Contemporary Media Technologies Research Articles

Global Leader, Local Challenges: An Overview of Streaming in India

The rise of digital technologies in the past three decades transformed how individuals and societies consume and interpret media. This digital penetration impacts almost every aspect of social life, including the form, content and affordances transnational media conglomerates offer. The post-2000 shifts from traditional broadcasting to digital streaming introduced new questions about contemporary media technologies. One such question is the significance of global media conglomerates’ localisation of technologies and texts in diverse markets such as India, where the streaming industry is expected to hit $15 billion by the decade’s end. This study, grounded in the theoretical frameworks of global media, political economy and cultural studies, attempted to enhance existing scholarship on hybridity or glocalisation, the fusion between global and local cultures, by analysing the effects of streaming in India’s rapidly digitising economy. Through textual and document analysis, the study examined the factors across content preferences, pricing policies and regulatory environment that contributed to Netflix’s struggles and the relative success of Disney+Hotstar and JioCinema in the Indian market. Investigating cultural and economic factors revealed that global media conglomerates and platforms must localise their messages, agendas and ideologies for adequate consumption, interpretation and adoption.

Tendencies and characteristics of public fitness behavior in the digital era: an Internet ethnography study based on the K Community in China.

The deep integration of media technologies into fitness activities in the era of digital intelligence has created a new and evolving landscape for public fitness. This transformation significantly impacts the practices and experiences of fitness. This study employs Internet ethnography as a qualitative research methodology, focusing on the daily activities of participants in a digital fitness community known as the K-community. Through immersive observation and analysis, the research seeks to uncover the evolving patterns and characteristics of fitness practices in China during the digital era. As media technology and network culture advance, participants in digital fitness increasingly display fragmented, digitized, entertaining, ritualized, and highly socialized behaviors. These traits reflect the community's desire for varied and complex exercise experiences within the context of modern technology. The evolution of fitness behavior not only reflects the operational principles of contemporary media technologies but also encapsulates the essence of popular culture in the digital age. This study enhances our comprehension of fitness practices in digital environments and their wider cultural ramifications.

Impact of The Artificial Intelligence in Media: A Need to Address the Problem Relating to Regulation of Ai in Media

Over the past 20 years, technological innovations have caused tremendous disruption to the traditional media sector. A plethora of new opportunities and challenges have arisen as a result of the development and widespread use of AI technology. On the one hand, widespread use of these technologies may open up new avenues for media service expansion, disinformation suppression, and data-centric journalism advancement. Some approaches, such as algorithmic content selection and user customization, have the potential to cause social risks and should thus be implemented with caution. Finding a balance between the benefits and the downsides of these options highlights the need for additional research in the field of responsible media technology. This article's first portion provides a thorough analysis of the most pressing issues brought about by contemporary media technology, with a particular emphasis on how these issues affect society's dynamics and the media industry. We first acknowledge the need for further research, better technical methods, and a technology infrastructure that can sustain moral editorial standards and practices. Then, we go on to outline a number of areas within the media production and distribution spectrum. The argument that is made is that quick action is required to create a thorough framework for media technology research. This strategy is anticipated to integrate interdisciplinary approaches and promote robust cooperation between media companies and educational establishments.

Implications of social media technologies (SMTs) to library services

Purpose Academic libraries may become obsolete in the twenty-first century unless they begin to harness new technology and improve information and service delivery. This paper aims to examine the emergence of social media technologies (SMTs) with their implications to academic library services in developing countries in the world. It is believed that a growing number of libraries of all types are starting to use SMTs to enhance their service delivery, similar to other institutions. Design/methodology/approach The research, which was conducted on a desk, examined how the implementation of SMTs may affect library services and operations. The study emphasizes that many academic libraries in developing countries have not yet adopted and implemented SMTs despite the potential that they hold for libraries. Findings Given that there has been relatively little study linking SMTs to librarianship, this may be because there is a low degree of awareness of SMTs’ importance in libraries. This study discovered that there are other types of SMTs relevant to academic libraries including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blog among others. This paper reported the implications of SMTs to library services in developing countries. Originality/value This study is the original idea from the authors and does not reflect on any copyrighted materials. The study recommended among others that sufficient training and more expertise need to be gained by academic libraries to further facilitate implementation of social networks in the libraries, and adoption of contemporary media technologies such as social media in meeting the needs of the 21st-century library patrons should be prioritized.

NAKED ATTRACTION: STRUCTURE OF DESIRE

The article conceptualizes the structure of desire, which is inherent in the society of the spectacle of consumption. The nature of the representations of diversity, equality, and equivalence, which constitute the contemporary subject of desire and exhibit the singularity of desire directed at a partial object, is determined. The specificity of the culture of contemporary society, which is oriented towards various methods of "self-invention" through the publication of the construction of the personality, is fixated on body. It is about the dominance of defragmented images produced according to the principles of commodity form through representation, which is ensured by the development of contemporary media technologies. In this perspective, the capitalized body is reduced to its instrumentality, the production potential of its parts, which is legitimized by the process of transformation of sexuality, which can be observed in the contemporary media space, in talk shows, in particular Naked Attraction, the characteristic features of which are considered in the article. The subject of the society of the spectacle of consumption is the subject of desire, which focuses on the surfaces of the body as a wrapper in which pleasure is wrapped. The process of unpacking appears as one that gives pleasure. In the Deleuzian projection this type of desire and this mode of jouissance is interpreted as masochistic, which is realized in the form of a contract and, in particular, in the "suspense" of unpacking/undressing. In the spectacle of consumption, we are talking about the gradualness of desire, which moves from organs/parts according to the logic of unpacking as the fanning of desire. The figure of the subject of desire/spectacle/consumption is defined through points of divergence/convergence: natural/cultural, whole/partial, single/multiple, intimate/extimate. Thus, it is argued that there is no single whole subject, a personality to be reproduced or imitated. Instead, there is a partiality of the multitude that is in the transformational process of self-(re)presentation. In this context, life appears as a movement from part to part, the quality of which is assessed by the ability to give/receive, produce/consume, exhibit/contemplate pleasure/enjoyment, which unfolds in the deconstruction and transformation of the subject of desire and in particular sexuality.

Review: Media Hot and Cold, by Nicole Starosielski

Review: <i>Media Hot and Cold</i>, by Nicole Starosielski

Presence and Absence in Mollusc Lifeworlds and Visual Essays

This article reconfigures and reflects on the author’s visual essay “MOLLusCS + mollUScs” (2019), which assembled narration on human-mollusc correspondences and a series of three black and white photos. With the aim to employ the trope of presences and absences throughout matter and form, the three photos were printed page-filling and in normal ink, whereas the text was printed across the photos in Europium, a rare earth metal often used in screens and only visible when charged with additional (black)light. By situating the navigation of the catalogue's in/visibility into the realm of the beholders, these were invited to engage in an interactive, multisensory exploration of text and image. The here presented reconfiguration and reflection takes up the “original” visual essay’s theme and focusses on the presences as well as absences in mollusc gleaning and around accreted mollusc shells in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal. Added is a companion part, which reviews the interactive and sensory specifics of the printed “original” and critically assesses its reconfiguration into the digital. In this twofold way, this digital essay seeks to trace the (im)possibilities of print-to-digital synesthetic re-enactment and reflects on and invites to probe different kinds of beholding beyond the common dualism of text and image. It also problematises the imperative of contemporary media technologies to ‘make present’ via the formalisation of touch – all in relation to the role of presence and absence in deltaic mollusc lifeworlds.

Embrace the Antagonism, Build the Party! The New Communist Horizon in and Against Communicative Capitalism

Jodi Dean is the Donald R. Harter ‘39 Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, where is also the Director of the Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice. She earned a BA in History from Princeton University and her MA, M.PhiL and PHD in Political Science from Columbia University. Jodi’s research interests focus on the interface between contemporary media technologies and Left politics. Through her career, Jodi has won numerous fellowships and awards. Recent ones include Distinguished Writer in Residence, Birkbeck College of Law, London (2017), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University (2013), Beaverbrook Media Scholar, Media@McGill and the Department of Communications and Art History, McGill University, Montreal (2010), and Erasmus Chair in the Humanities, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2009).

Racjomorfizm i racjonalność w tak zwanym komunikowaniu politycznym

&lt;p&gt;Jednym z podstawowych problemów tak zwanego komunikowania politycznego jest kwestia następująca: jak zaprojektować mającą cele i funkcje polityczne komunikację, aby przyniosła oczekiwane efekty?&lt;br /&gt;Wprawdzie tego typu problemy są już dobrze rozpoznane i uteoretyzowane przez badaczy reprezentujących różne dyscypliny (głównie, choć nie tylko, przez politologów), a rezultaty ich badań z powodzeniem są wykorzystywane w praktycznych działaniach o charakterze politycznym, to wciąż pozostaje miejsce dla innych ujęć, traktowanych dotychczas marginalnie lub w ogóle nieobecnych w naukach społecznych i humanistycznych.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Artykuł podzielono na cztery główne części: onto-epistemologiczny status komunikacji, racjo- i technoracjomorfizm: mechanizm i efekty, cele doraźne i perspektywiczne, racjomorficzność w projektowaniu komunikacji politycznej.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Problem, o którym mowa, sprowadza się do problemu wyboru: co ludzie myślą, wybierając i dlaczego tak myślą? A może nie myślą, a wybierają? W artykule rozpatruję tę kwestię, odwołując się do ewolucyjnej teorii poznania; „racjomorfizm” – kluczowy termin, który się w nim pojawia, pochodzi ze słownika ewolucyjnych epistemologów. Argumentuję, że współczesne technologie medialne sprzyjają racjomorficzności, a nie racjonalności, to zaś stwarza nowe możliwości preparowania komunikacji, także w obszarze komunikowania politycznego. Współczesny człowiek nie jest w stanie śledzić wydarzeń politycznych, dlatego racjomorficzność staje się kryterium wyborów politycznych, a media przestrzenią sofistyki i populizmu. Racjonalność zostaje zarezerwowana wyłącznie dla elit.&lt;/p&gt;

Yesterday’s Hadaly

This essay offers a feminist critique and correction of media archaeology. Media archaeology has developed over the last two decades as a historiographic response to increasingly advanced contemporary media technologies and, with them, changing accounts and archives of earlier analog media networks. Redressing the absence of an explicitly feminist media archaeology, the essay focuses on the medium of the gendered telephonic voice and the method of voicing. The former is inspired by the extraordinary prevalence of feminine voices deployed in media old and new, while voicing is inspired by Jacques Derrida’s turn from phonocentric presence to telephonic writing. The essay elaborates this concept of voicing by contrasting Derrida and other philosophers of voice with the desexualizing approach taken by media archaeologists, focusing on Wolfgang Ernst’s version of media archaeology as cold, timeless bachelor-machine. It concludes by turning to the digital resurrection of Thomas Edison’s phonographic female dolls by a no less gendered technology, an optical scanning system named IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.). Tracking “female noise” from Homer’s Sirens to Edison’s dolls, IRENE to Apple’s Siri, it argues that media archaeology should have as one of its essential conditions feminist critique. Media archaeology would do well not to repress this critique, considering the no less gendered fantasy of a neutral thinking of objects stripped of desire, a fantasy likewise voiced by Siri and her sisters, spokeswomen of neoliberal, digital capitalism.

Literal Media Ecology: Crisis in the Conditions of Production

This article outlines a socio-political theory appropriate for the study of the ecological repercussions of contemporary media technologies. More specifically, this approach provides a means of assessing the material impacts of media technologies and the representations of capitalist ecological crises. This approach builds on the work of ecological economists, ecosocialist scholars, and Marx’s writings on the conditions of production to argue that capitalism necessarily results in ecological destabilization. Taking Apple’s 2016 Environmental Responsibility Report as a case study, the article uses the theory to analyze Apple’s responses to ecological crises. The article asserts that Apple’s reactions are emblematic of the capitalist compulsion for increasing rates of productivity. However, unless the matter/energy savings achieved through higher rates of productivity surpass the overall increase in the flow of matter/energy in production, ecological crises will continue. Ultimately, capital accumulation ensures continued ecological destabilization.

The empirical potential of Live Streaming beyond cognitive psychology

Empirical methods of self-description, think aloud protocols and introspection have been extensively criticized or neglected in behaviorist and cognitivist psychology. Their methodological value has been fundamentally questioned since there apparently is no suficient proof for their validity. However, the major arguments against self-description can be critically reviewed by theoretical psychology. This way, these methods’ empirical value can be redeemed. Furthermore, self-descriptive methods can be updated by the use of contemporary media technology. In order to support the promising perspectives for future empirical research in the field of cognitive psychology, Live Streaming is proposed as a viable data source. Introducing this new paradigm, this paper presents some of the formal constituents and accessible contents of Live Streaming, and relates them to established forms of empirical research. By its structure and established usage, Live Streaming bears remarkable resemblances to the traditional methods of self-description, yet it also adds fruitful new features of use. On the basis of its qualities, the possible benefits that appear to be feasible in comparison with the traditional methods of self-description are elaborated, such as Live Streaming’s ecological validity. Ultimately, controversial theoretical concepts, such as those in phenomenology and cultural-historical psychology, are adopted to sketch further potential benefits of the utility of Live Streaming in current psychology debates.

Representations of Love Life in Social Media (By the Example of the Social Networking Service “VKontakte”)

Contemporary media technologies are incorporated in our life, affecting our everyday experience. In this connection, it is necessary to study the practices of individual users. One of the most popular social media practices is telling the private stories. The users of social networks often share their personal information and make this information public. It is the reason to continue the discussions about the relationship between the public and the private. This article is devoted to representations of love relationships in social media. The research is aimed to reveal how a user constructs the representation of their own personal life in the space of social media. Creating the digital chronicle of their love relationships, users use certain discursive strategies. In this study, the users’ practices are interpreted in the context of public and private perspective. Special attention is paid to the situation of the user’s own interpretation of their subjective experience. The space of social networks is considered as an area of opposing discursive strategies. Those strategies come from the interpretation of this space as personal or as public.

When Club Culture Goes Online: The Case of Boiler Room

Contemporary media technologies are often perceived as providing an opportunity to widen the audiences of cultural events. Online video broadcast (“streaming”) formats seem to be especially promising for popular music events. This article analyzes the encounter between these club/rave culture and streaming technology through a dual event—both on-site and mediatized—run by a [relatively] new organization, Boiler Room. Video streaming seems to offer the promise of alleviating many obstacles to participation historically associated with underground culture, but in doing so it also threatens to undermine the specialist exclusivity that contributes to the community’s own sense of authenticity. This article is interested in how event organizers appropriate such technologies, adjusting them to club culture in order to develop online an original variant of the DJ experience. We aim to show how decisions regarding stage design, videography, and website development all contribute to building the social significance and specificity of an episode in club culture.

Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Mā by Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku (review)

Reviewed by: Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Māby Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku Terava Ka‘anapu Casey Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Mā, by Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku, 2012. In Tahitian and French. Papeete: Editions des Mers Australes. isbn: 978-2-905808-44-8; 46 pages, illustrations, audio cd, dvd. €30.00. During the 2011 national celebration of Heiva in French Polynesia—an annual festival of culture and patrimony well known for dance competitions often involving elaborate preparations, costuming, oratory, and musical performances—the Tahitian dance troupe Nonahere Òri Tahiti realized the legend of Pipiri mā. A significant contribution to that year’s Hura Tau (Senior Division) section of the Heiva competition, this performance has been captured in a combination book, cd, and dvdpackage. Collaboratively realized by prize-winning Tahitian literary author Patrick Amaru, Marquesan anthropologist Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku, director of the dance troupe Nonahere, this collection offers audiences an extraordinary window into Tahitian culture through a key myth related to the constellation Scorpio while capturing a sense of the vital energy and possibility of multimedia art in the contemporary Pacific. In the legend of Pipiri mā, Pipiri and Rehua (brother and sister) run away from home after being starved and neglected by their parents. They climb the tallest mountain, and, before their parents can reach them, they are tricked by an evil spirit and carried away on an enormous kite. They ascend to the highest heavens and take their place in the stars as the constellation [End Page 302]Scorpio. An important part of what this collection makes visible is that knowledge of traditional histories and stories has endured despite centuries of massive social and cultural change and is being used to revitalize cultural practices that Pacific Island communities are enacting in creative and sometimes surprising ways. Moreover, contemporary media-technology can now bring knowledge sources and performance traditions into mainstream accessibility beyond the temporal borders of onetime events and annual festivals. In the long-term scope of cultural preservation, Pipiri māis a notable example of the role played by high-quality media releases in how rising generations view themselves—as participants in these cultural practices and as audiences in diasporic contexts, removed from actual performance events but participating in globe-spanning conversations surrounding culture, art, dance, music, and story. In their local and regional circulations, such compilations engage regional and extra-regional audiences in a process that asks them to question what these legends mean for contemporary lives and what roles they can play in education and cultural renewal. Nona-here Òri Tahiti used approximately 160 cast members (dancers, singers, chanters, drummers, musicians, and costume designers) in this collaboration in order to display traditional and expected dance routines that breathe life into this story. The traditional pā‘ō‘ā, for example, is a group routine in which the dancers sit in a circle and sing/chant while select members of the group dance in the middle of the circle. However, Nonahere uses the pā‘ō‘ā as a highlighted scene in the beginning of the story when the parents are gathering the meal. This supports the story line, fulfills the dance requirements of a Hura Tau presentation for Heiva, and lends a creative edge to a dance style appropriate to the event. The dances are interwoven into the legend, much like the male and female counterparts are paired in the opening ‘ōte‘a (a fast, vigorous dance), to represent the balance and harmony necessary in humanity. This tale considers underlying tones of gender within legendary stories, intertwined creatively in order to remind us of the lessons of humanity in a tale of sacrifice. The presentation depicts a customary parable, while displaying aspects of culture that correspond to dance and drumming traditions. The intensity and speed of the drumbeats help the story to climax, while contributing a sense of conflict and complexity to the plot. Soloists serve as highlighted characters who embody significant ideas of the legend, such as the mischievous spirits that lead Pipiri and Rehua to the kite. Similarly, the ‘ōrero becomes song-like, matching the tone of the drumbeats to create a melodic, soulful emphasis on the drama. Both in...

Remix: Practice, Context, Culture

Remix: Practice, Context, Culture

Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (review)

Reviewed by: Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past Terence Wright (bio) Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past.By Steve F. Anderson. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2011. Pp. vii+210. $35. We all have a sense of history: an idea of where we come from, where our family comes from, or what makes our social group or country what it is. Some of the information that forms our histories was taught to us at school: such school histories traditionally fit Jean-François Lyotard's notion of the "grand narrative." But our personal historical narratives, together with the information that gives us a sense of place in relation to preceding decades, is gained from a variety of sources. Anecdotes, family stories, local myths and legends, and state propaganda all have a role to play in creating our sense of historical identification. The media also play an important role, though, as Steve F. Anderson argues, they do so less through explicit attempts to teach about the past (as in historical documentaries) than through other, perhaps unexpected, sources. In Technologies of History, Anderson shows how home movies, science fiction, experimental film, and video games all play significant roles in forming our historical consciousness. His central concern throughout is visual history and its dependence on technology for its propagation. We may be aware that televised media and Hollywood are renowned for taking liberties with historical fact, but this is not the main issue for Anderson. As he puts it, "we should not look to media for the truth about the past but instead examine them for clues about the way history is constructed and engaged through cultural products, memories, myths, politics" (p. 2). Thus his book attempts to explore the complex entanglements of historical information with contemporary media technologies. In order to clarify Anderson's approach, we might apply it to a spaghetti Western such as Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964). As a work of fiction, its main intention is to tell a gripping story. Its narrative is not primarily concerned with describing a period of history. After all, the film is a [End Page 717] remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) in a Japanese setting (in turn inspired by Dashiell Hammett's detective novel Red Harvest set in the United States of the 1920s). Indeed, Leone shows how easily the archetypal storyline transfers from rural Japan to the lawless West. Yet A Fistful of Dollars does contain a number of much more subtle messages about how the particular historical period, nineteenth-century America, is to be regarded (as does Yojimbo convey information and suppositions about the nineteenth-century Japanese culture). But Anderson's argument, that a much wider variety of media forms play an important role in molding our conceptions of history and historical narrativity, is just the starting point. It is his contention that historians have disregarded the role of (what we might call) lateral inferences as making significant contributions to historiography and our historical understanding. One of the more extraordinary examples cited by Anderson, where futuristic fiction encounters History head-on, is an episode of Star Trek in which Kirk and Spock meet the inhabitants of a planet who base their culture on the 1930s/40s Nazi regime. Star Trek often fantasizes history for its "what if" scenarios. In the Nazi episode Anderson finds that "meaningful historiographical discourse takes place in many more places and cultural forms than we habitually acknowledge" (p. 18). The argument can be extended to the historiography of computer games in the controversial online game JFK Reloaded. Here "historical simulation" enables users to put themselves in the position of would-be assassin in order to evaluate how their strategies and responses weigh against the findings of the Warren Commission's official investigation into the Kennedy assassination. In the context of numerous conspiracy theories about the shooting, Anderson points out that the implicit historical goals are not to establish "truth" about events, but to create more or less successful interplays between the facts and "the cultural discourses of history" (p. 152). Technologies of History will be of interest to readers from a...

Washington Crossing the Media: American Presidential Rhetoric and Cultural Iconography

The Revolutionary War has been of prime importance to American self-perceptions and to the formation of its national identity. As a foundational moment with a strong mythical dimension it has become a cherished point of reference for the nation’s leaders, who, in their speeches and written communications, rely on the most widely accepted cultural iconography to recall this event. A time-honored, traditional discourse might, however, go together with the use of contemporary media technology as a means of distribution, as in the case of Barack Obama. Framing Obama’s rhetorical strategies within 19th- and 20th-century artistic representations of one specific historical moment from the Revolutionary War, Washington’s crossing of the Delaware river, this paper seeks to contribute to an enlarged understanding of the intricate relations between politics, the arts, and media development and of the ways they appropriate the past

Technologies of the spirit

Users of contemporary media technology in religious settings often oscillate between immediacy in spiritual interaction and the increasing complexity and visibility of media technology as human artifacts. Drawing on approaches to mediation from philosophy and media theory, I examine Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in performing a devotional genre to show how theological assumptions about mediation shape the domestication of media technology in religious settings in different ways. A semiotic approach can throw new light on the dialectics of mediation and immediacy that frequently result in searches for technical solutions to bypass established forms of interacting with the divine.

Drive entre Mille Sons: a psychogeographic approach to mobile music and mediated interaction

Drive en Mille Sons (Drifting in a Thousand Sounds) is a musical work that uses mobile media technology to artistically examine the relationship between music and the listener. Contemporary media technologies, be they at work, home or in your pocket, emphasize playback. These devices are designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of pre-made media assets. This work leverages the processing capabilities that rest dormant within these technologies. Drawing from the writings of Guy Debord and the situationist/surrealist practice of the drive, drifting becomes a metaphor for instrumental performance in which the openness and emergence of interactivity is articulated through sound, as music.