few months of the movement, while analyses of protest onsite survey data show how the use of LIHKG systematically related to several movement-related attitudes among the protesters. The article highlights the affordances and movement dynamics that allow the forum to play the role. It contributes to understanding the factors that shape the role and impact of digital media platforms in social mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and empirical work on digital media use and social connectedness has often considered face-to-face communication to be an available option. But how do various digital media uses relate to social connectedness when face-to-face communication is not, or much less, possible? Drawing on survey data from 2925 US adults during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that different digital communication methods display different relationships with social connectedness under stay-at-home circumstances with limited in-person interactions outside the home. Overall, digital communication relates to lower social connectedness. In line with notions from social presence theory, especially digital media lower in social presence (e.g. email, social media, and online games, and to some extent text messaging) relate negatively to social connectedness, while this is not the case for higher social presence media (e.g. voice and video calls). Our study has implications for theorizing about digital media use and social connectedness in times when face-to-face communication is less available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of modern science and technology, the speed of digital media to disseminate information is also accelerating, and the forms of communication become more and more diversified. In order to make digital media art better innovate and develop, designers should actively explore, so that art under digital media has the characteristics of intelligence, networking, and content diversification, so that it can be better applied in modern digital media communication and let visual art reach new development heights in the context of digital media. The current rapid development of artificial intelligence technology is being gradually applied to all fields of society. From the current point of view, China's digital media art will inevitably remain in the early development stage for a long time to face many difficulties and problems. In the context of the era of artificial intelligence, there will also be a large number of art and design talents for continuous research and exploration, and the emergence of these talents will certainly prompt the further development and enhancement of digital media art and artificial intelligence technology. In this process, it is especially worth noting that China's excellent cultural connotations should not be abandoned. Committed to digging more beneficial digital media art elements from traditional culture to make digital media art always develop in a more meaningful way. This paper takes the artificial intelligence era as the background, discusses the core of the development of the mutual integration of artificial intelligence technology and digital media art, analyzes the current development status of digital media art and technology, as well as the innovative development direction and future trends, proposes a digital media art design algorithm based on the convolutional neural network, and finally proves the effectiveness of the method in the relevant data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a cultural and legal analysis of the viability of marketing indigenous handicrafts through the use of digital media as a strategy to innovate and empower the enterprises of indigenous peoples living in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Through a legal and social documentary research study, several prevailing factors have been identified, such as insufficient and ineffective legal protection on the design of handicraft products and their incursion into ecommerce, as well as the conditions of marginalization and poverty, lack of access to Information and Communication Technologies and digital illiteracy in which artisans find themselves. This causes a disproportionate negative impact, both in the loss of cultural values and identity, as well as in the lack of economic gains and development opportunities for indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a new direction in digital media and communication studies and develops an emergent analytical lens of digital media and immobility in the context of forced migration. Drawing on a qualitative multi-sited research approach, I shed light on digitally mediated transnational care among the Rohingya diaspora in refugee camps in Bangladesh and in Brisbane, Australia. I draw on Massey's idea of the 'power geometry' with a combination 'immobility turn' to consider how the socio-spatial mobility is restricted and regulated, and how these immobilities are crucial to understanding family care practices. I argue that the idea of transnational families existing beyond nation-states, and the social and spatial immobilities may help us to identify the linkages, discrepancies and power asymmetries that exist in cross-cultural settings. The findings offer a critical stance on immobility, which impacts and shapes transnational caregiving practices of forced migrants in the age of digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the investment in digital tools and the allocation of communication expenses in a Global South country with an uneven digital penetration rate. Data were collected for 2,563 candidates in the 2018 legislative election in Colombia, based on the official campaign finance disclosure documents. A multivariate analysis shows that particularly challengers invest in social media tools, which is a strong indication in favor of the equalization model. That such an effect is not found for radio and television expenses confirms this interpretation. Candidates on open lists are more inclined to spend on both digital and radio and television tools than candidates on closed lists. At the district level, the odds of spending on digital media increase with the digital media use, but so does the odds of spending on radio and television ads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments during the Covid‐19 pandemic in response to the challenge of reaching as many of their citizens as quickly as possible have relied on the use of digital media communication. Various stakeholders, however, have questioned whether strategic use of digital communication by governments has been effective during the Covid‐19 health crisis. We thematically analyzed a public online bi‐country webinar and conducted a netnographic analysis of South African Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize and Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services Twitter accounts to evaluate the effectiveness of government digital communication during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Stakeholders and social media analysis highlight that government digital communication has lacked engagement, falling short in assisting citizens to understand the effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic. We highlight the shortcomings of governments simply transmitting information on channels built for dialogue, the digital divide limiting reach, as well as how limited engagement opens up opportunities for misinformation. Highlights: •Many governments, including the South African and Namibian governments, have relied on the use of digital media to disseminate as much information as possible.•Various stakeholders have questioned the effectiveness of using digital media as a strategy in reaching citizens across parts of Southern Africa.•Stakeholders acknowledged that the use of digital media by governments, particularly South Africa and Namibia started as a good initial reaction to the Covid‐19 pandemic.•However, these governments were mostly reactive in their online communication with limited engagement that fueled misinformation online and citizens looking to other nongovernment sources for information.•Some of these alternative sources of information became health‐care professionals and other helpful citizens that were online, taking on the communication burden.•The governments were perceived as not being humanistic in their digital communication and part of the challenge was digital inequality that highlighted the need for traditional communication in media convergence.•Inefficient use of digital and social media erodes trust and quality of the relationship between government and their key stakeholders, that is, citizens, reversing any gains made in this case, in the fight against the Covid‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality (VR) has advanced as a collaborative, realistic, and creative computation technique in recent decades. With organizations becoming digitally more focused and employees' experience changed by technology, manager's face and continue to confront several obstacles in the digital transformation process. Recent advances in information integration have been made possible by implementing the improved digital twin (DT) paradigm and its use in the workspace. To solve these problems, simulated convergence, realistic dynamic computational decision-making, and other tools are effective. This helps to complete activities with physical models and records. Thereby, this paper presents a Visually Improved Digital Media Communication Framework (VIDMCF) using VR technology and DT. Incorporating all information, displaying the whole procedure, avoiding challenges, closing loops, optimizing repetitive processes, and making complex decisions in real-time can be aided by reproducing physical systems in the virtual design and adding VR and digital mirror twin to the output of digital media. The proposed model can achieve connectivity and convergence among the realistic atmosphere and the digital environment's virtual system in cyber-real-space harmony over the life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media have transformed media's news gathering, production and news dissemination traditions. However, African language newspapers' use of digital media has been overlooked and understudied. Therefore, this study explores the adoption of digital media by Isolezwe, a South African indigenous language newspaper that publishes in IsiZulu. Data were gathered using the interview and observation methods. Deploying strands drawn from media convergence and diffusion of innovation theories, the study shows the convergence of African language print media and digital media, and advancement of African language newspapers towards increasing their digital and social media presence. This development has positively enhanced Isolezwe's journalistic functions of newsgathering and dissemination. The study provides insights into understanding African language journalism in the context of the advancement of digital and communication technologies. Findings from this research show that Isolezwe has expanded its digital presence to social media. Over and above the online version, Isolezwe is also actively engaged on Twitter and Facebook which are the two most popular social networking sites in South Africa. The platforms are strategically deployed for newsgathering and news dissemination purposes. This is a timely contribution to existing scholarship on the adoption of digital media by indigenous languages newspapers in South Africa in particular and Africa in general. The study also provides insights into understanding African language journalism in the context of the advancement of digital and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication tools, which are widely used today, provide wide and fast access. These tools, which permeate every aspect of our lives in terms of providing the user with the opportunity to participate actively and sharing information quickly and cheaply, attract the attention of the youth in particular. The increase in the use of new media technologies and the penetration of all areas of society show how important it is for people to have information about new media literacy. Especially the youth should be made aware of all kinds of messages coming from new media tools.Therefore, increasing research on new media literacy is important. The purpose of this research is to determine the new media literacy knowledge and skill levels of undergraduate and associate degree students between the ages of 18 and 25 who are the current students of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. General scanning model was used in the research. Random sampling technique was used to determine the sample of the research. In the research, an online questionnaire was applied to 348 students. As a result of the research, it was concluded that new media literacy levels of male students were more advanced than new media literacy levels of female students. In addition, it is one of the significant findings of the research that new media literacy levels of the students who spend more time on the Internet were more advanced than the students who spendless time on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts the approach of the Internet fusion digital media to conduct in-depth research and analysis on the interaction and communication of traditional culture. This structural information can be used to express and describe the Internet requirements. With the increasing demand for the Internet applications, the number of objects in the network and the complexity of the structure are also growing, so we can design suitable clustering algorithms to obtain more reasonable network structure information by using different semantic information in the heterogeneous information network. Firstly, the caching scheme is transformed into a backpack problem, and the storage scheme is obtained recursively by using dynamic programming, after which the computational task is optimized based on this storage scheme by using the whale algorithm to make it the least costly. The exact balance between the connotation essence of traditional culture and the emotional resonance in modern life has not yet been found, and the visual language belonging to cultural aesthetics under the combination of traditional and modern aesthetics needs to be explored for a long time. From an objective point of view, the digital art communication of cultural elements still suffers from five problems: lack of communication cultivation and stratification of target audiences, low quality of transcription of digital artworks, unbalanced economic and cultural values, uneven development of digital art communication forms, and low degree of Internet adaptation. A ranking algorithm based on fusing multiple meta-paths is proposed to better reflect the ranking values of different object distributions of the Internet data in heterogeneous information networks, which can obtain better clustering, while better clustering can be calculated to obtain more reasonable rankings, and finally, the types of the Internet-oriented applications are divided into multiple reasonable clusters. The effects of selecting different meta-paths on the clustering algorithm and the effects of fused meta-paths versus single meta-paths on the clustering results are given in the experimental results section. Also compared with other clustering algorithms, the I-RankClus algorithm can better achieve the data clustering classification for the Internet application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the characteristics of strong interaction, pertinence, and digital communication of digital media technology, this study combines it with interactive technology. It not only increases customers' feelings in the process of experience but also promotes the progress of new media technology. However, people's demand for digital media interface has gradually shifted from functional demand to emotional demand. In order to make a good interaction design, interaction designers must first deeply understand and study users' cognitive behavior and psychological activities. In this study, through multidimensional heterogeneous emotion analysis of users and optimizing the interface design of digital media products, users can easily and efficiently complete tasks, increase the sense of intimacy, comfort, and success, and improve user satisfaction and brand reputation. Digital media product interface carries the function of visual invisible logic language. As the most common form of visual communication, it affects everyone's life. Digital media carries all kinds of information. How to get more user experience in the same type of media is a problem to be considered in the design of digital media interface. Applying emotional design to digital media interface design, users can not only meet the needs of actual functions but also get a more emotional experience. Starting with the emotional design theory of digital media product interface, this paper studies the emotional instinct layer, behavior layer, and reflection layer in the creativity of user interface design, analyzes the emotional relationship between users and products with the three layers of emotion of design, and discusses the characteristics of the emotional design of digital media product interface from the perspective of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguably Mount Everest has always been mediatized: its appeal as an idea has existed in part through technologies of visual cultures. Exploring the digital media practices of tourists and the tourism workers, this article considers how imaginaries of Mount Everest that appear through technologies of visual culture relate to experiences of Everest in Nepal. I argue for a composite visual ethnographic approach that entails examining experiences on site in relation to cumulative media and visual texts, both historically and on digital media platforms. The article contributes to an anthropology of mobility through its focus on how digital visual communication becomes constitutive of work and practices in tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media and networks are structured in a communicating architec ture that shapes the interactions, information flows and territorialities in a Zeitgeist in which reputation has become one of the main assets of organizations. A case study was carried out and the institutional communication of the iFood company was evaluated, associated with the journalistic podcast Foro de Teresina, analyzing audio inserts and surveys with open questions in a context in which the program and the company are digital products that exploit symbolic capital in their business models. iFood's communication strategy, however, remains faithful to classic standards, without innovations that, theoretically, characterize the contemporary media bios. The conclusion is that the link with the public is materialized through a plastered format that welcomes a traditional content, yet not inefficient for that reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]