Commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic must necessarily consider the medical issues in social and political context. This paper discusses one important dimension of the context, the long-term history of ...human activity as intrinsically technological in its nature. The pandemic has accelerated the use of technology to mediate relations between people at a distance. This involves not only a change in the skills people have (though acquiring these skills has become the central project of work for many people), but changes the sort of person they are. Our notions of closeness and distance, or of touching and being touched, and so on, refer simultaneously to states that are spatial and emotional, factual and evaluative. Inquiry into the differences in human relations where there is physical presence and where there is not raises very significant questions. What are the differences and why are they thought, and felt, to matter? What are the differences when the relationship is supposed to be a therapeutic one? What are the financial and political interests at work in enforcing relations at a distance by new media, i.e., mediated relations? How is a persons agency affected by a lack of freedom to move or a lack of face-to-face contact? What happens to all those human relations for which physical presence was previously the norm, relations such as those performed in the rituals of birth, marriage and death, or in activities like sport and the arts? Can it be said that new technologies involve a loss of soul? The present paper seeks to provide a reflective and open-ended framework for asking such questions.
Innovative uses of punctuation in online communication have become increasingly visible in research and public awareness since the 2000s, whereas studies on the innovative use of tildes (“∼”) in ...digital use remain scarce. Drawing on a data set of 543 Chinese WeChat messages with sentence-final tildes, this article investigates the uses and functions of innovative tildes in online communication using quantitative data and follow-up interviews. The findings suggest that: (1) The innovative tildes are deployed in messages implying sounds and performing speech acts in online communication, and they are more frequently used in speech acts (e.g., expressives and directives in particular). (2) The innovative tildes convey sound extension, i.e., to compensate for the loss of audio information in online communication and reproduce elongated sounds; pragmatic function, i.e., to enhance or mitigate the illocutionary forces of speech acts; and entertaining function, i.e., to make messages informal, vivid, joyful, and interesting. (3) The innovative tildes are pragmalicalized as a result of their semiotic features and politeness motivation of messengers for maintaining rapport and achieving successful online communication.
Abstract Adolescents far outnumber adults in their use of e-communication technologies, such as instant messaging and social network sites. In this article, we present an integrative model that helps ...us to understand both the appeal of these technologies and their risks and opportunities for the psychosocial development of adolescents. We first outline how the three features (anonymity, asynchronicity, and accessibility) of online communication stimulate controllability of online self-presentation and self-disclosure among adolescents. We then review research on the risks and opportunities of online self-presentation and self-disclosure for the three components of adolescents' psychosocial development, including identity (self-unity, self-esteem), intimacy (relationship formation, friendship quality, cyberbullying), and sexuality (sexual self-exploration, unwanted sexual solicitation). Existing research suggests several opportunities of online communication, such as enhanced self-esteem, relationship formation, friendship quality, and sexual self-exploration. It also yields evidence of several risks, including cyberbullying and unwanted sexual solicitation. We discuss the shortcomings of existing research, the possibilities for future research, and the implications for educators and health care professionals.
Echo chambers in online social networks, in which users prefer to interact only with ideologically-aligned peers, are believed to facilitate misinformation spreading and contribute to radicalize ...political discourse. In this paper, we gauge the effects of echo chambers in information spreading phenomena over political communication networks. Mining 12 million Twitter messages, we reconstruct a network in which users interchange opinions related to the impeachment of the former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. We define a continuous political leaning parameter, independent of the network’s structure, that allows to quantify the presence of echo chambers in the strongly connected component of the network. These are reflected in two well-separated communities of similar sizes with opposite views of the impeachment process. By means of simple spreading models, we show that the capability of users in propagating the content they produce, measured by the associated spreading capacity, strongly depends on their attitude. Users expressing pro-impeachment leanings are capable to transmit information, on average, to a larger audience than users expressing anti-impeachment leanings. Furthermore, the users’ spreading capacity is correlated to the diversity, in terms of political position, of the audience reached. Our method can be exploited to identify the presence of echo chambers and their effects across different contexts and shed light upon the mechanisms allowing to break echo chambers.
Romantic jealousy, a complex response to a real or perceived threat to a romantic relationship, can have serious negative consequences for individuals, partners and perceived rivals. The likelihood ...of a jealous response is heightened among individuals who experience attachment anxiety, and online communication and social media provide unique fodder for romantic jealousy. The purpose of the current study is to test whether the association between attachment anxiety and online jealousy (jealous response to ambiguous hypothetical online scenarios) is moderated by negative attitudes about online communication. Individuals in dating relationships were asked about attachment anxiety and attitudes about online communication (i.e., apprehension and concern about misunderstandings) as well as emotional, cognitive, and behavioral online jealousy. Hierarchical linear regression revealed an attachment anxiety-attitude interaction, such that the link between attachment anxiety and jealousy was stronger for participants with relatively low levels of negative attitudes about online communication compared to participants with relatively high levels of negative attitudes. The current study expands knowledge about attachment anxiety and jealousy in the context of online communication and social media, and highlights the importance of considering attitudes about online communication when studying relationship processes in the digital arena.
Local Action Groups (LAGs) play an important role in the development of rural territories, by engaging communities in the creation of local identity. The LAGs have the great advantage of being in ...direct contact with the population, of understanding the needs of the local communities through direct interaction and involvement. They have the freedom to collaborate with public institutions, private partners, and local actors, to identify ideas and solutions that lead to the development of the final beneficiary, the rural area. By their nature, the LAGs aim at building a tight community, by being open to efficient communication. Their strategies must consider the characteristics of the target audience and their needs. The development of various online communication tools allows efficient and fruitful interaction if the communicators have the know-how, resources, and motivation. This paper aims at analyzing how the LAGs organize their public communication, both through websites and social media. A content analysis was applied to 65 LAGs, covering the Center and North-West Romanian Development Regions, and to 27 Facebook pages, covering the 2017-2022 timeframe. The results show that LAGs need a significant enhancement in the way they communicate, in order to unite the community around them.
The 2020 Covid-19 global pandemic has greatly impacted societies around the world, where governmental strategies to curb and control the outbreak have resulted in citizens being unable to attend ...public businesses and spaces. For musicians who rely on touring as a dominant part of their income, the pandemic has had a hugely negative effect on their finances since they can no longer play face-to-face shows. However, a number of artists have turned to digital media to remedy this, performing online to audiences via Web 2.0 platforms. To better understand this cultural phenomenon, the article introduces the concept of portal shows that employ a converge between traditional live gigs, screen media and new media technologies. Analysing the textual, affective, performative and economic dynamics of portal shows, the article examines three differing case studies: Code Orange’s album release show on Twitch.TV, Beach Slang’s acoustic performance on StageIt and Delta Sleep’s in-store show on Instagram. In doing so, the article argues portal shows offer novel and nuanced ways artists and audiences can engage with one another through spatial convergence afforded by video streaming technologies and digital interfaces. Such live events also offer just-in-time fan engagement but does so within a digital transcultural remit, aiding the support of virtual scenes. As a result, the article expands on what is considered pandemic media and subsequent audience affective registers and enriches the study of the music industry’s engagement with digital media and wider convergence cultures more generally.
Evidence indicated that emojis could influence sarcasm comprehension and sentence processing in English. However, the effect of emojis on Chinese sarcasm comprehension remains unclear. Therefore, ...this study investigated the impact of the smiley emoji position and semantics on eye movements and subjective assessments during Chinese online communication. Our results showed that the presence of a smiley emoji improved participants' interpretation and perception of sarcasm. We also found shorter dwell times on sarcastic words compared to literal words under the comment-final emoji condition. Additionally, we clarified the time course of emojified sentence processing during Chinese reading: the presence of emoji initially decreased first fixation durations compared to the absence of emoji and then the comment-final emoji shortened dwell times on sarcastic words compared to literal words in the critical area of interest. Our findings suggested that the comment-final emoji was the preferable choice for avoiding semantic comprehension bias in China.
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