Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies最新文献

{"title":"Data reflexivity as work-in-progress","authors":"Ranjana Das","doi":"10.1177/13548565241270889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241270889","url":null,"abstract":"Datafication, across private and public sectors demonstrably touches upon, and indeed, alters, with profound consequences, diverse domains of people’s daily lives. However, also, increasingly, critical scholarship on datafication is the locus of careful attention to not solely platform and algorithmic power but also people’s sociocultural practices to make sense of, cope with, feel and show new literacies with data and datafied systems. It is in this context of genuinely listening to what people do with, through and around data, and to what end, that this special issue invites us to ponder the notion of data reflexivity. In this paper, I adopt a working definition of data reflexivity as – a vernacular and relational set of practices and strategies in relation to data and data infrastructures, working with, within and sometimes against platforms, where, such practices and strategies morph and change across the life course, through a web of cross-cutting relationships with individuals, communities and institutions. I draw upon illustrative instances from a project in England which explored parents’ perspectives on personal data and algorithms in the context of raising children. First – I suggest that we approach data reflexivity through a relational lens rather than as an individual and inward-looking strategy, where such relationality is experienced in relation to institutions, individuals, families, friendships, and networks. Second – I suggest that we look at data reflexivity as a fluid, lifelong journey – where a life course approach enables us to consider how data reflexivity morphs, adapts and transitions through the course of life, involving numerous acts of unspectacular, ephemeral agency. I conclude with a reminder that attention to data reflexivity, or indeed, more broadly, people’s agency, must not mean a shift of focus away from scrutinising and holding accountable, powerful institutions, both public and private.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141933359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What is ‘children’s television’ in the streaming era?: Assessing content discoverability through Australian children’s streaming platform fluencies","authors":"Jessica Balanzategui, Djoymi Baker, Georgia Clift","doi":"10.1177/13548565241264002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241264002","url":null,"abstract":"In line with international trends, increasing numbers of children in Australia use streaming video platforms to watch television on-demand from extensive catalogues. Child viewers thus tend to negotiate platform interfaces organised by algorithmic curation to select content, rather than accessing content via scheduled linear TV. The deeper implications of this substantial shift in child audience habits around television have yet to be robustly reckoned with across scholarly and national policy approaches. Indeed, policy settings in Australia have not kept pace with these transformations, one result of which has been that 84% less Australian content was aired on free-to-air commercial broadcasters in 2022 compared to 2019. Key producer bodies fear the sector is in serious peril and may not withstand the current instability. Given that local children’s television meets Australian children’s best interests by situating them within their own socio-cultural context, the issue has become a site of significant policy, industry, and cultural concern. At this precarious time for the Australian children’s television sector, this article outlines key findings of a mixed method study with Australian children aged 7–9 ( n = 37) and their adult guardians to illustrate how children understand, identify, and discover ‘local’ and ‘children’s’ content on streaming platforms. This child audience research contributes to current policy and scholarly debates around the ‘routes to content’ audiences develop in the streaming era. A focus of our analysis is how and if children find Australian content. Our aim is to shed light on how ‘discoverability’ issues compound the current state of turmoil for the sector. We elucidate children’s digital fluencies with platform interfaces but highlight their limited cultural literacies with the content itself, which poses significant implications for industry and policy strategy around local content discoverability for child audiences on streaming platforms.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141933364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finding the future in digitally mediated ruin: #nostalgiacores and the algorithmic culture of digital platforms","authors":"Maria Gemma Brown, Nicholas Carah, Xue Ying (Jane) Tan, Daniel Angus, Jean Burgess","doi":"10.1177/13548565241270669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241270669","url":null,"abstract":"The #nostalgiacores are a series of interrelated hashtags on Instagram and TikTok where users recirculate content from the digital and consumer cultures of the 1990s and 2000s – childhood play centres, dead malls, long-gone toys, and superseded game consoles and phones. In this article, we explore these digital cultures using a critical platform studies approach that involves a combination of network analysis and close textual analysis augmented with purpose-built machine vision tools. We scrape a collection of 359,150 images from Instagram that used one or more of 30 ‘-cores’ hashtags (such as #y2kcore, #webcore and #childhoodcore) that we chose following a period of immersive qualitative investigation of #nostalgiacore scenes on Instagram during 2021 and 2022. 10,000 Instagram images were then randomly selected and processed using a purpose-built unsupervised machine vision model that clusters images together based on their similarities. This research is part of a multi-year project where we develop hybrid digital methods for critically simulating and exploring the interplay between our image-making practices and the algorithmic systems that cluster and curate them. By combining computational approaches with critical platform and cultural studies approaches we speculatively explore both practices of curation and their interplay with the algorithmic classification and recommendation models of digital platforms. Our platform-oriented mode of textual analysis helps us to explore how our digital cultures are both symbolically and technically nostalgic. Instagram users in the #nostalgiacore scene recirculate images from the past as part of practices of critically reflecting on digital platforms and consumer cultures. At the same time those images are recuperated as archives used to train the algorithmic models that optimise attention on digital media platforms like Instagram.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"217 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141883748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Attention, memory, and narrative interpretation of Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet: Comparing 2D and 3D film viewing using eye-tracking and self-report","authors":"Miklós Kiss, David Hayes, Brendan Rooney","doi":"10.1177/13548565241267720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241267720","url":null,"abstract":"Historically 3D effect in film has been used as a relatively superficial aesthetic attraction. Here we consider and test the idea that 3D can be used to guide viewer attention and narrative interpretation in film. The current study used self-report measures in conjunction with eye-tracking technology to record attention, memory and narrative interpretation of 32 participants (25 female). Eye-gaze behaviour was recorded while half of the participants were randomly assigned to watch Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet (2011) in 3D and the other half watched the same film in 2D. We concentrated on a particular moment where the use of 3D technology brings some aspects of the image to the forefront, such as a prop that might have narrative significance for the story as it unfolds. We were unable to confirm that 3D effect in Gondry’s film is effectively used to direct viewers’ visual attention towards narratively relevant information. Also, we found no evidence that the 3D version of Gondry’s film contributes to better memory or narrative interpretation of this particular scene. In discussing our findings, beyond the technical conditions of our eye-tracking research, we consider the role of film genre, narrative mode, viewers’ expectations and media literacy in shaping such visual attention and narrative interpretation.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141883747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Formatting work: Cloud platforms and the infrastructuring of capitalist asymmetries in software work","authors":"Sebastian Randerath","doi":"10.1177/13548565241268013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241268013","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 2000s, so-called cloud computing infrastructures have had a profound impact on the capitalist relationship among labor, software, and organizations. This infrastructuring did not only affect the outsourcing of servers and databases but extends to the on-demand delivery of middleware and operating systems through so-called platforms-as-a-service (PaaS). As a result, the capitalist relationship between labor, organization, power, and software has shifted – both regarding the ways in which software development is organized and the ways in which work processes are organized through software. Such a shift is particularly evident in the development and application of so-called customer relationship management (CRM) software, which is used to plan and record sales and work processes. No longer limited to performance measurement and automated management within sales processes, the widely used Salesforce CRM software is leveraged to document and assess the work performance of employees meticulously, among other applications. To demonstrate how PaaS became central organizational media by reformatting labor and power asymmetries, the paper provides a critical analysis of the CRM software of Salesforce and the various actors and interfaces entangled with its PaaS. Thereby, the paper develops a critical media theoretical framework to analyze how the political economy of adapting PaaS is entangled with power dependencies between organizations and the labor of coding and implementing. Drawing on a platform historiographical analysis of Salesforce developer interfaces, the paper shows how organizational hierarchies and asymmetries manifest in the work of implementing specific sets of operational rules in software development (the work of formatting) and the platform capitalist standardization of work coordination in existing organizations (the formatting of work).","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"155 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Loved everywhere?: Netflix’s top 10 and the popularity of geographically diverse content","authors":"Michael L Wayne, Nahuel Ribke","doi":"10.1177/13548565241265504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241265504","url":null,"abstract":"Using Netflix’s weekly Global Top 10 lists for English-language and non-English-language series and films, this article highlights some of the ways in which the world’s most popular streaming platform misrepresents both the production and consumption of its most popular geographically diverse global content. First, the Global Top 10 lists create a series of false equivalencies between the popularity of English-language and non-English-language content that mask the difference in production budgets between the two categories. Second, Netflix’s publicized data isolates the global audience distribution of non-English-language content from other economic, technological, cultural, and political factors affecting local media ecosystems as demonstrated through an analysis of South Korea. Third, in failing to account for genre-related differences, the Global Top 10 lists distorts audience behavior in the Ibero-American region. Despite the variety of limitations presented by the incomplete audience data from Global Top 10 lists, when properly contextualized with recent academic research and economic information extracted from the specialized trade press publications, this article argues that the relationship between global streaming audiences and geographically diverse content is far more complex than it appears in the Netflix’s industrial discourses.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sexual diversity and streaming television: Toward a platform studies approach to analyzing LGBTQ+ TV","authors":"Hollis Griffin","doi":"10.1177/13548565241265508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241265508","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues for the utility of a platform-studies approach alongside textual analysis when studying the politics of sexual representation in contemporary television programming. Using a corpus of four LGBTQ+-themed programs that represent queer and trans sexualities and HIV/AIDS, the paper argues that funding mechanisms play a constitutive role in determining the kinds of sexual diversity that can circulate via streaming technologies. Comparing and contrasting content created for SVODs, BVODs, and video-sharing platforms, the essay considers the impact that the economic diversity of television’s multiplatform ecology has on the sexual diversity of content that circulates there. Purposefully combining an analysis of online TV with social media entertainment, the essay casts ‘streaming television’ as a wide, varied category whose relationship to questions of representational diversity is more complex than existing scholarship on these issues sometimes suggests. Situating its analysis in the literatures of platform studies, media industry studies, and television’s politics of LGBTQ + representation, the essay shifts the purview of ‘diversity’ away from representations of identity and toward diversities of funding mechanisms and diversities of sexual acts and practices. The essay argues for the necessity of textual analysis to properly articulate the relationship between platforms and the politics of sexual representation in the content that they circulate.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Media ruins: Cambodian postwar media reconstruction and the geopolitics of technology","authors":"Yovanna Pineda","doi":"10.1177/13548565241265505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241265505","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Make (digital) space for and with the young: Arts-inspired co-design of civic tech for youth mental health policies","authors":"Sonia Bussu, Enric Senabre Hidalgo, Olivier Schulbaum, Zarah Eve","doi":"10.1177/13548565241264001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241264001","url":null,"abstract":"Public engagement, digital or in-person, is mostly adult-centric and ableist, often universalising the experience of participation of a narrow demographic (white, older and middle class). In Mindset Revolution we combined arts-based and creative methods with civic tech to co-design participatory spaces with a diverse group of young people, where to discuss and influence mental health policy and practice. The paper examines the digital element of the project, where young people, supported by a team of academics and digital designers, used the Decidim civic tech platform to engage with their peers and policymakers. This co-design work helped inform changes to the platform towards more accessible and margin-responsive participation that can better support active engagement of traditionally excluded groups. The young people evaluated their own participation and social impact, challenging assumptions about youth participation. The flexibility afforded by the digital platform was crucial to sustain engagement. However, although often branded as digital natives, the young people we worked with perceived digital participation as an enabler but not a central element of their work on social change. Follow-up work on the platform is shaping it as a space for collective oversight, with opportunities for open-ended dialogue between young people, the community and policymakers to identify and navigate barriers to implementation of young people’s proposals.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"38 17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Streaming women: Hayu, Passionflix and gendered demographics in subscription video-on-demand","authors":"Alexa Scarlata, Andrew Lynch","doi":"10.1177/13548565241264004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241264004","url":null,"abstract":"The focus of most academic analysis of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services so far has been on “first tier” platforms like Netflix and Prime Video. These platforms are spending and charging significant amounts of money to adopt a generalist strategy that rhetorically disregards demographics . However, not all SVODs operate in this manner. This article will consider examples of second (subsidiary) and third (independent) tier SVODs for whom traditional demographic thinking remains fundamental to their core business model. We examine second tier service Hayu and third tier service Passionflix as female-targeted SVODs that represent a spectrum of approaches to gendered curation, from the online extension of reality programming long-linked to cable interests, to the production and promotion of softcore erotica SVOD originals. We combine analyses of catalogues, interfaces, marketing, paratexts, and original production to consider how SVODs conceptualise, address, and court female audiences in different ways.","PeriodicalId":47242,"journal":{"name":"Convergence-The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141772427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}