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Free, online games tailored specifically for girls have carved out a burgeoning niche in a marketplace that has traditionally catered to the interests of boys. However, girls’ games may have a nega...

In contrast to traditional media studies, new media studies examine digital media as an interactional network organization. It also includes communication and media practices associated with information and communication technologies. As the participant plays a role in reproducing and reconstructing the text in the new media, cooperation between the participants is enabled. Social media networks, one of the most important communication tools of new media, are platforms in which people establish relationships and carry out their connections remotely, without any limits, and where they are able to increase their selective affinity tendency. Digital environments, where a culture of convergence is formed by creating non-anonymous profiles of people like Facebook and creating an environment of mutual consensus, give people the opportunity to build a common identity. The position of translation practices in new media is also a projection of the participatory sharing culture. The aim of this study is to make inferences with netnographic analysis through the digital environment translation practices of Bulgarian Turks in a digital environment. The study focused on a Facebook group for Turkish migrants in Bulgaria. The group members are adept at navigating at least two countries, languages, religions, and cultures, and these elements transform fluidly within each other. The study yielded uninterpreted data about their cultural interactions and transfers based on the digital traces of the participants via a netnographic method. It also aimed to present the translation practices of the specified group in a digital environment with a netnographical analysis, with an examination of Henry Jenkin’s convergence culture and participatory culture concepts in network society.

Background and Purpose: This article analyses the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) political scandal as a case study to examine how an issue is discursively shaped online by netizens’ perceptions of the scandal. The study has two objectives: firstly, to explore netizens’ perceptions of 1MDB and how they reacted to the news reported based on the online exposés appearing throughout 2015. Secondly, it aims to examine whether the discourse regarding 1MDB among netizens on an online platform, The Malaysian Insider Facebook page, meets the characteristics of a practical discourse in an online context, as proposed by Jurgen Habermas. Methodology: A total of 1950 Facebook comments related to 210 1MDB articles in 2015 were analysed. The articles were linked and published by The Malaysia Insider Facebook page. The analysis was conducted using thematic analysis via NVivo software to explore the perceptions of the selected netizens about 1MDB and how the online discourse on 1MDB matched the characteristics proposed by Jurgen Habermas for practical online discourse. Findings: Four themes emerged, namely Najib as the Prime Minister, the 1MDB Debate Controversy, the Opposition position on 1MDB and the investigation of the 1MDB scandal. Based on the online discourse, it was evident that consumption of 1MDB news on Facebook led Malaysian netizens to form their own perceptions of the scandal. The emergent themes also illustrate that the online discourse met the characteristics of practical discourse suggested by Jurgen Habermas. Contributions: This empirical contribution fills a gap in the current knowledge as few studies have been conducted on the online discourse of the 1MDB political scandal among Malaysian netizens. Currently, no research is documented on the 1MDB political scandal from the netizens’ perspective other than the first author’s PhD thesis. This research is, therefore, beneficial to new media studies as researchers normally investigate or explore a specific issue when it has a conclusion; here, a risk was taken to conduct the study while 1MDB was still under investigation. Keywords: 1MDB, 2015, Najib Razak, netizens, Malaysia. Cite as: Mohd Nor, N. H., & Baharuddin, Z. (2021). Malaysian netizens’ perceptions of 1MDB: A thematic analysis. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 351-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp351-372

This paper outlines the educational benefits of creating digital stories for a variety of academic purposes as well as the professional need for students to develop and showcase digital proficiency. Digital stories fall under the category of multimodal composition and new media studies, and they encourage students to expand their digital literacy skills while reconceptualizing ways in which traditional writing projects can appeal to a broader audience. The article also addresses some of the classroom challenges teachers may face when trying to implement the practice and some practical resources that might assist teachers to integrate digital stories into their classrooms.

New media studies have begun to take environmental topics into consideration. However, there has been little research that explores the origins of human psychological needs that motivate people to get exposed to nature on the Internet and gain satisfaction via social media uses related to nature. This study intended to investigate the uses and gratifications of and exposure to “nature 2.0” (a nature that is humanly created on Web 2.0) and the associated interdependence with nature and pro-environmental behavior. The results found that the needs to affiliate with nature 2.0 can be satisfied through functional, relational, and emotional gratifications. Exposure to nature 2.0 was associated with commitment to nature and pro-environmental self-reported behavior. Functional gratification was correlated with pro-environmental behavior, while relational and emotional gratifications were related to interdependence with nature.

Brian Shoesmith, an Australian academic, spent the last phase of his academic journey in Bangladesh. He contributed to developing a new Media Studies and Journalism department in a relatively new p...

While social media platforms afford visibility to marginalized voices and enable dissemination of alternative narratives, their own “power laws” can make few users responsible for most of the attention. New power users can redirect discussion away from those who initiate a conversation. The aim of this study is to examine relations between the network “gatekeepers” and “gatewatchers” following the announcement of the Days of Judaism celebrated by the Polish Episcopate every January. Two methodological approaches were taken over two consecutive years: social network analysis (SNA), and linguistic analysis of social media discourse. The linguistic analysis confirmed importance of classical rhetoric effects on Twitter. The social network analysis revealed that a balanced, personal statement given by users with high network standing outside of the Twittersphere can ignite constructive dialogue in the spirit of the inter-religious exchange that the idea behind Days of Judaism stands for. Our conclusion is that a careful social media policy of the Church, a controlled engagement in the public conversation, possibly by lay sympathizers of high standing in the real public life, have the potential for dispensing with the infamous toxicity of Twitter, and for turning conversation on any topic, even the most controversial, into positive exchange within the community of believers.

This chapter explores key ideas relating to consumption and advertising from new media studies perspectives. It involves grasping the general contours of consumption and processes of branding. Centrally, the chapter also requires that the consumers understand in some detail how advertising works and how it is changing in light of digital developments in media. Baudrillard argues that the simulative function of consumer society accounts in part for the seeming insatiability and continual dissatisfaction of consumers, and our desire to keep acquiring more ‘stuff’. However, Baudrillard also observes that there is no ‘in’ or ‘out’ of consumption and consumer society. To quote: the consumer experiences his distinctive behaviour as freedom, as aspiration, as choice. Creatives in advertising are dependent, therefore, on the politics and conventions of (digital) culture, fine art, graphic design, media, photography, pop music, subcultural activities, typography, web design/aesthetics, a variety of literary tropes and many other areas of cultural production.

Commentators and analysts in new media studies have taken inspiration from Goffman’s ‘dramaturgical’ approach to interaction as performance, as well as his concepts of ‘face’ and ‘impression management’. Goffman is specifically invoked in discussions of a particular source of interactional trouble that is seen as generated in and by the structure of mediated communication in digital spaces: so-called “context collapse.” Context collapse represents “a crisis of self-presentation” (Wesch, 2008) that is brought about by the ability of digital platforms like Twitter and Facebook to “flatten multiple audiences into one” (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 9). Returning to Goffman’s unpublished PhD dissertation (Goffman, 1953) – based on fieldwork on the remote island of Unst in the Shetlands – presents an opportunity to understand more fully both the online phenomenon of “context collapse” and the promise and limitations of Goffman’s work for the study of interaction in digital environments.

New media studies has often focused on the difference between traditional and new media objects while neglecting the perspectival difference in worldview and subjectivity concomitant with the becom...

Süreğen medya platformları, günümüzde anlatısal metinler için televizyon ve sinemayı ikame edecek yeni bir dolaşım/dağıtım biçimi olarak ortaya çıkıyor. Fakat bu dolaşım biçimine has izleme etkinliğinin zamansal ve mekânsal koşulları ve ön plana çıkardığı anlatısal aygıtlar, onu geçmişteki sinema ve televizyon izleyiciliğinden farklı şekilde yapılandırıyor. Süreğen medya platformları, taşınabilir medya teknolojilerinin de yardımıyla, izleyici etkinliğini zamansal ve mekânsal kısıtlarından kurtarıp sürekli, her yerde ve her zaman ulaşılabilir hale getiriyor. Bu pratik, sadece sinema ve televizyon izleyiciliğinin kurucu niteliği olan kamusallığın uzağında, yalıtılmış, sterilize bir iletişim tecrübesi yaratmakla kalmıyor; ilk bakışta kişisel ve kişiye özel gibi görünen bu yeni iletişim süreci esasında algoritmik süreçler aracılığıyla düzenlenerek platform kapitalizminin kontrol aygıtlarından birine dönüşüyor. Bu yazıda amacımız süreğen medya platformlarının dayattığı bu yeni izleyici etkinliğinin içinde kurulduğu koşulları kuramsal düzeyde analiz etmek ve bu koşulların kamusal yaşama etkisini sorgulamaya girişmek. Streaming media platforms are increasingly replacing cinema and television as the dominant means of narrative-content distribution, yet viewing media on these platforms differs in important ways from cinema and television spectatorship, both through the narrative and interactive possibilities they allow, but also through the temporal and spatial conditions they impose on audiences. With the help of the mobile media technologies they are delivered through, streaming media platforms free audiences from the temporal and spatial limitations of cinema and television and offer a continuous yet isolated viewing experience. Algorithmically regulated and customized program flow and the accompanying illusion of interactivity create a “privatized” viewing experience which contrasts with the “publicness” and “collectiveness” of that of cinema and television. In this article, we discuss the novel conditions imposed on viewers by streaming media platforms at a conceptual and theoretical level and interrogate their impact on public life.

This paper proposes that there is value in deploying video games as a form of scholarly critique, particularly in the field of game studies. I adapt the post-critical lens of Greg Ulmer and the institutional theories of Warren Beaty from comics studies to advocate for a shift of how we identify both games and scholarship. The result, hopefully, is not only a new tool for the analysis of games, but a functional definition of video games that allows this new tool a place within the form. This article begins with examples from some of the most popular games in the world that demonstrate that games can and do merge aesthetics and mechanics to convey either implicit learning or an explicit argument in combination with entertainment. Next, I outline a theoretical framework of post-criticism for games, a perspective that helps us to understand the legitimacy of such an approach. A survey of the definitional debate in games studies and a brief outline of some of the problems therein contextualizes the value of an institutional approach to the question of “What is a game?” Finally, I explore how a post-critical framework and institutional definition of games provides a fresh outlook that incorporates a new medium into scholarship and defines games in a way that causes us to ask, “what makes this example interesting?” rather than “does it fit?” Résumé Cet article propose que l’usage de jeux vidéo sous forme de critique universitaire peut entraîner des avantages, particulièrement dans le domaine des études du jeu. J’adapte le point de vue post-critique de Greg Ulmer, ainsi que les théories institutionnelles de Warren Beaty venant des études de la bande dessinée, afin de promouvoir un changement de la façon dont nous identifions les jeux et l’érudition. Il devrait en résulter non seulement un nouvel outil pour l’analyse de jeux, mais aussi une définition fonctionnelle des jeux vidéo qui permet à ce nouvel outil de fonctionner dans cette forme. Cet article commence par des exemples venant de quelques-uns des jeux les plus populaires au monde, qui démontrent que les jeux peuvent combiner l’esthétique et le fonctionnement pour évoquer soit de l’apprentissage implicite, soit de l’argument explicite en combinaison avec le divertissement. Ensuite, je présente un cadre théorique de la post-critique pour les jeux, une perspective qui nous aide à comprendre la légitimité d’une telle approche. Une étude sur le débat définitionnel dans les études du jeu et une présentation brève de quelques problèmes pertinents contextualisent la valeur d’une approche institutionnelle pour répondre à la question « Qu’est-ce qui un jeu ? ». Finalement, j’explore la façon dont un cadre post-critique et une définition institutionnelle des jeux fournissent une nouvelle perspective qui intègre un nouveau média dans l’érudition et qui définit les jeux d’une façon qui nous fait nous demander « qu’est-ce qui rend intéressant cet exemple ? », au lieu de nous faire nous demander « est-ce que ça tient ? ». Mots-clés: Humanités Numériques; Etudes de nouveaux médias; Etudes du jeu; Théorie; Post-critique; Etudes de la bande dessinée; Institutionnalisme

This article, stemming from research in contemporary book studies and new media studies aims at showing the recent evolutions of storytelling practices in contemporary literature, more specifically in their relationship with electronic forms of literature. Starting with the recent resurgence of the “death of the novel” trope, we attempt to map out the way elements of contemporary literature have in part evaded the perceived opposition between print and electronic literature, to build a new form of storytelling which is characteristic in its construction of a specific way of reading. Since it has been established that reading practices are influenced by the evolution of reading devices, storytelling is in turn informed by these evolutions. Electronic literature as such has been studied extensively, as well as its direct aesthetic influence on avant-garde works like Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. This influence has reached different audiences and may be connected to other productions referred to under Henry Jenkins’ umbrella term “transmedia storytelling.” Then, forms of contemporary storytelling have attempted to regain the reader’s fractured attention, notably through the manipulation of experience and immersion in time and space –geolocalised narratives, stories told through social media, or lived stories translated into a museum. Storytelling is thus informed not only by its source, but by a great variety of variables like touch, smell, or spatial experience, to regain a sense of connectedness in the act of telling stories. In seeing storytelling as a synchronic experience, we then focus on works both targeting a specific audience used to experimental texts or productions, or niche audiences expecting genre fiction.

This project explores the potential of creating, sharing and listening to oral stories online to open affectively charged spaces for listening across difference. In a world in which we are increasingly able to tailor the technologies that surround us to echo back our own voices and worldviews, we seem less willing to slow down and listen deeply to the voices of those whose presence risk placing our tidy worlds into turmoil. This project explores the affective political potential of both the processes of production and dissemination of the multiplatform oral history project StoryCorps. Drawing together recent work on affect from rhetorical studies, cultural studies and new media studies, this project uses textual analysis to analyze how the various StoryCorps platforms (NPR segments, the podcast, the StoryCorps me app) generate affective archives that invite different forms of interactivity from listeners. This paper explores the affective power of mediated voice to bring minoritized experiences and calls for equity to the ears of broader publics. It is significant because it highlights the boundaries and possibilities of digital storytelling as a way to connect with others across difference. The boundaries remind us of the persistence of structures of marginality that limit the seemingly democratic practices of storytelling in a digital age; the possibilities gesture to the power of minoritized voices to disrupt entrenched narratives. The significance of these stories rests in their claim to be at once particular and generalizable, and the digital format enables their travel in new ways and to new audiences.

The item number is the driving force behind the transformation of cine-dancing in relation to the star and as a corollary, positioning the star body within the discourse of post-network status of film publicity, marketing culture, branding, and value creation across media templates. I engage with the item number as the explosive interface that mutates the sensation of stardom. The performative charge of item numbers provoke dynamic interface processes that forge a sensational image of the star body through “inherently rhizomatic and hyper-visible sites” beyond cinema in music television, radio, print, live stage, new media as well as other ancillary industries like merchandize endorsements and product branding (Nayar in Seeing stars: Spectacle, society and celebrity culture. Sage, New Delhi, 2009). Extra-filmic stardom proliferates across networked media where every public appearance, statement, “tweet” and sound bite made by the star (or a controversial/leaked/morphed orphan video that floats on Web space) generates a ripple of sensations (Cashmore in Celebrity/Culture. Routledge, NY, 2006). The chapter will locate the new erotics of the star body after globalisation and in a post-network society, a body that “deterritorializes geographical and cultural borders” and conjures the erotic spectacle of the “global celebrity” (Redmond in A Companion to Celebrity. Wiley Blackwell, UK, 2016). This chapter will offer insights on the role of dance in the shifting notions of a star’s screen position. If at one point the item girl was an ‘outsider’ to the narrative, today lead heroines perform these dance spectacles. I do a comparative study of major (Malaika Arora, Aishwarya Rai, and Kareena Kapoor) and minor stars (Sambhavna Seth, Rakhee Sawant, Veena Malik, and Sherlyn Chopra), their performance of item numbers and the discourse generated in the popular press about them. The last two decades have shown how fringe actors acquired short lived stardom owing to their performance of certain item numbers (Rakhi Sawant and Isha Koppikkar). At the other end of the spectrum we have seen how big stars like Madhuri Dixit can add value to aid the publicity and marketing of films (Madhuri Dixit’s number “Ghagra” in Karan Johar’s blockbuster hit film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani 2013).). The chapter aims to make an intervention in the existing academic discourse on cinematic ‘trash’ and ‘sleaze’ by underlining the obvious but understated edge of technology mediating the sensation of ‘sleaze’ and bringing it in close connection with mainstream stardom in the case of the item number. Sleaze here is an aesthetic mode of the cine-erotic that is widely recognized from Hollywood’s genre of exploitation films (with lesser-known starlets, low budget productions, lurid mise-en-scene, and deliberate investment in trash). While I am immensely indebted to previous studies of stardom especially Neepa Majumdar’s logic of the “split discourse of female stardom in India” which stages a debate about the class position of the performer and the respectability of the medium, I move away from purely socio-cultural connotations of stardom. I acknowledge new media studies and propose a study of the item number as an interface for stardom. I make use of gossip journalism and magazine covers to trace the sensation of the erotic in star bodies. Narratives of cosmetization of the star body (botox, silicone implants, size-zero figure and six-pack abs) further the logic of the fractal nature of the affective body which can mutate in contact with technology. The glamour associated with big male stars and their dance numbers that work as promotionals for big budget films will be discussed in this chapter. The numbers themselves operate as star texts creating value for the film. Male dancing in item numbers, as I show through my case studies, performatively create star narratives: Shahrukh Khan’s global stardom created by his dancing on live stages across continents is cited in his item numbers; Salman Khan performatively addresses his Muslim (often based in the Middle East and Europe) and working-class fans through his item numbers which act as standalone pieces and Ranveer Singh’s item numbers (across media templates of film, video, live show and endorsements) assert his taporiness—a crucial marker of his star narrative. In each of these cases, the item number ascertains the “global citizenship of the Bollywood star” (Nayar 2016). Some of these male dance numbers have not been considered as item numbers. However, they fit my taxonomy of item numbers as hybrid ensembles that not only reframes the logics of sensation around the body of the performing star but also operates as standalone star texts outside the narrative of the films and even the ecology of the song’s lyrics and picturization.

Focusing on online magazines, this article sheds light on Russian cultural institutions from the perspective of digital media. My analysis concentrates on urban lifestyle magazines, a sub-category of consumer magazines and a media genre, which emerged in Russia in the glossy magazine format and is now experiencing a powerful second rising' on the internet. My article asks how the adaptation to the digital communication environment by lifestyle publications re-defines the very concept of a magazine and reorganizes the institutional ties between media and cultural industries. This focus enables me to analyse lifestyle magazines as a dynamic field of interaction in which cultural meanings are produced and negotiated. Based on new media studies, I see the cultural transcoding (Manovich 2002) of the networked and automatized information transmission into the magazines' content as being a significant factor in the development of contemporary culture and media. Ultimately, my article introduces an attempt to analyse new media titles combining qualitative media analysis with the developing theory of algorithmic culture' (Striphas 2015). My argumentation is based on two case publications: Afisha, established in 1999 as a weekly glossy magazine introducing all cultural events in Moscow, and Inde, a digital-born regional lifestyle magazine focusing on urban culture in the Republic of Tatarstan. Urban lifestyle magazines are important for the institutional organization of Russian culture, as they direct their readers' attention to a broad selection of arts, products and events; strengthen the link between consumers and cultural entrepreneurs and build on a long tradition of print journalism, thereby transmitting the values of reading and literacy to a popular public. Moreover, my analysis shows that, through their multi-platform publication strategy, online magazines (re)organize as aggregates of digital resources helping to manage cultural decision-making in a consumerist setting.

This article contends that the writing curriculum for “diverse classrooms” should be responsive to the resources students bring with them to the classroom and cultivate in them the multiple literacies needed to successfully navigate an increasingly global workplace and society. It also presents some findings from an experiment with and investigation into how diverse students in a college writing class responded to a curriculum and pedagogical approach framed around the idea of “a broad-based multiliteracies,” a curricular and pedagogical framework informed by recent developments in some aligned fields of rhetoric and composition—intercultural communication, literacy studies, media studies, and digital/new media studies.

In the relatively young field of new media studies, both video games and online dating platforms are identified as being important and popular genres of digital products, which are often discussed separately. This article argues that these two genres of digital products are not so much separate but entangled elements of the same processes of technological shifts in media industry, development of people’s online leisure activities, and the convergence of digital genres. To provide empirical evidence, this article examines a Chinese dancing video game, QQ Dazzling Dance (QQ Xuan Wu), which creatively juxtaposes these two genres of participatory digital culture and recognizes the analytical and critical values in doing so.

Concerning the rise of new media and the imperative to make sense of it in our social world, this collection of essays aims to bring into our studies on new media and communication research some fresh perspectives, both theoretical and practical. Scholars from different areas of expertise contribute to the topic of new media studies by laying bare certain fabrics, structures, and mechanisms that have been operating behind the veil of our prereflective ignorance.

While intellectual property protections effectively frame digital humanities text mining as a field primarily for the study of the nineteenth century, the Internet offers an intriguing object of study for humanists working in later periods. As a complex data source, the World Wide Web presents its own methodological challenges for digital humanists, but lessons learned from projects studying large nineteenth century corpora offer helpful starting points. Complicating matters further, legal and ethical questions surrounding web scraping, or the practice of large scale data retrieval over the Internet, will require humanists to frame their research to distinguish it from commercial and malicious activities. This essay reviews relevant research in the digital humanities and new media studies in order to show how web scraping might contribute to humanities research questions. In addition to recommendations for addressing the complex concerns surrounding web scraping this essay also provides a basic overview of the process and some recommendations for resources.

Scholarship on citizen activism in a digital era is growing exponentially in sociology, political science, and communications/new media studies. Theorists observe changing dynamics and power shifts within a public virtual sphere. In contrast, planning scholarship is sparse on how citizens use technology outside of official channels to participate and mobilize. To explore this under-studied phenomenon, a new conceptual framework is developed by synthesizing literature across disciplines to examine digital networked activism in planning and focusing on conservative activists’ fierce opposition to regional planning in Atlanta, Georgia and the San Francisco Bay Area. I find activists use new media in combination with traditional strategies to communicate, organize, market their cause and refine tactics. The new media facilitates their channeling of deeply held emotions into the production, performance and circulation of counter-narratives that destabilize the planning process as conventionally underst...

This essay draws together new media studies and postcolonial/ethnic studies, two academic disciplines often thought to have little in common, in order to cast new light on the work of Korean-born video artist Nam June Paik. Paik has been considered the "founding father of video art" and is often said to have expanded the concept of contemporary art and new media aesthetics. However, his video art has often been regarded as an ahistorical postmodern art form in contemporary theoretical discourse. This brief and preliminary intervention challenges that widely-held view and offers a new historical understanding of postmodern new media by excavating his relatively unknown career as a postcolonial composer. By paying close attention to Paik's musical work and his critical engagement with Western composers such as Schoenberg, I demonstrate how his deconstruction of modern and postmodern music in the West paved the way for his own invention of postmodern video as a "postmusical" narrative. I also consider Paik's postcolonial rewriting of Korean history, as well as his thematization of a contemporary global economy that is underpinned and facilitated by transnational networks of information, communication, and cultural formations. In doing so, I contextualize the genealogy of Paik's oeuvre within the complex constellation of modernity, coloniality, postmodernity, and postcoloniality, and thereby unpack the multilayered and palimpsestichistoricity of postmodern visual art.

Anna Poletti and Julie Rak, editors. Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. 286 pp. $34.95. The collected essays in Identity Technologies provide not only a timely examination of contemporary digital identity practice but serve as "an experiment in interdisciplinary dialogue" (Poletti and Rak 3). Contributors come from diverse academic backgrounds including (but not limited to) auto/biography and new media studies, borrowing theories and methodologies from each other's fields as means of interrogating the potentially limiting assumptions of their respective areas of expertise. The volume's commitments are largely concerned with interdisciplinarity: to demonstrate how auto/biography studies' recent troubling of notions of subjectivity and concern with how the "self" is produced through representation (5) could nuance work from new media studies and to indicate how auto/biography studies might benefit from imitating the work of new media theorists in their study of "non-narrative forms of identity work" (7), which could rectify auto/biography studies' previous tendency to focus on those digital genres that most resemble offline autobiographical genres (for example, text-heavy blogs their predecessors online diaries). Recurring concerns in this collection include the situatedness of digital identity within "offline" geographical, economic, and racialized contexts; how the "affordances" of digital interfaces influence the kinds of writing--and by extension, the kinds of "selves"--that are produced; and how the formation online identity is inextricable from digital community and the technologies that enable and direct communities' formation. Contributors demonstrate how attention to the offline contexts of digital identity work can add nuance to analyses of how online sociality fits into subject formation overall, an approach that poses productive challenges for auto/biography studies as a field heavy in the text-centric approaches familiar to English departments. Several authors in this work (Kennedy, Cover, Nakamura, Gray) contend that, where possible, scholarship should consider the offline contexts of digital identity construction. Online and offline selves are not separate entities; rather, they are continuous, mutually influential, and involve many of the same self-fashioning practices insofar as both online and offline performances operate in response to the "ongoing cultural demand that we process our selves and our actions into coherence, intelligibility, and recognizability" (Cover 56). The authors in this collection criticize the tendency in scholarship to focus on the novelty of the technologies themselves, a tendency that promotes the misconception that communication technologies are producers of effects, rather than "cultural elements of the complexity of human interactions" (Gray 171). Authors in this volume set a precedent for how to read closely in online environments, a practice that must take into consideration the various contexts and contingencies that contribute to online identity performance. The concept of "affordances," which is key to this collection, refers to those properties (overt and covert) of a digital interface that determine how it will be used and, consequently, the kinds of identities that will be enacted using a particular social platform in the context of computerized environments. Essays in Identity Technologies (notably those by Gregg, Morrison, Rivard, and McNeill) are nuanced by an awareness of how the tools and functions built into the platforms we use impact the character of our self-disclosure, and therefore shape the selves we create. This concept is most explicitly referred to in Aimee Morrison's study of the history of the Facebook status in its various iterations over time, analyzing how subtle changes in how the empty field coaxes information affects the kind of updates and narratives that are registered. …

On the rapidly expanding social media in India, online users are witness to a routine exchange of abusive terms and accusations with choicest swearwords hurled even for the seemingly non-inflammatory political debates. This article draws upon anthropology of insult to uncover the distinctness, if at all, of online abuse as a means for political participation as well as for the encumbering it provokes and relations of domination it reproduces as a result. In so doing, the article critiques the conception of ludic as anti-hegemonic in the Bakhtin tradition, and develops an emic term “gaali” to signal the blurred boundaries between comedy, insult, shame, and abuse emerging on online media, which also incite gendered forms of intimidation. Gaali, it argues, is best conceptualized through the metaphor of “sound” as distinct from what recent new media studies theorize as “voice.”

Shared with permission of publisher. Published by Routledge in The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities on February 08, 2018, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781317549093

Drawing from the literature in Intercultural and New Media Studies (INMS), this study explores the SlutWalk social movement, a transnational movement of protest marches. The author conducted interviews with seven SlutWalk organizers from various cities in the United States to understand what culture SlutWalk organizers are fostering through their work and the role of new media communication in their organizational efforts. Results of the interpretative analysis suggest that although SlutWalk organizers foster a survivor culture through activities consistent with intercultural dialogue and third culture building, their use of various social media outlets might be motivated by various definitions of localized need. In addition, organizers highlight a tension between prioritizing more global survivor experiences over individual experiences with sexual assault and reveal the possibility for new media communication to enable anti-social cultural interactions. These findings contribute to the continued development of theorizing in INMS related to virtual third culture and continued scholarship exploring the intersections between new media and intercultural communication.

This paper explores whether or not our online social media persona is viewed as authentic. The selfie is a fundamental part of the structure of the online identity for young people in today’s digital world. The relationship between an individual’s self-identity in the physical face-to-face environment was analysed and compared to a carefully constructed, modified virtual representation in a selfie posted on social media platforms. Data was obtained through four focus groups at the University of Adelaide. Two key theoretical frameworks provide a basis for this study: Erving Goffman’s concept of the self as a performance, and Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking glass self. In examining the focus group discussions in light of these two frameworks as well as associated literature, we conclude that the authenticity of the selfie as a way of visualising a social media persona is subjective and dependent on the individual posting a selfie. Ultimately, authenticity involves a degree of subjectivity. It was on this basis that focus group participants argued that selfies could be considered authentic expressions of identity.

Thompson’s chapter focuses on her specialized Writing through Comics course, an upper-level course for a recently formed Writing Studies major that includes a track in Creative Writing and Technical Communication. As Thompson explains, this interdisciplinary course draws on the traditions of creative writing, visual design, art, rhetoric, and new media studies to present students with a historical and critical perspective on the art of writing through comics while introducing them to the foundational skills of writing in this literary genre. Built around a workshop format, Thompson’s students read, analyze, and respond to both creative and critical texts, which form the foundation for the writing and revision of their own original comic stories.

In recent years archaeologists have asserted the value of social media for achieving goals such as ‘shared authority’ and the ‘empowerment’ of various communities. These assertions often resemble techno-utopian discourse. However, it is essential to critically consider these assertions with reference to the important studies emerging from the fields of new media studies and Indigenous and collaborative archaeology, which have particularly emphasised the need for a greater awareness of sociopolitical contexts. Informed by this literature, this paper surveys some of the emerging and established uses of social media by archaeologists and museums, and proceeds to introduce factors that challenge the broadly positive discourses about the impact of social media on various communities. It also highlights the need for short- and long-term impact studies.

It is sometimes frustrating being a feminist scholar researching new and emerging technologies. Some of this frustration stems from the shocking amount of violent sexism and misogyny that exists in...

Introduction The effect of new media on the computerization of cultural practices has moved to a new level and has become more open, common, and prevailing as we deal with new forms of artistic creation and design processes in supporting higher education. Massive changes have occurred in the way frameworks for new media studies have been constructed, and they have had a significant effect on higher education in which sound studies are taught. In the past, sound has not received much attention in new media research and studies. Instead, the emphasis has been on visual processing and representations. Today, imagining an auditory paradigm that targets new modes of reflection in sound domain activities—activities that result in new forms of interactions in cultural, aesthetic, urban, and media contexts—is easy. Computational tools and new media play an increasing role in this process because they have become ubiquitous in people’s use of computers and new technologies to express thoughts and ideas.1 From an auditory media perspective, digitization of sound has engendered various opportunities in the production and distribution of art and design work. This new form in auditory media has resulted in a growing scholarly interest in interdisciplinary research and studies, just as it brings up further discussions about why sound should be considered a part of design practice and studies. Not just in terms of sound as a design practice, but design practices in general have begun to address demands for products, services, art, and entertainment—designed as part of everyday culture—that has emotive, functional, intriguing, and beautiful qualities.2 Sound as a design and mediating element can manifest the qualities of the design object and open up new ways for us to consider our interactions with it. With increased knowledge and understanding of sound as a design element in design studies, students become better equipped to enrich the usability, attractiveness, and communicative qualities of designed artifacts. 1 Lev Manovich, The Language of the New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001). 2 Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007).

Photoshopping of newlyweds, downloading the latest movies, teens flirting on social network sites and virtual gaming may seem like typical behavior in the West; yet in the context of a village in Mali or a slum in Mumbai, it is seen as unusual and perhaps an anomaly in their new media practice. In recent years, some studies (Ganesh, 2010; Mitra, 2005; Arora, 2010; 2012; Rangaswamy & Nair, 2012; Kavoori, Chadha & Arceneaux, 2006) have documented these leisure-oriented behaviors in the global south and argued for the need to emphasize and reposition these user practices within larger and contemporary discourses on new media consumption. Yet, for the most part, studies in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) have duly relegated such enactments as anecdotal. This is partly due to the fact that much of this research is driven by development agendas with a strong historical bias towards the socio-economic focus (Burrell & Anderson, 2009). Data that is not directly addressing project-based outcomes is sidelined. However, as emerging economies globalize and urbanize exponentially, and their users become more critical consumers and creative contributors of digital content or ‘prosumers’ (Bruns, 2008) and arguably free laborers (Scholz, 2012) instead of classic development beneficiaries, a paradigm shift is needed in approaching this new media audience with a more open-ended, explorative and pluralistic perspective. Thereby, this commentary piece serves as a call to rethink new media practices in the global south by looking at the implications and impacts of ICTs as leisure (entertainment/pleasure/ play) artifacts in the context of developing economies and emerging markets. We believe this line of inquiry is timely and enables a strategic bridging of the new media studies and development communication domain. Despite studies yielding insightful commentaries on ICTs in this arena, we believe resource constrained environments generating rich usages that are not overtly utilitarian have remained hitherto unexplored. A critical movement is needed among scholars focusing on emerging economies to re-conceptualize the mobilization and serviceability of ICTs to extend beyond a conservative understanding of developmental value. This will help in focusing on the heterogeneous and life enhancing aspects of technological use encompassing both experiential and purposive elements of ICT adoption: their interplay with systematic/systemic ecological constraints to provide an analytical and descriptive study of the technology spectrum and use in these contexts. To illustrate our argument, we offer some critical points of contention that need addressing and new avenues for research if we are to rethink, reframe and refresh our thinking on Web 2.0 enactments in the global south.

This article presents a narratological study of new media performance, arguing that the text in such works reflects a postnarrative perspective. In Blast Theory's Rider Spoke (2007-present) and David Pledger and Jeffrey Shaw's Eavesdrop (2004–05) the audience's co-creation of the text reveals a transition away from the binary of narrative and non-narrative, of narrative and database, and into the field of postnarrativity. When the grand design of an overarching narrative has been rejected, and focus placed on the small intricacies and nuances of various elements, meaning is not given but is developed, and performed, through the accumulation of layered effects. Using theories of non-traditional narrative and new media studies and referring to theorists such as Marie-Laure Ryan and Lev Manovich, this exploration maps the characteristics of the postnarrative encounter within new media performance and argues that the postnarrative text can be best examined through the analytical tools of poetry that look to u...

Television and media studies embraced diverse methodologies as scholars sought to interrogate textuality, social contexts, economic and industrial imperatives, and policy and audience formations. Media studies has always existed on the fuzzy boundary line (or border war, depending on your perspective) between the humanities and the social sciences; its hybrid nature has often provoked debates about the future of the field. Current prescriptions for the future of media and cultural studies from John Hartley and Graeme Turner provide new directions for researchers; our attempt here is to add to their provocations and think through some of the research and collaboration opportunities of digital media studies futures while pointing toward the economic, institutional, and disciplinary challenges of further enriching and hybridizing media studies. While we take seriously the critiques made by Graeme Turner (2012) against a small slice of scholarship on creative industries, new media studies, and/or convergence culture studies, we find it important to stress the variety and depth of digital media scholarship as well as the theoretical and methodological vigor of “new” media studies. We also want to stress a wider array of digital media scholarship than Turner acknowledges and point to the ways that critical race, feminist, queer, postcolonial and globalization scholars interrogate digital poetics and politics and open up new pedagogical and research horizons. As scholars interested in game studies and digital media studies, we argue that future media scholars will need to do even more to talk and work across disciplinary boundaries. Game studies and digital culture studies are not simply media studies. Computer scientists, software studies scholars, game designers, designers (in fields from interaction design to human computer interaction to industrial design), cultural anthropologists

Web 2.0 and social media applications that allow people to share, co-create and rate online content are crucial new ways for conservation organizations to reach audiences and for concerned individuals and organizations to be (seen as) ‘green’. These dynamics are rapidly changing the politics and political economy of nature conservation. By developing the concept of ‘nature 2.0’ and building on empirical insights, the article explores and theorizes these changes. It argues that online activities stimulate and complicate the commodification of biodiversity and help to reimagine ideas, ideals and experiences of (‘pristine’) nature. By exploring the implications of these arguments in relation to several key themes in new media studies, the article aims to provide building blocks for further investigations into the world of nature 2.0 and the effects of new media on human–nature dynamics more broadly.

This essay provides an overview of the theoretical perspectives and trends in the study of online community. It traces the genealogy of the community concept, addressing the conflicting views of community as a morally valued way of life and as a complex of social relationships in Western sociology. The essay also critiques the network approach to online community for its inadequate conceptualization of culture, which provides a particular tradition of meanings for social action. Lastly, under the rubrics of development and modernization, the paper contrasts the conception of online community as social network with what has been observed about the social and political lifeworlds of East Asian societies.

New media (ICT's) are transforming communication across cultures. Despite this revolution in cross cultural contact, communication researchers have largely ignored the impact of new media on intercultural communication. This groundbreaking article defines the parameters of a new field of inquiry called Intercultural New Media Studies (INMS), which explores the intersection between ICT's and intercultural communication. Composed of two research areas—(1) new media and intercultural communication theory and (2) culture and new media—INMS investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world. INMS promises to increase our understanding of intercultural communication in a new media age and is the next frontier in intercultural communication.

That a new media studies is needed is clear; that a rapid, inspiration-seeking survey can find this from South Asia in an international frame, after 10 years of the War of Terror, comes as no surprise. The obsessions and ideologies of television globally are still there to be critiqued, and this can be done with some of the authors considered here. That these readings are contingent only means that reviewing contemporary events through a distorting lens is also a part of the game and a wider remit of media studies is now urgent. From the anti-Muslim ultra-racist attacks by Breivik in Norway to the photographed-but-not-televised scenes in the White House situation room in May 2011, through the grainy aesthetic of green night vision combat patrol videos, there is a need to deploy critical ideas gleaned from the work of authors such as Ravi Sundaram, Arvind Rajagopal, M. Mhadava Prasad and Ashish Rajadhyaksha. The contemporary has a political purchase that was once national, but is now both wider and more sp...

China was first connected to the internet in 1994. In 1997, there were only about 670,000 users. By June 2011, China had over 485 million internet users, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the population. The rapid diffusion of the internet has had profound influences on all aspects of Chinese life. Scholars both in China and outside have responded to these new developments by producing a large amount of research. Not surprisingly, due to the internet’s connections with broad fields of social life, scholarly research on the topic is interdisciplinary, or rather, multi-disciplinary. Anthropologists (Zhou, 2006), political scientists (Zhang and Zheng, 2009; Zheng, 2008), communication scholars (Hu, 2008; Qiu, 2009), sociologists (Yang, 2009) have all contributed book-length studies. Their topics range from internet use among intellectuals (Zhou, 2006), migrant workers (Qiu, 2009), the impact of the internet on state–society relations (Zheng, 2008), internet governance and expression (Hu, 2008), to online activism (Yang, 2009). In addition, there are numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as frequent international conferences. The five books under review here represent the most recent additions to this lively field. All published since 2010, they cover some new issues and phenomena. Liu’s book on internet experiences among urban youth and Voci’s on digital videos, for example, are both notable as the first systematic studies of their respective subject matters. The authors of the five books come from different disciplinary backgrounds (film studies, education, as well as communication) and do not necessarily share the same theoretical concerns. 425146 NMS14110.1177/1461444811425146Review essaynew media & society 2011

The scholarly field of the digital humanities has recently expanded and integrated its fundamental concepts, historical coverage, relationship to social experience, scale of projects, and range of interpretive approaches. All this brings the overall field (including the related area of new media studies) to a tipping point where it has the potential not just to facilitate the work of the humanities but to represent the state of the humanities at large in its changing relation to higher education in the postindustrial state. Are the digital humanities up to this larger task?

This essay tests the claims made by some versions of convergence culture to be the next step forward for Cultural Studies. It does this by examining the teaching programmes that have been generated by various formations of convergence culture: programmes in new media studies, creative industries and digital media studies. The results of this examination are cause for concern: most of these programmes appear to have surrendered the space won for Cultural Studies in the university curriculum in favour of an instrumentalist focus on the training, rather than the education, of personnel to work in the emerging media industries. The essay argues therefore that while such developments may represent themselves as emerging from within Cultural Studies, in practice they have turned out to have very little to do with Cultural Studies at all.

Arguing that comic book culture has been one of convergence for many decades, this essay examines the history of this once dominant pop cultural form to reflect on current debates around new media. With a focus on three eras within the comic book industry, the author gleans five lessons for today's media practitioners, theorists, and educators. The author is especially interested in the gradual institutionalization of new media and in the impact and importance of fans. Ultimately this brief history of the comic book industry recommends for the contemporary moment a more cautious approach to new media and new media studies than some of the utopian rhetoric of the last decade has offered, with a greater emphasis on fair labor practices and movement toward an appropriate legal regime.

Facebook and other social media have been hailed as delivering the promise of new, socially engaged educational experiences for students in undergraduate, self-directed, and other educational sectors. A theoretical and historical analysis of these media in the light of earlier media transformations, however, helps to situate and qualify this promise. Specifically, the analysis of dominant social media presented here questions whether social media platforms satisfy a crucial component of learning – fostering the capacity for debate and disagreement. By using the analytical frame of media theorist Raymond Williams, with its emphasis on the influence of advertising in the content and form of television, we weigh the conditions of dominant social networking sites as constraints for debate and therefore learning. Accordingly, we propose an update to Williams' erudite work that is in keeping with our findings. Williams' critique focuses on the structural characteristics of sequence, rhythm, and flow of television as a cultural form. Our critique proposes the terms information design, architecture, and above all algorithm, as structural characteristics that similarly apply to the related but contemporary cultural form of social networking services. Illustrating the ongoing salience of media theory and history for research in e-learning, the article updates Williams' work while leveraging it in a critical discussion of the suitability of commercial social media for education. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Lowe is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC)-funded postdoctoral research fellow in media studies at the New Media Studies Research Centre, TRU, Canada. Lowe recently completed an SSHRCC and British Council ORS-funded PhD at the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, UK.)

In this interview Jon Lewis reflects on his period as editor of Cinema journal and discusses changes in the historical-critical emphases at play in the field of film and media studies as it begins to engage more directly with the claims of television studies and the emerging field of new media studies. He further discusses the shifts he has observed in film and media studies as an area of academic publication, over the course of his academic career, noting the impact of the current context of more limited or competitive publication possibilities on younger academics hoping for a career in the profession. Finally, he discusses his own recent research and publications, and speculates on two further, ongoing areas of research: his work on HUAC, and even more specifically his work on the memoirs of HUAC survivors; and his involvement with research into the place of soccer in US sporting and cultural life.

In the early years of the Internet, many people hoped the Internet would erase social inequalities. A long legacy of critical feminist work challenges this dream, in some cases theorizing new utopi...

Death and bereavement are human experiences that new media helps facilitate alongside creating new social grief practices that occur online. This study investigated how people’s postings and tweets facilitated the communication of grief after pop music icon Michael Jackson died. Drawing on past grief research, religion, and new media studies, a thematic analysis of 1,046 messages was conducted on three mediated sites (Twitter, TMZ.com, and Facebook). Results suggested that social media served as grieving spaces for people to accept Jackson’s death rather than denying it or expressing anger over his passing. The findings also illustrate how interactive exchanges online helped recycle news and “resurrected” the life of Jackson. Additionally, as fans of deceased celebrities create and disseminate web-based memorials, new social media practices such as “Michael Mondays” synchronize tweets within everyday life rhythms and foster practices to hasten the grieving process.