Discussing how far mankind went with mobile technologies, it is interesting to point out that already in 1964 the famous theorist of media, Marshal McLuhan predicted this scenario in his book ‘Understanding Media: Extension of Man’: “Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness” (McLuhan, […]
This study reflects on the Internet and its resources, especially social media websites, as a scenario of empowerment for the Brazilian urban popular classes, which find in that space an opportunity to express their opinions, to socialize with their friends and family and to discover new horizons and conjunctures. According to the research “Information […]
The issue that this paper addresses is YouTube based programming in Saudi Arabia. It focuses on the bottom-up, professionally generated content (PGC) produced by the Saudi youth exclusively for YouTube – between 2010 and 2016. It explores the political context of YouTube based programming and is aimed at understanding how the programme makers operate […]
This image is from https://world.wng.org/2016/07/blocked_by_the_great_firewall To make Facebook could possibly across the Chinese Great Firewall, Mark Zuckerberg has been working so hard (like showing his fluently speaking Mandarin online, meeting Chinese politicians, and trying to sell a Chinese version Facebook which could allow the governmental censorship possible) to please the Chinese government and the […]
For decades, tech companies have competed to make devices that can do more and more, faster and faster, with less and less user effort. In a current culmination of this trend, powerful smartphones have enabled us to truly do anything anywhere anytime. But a surprising opposition has emerged against the ruling wisdom that ‘convenience is […]
The ways in which we learn foreign languages have changed substantially over the past decades. With the rapid development and spread of new technologies, we now have more opportunities than ever before to engage with any language we like in a myriad of ways. There are countless websites and apps that promise to help us […]
You use social media. Be it Facebook, Twitter, or even a MySpace you haven’t visited since the early ‘00s, the clear majority of us now have an online presence. The most widespread social media sites will often display your profile with your real name, but there are several popular sites in which users can be […]
Cyber Security is an actor-rich area: many different entities influence the security of the various actors. The dynamics of such a space are of special interest to international relations scholars. In my upcoming talk at Connected Life 2015, I will share from my on-going DPhil research using a historical analogy to mercantile companies, privateers, and […]
Packing a suitcase and moving to a new place is not a fact of fiction. Academically speaking, ‘mobilities’ are understood as movement of people, objects, spaces and information. So, in reality when one moves to another country they are packing more than just their suitcase. What I am trying to find out is why and […]
Wine has a powerful connection to the world of the sophisticated and even godly far surpassing that of any other food or drink. In this vein, the wine community is often seen as out of reach to the average individual. However, the evolution of social networking technologies over the past decade has given rise to […]
What makes us dump ice on our heads enough times to raise 90 million dollars? How do 50 kids building polar bears on the streets of London help to win a fight against Shell? There is a lot of hype around digital technologies, but is it really the technology itself that causes social change amongst […]
My presentation at Connected Life 2015 will investigate the dynamics between representations of the French community on-line and their lived experience on-land, by means of an “ethnosemiotic” reading of a small corpus of blogs. The fine-grained analysis of the blogs, all of which are housed in the London French Special Collection (UK Web Archive), aims […]
On October 16, 2014, popular photo hosting service Twitpic announced it would be shutting down. The announcement came after weeks of negotiation, as the company attempted to find a buyer that might save it from obsolescence. Twitpic advised users to download their own photo archives and gave step-by-step directions to aid users in saving and […]
In the summer of 2012, I gave up chopping strawberries at Wimbledon to attend my PhD interview. Before I knew it I’d been offered a studentship, generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and GE Healthcare Ltd. It was the start of a great three years which would take me back to my […]
The 2011-2012 Russian protest mobilisations were largely enabled by the rise of social networks. Social and technological advancements paired to pave the way for “the biggest protests since the fall of the USSR” (BBC, 2011). Ubiquitous and uncensored social media empowered the liberal masses to share their grievances, discuss and unite online, and then mobilise […]
This short article is based on findings from a pilot study which took place in January 2015 and primarily draws on semi-structured interviews with three girls conducted in a school in South London serving a low-income community. It marries feminist and Foucauldian perspectives to explore how female peer hierarchies and social control are navigated in […]
In the last ten years the Internet Governance landscape has changed sensibly. Departing from the romantic and libertarian view that enabled the technological development a fertile fractal governance ecosystem was developed and with the support of different actors established the minimums standards of its international regulation. The Internet Governance Forum – IGF, the International Telecommunication […]
A quick web search for the key word “Family memories” reveals 329,000,000 web page search results, 29,100,000 videos and many more photos (1). Each piece in the many millions of pieces and pixels of content reveals interesting trends about how families create and share memories in the digital environment. Memory bytes: Born Digital and Digitized […]
Government open data (OGD) programs, in which a government places public data online in a downloadable and typically machine-readable format, have spread widely in recent years. Just over ten years after the launch of the first OGD program, Washington D.C. in 2006, dozens of OGD programs exist worldwide. The practice of opening government data has […]
Through a close reading of experimental electronic musician Holly Herndon’s September 2014 song and video release “Home,” I consider the crossroads of NSA Internet surveillance and the contemporary, post-internet, and globalization-informed home. In my exploration, I reference home within the context of Herndon’s understanding: that her laptop is her home, intertwined with her life and […]