1,720,997 research outputs found
Smartphones, streaming platforms, and the infrastructuring of digital music practices
No full textThis chapter aims at advancing the intersections between science and technology studies (STS) and music studies by exploring some of these changes and, more specifically, those triggered by listeners’ adoption of smartphone-based music streaming platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music. Since the 1980s, the notion of infrastructure became a crucial entry point in STS for disentangling the intersection between technology, people, and shared practices. Historians and sociologists interested in technology explored the role of infrastructures to analyze the implications of large sociotechnical systems like electric power grids and telephone networks. A fruitful terrain of convergence between STS and media studies has emerged in the last few years as a consequence of the rise of digital platforms as crucial sociotechnical entities in contemporary society. In recent years, this interest has expanded, recognizing the crucial role of media platforms in reshaping a wide array of human activities and relations in several different fields
The Future of Digital Music Infrastructures: Expectations and Promises of the Blockchain ‘Revolution’
No full textInternet fra dono e mercato
No full textFour scholars discuss the book Il dono al tempo di internet by Marco Aime and Anna Cossetta (2010) which analyses the ways in which the Maussian idea of the gift as a creator of social relations can be readapted to the contemporary world of the web. The debate opens with a critical reading by Alessandro Delfanti, followed by a reply by one of the two authors. Paolo Magaudda and Fabio Dei enrich the debate with two further contributions on how to develop the relationship between the gift and internet
The ‘obligatory passage point’ in knowledge co-production: Italy’s participatory environmental monitoring platform
No full textThe process of developing of a participatory environmental monitoring network in Italy, unfolded between 2013 and 2020, is analysed in order to explore the dynamics of knowledge co-production involving collaboration between scientists and non-experts, in the present case constituted by a community of weather amateurs and practitioners. Based on a qualitative approach and 15 in-depth interviews with different stakeholders involved in the early development of the pilot network, the analysis focuses on the dynamics of collaboration between the actors involved that led to the creation of the Italian participatory environmental monitoring platform. For the analysis, we adopt the theoretical model of ‘translation' proposed by Michel Callon (1984), which focuses on the dynamics of the emergence of a network of collaboration between scientists and other heterogeneous actors. In particular, we focus on the notion of ‘obligatory passage point’ (OPP) along the translation process. Focusing on the process of translation and the dynamics that characterise the convergence towards a common OPP in the processes of network constitution and knowledge production highlights some crucial dynamics that support the unfolding of effective forms of participatory co-production, including: the understanding of how the roles and identities of different actors are recognised, transformed, productively aligned and consolidated; the performative power of participatory processes that are able to redefine and transform the pre-existing identities and roles of actors; and the outcome of the epistemic inclusion of practices and knowledge of less powerful actors within institutional, political and scientific frameworks
Introduction: Nanotechnologies and the Quest for Responsibility
No full textThis chapter provides an introduction to the issue of responsibility in nanotechnology development. After introducing the growing relevance of responsible development in nanotechnology policy and regulation, the chapter illustrates the structure of the volume and highlights three major aspects of responsibility that the book addresses: (1) responsibility and social relationships; (2) responsibility, division of social labour and institutional settings; (3) responsibility and orientation to the future. Eventually, the chapter suggests that the considerations proposed in the book about the responsible development of nanotechnologies offer useful entry points to frame a broader discussion on the responsible governance of emerging technologies
Retromedia-in-practice: A practice theory approach for rethinking old and new media technologies
Get PDFThe article aims at investigating the persistence and comeback of old media technologies (phenomena we define, in short, 'retromedia') by developing a distinctive theoretical approach named retromedia-in-practice and based on practice theory. Far from being abandoned and forgotten, many old media devices and artefacts (such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, analogue photographic cameras, early videogames and brick mobile phones, to mention just a few notable examples) are nowadays readopted by young generations and niche media subcultures. However, most of the existing literature focusing on these cases has limits and shortfalls, resulting in a partial and misleading understanding of these phenomena: scholars and theorists often put at the centre the cultural fascination for vintage objects and the nostalgia effect; other studies rely on a taken-for-granted distinction between old and new media; the relational and processual nature of media change is rarely addressed; and in general, research lacks a framework capable of adequately integrating symbolic processes with material and technological features. In order to cope with these shortfalls, the article adopts the approach of practice theory, which enables to focus not on the media themselves, but on the practices associated with them. After presenting the distinctive framework of analysis, we exemplify our approach by analysing three different cases coming from music (vinyl records), photography (Polaroid-like instant photography) and videogaming (the 'consolization' of old arcade games). These case studies rely on original empirical data coming from authors' qualitative research. The article concludes by arguing that a shift from considering retromedia as objects or discourses to retromedia-in-practice allows to both address the processual nature of retromedia and propose an interpretation that keeps together media materiality, their meanings and also the embodied activities and behaviours that are attached to them
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
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