Digital Ecology Research Articles

Justice in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobility Capital and New Social Order

The COVID-19 pandemic forces us to reconsider the conceptual boundaries of the world and everyday social order, affecting such pairs of concepts as: natural / artificial; habitual / extraordinary. The author considers one of the aspects of the changes having occured: the transformation of spatial mobility, which is connected with deep social changes. In the first part, the experience of isolation is interpreted on the basis of the theoretical resources of the social theory of mobilities, primarily the concepts of mobility capital and mobility justice. Not all social groups were equally mobile, because they had different mobility capital. The issue of mobility equity has taken in a new context: a natural global threat that has exacerbated the existing inequalities caused by the emergency. The second part of the article deals with the concept of "state of emergency" by G. Agamben and analyzes the issue of transgression of the system of the world social order, including its everyday dimension. The answer to this question is given on the basis of an analysis of the interpretations and forecasts of the leading contemporary European intellectuals (Agamben, Žižek, Latour, Sloterdijk, Fuller). The problems of social distancing, the transformation of higher education, the increase in the powers of the state, associated with medical justifications are considered. Important parameters of the new social order are the environmental factor and the need for sociocritical optics to understand the consequences of the pandemic. Analysis captures the increasing role of digital intermediaries of social interactions, which forms a new context for the problem of justice, opening up perspectives for issues of distance with digital technologies and issues of digital ecology.

Еnvironmental and Legal Regulation of Digitalization of Environmental Protection

The article is devoted to certain issues of environmental and legal aspects of the digital environment in the information system of environmental safety, issues of legal implementation of the digitalization program. This article has researched the importance and necessity of environmental digitalization. At the same time, the main idea of digital ecology is considered as the implementation of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development and prevention of Environmental Disasters, control of public opinion on environmental issues, improvement of health and increase in life expectancy of the population, adaptation of the state system of digitalization management in the field of environmental culture, environmental education, environmental safety to the digital environment, use of the possibilities of modern "breakthrough" digital technologies. Environmental digitalization in management comprehensive studies of the system approach to the use of digital environmental resources were conducted, the basics of improving the regulatory legal regulation in the management in the field of environmental safety in the framework of the implementation of the digital program were considered.

About some aspects of digital ecology

The situation with the spread of disinformation in the modern information environment and the complexity of the presentation and perception of refutations caused by the effects of "lasting influence", "reverse action" and the existence of polarized communities — "echo chambers" have been analysed. The dangers of deepfakes have been considered. A new type of content marketing with the self-explanatory name clickbait has been considered. It has seriously revolutionized the way content is distributed and attracted readers' attention. The proficiency of media literacy skills by children and adults in these conditions becomes a key factor in assessing online content and detecting misinformation. And as disinformation takes on new and viral forms, teaching children and teachers how to identify it and interact with it becomes especially relevant. It is concluded that it is necessary to create and introduce a media literacy course into the training program for all subject teachers.

Steps toward a digital ecology: ecological principles for the study of digital ecosystems

The notion of digital ecosystems has become a fruitful metaphor for examining the effects of digitalization across boundaries of organization, industry, lifeworld, mind, and body. In business-economic terms, the metaphor has inspired IS research into new business models, while in engineering terms, it has led to important insights into the design and governance of digital platforms. Studying digital ecosystems in these terms, however, makes it difficult to trace and explain those effects of digitalization, which do not materialize predominantly in economic and engineering patterns. Important relationships and their effects may therefore go unnoticed. In response, I draw on the ecological epistemology of Gregory Bateson and others to contribute an ecological approach to digital ecosystems. Such an understanding, I argue, expands the possibilities for tracing and explaining the wide-reaching, boundary-crossing effects of digitalization and the runaway dynamics they may lead to. I suggest to do this based on three principles: (1) part-of-ness—phenomena are to be observed as always part of a larger ecosystem; (2) systemic wisdom—ecosystems have limits, which need to be respected; and (3) information ecology—ecosystems are not mechanical but informed, cognitive systems. As my contribution, I propose six avenues for future IS research into digital ecology.

TIKTOK’S PEER PEDAGOGIES - LEARNING ABOUT BOOKS THROUGH #BOOKTOK VIDEOS

This paper eschews normative constructions of formalized ‘online learning’ to argue that learning with ‘the internet’ is mostly vernacular, ordinary, messy and constant. It uses the example of #booktok short videos to argue that individuals frequently learn from and with peers in online spaces, where ‘peerness’ is defined broadly. The paper draws on traditions within education, media and communications research such as theories of media pedagogies that refuse to see learning as pedagogically isolated within formal learning arrangements. I build on these foundations to conceptualize how TikTok viewers learn about books and reading via ‘peer pedagogies’. ‘Peer Pedagogies’ recognizes that in digital contexts individuals often learn from other individuals, regardless of if the ‘teacher’ in the relationship is directly known to the learner, and regardless of if ‘teaching’ is intended or purposeful. For instance, peer pedagogies and learning are frequently central characteristics of the relationships that form between ‘micro-celebrities’ and their fans. The paper discusses findings from an ongoing nationally funded Australian study which is mapping the digital ecology of teen reading in Australia. The project argues that one avenue for teens to find out about books is on digital platforms via peer pedagogies. That is, teenagers may purposefully or casually learn about books and reading from everyday users and micro-celebrities on digital platforms. The TikTok #booktok hashtag is therefore being investigated to identify examples of how young people learn about books and reading via TikTok videos and associated communities.

The Auto-Tuned Self: Modulating Voice and Gender in Digital Media Ecologies

Abstract This essay takes the auto-tuned viral video “Can't Hug Every Cat” as a point of entry for a broader analysis of how modulation decisively shapes politics, aesthetics, and gendering in contemporary digital ecologies. It uncovers how the exaggerated exhibitions of feminine vocal modulation in “Can't Hug Every Cat” entangle with generational feminist anxieties over gendered forms of articulation such as “sexy baby voice” and “upspeak.” It argues that the problematic of the modulated voice is both technologically and thematically central to political, technological, aesthetic, and gendered genealogies of media-technical modulation. The modulated voice given such extraordinary staging in “Can't Hug Every Cat” is therefore restored to the longer history of voice modulation, which is itself closely tied to the rise of control societies and digital media. In this perspective, techniques of voice modulation and social modulation are tandem technologies. The voice modulation that has figured prominently in media cultures in recent decades—from the music of Cher to T-Pain and beyond—is not merely a consequence of digital media and control societies but is also integral to their conditions of possibility. In this light, the rise of technologies for the modulation of the human voice since the nineteenth century is intertwined with the rise of new economic, political, and medical systems of control.

Memeability in an Attention Economy: On the Form of the Nike Kaepernick Meme

ABSTRACT This essay calls for understanding memes within the context of an attention economy, illustrating how the form of the Kaepernick Nike meme adapts to its conditions. These include a digital media ecology, abundance of information, scarcity of attention, and affective-emphasis. The Nike meme employs digital media to produce condensed images that fit into the pace and punctuated rhythm of scrolling. The iterations also frequently employ juxtaposition and paraprosdokian, forms that match the rhythms of reception in an attention economy and that surprise-shock. The essay concludes that placing memes in an attention economy context directs attention to formal cause (“memeability”) and that analyzing memes’ formal characteristics aids in understanding rhetoric in an attention economy.

Challenging the placeless imaginary in digital memories: The performation of place in the work of Forensic Architecture

This article discusses the imaginary that digital memories are ‘placeless’, which refers to the notion that, among the changes that memory has experienced under the impact of digital media, one is the loss of a significant link to place. I contend that digital memories are not placeless memories, but, on the contrary, that place is central for digital memory work. Drawing on the concept of ‘performation’, I seek to demonstrate how place is created, executed and staged in the digital ecology. To illustrate this, I analyse two works of the research agency Forensic Architecture, ‘Hannibal in Rafah’ and ‘Saydnaya: Inside A Syrian Torture Prison’, in which ‘place’ plays a central role in the shaping of digital memory. Digital media’s ‘inherently archival’ nature acquires a different meaning in these works: it is the process of collecting and mapping the dispersed fragments of data that transforms the archive into memory.

Exploring the digital media ecology: insights from a study of healthy diets and climate change communication on digital and social media

This study explores the types of actors visible in the digital science communication landscape in the Netherlands, Serbia and the U.K. Using the Koru model of science communication as a basis, we consider how science communicators craft their messages and which channels they are using to reach audiences. The study took as case studies the topics of climate change and healthy diets to enable comparison across countries, topics and platforms. These findings are compared with the results from a survey of over 200 science communication practitioners based in these countries. We find that although traditional media are challenged by the variety of different new entrants into the digital landscape, our results suggest that the media and journalists remain highly visible. In addition, our survey results suggest that many science communicators may struggle to gain traction in the crowded digital ecology, and in particular, that relatively few scientists and research institutions and universities are achieving a high profile in the public digital media ecology of science communication.

Research on Profit Model of Suning Smart Retail E-Buy in Digital Ecology

With the popularity of the Internet, the traditional retail model has caused a huge impact. With the application of Internet of things to retail enterprises, it has produced a lot of data. Suning has developed e-commerce through Smart retail (hereinafter referred to as SR), which has brought huge profits to Suning e-buy (hereinafter referred to as Suning). Traditional retail enterprises must transform and upgrade, which will achieve better profits. By integrating into the Internet, Suning e-commerce launched an e-commerce model. Through the e-commerce platform, Suning can easily experience online shopping, which will improve sales through price strategy. Through e-commerce, Suning continues to expand its market scale, which also continues to ensure its position in the industry. Through the Internet platform, Suning ensures the stable profit level of the enterprise, which can ensure the transformation of the enterprise to the profit model (hereinafter referred to as PM). Firstly, this paper analyzes the main retail models. Then, this paper constructs a PM of SR in digital ecology. Finally, some suggestions are put forward.

How Are Smallholder Farmers Involved in Digital Agriculture in Developing Countries: A Case Study from China

Digital transformation in agricultural practices may lead to a "digital divide" between small and large farms, owing to the characteristics and availability of digital technology. This paper sought to use a case study in Chongzhou County, Sichuan Province in China, to analyze how smallholder farmers in developing countries access such digital agriculture and share the benefits of digital agricultural transformation. Small farmers may own a larger scale farm through forming cooperatives; they are also indirectly involved in digital agriculture through agriculture outsourcing. The outsourcing market is expected to grow, which will allow for the evolution of a digital agricultural service platform, the development of a digital agricultural business organization consortium, and the continued expansion of a healthy digital ecology. This paper revealed important policy implications, stemming from the fact that the implementation of inclusive digital agriculture relies on two key shifts: (1) transformation from land scale operations to service scale operations and (2) from inclusive technological progress to inclusive organization innovation.

Characterizing Interaction Design by Its Ideals: A Discipline in Transition

As a way to capture a broadly acceptable high-level characterization of design, we focus on the guiding values or ideals of the discipline. We first reason from the notion of engineering interfaces for usability and utility up to the 1990s to the current ideal of designing interfaces for experience and meaning. Next, we identify three recent technical and societal developments that are challenging the existing ideals of interaction design, namely the move towards hybrid physical/digital materials, the emergence of an increasingly complex and fluid digital ecology, and the increasing proportion of autonomous or partially autonomous systems changing their behavior over time and with use. These challenges in turn motivate us to propose three directions in which new ideals for interaction design might be sought: the first is to go beyond the language-body divide that implicitly frames most of our current understandings of experience and meaning, the second is to extend the scope of interaction design from individual interfaces to the complex sociotechnical fabric of human and nonhuman actors, and the third is to go beyond predictability by learning to design with machine learning.

Ecological Interfaces between Land and Flowing Water: Themes and Trends in Riparian Research and Management

This paper provides an overview of past, present and future themes for research and management of riparian zones, often relating to papers within this Wetlands Special Feature. Riparian research expanded in the United States around 1980 with themes that recognized (1) damage from excessive livestock, or (2) damage from river damming and diversion, and (3) the beneficial capacity of riparian buffers to intercept and assimilate nutrients and other water contaminants. Research expanded globally in the 1990s, with themes including (4) plant life history requirements and (5) reliance on fluvial geomorphic dynamics that enable riparian rejuvenation. Resource managers recognized that riparian areas provide (6) rich wildlife habitats (7) along with valued ecosystem services, (8) which encouraged conservation and restoration initiatives, (9) including environmental flow regimes. Floodplains are (10) vulnerable to invasive plants and management has included biocontrol such as for Tamarix in the American Southwest. Into the twenty-first century, (11) climate change is advancing, and riparian ecosystems may be especially impacted due to the compound challenges from increasing water demand and declining summer flows. As an emerging opportunity, (12) while reservoirs submerge floodplain vegetation, reservoir deltas may support compensatory riparian wetlands. (13) Studies increasingly utilize remote sensing tools including satellite imagery, LiDAR and unmanned aircraft systems, and (14) the coordination of large data sets invites digital ecology, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Since riparian zones are centres for human activities, (15) there are opportunities for citizen science, social media and internet applications, which will increasingly democratize riparian research and management.

Digital ecology: Artificial intelligence impact on legal and environmental sphere

New century turns out the intensive scientific revolution, which leads to the extension the digital technologies. The research is devoted to the analysis the opportunities and prospects for the implementation of the artificial intelligence in the legal system. The urgency of the study predetermines by the large-scale digital revolution that affects all spheres of society, including the area of legal activity (for example, the initiative to use lawyers-robots in the legal corporations; the idea to automate legal activity; the appearance of smart contracts, blockchain technologies, cryptocurrency, which are not regulated by the Russian law yet; increase if the cybercrime and others). The purpose of the study is to analyze the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and limits of introducing the digital technologies into the legal environment. Research methods are analysis, synthesis and comparative law. The study contains several positions. Firstly, the analysis the points of view about the theme of research among the national and foreign scientists are presented. Secondly, the comprehensive assessment of the artificial intelligence influence on the legal sphere is given. Thirdly, the opportunities for regulation changed relationships, connected with digital technologies, in the current Russian legislation, and the advantages and disadvantages of fixing new categories in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation are researched. Fourthly, examples of the negative impact of legal vacuum on the law enforcement practice and the ways for its overcoming are given. By the way, specific decisions of the courts given as the arguments. Fifthly, the analysis of current trends in the introduction of digital technologies in the legal sphere in the Russian Federation and in the over countries is carried out. There are some contradictory opinions of scientists and practitioners regarding the possibility of using robotic technologies in the legal system. Sixthly, it presents own conclusion based on the conducted research, which is to substantiate the positive trend towards digitalization in the legal system, but the negativity of the possible effects excessive interference of the artificial intelligence in the legal activity.

21st‐century science education digital ecologies: Technology, technique, shoelaces, promise, and pitfalls?

21st‐century science education digital ecologies: Technology, technique, shoelaces, promise, and pitfalls?

“Damn I Didn’t Know Y’all Was Sad? I Thought It Was Just Memes”: Irony, Memes and Risk in Internet Depression Culture

Born in online cultures that use irony as a form of play, depression memes seek to subvert popular understandings of mental health and expression. Commenting as much on the brutal reality of depression as well as a number of associated anxiety symptoms, depression memes manifest as a generalised pessimism towards the future, often resulting in a nihilist outlook that borders on suicidal ideation. This article studies how depression meme culture operates as a logic transcending various social media platforms and their respective modes of subjectivisation, and risk results from the tension between them. Within mask cultures, dissimulation is the driving principle behind layering irony onto a text, with the purpose of constantly evading a stable sense of identity. (de Zeeuw, 2017, Tuters, 2019). On Facebook and other social media platforms like Instagram, irony can be pursued to increase one’s social capital and acts as a form of connective intimacy (McCosker, Gerrard, 2020). Internet depression culture reveals the tension between these different modes of subjectivity, and creates ambiguity that risks being recuperated by the neoliberal discourses around mental health it seeks to escape from.

Child and youth engagement: civic literacies and digital ecologies

With a rise in participatory media, there has been a hopefulness about how networked media spurs on youth leadership and civic engagement, offering opportunities and power to marginalized voices an...

Digital Debt Collection and Ecologies of Consumer Overindebtedness

abstract New digital financial technologies (fintech) are changing the contours of the consumer debt industry. The aim of this article is to address the challenges that these shifts pose for the operation and regulation of the debt collection industry and how they map onto existing spatial ecologies of consumer overindebtedness. Two ideal types of consumer debt ecosystems are developed: a mainstream ecology based on traditional modes of operating that include some practices that have existed for centuries; and a new digital ecology comprising new digital entrants that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. A fourfold framework provides a lens through which the new fintech debt ecology is analyzed: debt repayment, debt reporting, debt accounting, and debt prevention. The challenges digital debt collection pose for financial exclusion, digital inequality, the digital divide, and the implications for policy makers and regulators are discussed.

Making IS Relevant in a Connected World

The exponential growth of the Internet since the mid-1990s has greatly expanded the capacity of people everywhere to interconnect and engage through digital technologies. As a complex adaptive system of systems, the Internet has extended the range and complexity of phenomena of interest to Information Systems (IS) scholars. This is both an exciting opportunity and a challenge which we explore in this paper by revisiting the Intellectual Structures Framework (Hirshheim et al. 1996) which attempted to make sense of the fragmented adhocracy of IS, before the expansion and penetration of the Internet. We suggest that the IS adhocracy, with its multi-disciplinary and systems-oriented nature, gives IS researchers the requisite variety to contend with the increasingly diverse digital ecologies of IS-enabled human activities that have emerged in the ensuing two decades. Based on relevant research over these two decades we present a revised framework that (1) reflects the complexities of contemporary IS phenomena and (2) can act as an instrument for analysing such phenomena across a spectrum of human activities. We justify the form and content of the Revised Intellectual Structures Framework, providing examples of its application in IS research using appropriate research methods and techniques. We argue that our revisions to the original framework provides individuals, organisations, and societies with a conceptual lens that is necessary to better address the challenges and opportunities posed by the complexities of contemporary digital ecologies.

Informal multimedia biodiversity awareness event as a digital ecology for promoting culture of science

Using self-determination theory, this study investigated the influence of a multimedia-enhanced informal biodiversity awareness event on the evolving culture of science and internal and external motivation to take environmental action among the members of a small community in Southeastern US. The event was hosted by a local life and science museum and featured three main components: a) opening session by experts in biodiversity; b) animated video about biodiversity; and c) follow-up conversation with scientists. Motivation for Environmental Action survey was used to examine public’s motivation to take action to protect biodiversity prior to and upon finishing the event. Semi-structured interviews were employed to investigate public’s evolving culture of science. Ordinal regression analysis suggested that public’s internal motivation was positively associated with a greater number of actions taken to protect biodiversity. University students were less likely to take actions to protect biodiversity than other members of the public. Interestingly, the increase in internal motivation was larger for students than for non-students, suggesting that even a relatively short informal biodiversity awareness event can impact community’s motivation, especially among those who were not particularly motivated to take actions to protect biodiversity prior to the event.