Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 5, Page 1262-1282, October 2023.
The research addresses whether adolescents are increasing their self-sexualisation on TikTok through content analysis. It has studied the type and number of sexualising features present in the videos that Spanish and British teenagers share on the social network TikTok, offering a comparative view. A total of 447 videos from 12 British and 12 Spanish tiktokers aged 11 to 17 have been analysed, considering their gender and age and comparing both nationalities. A high level of self-sexualisation has been found in the videos of adolescents of both genders and nationalities. The results show that age and gender determine the sexualising characteristics included in their videos and that British and Spanish minors do not use the same sexualising codes, although neither nationality is more sexualised than the other. It has been confirmed that boys and girls self-sexualise in similar proportions. Age determines sexualising characteristics they incorporate in their audio–visual productions, which indicate the blurring of traditional stereotyped roles and the unification of sexual codes that have traditionally been considered a female domain.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
As the number of ethical incidents associated with Machine Learning (ML) algorithms increases worldwide, many actors are seeking to produce technical and legal tools to regulate the professional practices associated with these technologies. However these tools, generally grounded either on lofty principles or on technical approaches, often fail at addressing the complexity of the moral issues that ML-based systems are triggering. They are mostly based on a ‘principled’ conception of morality where technical practices cannot be seen as more than mere means to be put at the service of more valuable moral ends. We argue that it is necessary to localise ethical debates within the complex entanglement of technical, legal and organisational entities from which ML moral issues stem. To expand the repertoire of the approaches through which these issues might be addressed, we designed and tested an interview protocol based on the re-enactment of data scientists’ daily ML practices. We asked them to recall and describe the crafting and choosing of algorithms. Then, our protocol added two reflexivity-fostering elements to the situation: technical tools to assess algorithms’ morality, based on incorporated ‘ethicality’ indicators; and a series of staged objections to the aforementioned technical solutions to ML moral issues, made by factitious actors inspired by the data scientists’ daily environment. We used this protocol to observe how ML data scientists uncover associations with multiple entities, to address moral issues from within the course of their technical practices. We thus reframe ML morality as an inquiry into the uncertain options that practitioners face in the heat of technical activities. We propose to institute moral enquiries both as a descriptive method serving to delineate alternative depictions of ML algorithms when they are affected by moral issues and as a transformative method to propagate situated critical technical practices within ML-building professional environments.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Scholarship on immersion in simulated environments often emphasizes cognitive immersion, or the suspension of disbelief that takes place in an illusionistic space that simulates reality, making the fact of mediation disappear in the experience. Marie-Laure Ryan writes that: “immersivity can be understood in two ways: in a properly VR sense, as the technology-induced experience of being surrounded by data, and in a narrative sense... as being imaginatively captivated by a storyworld” (230). Both of these definitions rest on the notion of cognitive immersion. Grounded in the field of post-dramatic multimedia performance, this paper will focus instead on immersive storytelling that activates the senses in a phenomenological experience. Rather than transporting the spectator into a fictional imaginary space, post-dramatic multimedia performance aims to make participants aware of their presence in the here and now (Klich and Scheer, 128). This paper will describe an immersive storytelling project that integrates virtual reality (VR) into live participatory performance events that take place outdoors. The paper is co-authored by an artist-researcher and two students who are working as research assistants on this project. We recount our creative research process in developing a pervasive game, which Montola defines as a “game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play socially, spatially or temporally” (2005, 3). This game is played in a park and at key moments, inside VR environments that simulate that same park. The purpose of the game is to attune participants to the species in that particular environment.

Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 5, Page 1369-1388, October 2023.
The eSports industry is growing at a rapid pace. The expansion of streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube Live played an important role in this leap and greatly contributed to the rise in popularity of electronic sports. Despite this success, there is no research on the topic of streaming demand of eSports to date. This paper aims to fill this gap using a demand approach of traditional sports to analyze the streaming demand of an eSports discipline, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The dataset comprises 865 matches between 2018 and 2021. Multiple Linear Regressions are taken as econometric tools. Main findings indicate that eSports enthusiasts value factors such as quality of tournament, match quality, and individual skill of the athletes when watching matches. In addition, the obtained results reveal that the Uncertainty of Outcome plays a significant role at streaming broadcasts of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where viewers prefer to watch those games in which there is a high level of competitiveness between the participants. Current research contributes to the existing eSports literature with a new framework for analyzing streaming demand. The empirical findings could be of the interest of tournament organizers as well as streaming platforms for maximizing audiences.

Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 5, Page 1411-1414, October 2023.

Convergence, Ahead of Print.
Kinwork is the maintenance of cross-household kin and family ties through both physical and mediated means and is a type of unpaid labour historically performed by women. However, changing gender norms, new communicative practices such as networked individualism, and internet and communication technologies are changing how kinwork is done. This study explores how these changes affect the gendered nature of kinwork. Swedes from multigenerational, cross-household families residing in Sweden and the United States took part in primarily home-based interviews (n=40). This empirical study explores current practices of kinwork, focusing on three empirical cases, Christmas cards for seasonal greetings, phone calls for birthday well-wishes, and digital communication for everyday contact. Results highlight how kinwork in the sample is performed by both men and women through a wide range of communication technologies. The study shows that due to new gendered norms, women in the younger generations are less willing to do kinwork for men than older generations in the same kinship networks, indicating generational differences rather than family differences. In the study, men use new internet and communication technology to both do and sometimes take responsibility for kinwork while older communication technologies retain a feminine coding, sometimes resulting in abandonment. Contemporary digital communication technology supports a shift to individual communication rather than group-based which further supports men’s increased engagement in kinwork. The study concludes that kinwork in the studied sample is performed by both men and women and that contemporary kinwork can only be understood by looking at the complex entanglements of evolving gender equality norms, trends towards more individual communication patterns, and affordances of communication technology. Together these result in new ways and opportunities for doing kinwork, which becomes less the work of women and more the work of networked individuals, whatever gender.