Convergence, Ahead of Print.
This paper presents findings from an online questionnaire that collected experiences from the Facebook outage on October 4th, 2021, an event that affected approximately three billion users around the globe. The purpose of the study is to contribute to recent discussions digital disconnection and digital wellbeing by using an extraordinary event of involuntary disconnection as point of departure. Our research questions were: Where were people when the services shut down, what did they think and what did they do? What correlations can be found between usage/attitudes to social media and the experiences of the outage? How can the outage of October 4th be understood as a snapshot of our cultural condition? The questionnaire was distributed to 463 Swedish university students and 191 responses were received. Our analysis shows how the involuntary disconnection caused by the outage was an event that highlights the ambivalence of digital life. It also points to some correlations between general social media use and attitudes, and the experiences and activities during the outage. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications that these findings may have for further research into digital disconnection.
Dr Hunter’s Plague: Gender, Race and Photography in British India
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 7-27, February 2024.
From politicians to physicians, the opening years of India’s plague epidemic (1896–1900) have conventionally been treated as a male-dominated sphere of activity. This article argues for the centrality of female actors—as doctors, nurses and ‘ward ayahs’—and across the social spectrum from dalits to Europeans. Photography demonstrates the prominence and diversity of women’s plague roles; it helps to complicate a text-based narrative of plague at the intersection of gender, race, class and colonialism. Images augment and not merely document. The value of combining visual and textual sources is underscored by focusing on a single institution, the General Plague Hospital in Poona (Pune) and on a woman doctor, Marion Hunter, whose photographic presence and whose views in and after India highlight the tensions and contradictions of a gendered as well as racialised imperial presence.
From politicians to physicians, the opening years of India’s plague epidemic (1896–1900) have conventionally been treated as a male-dominated sphere of activity. This article argues for the centrality of female actors—as doctors, nurses and ‘ward ayahs’—and across the social spectrum from dalits to Europeans. Photography demonstrates the prominence and diversity of women’s plague roles; it helps to complicate a text-based narrative of plague at the intersection of gender, race, class and colonialism. Images augment and not merely document. The value of combining visual and textual sources is underscored by focusing on a single institution, the General Plague Hospital in Poona (Pune) and on a woman doctor, Marion Hunter, whose photographic presence and whose views in and after India highlight the tensions and contradictions of a gendered as well as racialised imperial presence.
Four concepts to think from the South
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 143-154, March 2024.
This is a continuation of the first text I wrote for the ‘What Is Cultural Studies?’ series, defending the importance of theories and voices from the margins, from the oppressed. Now, I introduce four concepts created or adapted by intellectuals who – because of their displacement, double vision or contextual disadvantage – can propose theoretical tools and lenses to look at the world, useful for understanding social and cultural dynamics, both locally and globally. I argue that the intellectual production from the global South is deeply entangled with the global North, be it because we adopted (or were forced to use) Western knowledge bases, be it because the unequal and strong relation between the regions enabled the material and symbolic exploitation of some and the wealth of others. The concepts of Améfrica Ladina, double bind/knot, pact of whiteness and impedance are key to reflect upon otherness, communication, media, and cultural studies.
This is a continuation of the first text I wrote for the ‘What Is Cultural Studies?’ series, defending the importance of theories and voices from the margins, from the oppressed. Now, I introduce four concepts created or adapted by intellectuals who – because of their displacement, double vision or contextual disadvantage – can propose theoretical tools and lenses to look at the world, useful for understanding social and cultural dynamics, both locally and globally. I argue that the intellectual production from the global South is deeply entangled with the global North, be it because we adopted (or were forced to use) Western knowledge bases, be it because the unequal and strong relation between the regions enabled the material and symbolic exploitation of some and the wealth of others. The concepts of Améfrica Ladina, double bind/knot, pact of whiteness and impedance are key to reflect upon otherness, communication, media, and cultural studies.
Creative and cultural work post-Covid-19: Interruptions as space of political re-futuring
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
What sparks collective acts of resistance to workplace inequality? This article considers the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic as an interruption to established practices of creative work, one that creates the opportunity for politicised subjectivities to develop. It is based on a qualitative investigation of cultural and creative workers located in the Italian city Milan conducted in the aftermath of the first C-19 lockdown. Observations of an emerging sense of consciousness, a recognition of precarious working conditions associated with creative labour by those who operate within the sector, combined with the necessary resource of time created the conditions for collective action. Building on previous literature that considers the disruptive effects of interruptions, from either large-scale physical disaster or significant change to an individual's personal identity, the article explores the generative outcomes that can emerge from an interruption, one which creates opportunities for re-imagination and political re-futuring.
What sparks collective acts of resistance to workplace inequality? This article considers the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic as an interruption to established practices of creative work, one that creates the opportunity for politicised subjectivities to develop. It is based on a qualitative investigation of cultural and creative workers located in the Italian city Milan conducted in the aftermath of the first C-19 lockdown. Observations of an emerging sense of consciousness, a recognition of precarious working conditions associated with creative labour by those who operate within the sector, combined with the necessary resource of time created the conditions for collective action. Building on previous literature that considers the disruptive effects of interruptions, from either large-scale physical disaster or significant change to an individual's personal identity, the article explores the generative outcomes that can emerge from an interruption, one which creates opportunities for re-imagination and political re-futuring.
Cultures of reading: Then and now
International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 155-164, March 2024.
The political implications of reading practices have been a key concern in cultural studies since its beginning. Studying the process of reading, in various media and generic contexts, is crucial to understanding how cultural forces are coded in everyday experiences and to intervening effectively in these forces. I argue that studies of reading benefit significantly from the combination of sociological and phenomenological approaches. This mixed approach was visible from the earliest stages of cultural studies, but became a conscious development in recent work. Interdisciplinary attention to reading not only contributes to the methodological syncretism inherent in cultural studies, but is also a matter of political urgency. Many people around the world, including those in contemporary China, are confronted with affective challenges that cannot be tackled without intimate knowledge of how people are affected by reading.
The political implications of reading practices have been a key concern in cultural studies since its beginning. Studying the process of reading, in various media and generic contexts, is crucial to understanding how cultural forces are coded in everyday experiences and to intervening effectively in these forces. I argue that studies of reading benefit significantly from the combination of sociological and phenomenological approaches. This mixed approach was visible from the earliest stages of cultural studies, but became a conscious development in recent work. Interdisciplinary attention to reading not only contributes to the methodological syncretism inherent in cultural studies, but is also a matter of political urgency. Many people around the world, including those in contemporary China, are confronted with affective challenges that cannot be tackled without intimate knowledge of how people are affected by reading.
An audience studies’ contribution to the discoverability and prominence debate: Seeking UK TV audiences’ ‘routes to content’
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Despite discoverability and prominence emerging as crucial to contemporary industry and policy debates in relation to online and internet-distributed television, there remains relatively little rich, qualitative data about how contemporary audiences discover content. This article addresses this gap through empirical audience research focused on the ‘routes to content’ through which UK audiences find and decide what television to watch. Defining television broadly to include all forms of video content accessed in the home, we argue for the importance of thinking about discoverability as an audience activity, not just an industrial strategy. Building on TV audience studies’ longer history and more recent literature on engagement, media literacy, algorithms and technological affordances in contemporary media platforms, we argue for new understanding of the imaginaries shaping people’s habitual viewing activities. The article proposes four new concepts for thinking about discoverability as an audience activity. First, we explore technological affordances and default behaviour, developing the concept of the negotiated-null affordance to explain how technological affordances can be rendered invisible by habitual behaviours. Second, we focus on algorithmic literacies and propose a new dissonant algorithmic imaginary to explain our participants’ ambivalences towards algorithmic personalisation. Third, we unpack the dynamics of access that emerge in our participants’ negotiations of television technologies, services and content. Fourth, we examine the role of word of mouth and promotional paratexts, theorising a second-order algorithmic imaginary to help us understand how these forms of communication can often, themselves, be subject to algorithmic processes. In doing so, we argue for the need for further qualitative research that looks beyond the ‘savvy’ consumers that dominate audience research in order to unpack the technological, industrial, cultural and social processes that shape people’s routes to content in a platform-dominated media landscape.
Despite discoverability and prominence emerging as crucial to contemporary industry and policy debates in relation to online and internet-distributed television, there remains relatively little rich, qualitative data about how contemporary audiences discover content. This article addresses this gap through empirical audience research focused on the ‘routes to content’ through which UK audiences find and decide what television to watch. Defining television broadly to include all forms of video content accessed in the home, we argue for the importance of thinking about discoverability as an audience activity, not just an industrial strategy. Building on TV audience studies’ longer history and more recent literature on engagement, media literacy, algorithms and technological affordances in contemporary media platforms, we argue for new understanding of the imaginaries shaping people’s habitual viewing activities. The article proposes four new concepts for thinking about discoverability as an audience activity. First, we explore technological affordances and default behaviour, developing the concept of the negotiated-null affordance to explain how technological affordances can be rendered invisible by habitual behaviours. Second, we focus on algorithmic literacies and propose a new dissonant algorithmic imaginary to explain our participants’ ambivalences towards algorithmic personalisation. Third, we unpack the dynamics of access that emerge in our participants’ negotiations of television technologies, services and content. Fourth, we examine the role of word of mouth and promotional paratexts, theorising a second-order algorithmic imaginary to help us understand how these forms of communication can often, themselves, be subject to algorithmic processes. In doing so, we argue for the need for further qualitative research that looks beyond the ‘savvy’ consumers that dominate audience research in order to unpack the technological, industrial, cultural and social processes that shape people’s routes to content in a platform-dominated media landscape.
Role of Culture in Consumer Marketing: Thematic Trajectories and Theoretical Roots
Journal of Creative Communications, Ahead of Print.
Culture has been considered the primary motivator affecting consumers’ decisions for years. Despite the importance of consumer culture, the systematic review of literature studying consumer culture is less and remains highly fragmented. This study uses a topic modelling approach to explore the role of culture in marketing literature to propose a way forward for future researchers interested in this domain. The study helps to synthesise cultural impact in marketing with a specific focus on dominant research topics and key themes, presenting clarity to the extant knowledge base. This study offers two potential contributions to the research community. First, this study demonstrates the application of structured topic modelling as a text analytics method that helps to report the evolution and thematic structure of this rapidly expanding domain. Second, the scientometric analysis in this study maps the conceptual structure of research with interconnected research themes hidden in this domain.
Culture has been considered the primary motivator affecting consumers’ decisions for years. Despite the importance of consumer culture, the systematic review of literature studying consumer culture is less and remains highly fragmented. This study uses a topic modelling approach to explore the role of culture in marketing literature to propose a way forward for future researchers interested in this domain. The study helps to synthesise cultural impact in marketing with a specific focus on dominant research topics and key themes, presenting clarity to the extant knowledge base. This study offers two potential contributions to the research community. First, this study demonstrates the application of structured topic modelling as a text analytics method that helps to report the evolution and thematic structure of this rapidly expanding domain. Second, the scientometric analysis in this study maps the conceptual structure of research with interconnected research themes hidden in this domain.
NFTs applied to the art sector: Legal issues and recent jurisprudence
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Responding to the necessity of scarcity and uniqueness in the digital format, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) have recently gained much attention in cultural industries, especially video games and the art market. Faced with the digital paradigm shift and the challenge of dematerialization, creators started to use NTFs in order to emulate the concept of rarity for displaying, promoting, and monetizing their works in digital environments. An NFT is a certificate of ownership implemented through encrypted metadata pointing to a unique copy of a digital file. Likewise, NFTs enable the tokenization of a large array of digital, or even physical, assets. For this reason, they are used to facilitate the digitalization of contents heavily dependent on copyright and scarcity. Non-Fungible Tokens represent an emerging reality of significant economic, social, and cultural importance, which also raises important legal issues especially concerning the very nature of the NFT, as property or license, and the usage of copyrighted contents or trademarks. Indeed, the most frequent legal issues with NFTs are related to the attribution and exploitation of the Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the underlying content or litigations about non-contractual matters (i.e., theft). Litigious cases affecting NFTs most often take on an international dimension due to the decentralized nature of the technology on which they are developed, distributed on servers hosted in a multitude of countries, as well as the business practices of trading platforms that connect users from all over the world. Consequently, the principles of Private International Law (PIL) are applied to solve legal conflicts. This study focuses on the resolution of litigations related to NFTs in the three countries leading the global art markets: the US, the UK, and China. The analysis focuses on the application of international private law in relation to recent jurisprudence concerning conflicts involving NFTs and artworks.
Responding to the necessity of scarcity and uniqueness in the digital format, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) have recently gained much attention in cultural industries, especially video games and the art market. Faced with the digital paradigm shift and the challenge of dematerialization, creators started to use NTFs in order to emulate the concept of rarity for displaying, promoting, and monetizing their works in digital environments. An NFT is a certificate of ownership implemented through encrypted metadata pointing to a unique copy of a digital file. Likewise, NFTs enable the tokenization of a large array of digital, or even physical, assets. For this reason, they are used to facilitate the digitalization of contents heavily dependent on copyright and scarcity. Non-Fungible Tokens represent an emerging reality of significant economic, social, and cultural importance, which also raises important legal issues especially concerning the very nature of the NFT, as property or license, and the usage of copyrighted contents or trademarks. Indeed, the most frequent legal issues with NFTs are related to the attribution and exploitation of the Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the underlying content or litigations about non-contractual matters (i.e., theft). Litigious cases affecting NFTs most often take on an international dimension due to the decentralized nature of the technology on which they are developed, distributed on servers hosted in a multitude of countries, as well as the business practices of trading platforms that connect users from all over the world. Consequently, the principles of Private International Law (PIL) are applied to solve legal conflicts. This study focuses on the resolution of litigations related to NFTs in the three countries leading the global art markets: the US, the UK, and China. The analysis focuses on the application of international private law in relation to recent jurisprudence concerning conflicts involving NFTs and artworks.
Camera Phantasma: Reframing virtual photographies in the age of AI
Convergence, Ahead of Print.
The recent advent of virtual photography and artificial intelligence (specifically AI photography and diffusion models), presents a major challenge to both photographers and photography theory. All our common-sense assumptions about the ontology of the image now seem to be falling apart. Are these interlopers really photography? Can we hear the final death knell for the erstwhile medium in this era of ever-increasing media convergence and virtualisation? This practice-led investigation of these new media forms draws on the author’s recent creative work in virtual photographies, and similar interventions by other photographers and new media artists, seeking to augment and expand their practice using these new tools, whilst querying what photography really means today. From in-game photography to virtual exploration using Google Street View, to AI photography using the latest denoising diffusion models (such as Midjourney), there are surprising commonalities to explore between them, linking these new practices of image-making firmly back to traditions of lens-based photography. Rather than seeking a detailed map of this difficult new terrain, or a definitive ontology of emerging virtual photographies, the author reframes the discourse around practice, examining both photography as an evolving set of practices and also notions of media hauntology – specifically the spectral ways in which new media technologies are always haunted by prior practices and modes of communication. The importance of the frame to both traditional photography and new practices of virtual photography, is suggested as a vital and persistent dimension in photographic authorship. With that authorship increasingly contested by new generative methods, easy appropriation and AI image-making, the act of framing may become the best litmus test we have, for whether or not a photograph should be considered ‘real’ or valued.
The recent advent of virtual photography and artificial intelligence (specifically AI photography and diffusion models), presents a major challenge to both photographers and photography theory. All our common-sense assumptions about the ontology of the image now seem to be falling apart. Are these interlopers really photography? Can we hear the final death knell for the erstwhile medium in this era of ever-increasing media convergence and virtualisation? This practice-led investigation of these new media forms draws on the author’s recent creative work in virtual photographies, and similar interventions by other photographers and new media artists, seeking to augment and expand their practice using these new tools, whilst querying what photography really means today. From in-game photography to virtual exploration using Google Street View, to AI photography using the latest denoising diffusion models (such as Midjourney), there are surprising commonalities to explore between them, linking these new practices of image-making firmly back to traditions of lens-based photography. Rather than seeking a detailed map of this difficult new terrain, or a definitive ontology of emerging virtual photographies, the author reframes the discourse around practice, examining both photography as an evolving set of practices and also notions of media hauntology – specifically the spectral ways in which new media technologies are always haunted by prior practices and modes of communication. The importance of the frame to both traditional photography and new practices of virtual photography, is suggested as a vital and persistent dimension in photographic authorship. With that authorship increasingly contested by new generative methods, easy appropriation and AI image-making, the act of framing may become the best litmus test we have, for whether or not a photograph should be considered ‘real’ or valued.
Digital Enhancement: A Drawbridge or a Detachment of the Digital Divide
Journal of Creative Communications, Ahead of Print.
Mizoram, one of the smallest states in India, has a very dynamic and flexible culture. The internet reached the state during the late 1990s; the general public started accessing it by the early 2000s. Digital enhancement, facilitated by technological devices, is becoming a reality in various professions as well as daily life. The problem of the digital divide—tangible availability of computers and internet connections as well as issues of content, language, skills and social resources—is yet challenging to eradicate. Whilst a group called the ‘choose nots’ are not interested in engaging with technology, several questions arise—Will digital know-how be useful in bridging the gap of the digital divide? Can digital understanding outdo the divide demarcated by the native–immigrant separation? Or does digital enhancement widen the gap by endowing the ‘haves’ while the ‘have-nots’ keep adding numbers to the ‘digital left behind’? This study focuses on the influence of the internet on Mizo culture, nature of the digital divide, and traces the internet history of Mizoram while trying to map the perceived difference in communication behaviour before and after the existence of the internet among digital immigrants.
Mizoram, one of the smallest states in India, has a very dynamic and flexible culture. The internet reached the state during the late 1990s; the general public started accessing it by the early 2000s. Digital enhancement, facilitated by technological devices, is becoming a reality in various professions as well as daily life. The problem of the digital divide—tangible availability of computers and internet connections as well as issues of content, language, skills and social resources—is yet challenging to eradicate. Whilst a group called the ‘choose nots’ are not interested in engaging with technology, several questions arise—Will digital know-how be useful in bridging the gap of the digital divide? Can digital understanding outdo the divide demarcated by the native–immigrant separation? Or does digital enhancement widen the gap by endowing the ‘haves’ while the ‘have-nots’ keep adding numbers to the ‘digital left behind’? This study focuses on the influence of the internet on Mizo culture, nature of the digital divide, and traces the internet history of Mizoram while trying to map the perceived difference in communication behaviour before and after the existence of the internet among digital immigrants.