This article explores the workings of memes as cultural capital in web-based communities. A grounded analysis of 4chan’s /b/ board reveals three main formulations of memes as capital, delineating ...them as subcultural knowledge, unstable equilibriums, and discursive weapons. While the first formulation follows well-documented notions about subcultural knowledge as a basis for boundary work, the latter two focus on the dualities intrinsic to Internet memes. The contradiction between following conventions and supplying innovative content leads to memes’ configuration as unstable equilibriums, triggering constant conflict about their “correct” use. Paradoxically, this struggle highlights collective identity, as it keeps shared culture at the center of discussion. Similarly, when memes are used as jabs at the most intense points of arguments, they function simultaneously as signifiers of superior authoritative status and as reminders of common affinity. Thus, the dualities underpinning memes’ structure lead to their performance as contested cultural capital.
As Godwin’s Law states, “as a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person being compared to Hitler, or another Nazi reference, increases.” However, even though the theoretical ...probability of an infinitely long conversation including any term should approach 1.0, in practice, conversations cannot be infinite in length, and this long-accepted axiom is impossible to observe. By analyzing 199 million Reddit posts, we note that, after a certain point, the probability of observing the terms “Nazi” or “Hitler” actually decreases significantly with conversation length. In addition, a corollary of Godwin’s Law holds that “the invocation of Godwin’s Law is usually done by an individual that is losing the argument,” and, thus, that comparisons to Nazis are a signal of a discussion’s end. In other words, comparing one’s interlocutor to Hitler is supposed to be a conversation-killer. While it is difficult to determine whether a discussion on a given topic ended or not in a large dataset, we observe a marked increase in conversation length when the words “Hitler” or “Nazi” are newly interjected. Given that both of these observations challenge widely accepted and intuitive truisms, other words were run through the same set of tests. Within the context of the initial question, these results suggest that it is not inevitable that conversations eventually disintegrate into reductio ad Hitlerum, and that such comparisons are not conversation-killers. The results moreover suggest that we may underestimate, in the popular imagination, how much conversations may actually become narrower and therefore may tend to have a more impoverished or limited vocabulary as they stretch on. All of these observations provoke questions for further research.
This work explores how the Narcissus myth has been inaccurately adopted by media, specifically in the reporting of selfie-related deaths. Narcissus, a boy in love with his own image, loved himself so ...much he would not share his image with others. Considering sharing is an integral part of the selfie phenomenon, this work seeks to dismantle the narcissism misuse in media coverage of selfie-related deaths. Through critical textual analysis of six major newspapers, I argue that exhibitionism is a more accurate critique of the selfie. Furthermore, it is a critique that fits more in line with the digital age, as opposed to the analog nature of narcissism.
Este estudo objetivou identificar elementos constituintes de processos formativos de professores para a cultura digital, em perspectivas diferentes da visão instrumental. Trata-se de revisão ...integrativa realizada com buscas no Portal de Periódicos CAPES e na plataforma SciELO. Foram selecionados dez artigos publicados em periódicos brasileiros entre 2017 e 2022. As análises identificaram os elementos: reflexão no processo formativo; ampliação dos sentidos sobre Tecnologias Digitais de Informação e Comunicação (TDIC); cidadania digital; autoria; autonomia; letramento digital; percepção sobre as novas gerações; práticas do formador; aprendizagem colaborativa; postura de aprendiz permanente. Observou-se ser possível explorar perspectivas que redimensionam a visão instrumental na formação de professores para a cultura digital, na busca pelo desenvolvimento da consciência crítica sobre os impactos desses artefatos na vida, no social e na educação, bem como pela adoção de posturas reflexivas, autônomas e cidadãs, de modo a se apropriarem das TDIC pela problematização de suas implicações no cotidiano.
Un'analisi delle trasformazioni intervenute nell'ultimo ventennio nel campo della lettura deve partire da una valutazione del ruolo che alcuni fattori esterni hanno avuto sui consumi culturali e sui ...comportamenti individuali, tra i quali spicca la pervasività della rete e l'utilizzo intensivo dei social network. La rete ha infilato nelle nostre tasche un universo sconfinato di informazioni, saperi, distrazioni, bisogni e piaceri, che in poco tempo ha reso irrimediabilmente vecchio tutto ciò che esisteva prima e ha fatto perdere al libro – almeno agli occhi dei più giovani – la centralità che questo strumento ha esercitato per secoli nella comunicazione culturale e nei processi formativi, per far posto a nuovi ‘stili conoscitivi'. Le misure di distanziamento imposte dal Covid-19 hanno inoltre provocato una forte e improvvisa accelerazione del trasferimento sulla rete di molte attività umane, scaraventandoci in un mondo sconosciuto e in un clima da fantascienza, come quello descritto nel film e nella serie TV Stargate. In questo contesto, il mondo dell'editoria chiede provvedimenti che incentivino la domanda e un sostegno alle imprese, ma è necessaria una progettualità di più ampio respiro che investa la produzione e l'offerta editoriale, le modalità di circolazione e commercializzazione dei prodotti e i contesti in cui si sviluppano le pratiche di lettura, sfruttando le potenzialità del digitale e incuriosendo nuove fasce di lettori. Le trasformazioni più significative saranno tuttavia il risultato degli stili di vita che si diffonderanno nell'era post-Covid: ciò riguarderà l'assetto urbano, la sopravvivenza delle librerie di prossimità e dei servizi pubblici territoriali, come le biblioteche di base.
Digitalization has fundamentally changed organizational structures and processes and affects how people interact with each other, thereby impacting organizational culture. Given the pervasiveness of ...digitalization today, it is useful to study its profound effects on organizational culture through new theoretical lenses. In this paper, we offer a fresh perspective on organizational culture in the digital world. We accomplish this by integrating two competing perspectives and then leveraging the new perspective to identify digital cultural resources and propose a conceptualization of digital culture. We frame our conceptualization around the cultural resources for digitalization and describe four digital culture archetypes.
The digital service has firmly entered all areas of social and economic activity, including education. The activity of a modern teacher in the digital educational environment is its integral ...component. The development of "digital citizenship" as a whole largely depends on the formation of the digital culture of a teacher as a translator of the ideas of the state educational policy. The relevance of considering the problem of digital culture formation among teachers is due to the following contradictions: between the increasing importance of a teacher in the process of digitalization of education and poor development of the content of its digital culture and its components as determinants of professional pedagogical activity in a digital educational environment; between the growth of digitalization of the educational process and the insufficient level of formation of digital culture among teachers. These contradictions form the basis of our research, the problem of which is to reveal the features of the digital culture of a modern teacher as a resource for his professional activity in the context of the digital transformation of the educational space. The purpose of the research is to theoretically substantiate the essence and component composition of the digital culture of a modern teacher as a resource for his professional activities in a digital educational environment. This goal was achieved through the use of the following research methods: literature analysis, classification, modeling, description, ways of visualizing data in the form of figures and tables. The results of the research: 1) the analysis of scientific sources has made it possible to determine the conceptual approaches to considering the problem of the digital culture of a teacher, which made it possible to accumulate information and develop a map of the component composition of a teacher's digital culture; 2) the basic components of a teacher's digital culture have been theoretically substantiated: digital literacy and motivational-value attitude; 3) a procedure for assessing the level of formation of a teacher's digital culture has been proposed. Key conclusions: 1) the map of the component composition of the digital culture of a teacher is an integrative information about the essence and composition of the digital culture of a teacher and includes the types of digital competence, their corresponding competencies, indicators and digital skills; 2) the basic components of a teacher's digital culture are digital literacy and a motivationalvalue attitude, each of which is represented by indicators and digital skills corresponding to it; 3) the methodology for assessing the formation of a teacher's digital culture includes a level scale and the calculation of an individual index of digital competence. The information contained in the article can be used as the basis for developing a program of advanced training courses and professional retraining of teachers aimed at creating a digital culture in the educational environment.
This paper constructs the model of network economics to study the effect of different levels of network convergence on the digital culture industry. Then uses regression models and mediating effect ...models to test the effect mechanism of network convergence on the digital culture industry of China. This paper used panel data to conduct an empirical study. The data in this paper were quarterly. The time range was from the first quarter of 2009 to the third quarter of 2013 for 19 quarters.The three data types in econometrics are time series data, cross-sectional data, and panel data.The main conclusions are as follows. Network convergence brings positive policy effects and adverse capital effects. The impact of network convergence on firm performance of the digital culture industry is not statistically significant, and this effect also has no indirect effects on the test of mediating effect. However, network convergence indirectly leads to the reduction of operating costs of the digital culture industry. The indirect effect is brought by the chain mediating effect of policy effect and capital effect. The study could provide a reference for other countries and regions. Meanwhile, it can be used to analyze the impact of different media convergence on digital industries.
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