Internet Culture

Cultura e Internet: il patrimonio culturale siciliano e la sua visibilità sul web

by Elisa Bonacini

StrumentiRes Anno IV | n° 1 | Febbraio 2012; ISSN  2279-6851

Si presentano i risultati dell'indagine sulla visibilità online del patrimonio culturale siciliano (realizzata nel... more Si presentano i risultati dell'indagine sulla visibilità online del patrimonio culturale siciliano (realizzata nel volume "La visibilit@ sul web del patrimonio culturale siciliano. Criticità e prospettive attraverso un survey on-line con Guida multimediale ai musei siciliani sul web"), soffermandosi sulle principali criticità e illustrando le potenzialità non adeguatamente sfruttate della comunicazione culturale sul web.

Reading in the Future: Literacy and the Time of the Internet

by David R Cole

Abstract: David R. Cole’s “Reading in the Future: Literacy and
the Time of the Internet” locates the literacies... more Abstract: David R. Cole’s “Reading in the Future: Literacy and
the Time of the Internet” locates the literacies of the internet
– itself read as “the end game of western technology” or the
Machina Mundi, the Great Chain of the World that has a centre
that is everywhere and a circumference that is nowhere – in a
contradictory space. But Cole also self-consciously locates his
own writing at a moment in time when the initial technological
hype of the internet is subsiding in the face of the boredom of
informational overload and the internet is emerging as both an
“unlimited realm of resource” and the site of a brand of “western
nihilism containing a sense of relativism, collapse of meaning
and cultural schizo-cynicism”. Remarkably, in the course of his
argument, Coles does not appropriate the internet, does not
simplify it according to his own vision of its potential or
mission – but allows it to remain a place of cultural
schizophrenia, to be navigated only by means of the corresponding learning, acceptance, and practice of “schizo literacy”.

Do privacy settings work in the age of online reputation management?

by Sean Rintel

News publication - TheConversation.edu.au - November 4, 2011

A UK employment tribunal recently ruled that posting derogatory comments on Facebook merited a gross misconduct... more A UK employment tribunal recently ruled that posting derogatory comments on Facebook merited a gross misconduct dismissal for one Apple Store employee. [... the ruling] establishes some worrying issues for users, social network sites, and the public relations practice of reputation management.

Unthink rethinks online identity – and fronts up to Facebook and Google+

by Sean Rintel

News publication - TheConversation.edu.au - November 3, 2011

On October 25, Unthink invited public beta users to put aside their YASNS (Yet Another Social Network Site) fatigue.... more On October 25, Unthink invited public beta users to put aside their YASNS (Yet Another Social Network Site) fatigue. [...] But Google+ is experiencing roller-coaster metrics and Facebook’s metrics are levelling out or even falling. So what does the Orwellian-sounding Unthink have to offer that’s different?

Is StumbleUpon trumping Facebook in the internet attention wars?

by Sean Rintel

News publication - TheConversation.edu.au - 30 August 2011

The latest salvo in the internet attention wars has come in the form of figures from StatCounter. A relatively small... more The latest salvo in the internet attention wars has come in the form of figures from StatCounter. A relatively small content driving service called StumbleUpon drove more than 50% of all social media referral traffic in the US, news the company’s founder and CEO Garrett Camp was quick to tweet. In other words, Camp claims his company now generates more more referrals than Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Digg combined.
Facebook, second place in the US statistics, drove almost 39% of American social media referral traffic (but is still the number one social media site globally). To put this in perspective, Facebook claims around 750 million accounts. StumbleUpon claims around 10 million. Goliath, meet David. The StumbleUpon figures represent a new front in the debate over content freedom versus focus. But they do not offer an easy solution.

Obama? Norway killings? London riots? You can has a meme for that …

by Sean Rintel

News publication - TheConversation.edu.au - 15 August 2011

Alongside serious reportage of bad news, you’ve probably come across at least one crisis meme that treats that bad... more Alongside serious reportage of bad news, you’ve probably come across at least one crisis meme that treats that bad news with a dose of ghoulish humour. Just hours after the Daily Mail printed the image of a London looter the version above appeared. It’s funny, timely, and was rapidly shared online. Similar images can be found for other recent bad news, such as the Norwegian mass killings or the US debt crisis. Why does internet social commentary take these precise forms? And why does that matter?

The Cyberart of Corpos Informáticos

by Margaret Anne Clarke

Published in Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman (Eds) (2007) Latin American Cyberliterature and Cyberculture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 70 - 86

This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the website more This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the website www.corpos.org, a website constructed by the Brazilian performance and installation art collective Corpos Informáticos. The chapter treats some central themes of Corpos Informáticos' work: the treatment of the human body and ontological status in relation to broadcasting media and contemporary technology, proposing an alternative conceptualisation called "symbolic ecology" which allows for no fundamental schism between the human, the organic and the technologies that both create. The website also exemplifies, through a process of dual construction by its creators and the 'internaut' or viewer-participant, a redimension of the body effected by the affordances provided by framing, looping flash and hypertext. The chapter also considers other philosophical conceptions proposed by the collective's writings and web art, partly informed by the work of Gilles Deleuze, concerning the nature of knowledge itself, and the concepts of evolution of life and society fundamental to Western thought.

Potenzialità economiche della cultura e v@lorizzazione negata in Sicilia

by Elisa Bonacini

paper presented at "Un'altra Siracusa - Primo Incontro: Il 'valore' della cultura per il turismo", Siracusa, Museo Archeologico Paolo Orsi, 21 ottobre 2011

Dopo un inquadramento generale sul potenziale economico inespresso del nostro patrimonio culturale, il contributo... more Dopo un inquadramento generale sul potenziale economico inespresso del nostro patrimonio culturale, il contributo approfondisce il ‘peso’ economico di Internet e l’arretratezza digitale dell’Italia, che corre il rischio di entrare a far parte di un Terzo Mondo Digitale anche a causa di una serie di impedimenti legislativi allo sviluppo. Infine, si anticipano alcuni risultati di una ricerca in c.d.s. (La visibilit@ sul web del patrimonio culturale siciliano: criticità e prospettive attraverso un survey on-line. Con Guida multimediale ai musei siciliani sul web) nella quale si evidenzia come, tranne alcune rare eccezioni, sia ancora scadente la qualità della comunicazione del patrimonio culturale siciliano.

Why aren't we using Google+?

by Sean Rintel

News publication - TheConversation.edu.au - 17 October, 2011

Features are not friends. That’s the simple message to Google+ from 40 University of Queensland students after using... more Features are not friends. That’s the simple message to Google+ from 40 University of Queensland students after using the system since its invite-only launch in July.

Analysing New Learning Culture

by Thomas Richter

Richter, T., Ehlers, U.D. & Helmstedt, C. (2010). In: Tait, A. & Szücs, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the EDEN 2010 Annual Conference, Valencia, Spain, European Distance and E-Learning Network. Book of Abstracts, p. 3. Paper on attached CD-Rom.

In this paper, we first of all deduce factors for the analysis of learning culture from HOFSTEDE’S onion model of... more In this paper, we first of all deduce factors for the analysis of learning culture from HOFSTEDE’S onion model of culture (Hofstede, Hofstede, 2005) and build a model of learning culture corresponding to HOFSTEDE’S model. Secondly, we are going to introduce and describe how learning scenarios change from an e-learning 1.0 to an e-learning 2.0 scenario, and – in a third section – describe the latter using elements of a learning culture model for a cultural analysis.

Knowledge transmission in cyberspace. Discourse analysis of professional web forums as internet subgenre

by Cristina Varga

PhD thesis, published in 2011

Since the beginning of the Internet, its features have been used to communicate knowledge between researchers in... more Since the beginning of the Internet, its features have been used to communicate knowledge between researchers in different universities or scientific laboratories, and later, with the increasing growth of the World Wide Web, knowledge became a collective good shared by its users. The current investigation has three main objectives: a) to describe the professional web forum as a discursive subgenre of the web, b) to illustrate the mechanism of knowledge transmission on the professional web forums, and c) to observe the variation across languages of the professional web forum as a subgenre of the knowledge transmission process.
In the analysis of the linguistic material of the professional web forum corpus we used a theoretical framework based on different linguistic trends and theories currently developed in France.
The analysed material consists in a comparable texts corpus, organised, in five sub-corpora, in function of the language the participants in the web forums use to communicate: English, Spanish, French, Romanian, and Catalan.
The analysis of the linguistic material of the professional web forum corpus provides essential information concerning the discursive features of the knowledge transmission process in different languages.

Copyright, Freedom of Expression® and Artistic Communication in the Internet Era: The Recorded Music

by Alexandros Baltzis

Deliyanni, Elsa; Baltzis, Alexandros; Synodinou, Tatiana
Paper at the international conference "The Impact of Internet on the Mass Media in Europe"
European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST - Action A20), Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Delphi, April 26-28, 2006.

Based on the case of music in the internet, this paper explores the framework and the parameters of the conflict... more Based on the case of music in the internet, this paper explores the framework and the parameters of the conflict arising between copyright (in the sense of the protection granted by law to the authors by allowing them to prohibit unauthorized use of their works) and the right of the citizens to be informed. It presents some paradoxes that often result during litigation the degree to which the established legal approach of the peer-to-peer music file exchange complies with recent developments.

The paper discusses also the challenges that the internet creates for the recording industry, the phases of the "war on copyright infringement" in which the industry is involved, as well as its strategy. A major asymmetry is actually established in this field: the very notion of intellectual property - being socially constructed (and therefore culturally determined) - is incompatible with new types of practice and new forms of culture that proliferate in the internet and the public "cybersphere". Furthermore, it is incompatible also with cultures ignoring the concepts of individual creativity and of the autonomous and accomplished individual artwork.

Finally, the paper discusses some issues which are really at stake and extend far beyond the industry concerns about lost profits.

Animal 2.0

by Natalie Gilbert

The Internet has provided people with a new way to view animals, but how does our online activity compare to our... more The Internet has provided people with a new way to view animals, but how does our online activity compare to our offline viewing and do we witness a greater abundance of animal videos now than we have ever done historically? Is online content more or less factual than what has gone before? Experts have questioned whether the ethics of some traditional wildlife filmmakers are any better than the producers of animal videos shared online by amateurs, but the key consideration is how do we – if we can at all, censor and control animal footage? How does a digital audience react to animal footage and what draws the largest number of viewers? Evidence from YouTube suggests that the number of viewers does not equate to popularity and approval. Insight from cyborg anthropology and results from digital ethnography are presented to maximise our understanding of the phenomenal impact of the Internet on a global community before introducing some animal video case studies and the reaction to them.

Playing With Jane Austen: Gender Identity and the Narrowing of Interpretation

by Elise Barker

Pictures on walls? Producing, pricing and collecting the street art screen print

by Luke Dickens

When graffiti writing was transferred onto canvas for sale during the Manhattan art boom of the 1980s, it was widely... more When graffiti writing was transferred onto canvas for sale during the Manhattan art boom of the 1980s, it was widely felt to have ‘sold out’ to the exploitative interests of the art establishment and become a ‘post‐graffiti’ art movement. In contrast, recent British street art demonstrates the capacity to be both more critical and complicit in the influential spheres of art and commerce. Yet, despite growing recognition of these ‘new directions in graffiti art’, there remains little critical attention to how such post‐graffiti aesthetic practices are mobilized, not simply by the heroic tactics of the lone male street artist, but by a significant body of cultural intermediaries, institutions and firms. Established in 2002 by the notorious street artist, Banksy, and his agent, the photographer Steve Lazarides, Pictures on Walls Ltd (POW) was a company that in many ways stood at the cutting edge of these developments. As such, it serves as a rich case study of the ways street art can be understood as a sophisticated form of creative industry. Specifically, as a key way of buying into the street art scene, the limited edition POW screen print is used here to exemplify a cultural economy that is both rooted in the contemporary city, and poised at an intersection between the urban and the virtual. Following the printing, pricing and collecting of such products, this research traces street art from its production in the fashionable art district of Hoxton, east London, and into the everyday lives of a passionate group of Internet collectors and fans.

Trust-Building In E-Negotiation

by Noam Ebner

YouTube and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: Broadcasting Yourself to the Ends of the World

by Dennis Beesley

‘Young People Playing with Risk: Social networking and the normalisation of gambling behaviours’

by Carolyn Downs

Citation
Downs, C (2010) ‘Young People Playing with Risk: Social networking and the normalisation of gambling behaviours’ in Leisure Experiences: Space, Place and Performance ed: Marion Stuart-Hoyle and Jane Lovell LSA 109 ISBN 978 1 905369 20 1 pp25-47
This is a PROOF Copy and has some typos and also a small part with referencing back-to-front (about 40 words) please check with me if quoting from this version to make sure it is the same as the final published version. I answer emails within 24 hours

This paper will explore the ways in which young people use SNS, the benefits and possible uses of SNS and the... more This paper will explore the ways in which young people use SNS, the benefits and possible uses of SNS and the potential for social harm to be generated by content available on SNS hosts. Many of the concerns that have been expressed about increased time spent in virtual worlds are declines in oracy and literacy, loss of social skills and risky contact. This paper will show how young people are adapting SNS for a range of purposes and using it in a wide variety of situations. Content-generated risks from this new leisure activity have not been investigated in the UK. One such risk may be access to a wide range of gambling-related activities via SNS. This paper will show how this may normalise gambling behaviours as part of the consumption patterns of a non-gambling leisure activity and will consider whether this may change the prevalent, and long-standing, social attitude in the UK that gambling is a risky activity to one that views gambling as a tool for the acquisition of consumer goods.

Virtual Ideals: Art, Science and Gendered Cyberbodies.

by Kate O'Riordan

Gender, Technology and Visual Cyberculture: Virtual Women.

by Kate O'Riordan