This article examines the transformative effects of platforms on cultural production through an analysis of the LINE “super app.” Super apps are apps that do-everything; mega-platforms unto ...themselves. They are particularly prevalent in East Asia. Like China’s WeChat or South Korea’s KakaoTalk, Japan’s LINE has evolved from a single purpose chat app to the do-everything platform for everyday cultural and economic activities. It is also the very reason for the global proliferation of stickers or large-size emoji in other chat apps, from Apple’s iMessage to Facebook’s Messenger to Tencent’s WeChat. This article offers a close examination of LINE to highlight and theorize the process of the “platformization of cultural production.” To do so, it traces Japan’s longer history of platforms going back to the i-mode mobile platform launched in 1999, and examines LINE’s regionally specific sticker-oriented strategies in East Asia. With a focus on the entrepreneurial work of sticker designers as cultural producers, this article also mobilizes LINE to both highlight the specificities of this platform and contest the excessive attention paid to platforms from Silicon Valley, or, at best, their Chinese counterparts. LINE and the regional convergences of super apps in East Asia are a potent reminder of the need to analyze platforms outside of the bi-polar hegemony of the United States versus Chinese tech world—which increasingly frames journalistic discourse and academic research—and of the need to attend to the historical and regional particularities of platforms and their cultural impacts.
A key component of social life, discourse mediates the processes of class formation and social conflict. Drawing on dialogic theory and building on the work of E. P. Thompson, Marc W. Steinberg ...argues for the importance of incorporating discursive analysis into the historical reconstruction of class experience. Amending models of collective action, he offers new insights on how discourse shapes the dynamics of popular protest. To support his thesis, he presents studies of two English trade groups in the 1820s: cotton spinners from Lancashire factory towns and London silk weavers. For each case, Steinberg closely examines the labor process, industrial organization, social life, community politics, discursive struggles, and collective actions. By describing how workers shared experiences of exploitation and oppression in their daily lives, he shows how discourses of contention were products of struggle and how they framed possibilities for collective action. Embracing work in literary theory, sociocultural psychology, and cultural studies, Fighting Words claims a middle ground between postmodern and materialist analyses.
In Anime’s Media Mix, Marc Steinberg convincingly shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Engaging with film, animation, and media studies, as well as analyses of consumer ...culture and theories of capitalism, Steinberg offers the first sustained study of the Japanese mode of convergence that informs global media practices to this day.
Introduction Although smoking prevalence has been declining for smokers without mental illness, it has been static for those with mental illness. The purpose of this study is to examine differences ...in smoking rates and trajectories of smoking prevalence in the often-overlooked population of smokers with poor mental health, compared with those with better mental health. Methods Data were obtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 2001 to 2010 to examine the relationship between poor mental health and current, daily, and intermittent tobacco use in New Jersey. Data were analyzed in 2014. Results During 2001–2010, current, daily, and intermittent smoking prevalence was higher in participants with poor mental health than those with better mental health. In addition, with the exception of 2 years, prevalence rates remained unchanged in this 10-year period for those with poor mental health while they significantly decreased for those with better mental health. Conclusions The disparity in which smokers with poor mental health are more likely to be current smokers and less likely to be never smokers as compared with those with better mental health has increased over time. These data suggest the need to more closely examine tobacco control and treatment policies in smokers with behavioral health issues. It is possible that tobacco control strategies are not reaching those with poor mental health, or, if they are, their messages are not translating into successful cessation.
This Viewpoint proposes a model of cannabis use disorder diagnosis in the context of cannabis for therapeutic purposes that is based on
DSM-5
model of diagnosing substance use disorder in the context ...of prescribed medication use
Changes in tobacco products, use patterns, and assessment technology in the last 15 years led the SRNT Treatment Research Network to call for an update to the 2003 SRNT recommendations for assessing ...abstinence in clinical trials of smoking cessation interventions.
The SRNT Treatment Research Network convened a group of investigators with decades of experience in conducting tobacco treatment clinical trials. To arrive at the updated recommendations, the authors reviewed the recommendations of the prior SRNT Workgroup as well as current literature. Ten additional experts in the field provided feedback on this paper and these recommendations.
With respect to defining abstinence, the authors recommend: 1) continuing to use the definition of no use of combustible tobacco products (regardless of use of non-combustible tobacco products e.g., snus and alternative products e.g., e-cigarettes); and collecting additional data to permit alternate abstinence definitions: 2) no use of combustible or smokeless tobacco products, and 3) no use of combustible or smokeless tobacco products or alternative products, as appropriate for the research question being addressed. The authors also recommend reporting point-prevalence and prolonged abstinence at multiple time points (end of treatment, ≥3 months after the end of treatment, and ≥6 months post-quit or post-treatment initiation).
Defining abstinence requires specification of which products a user must abstain from using, the type of abstinence (i.e., point-prevalence, continuous), and the duration of abstinence. These recommendations are intended to serve as guidelines for investigators as they collect the necessary data to accurately describe participants' abstinence during smoking cessation clinical trials.
This paper provides updated recommendations for defining abstinence in the context of smoking cessation treatment clinical trials.
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