1,720,964 research outputs found
Aesthetic Approach for Critical Sociology of Contemporary Communication Technology
No full textArda, Balca/0000-0002-3793-2472Critical theory has already marked that technology often threatens civil liberties, personal autonomy, and rights. Heidegger, later Marcuse, emphasized how technology is not value-free in its own revealing power of the surrounding environment, external and inner nature. Throughout this paper, I explore how the aesthetic approach engages with critical theory and contributes to the sociology of media and communication. For this, I will theoretically survey the terms of sociality under the forces of immediate communication, ubiquitous surveillance, and the compression of time and space that Baudrillard and Virilio once problematized through the lens of critical technology theory to adapt it to media and communication studies. I contend that techno-aesthetics that converge with Ranciere's dissensus can provide practical suggestions on an updated vocation of critical sociology. This article discusses the potential of aesthetic and social criticism of media for democratizing technology that Feenberg inserted. It is urgent to acknowledge the changing spatio-temporal aesthetic regimes that affect the societal imagination and limits of sociality and action to determine the next steps for achieving a commons-based society
Multimodal Online Dissident Culture in Instagram: a Critique of the Turkish Economy
No full textArda, Balca/0000-0002-3793-2472; Bas, Ozen/0000-0002-8895-9704Ever-present mass surveillance has blocked the flourishing of a traditional dissident culture in Turkey. Focusing on popular 'just for fun' Instagram accounts during the lira's freefall that began in the autumn of 2021, this study seeks to identify the creative strategies for digital social resistance embedded in multimodal content sharing of posts, which are composed of visuals, text, and sound. For this, we employed a multimodal-type analysis of Instagram posts regarding Turkey's economic crisis, followed by an interpretative content analysis aiming to (1) identify, categorize, and compile a typology of the main countersurveillance strategies inherent in multimodal posts, such as memes, edited videos, and animations, Photoshop-crafted still images, and (2) explore the contextual traits of the connected dissident culture. We discuss how these multimodal-type posts support connected dissident group formation while maintaining confidentiality while criticizing governmental conduct of economic policy making in Turkey
Mediative Performance of Creative Precariat in the Age of Digitalization
No full textIn this thesis, I define the artists who perform physical performances as the artist precariat. Starting from the concept of precariat, I am researching how the life of the precariat artist was affected socially and economically in the transition from physical performance to meditated performance in the age of digitalization. Since this research coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, I will have better analyzed the companies that were positively and negatively affected by the lockdown and the dimension of precariousness experienced by the artists. In this thesis, the formation of mediatized performance (distributing the video and audio recordings of the produced performance to different media channels) will be explained, to understand what the concept of contemplation is, and to understand the possible losses in art when contemplation becomes cool (artificial) in physical stage art. In addition, I expressed what the concept of precariat means in different studies and why I need to use this concept in this study. Data obtained by semi-structured interviews, which were held with stage company owners and physical performance artists (snowball sampling) and participant observation in field, were analyzed by discourse analysis techniques. Based on the collected data, the relationship between transforming art and artist insecurity will be examined. My analysis is composed of three sections: (1) to examine the measures and difficulties faced by art center owners, audiences, and artists regarding digitalization with the concepts of Baudrillard's “immortality” and Barthes’s “the author is death”. (2) Investigating the social precariousness created by the financial precariousness of flexible working in the arts sector (in the context of age and gender). Examining the concept of “precariat class” used by Guy Standing in his work on precarious working and flexible employment by focusing on the artist group and adding dimension (depth) to the concept in this direction. (3) To explore the adaptation process of precariat art to mediation shifting in the light of Byung-Chul Han’s concept of the “Banopticon” and Durkheim’s study of suicide. As a result of the interviews and fieldwork outputs, the death of art, which was defined metaphorically in the first place, eventually turned into the actual end of the artist. I contend that creative stage artists have difficulties in the transition process because their digital media knowledge and skills are insufficient, rendering them financially and socially precarious. Unemployment and insecurity experienced by the precariat artist in the culture and art sector affect not only the artist himself, but also the family members of the artist, art-loving individuals and the society. For this reason, the artist's insecurity becomes a collective problem rather than an individual one
Instrumentalization and Implementation of Artistic and Cultural Practices for Integration: the Case Study of Syrians in Turkey
No full textThis thesis aims to explore the interaction of three crucial phenomena: migration, integration, and perception of art and culture through the case study of Syrians in Turkey. For this purpose, the study examines the instrumentalization and implementation of artistic and cultural practices in the integration process of immigrants who migrated to Turkey due to the Syrian civil war in 2011. Migration affects both the host society members and the immigrants, whether voluntary or involuntary, for economic, political, social, or cultural reasons. Also, as seen in the example of Syrians in Turkey, although the initial purpose of migration is temporary, many immigrants become settlers in the receiving country, and since it was understood that immigrants would be permanent, policies and practices for integration have started to be discussed. In this sense, since it is understood that the Syrians in Turkey will be permanent, it requires research that offers new perspectives on what can be done about integration. For this purpose, I interviewed professionals such as coordinators, managers, employees, and artists in art centers and non-governmental organizations that use cultural and artistic activities in order to communicate between the local people and the immigrants in the provinces where Syrians live heavily, to explore the instrumentalization and implementation of artistic and cultural practices in the integration process. As a result, institutions' interviews demonstrated that art, artistic and cultural activities have an essential role in the integration process because they bring people from different countries, cultures, and different social groups together, as in the example of Syrians and local people provided communication, contact, and interaction beyond conflict
Calmer Persuasive Technology for Mental Health and Well-Being: Mindfulness-Based Mobile Applications
No full textOver the course of the last two decades, technology has become more distracting, more persuasive and more pervasive than ever before. We are surrounded by alarms, reminders, and notifications. As a result, we are constantly distracted, unable to focus on one task and forced to switch tasks constantly or multitask. This technological overload is contributing to the levels of mental health problems such as depression or anxiety. The aim of this thesis study is to develop an in-depth critical understanding of the root causes of technology becoming more persuasive over the years; in order to gain insight on how technologies can become calmer. In this context, we have chosen MBMAs (MindfulnessBased Mobile Apps) as a case study. This study provides an in-depth analysis of three of the most popular MBMAs worldwide: Calm, Meditopia and Headspace via CMDA (Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis); as well as EIs (Expert Interviews) with MBMA designers working in these firms and an additional EI with a mindfulness trainer that has no ties with these firms; to gain insight on professionals’ perspectives on the issue
Who Deserves to be Refugee?: The Instrumentalization of Art and Culture in the Solidarity Discourse of UkrainianRefugees in Social Media
No full textThis article explores the online display of artistic ability and cultural practice to express support for the resistance in Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees while blaming the Russian attack on the country starting in February 2022. Social media engagement is essential in constructing discursive traits of belonging through bottom-up articulations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomies. Here, I question the distinguished characteristics of representation related to art, artistic practices, and abilities under solidarity social media posts in the case of Ukrainians fleeing their homes. Social media users who include art and culture concerning solidarity use a discourse of inclusion to depict refugees as parts of civilization and hence not reducible them to the bare life position. This study is guided by critical multimodal discourse analysis to understand better how social power is enacted, replicated, and resisted by social media content. I contend that these social media posts that convey specific art and culture-related representations serve to distinguish characteristics of war-torn Ukraine, people displacement, and Ukrainian refugees from the generic tendencies of otherization reflected on the ‘Southern’ refugee figure deprived of capability or motivation for logos
The Construction of a New Sociality through Social Media: The Case of the Gezi Uprising in Turkey
Get PDFDuring Turkey’s Gezi Park Protests in the summer of 2013, millions of people became connected as fellow pro- testers. In the early days of the Gezi movement, the increase in participatory activism through social media made visible the police brutality exercised in the last days of May 2013 against a small group of environmentalists who were protecting Gezi Park from being demolished in order to build a shopping mall. Throughout Turkey’s political history, there has been no other example of this kind of spontaneous mass movement resisting the state apparatus with the large participation of diverse groups and self-convened protesters, without any dominant ideological appeal or leader affiliation. In this article, I will analyze the ways in which these patterns of contra- dictory interactions formed, evaluated, or triggered various types of social relationships, by critically examining the content of viral images, memes, and widely shared posts by Gezi protesters on social media. In the absence of internal cohesion or an ideological and organizational agenda, I argue that widely shared viral images, memes, and text messages provided the content to collaboratively construct and publicly frame the autonomous logic of the “Gezi spirit” by the Gezi protesters. I aim to analyze this new understanding of collective identity in autono- mous logic processed through social media as a being-with (mit-sein), rather than a fusion of the individual to an enigmatic we-ness in order to represent “I”. I claim that this autonomous collectivity is driven by fluidarity as a public experience of the self in relation to the other without intermediary apparatuses and hence can be conceptualized as having built a new sociality.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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