In the 1990s, the popularisation of house music and ecstasy led to a shift in the focus of research into club cultures. Characteristic of club culture is the willingness to share on the social (network), cultural (taste and knowledge), and physical (location) levels. Drug researchers ascertain that, since the 1990s, there has been a normalisation of drug use in the entertainment areas of youth and young adults. In an ongoing panel study among Amsterdam’s trendsetters, club cultures prove eminently receptive to new trends in nightlife. This chapter focuses on the transformation of club cultures into screen cultures within the electronic dance music (EDM) domain and the influence of vernacular media. This development runs parallel to the flight from overregulated entertainment venues. A second development is that the growing influence of the vernacular media has stimulated and also democratised knowledge, opinions and discussions about drugs, and the role in the prevention and risk discourse has changed from of a top-down to a linear model. In the vernacular discourse, the dominating view is that it is normal to experiment with drugs as long as it is done responsibly.
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Working as speech acts that delineate online communities, claims to victimhood tend to evoke contestation. Their inherent political nature spurs user engagement in the shape of clicks, shares, emojis, and so on. TikTok’s multimodality has given rise to new practices of engagement that significantly shape how victimhood is communicated and negotiated. This study draws attention to the platform vernacular practice of the ‘stitch.’ Allowing users to respond to someone else by ‘remixing’ social media content of others, the stitch is a platform practice designed for commentary. We zoom in on stitched videos networked by hashtags, published in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. TikTok’s multimodality expands user pathways that connect claimants and those who contest them. Moving beyond hashtag hijacking the stitch elevates a practice of commentary that turns victimhood politics into a spectacle that politicizes formerly less political realms, and that further blurs the boundaries between on- and offline spaces. The analysis shows how stitched videos are especially used for antagonist encounters where they crowd out the ‘original’ post to which they respond. In this way, stitches can be seen as tools that aid platformed ‘regimes’ of visibility that prioritize the antagonist encounter in order to commodify them.
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Introduction to a special issue of the IASPM journal. This special issue on fan studies aims to build a bridge with the study of popular music in order to inspire further investigation of music fandom.
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Fans constitute a very special kind of audience. They have been marginalized, ridiculed and stigmatized, yet at the same time they seem to represent the vanguard of new relationships with and within the media. ‘Participatory culture’ has become the new normative standard. Concepts derived from early fan studies, such as transmedial storytelling and co-creation, are now the standard fare of journalism and marketing text books alike. Indeed, usage of the word fan has become ubiquitous. The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures problematizes this exaltation of fans and offers a comprehensive examination of the current state of the field. Bringing together the latest international research, it explores the conceptualization of ‘the fan’ and the significance of relationships between fans and producers, with particular attention to the intersection between online spaces and offline places.
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This article interrogates platform-specific bias in the contemporary algorithmic media landscape through a comparative study of the representation of pregnancy on the Web and social media. Online visual materials such as social media content related to pregnancy are not void of bias, nor are they very diverse. The case study is a cross-platform analysis of social media imagery for the topic of pregnancy, through which distinct visual platform vernaculars emerge. The authors describe two visualization methods that can support comparative analysis of such visual vernaculars: the image grid and the composite image. While platform-specific perspectives range from lists of pregnancy tips on Pinterest to pregnancy information and social support systems on Twitter, and pregnancy humour on Reddit, each of the platforms presents a predominantly White, able-bodied and heteronormative perspective on pregnancy.
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This deaf-led work critically explores Deaf Tech, challenging conventional understandings of technologies ‘for’ deaf people as merely assistive and accessible, since these understandings are predominantly embedded in medical and audist ideologies. By employing participatory speculative workshops, deaf participants from different European countries envisioned technologies on Eyeth - a mythical planet inhabited by deaf people - centered on their perspectives and curiosities. The results present a series of alternative socio-technical narratives that illustrate qualitative aspects of technologies desired by deaf people. This study advocates for expanding the scope of deaf technological landscapes, emphasizing the needs of establishing deaf-centered HCI, including the development of methods and concepts that truly prioritize deaf experiences in the design of technologies intended for their use.
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In deze tekst gaan we in op de methodiek van het inzetten van levensverhalen binnen het onderzoek van het lectoraat Diversiteitvraagstukken van hogeschool Inholland. Eerst zal een korte weergave worden gegeven van de opdracht van het lectoraat, de focus van het lectoraat in haar onderzoek(en), de theoretische uitgangspunten die ze hanteert en ten slotte zal worden ingegaan op de wijze waarop het lectoraat levensverhalen inzet als methodiek van dataverzameling. Het in beeld brengen van levensverhalen kan op zichzelf staan en dienen als enige onderzoeksmethode. Ze is echter met name betekenisvol als de verzamelde verhalen worden gecombineerd met andere onderzoeksmethoden, zoals focusgroepen, interviews en (online) vragenlijsten, waardoor informatie over iemands leven van nog meer context wordt voorzien. De informatie in deze tekst is bedoeld voor onderzoekers en studenten die geïnteresseerd zijn in het inzetten van de levensverhalen methodiek. De tekst wordt afgesloten met een visuele weergave van de items die bij deze methodiek kunnen worden bevraagd en een aantal voorbeeldvragen die kunnen worden gesteld. De citaten zijn afkomstig uit het levensverhalenboek Ik ben dat samen met studenten van de minor Migratievraagstukken is gemaakt in 2021
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Visual cross-platform analysis (VCPA) is a methodological approach designed to overcome two forms of bias in the social media research literature: first, a bias towards studies of single plat- forms and, second, a bias towards analysis that focuses on text and metrics. VCPA addresses this by providing methods for identifying visual vernaculars, defined as the platform-specific content and style of images that articulate any given social or political issue.
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Increasingly, Instagram is discussed as a site for misinformation, inau-thentic activities, and polarization, particularly in recent studies aboutelections, the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines. In this study, we havefound a different platform. By looking at the content that receives themost interactions over two time periods (in 2020) related to three U.S.presidential candidates and the issues of COVID-19, healthcare, 5G andgun control, we characterize Instagram as a site of earnest (as opposedto ambivalent) political campaigning and moral support, with a rela-tive absence of polarizing content (particularly from influencers) andlittle to no misinformation and artificial amplification practices. Mostimportantly, while misinformation and polarization might be spreadingon the platform, they do not receive much user interaction.
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Citizen participation is booming, especially the number of urban bottom-up initiatives where information and communication technologies (ICT) are deployed is increasing rapidly. This growth is good news for society as recent historical research shows that the more citizens actively and persistently interfere with public issues, the more likely a society will be resilient. And yet, at the same time, a growing number of scholars argue that due to the unprecedented impact of ICT, the public sphere is at stake. How to understand both trends? How do the anti-‘public sphere’ developments relate to the growing number of citizens’ initiatives using ICT? And if these citizen initiatives can indeed be understood as manifestations of public spheres, how can ICT foster or hinder the development of these public spheres? These questions will be explored by analyzing a Dutch citizen initiative called ‘Buuv’ (an online ‘market’ place for and by local residents) from a ‘public sphere’ perspective. The author will turn to The human condition (1958) of Hannah Arendt in order to elaborate a ‘public sphere’ perspective. An Arendtian perspective (as any perspective) highlights, however, some aspects and underexposes other aspects. Furthermore, chances are that Arendt’s thoughts are somewhat outdated, in the sense that we now live in a world where the online and the offline life intertwine — an experience that is referred to with the term ‘onlife’. Bearing these remarks in mind, the author will elaborate on the value of Arendt’s ideas to 1) the endeavor of understanding current trends in society—more urban bottom-up initiatives and anti-‘public sphere’ developments due to the broad uptake of ICT—and 2) the endeavor of revitalizing the public sphere in an onlife world. IEEE copyright
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