Media Artifacts Research Articles

The Power of Assembly

The Power of Assembly

Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory.

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.

From media to hypermedia: Journalistic representations of Rohingya refugees and humanitarian communication

The paper is a comparative analysis of two media artifacts from Reuters engaging with the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis. One artifact are the ‘traditional’ images that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018; the second is a special report utilising several aspects of new media. Locating the artifacts within humanitarian journalism, the analysis seeks to understand whether emergent media has pronounced gains over traditional media. The study argues that moral connections through technology are not a given and that such relationships between the spectators and subjects of humanitarian communication artifacts must be continually worked on and improved upon through a vigilant media ethics. The paper hopes to contribute to knowledge about new media’s intersections with journalistic refugee representations and to the broad field imaginary of humanitarian communication.

Television Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence: Chinese Intellectual Property Shows and the Case of All Is Well

Abstract This article formally introduces the ‘intellectual property show’ concept currently inciting heated discussions among Chinese media studies scholars into English-language academia. Intellectual property show, a Chinese term generally referring to television shows adapted from internet fiction (and to a secondary extent, video games), explicitly suggests an adaptation form and logic particular to an environment characterized by converging media and digital transformations of cultural production. Using the 2019 Chinese hit show All is Well, adapted from an internet novel with the same name, I approach intellectual property show as a media artefact situated at the volatile convergence of political demand, business interest, and new media affordances through adopting an integrative approach to contemporary adaptations in China. By attending to both the material context of production and the media text itself, I join the current explorations in adaptation studies for methods that answer the why and how of adaptation.

Fluid Media Artifacts: New Foundations for Symbolic Dominance

The significance of the paper is predefined by the qualitative shifts in the information environment of society, characterized by the fluidity of the media. Social and technological changes in the Internet have had a crucial impact on the media audience’s perception of cultural artefacts. A decisive and ongoing factor has been the change in the functions of the audience, which is increasingly being transformed into an actor of information relations in society. In particular, there is a radical rearrangement of the actors in the subject-object relationship in media propaganda. In the media environment, the linear flow of time gives way to a chaotic flow that violates possible cause-effect relations; the values of artefacts of the past and present “stop having a certain propaganda impact on the audience, rather they themselves are “irradiated” by the propaganda intensions of the audience. Thus, the practices of symbolic domination implemented in the media environment acquire new forms and new social content. The empirical basis of the research was the findings of focus groups comparing the socio-philosophical meaning of movies from different eras (1968, 2015) and different countries (the USSR, the USA), with the same events as the basis of the movies. The meaning of the current problem predetermined the reference to the works of philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, theorists of journalism (Z. Bauman, I. Hoffman, S. Dudnik, D. Dubrovsky, S. Ilchenko, T. Eriksen, etc.). Methodology of focus groups, supplemented by the highlighting of semantic counterpoints of the discussions, their grouping and further inclusion in the context of the discussion to record the respondents’ reflection on the generalizing conclusions was used; content analysis of the transcripts of focus groups was conducted. The materials of the paper may be of interest to culturologists, political scientists and theorists of journalism. Keywords: fluidity of media, mediatization, artefact, propaganda, symbolic dominance, reflection

Approaching complex multimodal phenomena in educational settings–Insights from theory

Digital media tasks are increasingly used in university settings to assess students’ scientific knowledge. The use of such tasks has generated the need for principled analytical approaches to better understand how meaning-making operates in these artefacts. However, there has been a proliferation of approaches to multimodality in recent years and as a result deciding which tools to use is challenging for analysts and for subsequent translation into pedagogy. Systemic functional approaches to multimodal phenomena have proved useful as we study the digital artefacts produced in tertiary science classrooms. These approaches are grounded in Halliday’s (1994) social-semiotic theories of language and influenced by Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar. Here, we present insights from theoretical and methodological developments in systemic functional approaches to multimodal phenomena. We illustrate these insights with a student-generated digital media artefact, revealing the affordances of a systemic functional approach and the perspectives it offers on semiosis.

Females by Andrea Long Chu

Reviewed by: Females by Andrea Long Chu Kimberly Henry Andrea Long Chu, Females New York: Verso, 2019. 94 pp. The past decade has seen an explosion in trans discourse online especially between trans activists and the "gender critical," giving the search for a definition of "woman" new urgency. Andrea Long Chu's first book, Females, makes a playfully radical intervention into the fields of feminist and gender theory, bypassing questions of binary and biology with the simple statement, "Everyone is female." Her thesis, however, will not likely result in applause from the "future is female" crowd, as Long Chu immediately follows this statement by defining "female" not as a biological phenomenon but a psychological one, marked by self-negation to make room for the desires of others. The deliberately provocative idea at the center of Females operates on many levels to engage and challenge scholarly and popular conversations on gender. Long Chu stretches the theory of socially constructed gender to its extreme by defining "female" as "any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another" (11). Those termed female under the conventional—already embattled—definition, may initially feel taken aback at this re-definition, especially as it incorporates some of the worst misogynistic stereotypes about females: We are a hollow signifier, a vessel and canvas for the desires of the other. By casting "female" as the universal sex, however, Long Chu builds the basis for an almost humanist project, joining all genders together under the universally human suffering of femaleness. This book's playful radicality takes inspiration from Long Chu's muse, Valerie Solanas, self-publisher of the SCUM Manifesto and shooter of Andy Warhol. Long Chu's meditations on Solanas and particularly her play, Up Your Ass, make up a large portion of Females. Each short chapter is named for a quote from Up Your Ass, with scenes and characters function as a jumping off point for Long Chu to break down Solanas' theories on gender as stated in the SCUM Manifesto. Long Chu describes Solanas' caustic rhetoric with honesty and affection, acknowledging its occasional incomprehensibility. Of Solanas' many extreme suggestions, the inversion of gendered traits—that men behave in all the bad ways they assign to women, and vice versa—and the eventual "genocide" of men inspire Females the [End Page 378] most. They are the spiritual precursor for Long Chu's theory and in a certain sense the project of her book. Indeed, Females argues, men do act like women, but everybody does, so we are all female—a sentence which neatly satisfies Solanas' genocidal streak. Long Chu, however, rejects Solanas' preferred medium, the manifesto, though she doesn't opt for a standard academic manuscript in its place. Females blends media analysis and memoir, covering in its tight ninety-four pages Solanas' major works, new media criticism, and autobiographical reminiscences of Long Chu's gender transition. Long Chu identifies new media artifacts and phenomena, such as the development of a tumblr based porn subgenre called "sissy porn," and reads them through her theory of gender, building her argument for the universality of femaleness as she defines it. One of the more interesting, and likely more controversial, of these examples is Long Chu's analysis of Gigi Gorgeous, a trans YouTuber and makeup influencer. Long Chu explores the archive of images which constitute Gigi, her YouTube documented transition, and her steadfast dedication to conventional beauty, with a both critical and openly longing eye. Long Chu ends her first chapter on Gigi, writing, "Gender transition"—she later expands this to all gender—"no matter the direction, is always a process of becoming a canvas for someone else's fantasy" (30). This is the edge that Long Chu pushes up against, offering readers ideas that engage and threaten to offend, tempered by a genuine humanity. Long Chu is not Solanas; Females is not a manifesto, but a question. Hovering over this memoir/media studies approach to gender is the specter of psychoanalysis. Long Chu even acknowledges its presence, writing "When I say that everyone is female, I am simply restating something psychoanalytically uncontroversial" (22). Setting aside the fact that the words "psychoanalysis...

Learning About Metadata and Machines: Teaching Students Using a Novel Structured Database Activity

Machines produce and operate using complex systems of metadata that need to be catalogued, sorted, and processed. Many students lack the experience with metadata and sufficient knowledge about it to understand it as part of their data literacy skills. This paper describes an educational and interactive database activity designed for teaching undergraduate communication students about the creation, value, and logic of structured data. Through a set of virtual instructional videos and interactive visualizations, the paper describes how students can gain experience with structured data and apply that knowledge to successfully find, curate, and classify a digital archive of media artifacts. The pedagogical activity, teaching materials, and archives are facilitated through and housed in an online resource called Fabric of Digital Life (fabricofdigitallife.com). We end by discussing the activity’s relevance for the emerging field of human-machine communication.

Cultural Viz: An Aesthetic Approach to Cultural Analytics

Cultural Analytics (C.A.) is an approach for analyzing media and digital culture using data methods and visual computing techniques. This article explores the aesthetic value of C.A. by approaching cultural visualizations as digital artworks. The authors present a variety of techniques developed since 2007 by members of the C.A. lab for creating visualizations of media artifacts and collections of images. Through a series of projects conducted by them, the authors discuss the artistic meaning of media visualizations and their experience in art exhibitions, workshops and seminars.

From Analog to Virtual: Visual Stylizations of Humanoid Characters Across Media

Visual stylization and its impact on different aspects of the perception of digital human beings are commonly debated. This study investigated how fictional and non-fictional characters are represented in various media from the perspective of digital humanoid character design. Based on Zangwill’s theory of Moderate Aesthetic Formalism, this study focused on the formalistic aspect of visual analysis and interpretation of media artifacts ranging from older media such as paintings to newer media, such as animations, interactive video games and mobile apps. This paper also explores several case studies of how humanoid digital characters are represented via visual stylizations across different media. This article underlines the importance of visual stylization as an opportunity to find unique and innovative ways of communicating with visual means.

The politics and perils of dis/connection in the Global South

Using empirical vignettes of repression against minority groups in the Global South, my essay attempts to contribute to the existing discourse in disconnection studies by contextualising and reconceptualising the notion of disconnection in the contemporary milieu. I introduce the term ‘dis/connection’ into the existing repertoire to illustrate how the interplay between connection and disconnection serves as a tactic and a technique of both repression and resistance. ‘Dis/connection as repression’ represents a political practice of modern power that is ubiquitous, diffuse and circulating; it captures both territorial and network ecologies, renders the living condition of the targeted community transparent, making them visible to the gaze of the authorities. Against this practice, I identify the possibility of resistance by conceptualising ‘dis/connection as resistance’ in the form of an assemblage, namely the interplay between connection and disconnection that is formed through a constellation of things, each paving their own pathways but can cohere at certain events or moments before dispersing again. ‘Dis/connection assemblage’ follows the logic of media hybridity, is built upon temporary aggregates of media artefacts and connects networks and territorialities in multiple spatialities and temporalities. Within the dis/connection assemblage, people may sculpt their spaces and networks of hope for change.

Raw Harmonies: Transmediation through Raw Data

In this paper, the authors present the initial findings from explorations on transformation patterns of data in raw format when crossing or transmediating directly (i.e. unaffected by any other form of codification) between audio and visual media. These patterns have allowed the authors to engage in the production of transmediatic artifacts with some degree of control and agency, facilitating purposeful applications of transmediation. The products of such practices will enable a form of literacy, an aesthetic means to identify in visual media artifacts those patterns that could transmediate into useful or appealing sonic artifacts and vice versa.

Terrorists and Patriots: Construction in Popular Hindi Cinema

Through this research we are trying to understand the construction of the patriot and the terrorist in popular Indian cinema. In all media artefacts realities are represented and not replicated. Certain metaphors are used to construct a reality which is guided by individual understanding and perceptions. Certain metaphors used continuously used for particular constructions tend to become normative and unquestioned. As a result in any analysis of representation, the question, whose reality is depicted? is significant.For the purpose of this research we have closely looked at four Hindi movies, Mani Ratnam's Roja (1992) and Dil Se (1998), Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya (2004) and Shimit Amin's Chak De India (2007). Through a semiotic and discourse analysis of these movies, we have attempted to understand the creation and representation of the hero and the anti-hero in the form of patriots and terrorists respectively. This construction is a part of the nation-building discourse that films participate in, and act as a site of this discourse as well. The problems of the nation are depicted in these movies and are represented in the characterization of the anti-hero. The patriot on the other hand acts as the saviour of the nation in its times of trouble.The research has brought forward the fact that the desires of the nation-state have changed over time. Initially, religion formed a basis of most issues. Communal disharmony was highlighted upon and national integrity was the call of the patriot through the film, as seen in Roja. By the time Chak De India was released the nation's problems shifted to regionalism, thus proving India's concept of unity in diversity a farce. It reflected upon the internal problems of the nation state which is so divided by its own wings and thus needs a patriot to defeat the enemy which lies within its own self.

Analysis of U.S., Kenyan, and Finnish Discourse Patterns in a Cross-Cultural Digital Makerspace Learning Community Through the IBE-UNESCO Global Competences Framework

In 2017, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) put forth seven global competences to address accelerating technological progress and increasing levels of complexity and uncertainty affecting many facets of society (Marope, 2017). These competences were used in examining participant discourse in a global, collaborative digital makerspace environment, where students ages 12 to 17 from six countries develop and share STEM-focused media artifacts. The participants communicate synchronously through video conference calls, referred to as online global meet-ups. The meet-ups allow students to present media artifacts they have created, share ideas, exchange information, and provide feedback. In this analysis, epistemic network analysis (ENA), a technique in quantitative ethnography, is used to examine the connections made among the IBE-UNESCO global competences in a meet-up involving participants from Finland, Kenya, and the U.S. ENA network models were created initially for the three sites, then further disaggregated by time segment to analyze how participant discourse patterns may have evolved in each context. Through this approach, the paper explores more broadly the interactive role of media making, cross-cultural engagement, and collaborative learning in the development of global competences in students.

Hybridity and Soft Power Statecraft: The ‘GREAT’ Campaign

ABSTRACT This examination analyses transformations to statecraft accelerated by digital media technologies. This theory-building study moves beyond digitalisation of diplomacy as a means of adapting statecraft to evolving media landscapes, and extends to the governance of soft power capabilities. It challenges static approaches to digital diplomacy and argues for conceptualisations of soft power that account for changes to statecraft. To theorise this dynamic, the concept of ‘soft power statecraft’ and the notion of hybridity in the analysis of ‘GREAT’, Britain’s prominent strategic campaign, reveal trajectories of change elicited by it. The findings, drawn from interviews, policy data, and media artefacts, reveal how ‘GREAT’ embodies a hybridised approach to soft power statecraft at the levels of governance, communicative practices, media landscapes, and cultures. They reveal how these changes translate into statecraft strategies for the articulation of soft power.

Prosthetic Soul Mates: Sex Robots as Media for Companionship

Prosthetic Soul Mates: Sex Robots as Media for Companionship

The use of nondialogic trolling to disrupt online communication

Trolling, a uniquely common antisocial behavior in online communities, has traditionally been conceptualized as a phenomenon based in group dialogue. Yet it is possible for trolling to occur without any actual dialogue between the troll and the intended targets. In this paper, several methods of trolling are presented, each of which is performed through engagement with user-generated media artifacts rather than through back-and-forth conversation among users. These are broadly grouped into four categories based on the type of media engagement that is exploited: content creation, content curation, content evaluation, and content refinement. This manuscript therefore fills a significant gap in the literature on this topic and helps to resolve a limitation in existing explications of the construct by showing its applicability to a wider range of behaviors than previously acknowledged.

The Smells, Sights, and Pleasures of Ink on Paper: The Consumption of Print Newspapers During a Period Marked by Their Crisis

ABSTRACTMuch has been written about the crisis of print newspapers, but with more attention paid to issues of production and distribution rather than reception. Furthermore, the scholarship on contemporary print newspaper reception has been limited by a focus on the information dimension and on countries in the Global North. To help overcome these limitations, in this paper we ask two questions that inquire into the reception of print newspapers in the contemporary media environment, and do so within a country from the Global South. Drawing upon an analysis of 158 semi-structured interviews conducted in the City of Buenos Aires and other parts of the country, we find that people continue reading print newspapers not solely, or even primarily, for the information contained in their pages, but for dynamics that tie together news content with materiality, routinization, and larger practices of incorporation of this media artifact into their daily lives. These dynamics are partly shaped by distinctive aspects of the Argentine context, including business strategies, family rituals, urban patterns, and a culture of nostalgia.

Prime-Time Television’s First White, Female U.S. President: Gender and Race Discourses of a Feminist Media Artifact

Commander in Chief is the first prime-time television drama to have a protagonist and an entire plot dedicated to a female U.S. president. Through a transversal discourse analysis, we explain how the series is a feminist artifact that valuably contributes to contemporary discourses of gender—but also of race. First, the study unpacks the show’s publicity that exaggerates essentialist views of White femininity. Second, the study considers ways that Commander in Chief offers protean but insufficiently intersectional representations. Third, the study examines how President Allen provides a third-wave feminist account of women.

Role of spectral-detector CT in reduction of artifacts from contrast media in axillary and subclavian veins: single institution study in 50 patients

Background In CT imaging, a high concentration of iodinated contrast media in axillary and subclavian veins after brachial application can cause perivenous artifacts impairing diagnostic assessment of local vascular structures and soft tissue. Purpose To investigate reduction of perivenous hypo- and hyperattenuating artifacts of the axillary and subclavian veins using virtual monoenergetic images (VMI) in comparison to conventional CT images (CI), acquired on spectral-detector CT. Material and Methods 50 spectral-detector CT datasets of patients with perivenous artifacts from contrast media were included in this retrospective, institutional review board-approved study. CT images and virtual monoenergetic images (range 40–200 keV, 10-keV increments) were reconstructed from the same scans. Quantitative analysis was performed by region of interest-based assessment of mean attenuation (HU) and standard deviation in most pronounced hypo- and hyperdense artifacts and artifact-impaired arteries as well as muscle. Visually, artifact reduction, assessment of vessels, and surrounding soft tissue were rated on 5-point Likert-scales by two radiologists. Results In comparison to CT images, virtual monoenergetic images of ≥90 keV showed a significant reduction of hypo- and hyperattenuating artifacts (hypodense: CI -220.0±171.2 HU; VMI130keV -13.4±49.1 HU; hyperdense: CI 274.6±184.4 HU; VMI130keV 24.2±84.9 HU; P<0.001). Subjective analysis confirmed that virtual-monoenergetic images of ≥100 keV significantly reduced artifacts (hypodense: CI 2[1–3]; VMI130keV 5[4–5], hyperdense: CI 2[1–4]; VMI130keV 5[5–5], P<0.001) and improved diagnostic assessment. Best results for diagnostic assessment were noted for virtual monoenergetic images at 130 keV. Overcorrection of artifacts was observed at higher keV values. Interrater agreement was excellent for each evaluation and keV value (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.89). Conclusion Higher keV virtual monoenergetic images yielded significant reduction of contrast media artifacts and led to improved assessment of vessels and surrounding soft tissue. Recommended keV values for best diagnostic assessment are in the range of 100–160 keV.