bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
PROSAMIM SOB O PRISMA AMBIENTAL-PENALISTA: UMA ANÁLISE JURÍDICO-POLÍTICA DA SITUAÇÃO DO TRATAMENTO DA ÁGUA DOS IGARAPÉS NAS REGIÕES DE ASSENTAMENTO PRECÁRIO AMBIENTALMENTE VULNERÁVEIS
Authors: Nogueira Caroline Barbosa Contente , Lisboa Gabriel Esperança , Evangelista Thaíza Lopes
Published: March 2024

O tema-problema desta pesquisa trata da melhoria da qualidade da água realizado pelo Programa Social Ambiental dos Igarapés de Manaus (PROSAMIM) nas comunidades sob sua tutela, em prol de verificar a existência da prática de crimes ambientais por parte do programa. Por fim, o trabalho tem como razão a necessidade de se instituir uma política de tratamento da água dos igarapés mais eficiente, eficaz e efetiva. O objetivo deste estudo é analisar as ações do PROSAMIM nas comunidades formadas de assentamentos precários localizados nas redondezas dos igarapés, evidenciando, principalmente, o tratamento da água nessas localidades. A pesquisa tem caráter metodológico qualitativo-quantitativo e foi realizada por meio de análise de referencial teórico, como os divulgados em periódicos decorrentes de pesquisas avaliativas da água dos igarapés de Manaus, e coletas de dados documentais, a exemplo de dados oriundos do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) e do Centro de Estudos da Metrópole (CEM). Chegou-se ao fim do trabalho a uma análise crítica dos mecanismos utilizados atualmente por parte do programa para o tratamento da água dos igarapés até a observação de danos ambientais decorrentes da utilização de meios ultrapassados de redirecionamento dos dejetos presentes nas águas dos igarapés.
How to Say Bussy in Another Language:
Sociolingvistička rasprava i lični osvrt
Authors: Ferhatović Denis
Published: March 2024

I begin this bilingual (Bosnian-English) hybrid (scholarly-personal-fictional) essay, with my search for queer languages of my own, a fraught, complex process both due to my personal circumstances of immigration, and the larger history of suppression of queer expression in the Balkans and beyond. For the throughline of the discussion, I use the relatively recent portmanteau in English, bussy (boy+pussy for the anus), that has given birth to a wealth of Internet memes often featuring similar coinages, and my attempt to find its equivalents in several other languages. English and Bosnian will alternate, with their subcategories ranging from academic to confessional — so only those who read both will be able to understand everything.

I first look at the Soviet Russian gay slang recorded by Vladimir Kozlovsky and then move to a fuller discussion of the Turkish queer jargon named Lubunca, which like its Greek counterpart Kaliardá, has a prominent corpus of Romani borrowings. Some of these words appear in an almost identical form, with the same or similar meanings, in a number of European languages that I am familiar with: Bosnian, English, French, and German. While my queerness does not happen to provide a sense of linguistic belonging, it does enable me to note a much-neglected postcolonial queer aspect of the European language map, the Romani element, which I happily write about in the essay. As for bussy and its translations, I argue that such terms – playfully confusing and reassigning holes in English and other languages, in recent and distant times – present occasions for queerer, more pleasurable and expansive imaginings of human bodies, desires, and the world around us.
The carving & healing of a wound: linguistic homelessness and disidentification as survival
Authors: Rodriguez A. Daniela
Published: March 2024

Building on the work of chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa and queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz this paper analyses and discusses the affective component of language for those whose first language has been overshadowed by a second language. I ask how language affects the self’s sense of identity/belonging, the possibility for communicating/accessing queerness, and what linguistic or poetic tools can be employed to empower the self. Following the tradition of feminist thought that assumes that the personal is political, I write from personal experiences. As a Colombian-born migrant in Sweden, I explore how the overshadowing of my mother tongue (Spanish) by Swedish (as the language with the perceived highest social and cultural value in Swedish society) has impacted on my self-image, sense of identity, self-worth and queerness. Gloria Anzaldúa inspires me to mix languages and push the boundaries of the academic text format. Confronting it with a poetic, violent and desbordado language, I challenge normative ideas of academic writing, but I also hope that others might find beauty in the decisive ambiguity and the mixing of languages. I engage with what Gloria Anzaldúa (2012, 1984) and Cherrie Moraga (1984) call theorizing from the flesh and turn to concepts such as linguistic terrorism, while also approaching José Esteban Muñoz’s brown feelings (2020). Furthermore, I build on Torres (2017) who argues that the emotional bonds bilinguals have to different languages intersect with their sense of identity and place, thus evoking various emotions and memories. From here, I conclude that having one’s first language be overshadowed by a second one creates ambiguity and confusion about the self’s identity. Feeling homeless in language translates into an uncertainty about one’s claim to any citizenship or cultural identity, thus leading to anxiety, sadness and sense of non-belonging. I contrast this with the concept of disidentification (Muñoz 1999), which opens practices of survival through entering queer temporality and embracing ambiguity. Accordingly, the confusion about a defined identity (going along with a particular language) can become useful for negotiating the self’s queerness. For Muñoz, neither opting for assimilation nor counteridentification, but disidentifying allows the self to (re)construct a sense of identity and belonging.
Brücken schlagen: Queering durch Multilingualität, Ambiguität und Widersprüche
Über die Übersetzung von Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Authors: Frikh-Khar Claudia , Höchtl Nina , Melgarejo Weinandt Verena
Published: March 2024

In its construction and exploration of border identities expressed through several tongues Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) by Gloria Anzaldúa is a ground-breaking text. Anzaldúa’s particular use of multilingualism poses a gripping challenge in terms of translation. 36 years after its publication, the German translation will finally make this text available to readers in German.

This article circulates the Translators’ Notes to Borderlands/La Frontera, entitled “Grenzen übersetzen, translatorisches Handeln, Brückensprachen schaffen” [Translating Borders, Translational Agency, Bridging Language”], of our collective translation by Chaka. The objective of this article is two-fold. Firstly, it shows the vitality of the Translators’ Notes as an enunciative device that takes responsibility for the construction of meaning and subjectivity in the translated text. In so doing, the Translators’ Notes expound some of the key processes and concepts involved in conducting our translation while explaining our strategies that seek to undermine homogenizing tendencies by drawing on central features of Anzaldúa’s texts, namely allowing multilingualism, ambiguity and contradictions. Secondly, the article will explore to what extent it is this feature, Anzaldúa's use of multilingualism, that makes her text such an important contribution to queer theory much before the academic rise of queer studies.
The Multilingual Issue: Untranslatability, linguistic multitudes, embodied speech
Authors: Engel Antke A. , T. Anna
Published: March 2024

The Multilingual Issue engages with articulating queerness across different languages, considering untranslatabilities as well as hierarchies that have developed between languages. Those have emerged due to epistemic, economic, and cultural dominance, ableism, imperialism, and colonialism. Such hierarchies include the devaluation of embodied speech as it, for example, comes along in sign languages of Deaf cultures. It’s seen also in code-switching, which predominantly occurs amongst migrants, in performative poetics, queer slangs, racialized and classed registers, or in the expressiveness of sexual body language. The issue‘s aim is to disrupt and highlight these hierarchies, while respecting untranslatabilties and linguistic multitudes that derive from migration, disability, and disenfranchisement.
Leo cie lo ... A Series of Artefacts from the Near Future
Authors: Gylee Chris , - Aslan
Published: March 2024

The article centres on the analysis of a speculative (non)fictional text written in the Queer language Damiá by Dogai Bor (a.k.a. Chris Gylee), Second Speaker of the first Damiá speech community, with translation notes, a fictional frame in Finnish, a phonetic transcription, and a link to an online dictionary. Chris has been learning the constructed Queer language Damiá since January 2020, but in external communications and the various artworks that have been produced since, it has mostly fallen to Aslan, as First Speaker, to explain the functions and origins of the language and to lead on writings and translations. This text marks a turning point where Chris speaks directly, as Second Speaker, by writing a new text in Damiá using the skills he has attained over his initial years of study and creation in the language. As the Second Speaker takes the position of writing from a speculative future, what do they have to say about Damiá and the speech community from their unique position? How does their specific knowledge relate to notions of Queerness and Queer separatism? Do their words offer any map towards an alternative future?

The text becomes a speculative (non)fiction lens that blends truth and sci-fi by writing back from a future moment in which a Queer, Damiá-speaking, separatist community is thriving. Imagining this moment provokes a confrontation of the gap between this position of thriving and our current state, as well as possible paths between the two. The text is written entirely in Damiá without translation, but includes access notes to the reader and a link to the online Damiá dictionary. This text functions opaquely, and does not offer easy accessibility in English (or any other prestige languages.) What does this perceived opacity offer? In what ways does the text and the gaps in understanding resonate with the reader as they undertake the (perhaps daunting) process of decoding and translating using the basic tools provided?
El Número Multilingüe: intraducibilidad, multitudes lingüísticas, discurso encarnado – una introducción (forma abreviada)
Authors: Engel Antke A. , T. Anna
Published: March 2024

El Número Multilingüe aborda la articulación de lo queer a través de distintos lenguajes, tomando en cuenta lo intraducible y las jerarquías que se desarrollan entre estos como resultado de la dominación epistémica, económica y cultural, capacitismos, imperialismos y colonialismos. Tales jerarquías incluyen la devaluación del discurso encarnado como ocurre, por ejemplo, con el lenguaje de señas de las culturas Sordas. También se encuentran en los cambios de código, presentes predominantemente entre migrantes, en poéticas performativas, jergas queer, registros racializados y de clase, o en la expresividad del lenguaje sexual del cuerpo. El objetivo de este número que hemos “montado” es trastornar y realzar estas jerarquías a la par de respetar intraducibilidades y multitudes lingüísticas derivadas de migraciones, discapacidades y la privación de los derechos.
Talking to You
Authors: Daučíková Ančan
Published: March 2024

This videowork is a joint effort of two artists living in different cultural geopolitical and social landscapes. Their choice to live openly nonbinary existences as transpersons in public space form both their creative approach and artistic practice. In the online video meeting, they opened the theme of communication in form of dialogue of gestures to express distinctive qualities of living “in between” normalized binary genders and at the criss cross of mental and bodily discourse within prescribed patriarchal dichotomies.

The video presented here is an excerpt of Talking to You, Anna Daučíková, 2021, Two-channel HD video, color, sound, 33 min. The art work is based on an online performance by Anchan and Tamarra, Yogyakarta-Prague, 24.09.2021.

The video excerpt is presented together with sign language interpretations in DGS and IS by Dana Cermane, produced for a workshop facilitated by Antkek Engel during the membra(I)nes conference (15 June, 2023, HGB Leipzig/Germany). Sign language interpretation is funded by Aktion Mensch.
Numer wielojęzyczny: nieprzetłumaczalność, mnogość językowa, mowa ucieleśniona (wersja skrócona)
Authors: Engel Antke A. , T. Anna
Published: March 2024

Numer wielojęzyczny podejmuje problematykę wyrażania queerowości w różnych językach, biorąc pod uwagę zarówno to, co nieprzetłumaczalne, jak i hierarchie między językami. Hierarchie te wyłoniły się w wyniku dominacji epistemicznej, ekonomicznej i kulturowej, kolonizacji, czy ableizmu. Jednym z przejawów hierarchii jest dewaluacja mowy ucieleśnionej, w tym języków migowych używanych w kulturach Głuchych. Inne przykłady to przełączanie kodów językowych przez migrantów, poetyka performatywna, queerowe slangi, rejestry językowe nacechowane rasowo i klasowo, czy seksualna ekspresja ciała. Celem Numeru wielojęzycznego jest naświetlenie i zakłócenie tych hierarchii, przy jednoczesnym uwzględnieniu nieprzetłumaczalności i mnogości językowej wynikającej z migracji, niepełnosprawności czy braku praw obywatelskich.
Sprachwandel in Tauben queeren Communities in Deutschland / Language Change in Deaf Queer Communities in Germany
Authors: Vahemäe-Zierold Martin*a , Kopf Maria
Published: March 2024

Gebärdensprachen sind vollwertige natürliche Sprachen. Es gibt keine einheitliche, universelle Gebärdensprache. Der Online-Sprachenkatalog ethnologue listet 159 Gebärdensprachen (Eberhard, Simons & Fenning, 2023) und der Weltverband der Gehörlosen schätzt, dass es weltweit sogar mehr als 300 Gebärdensprachen gibt (United Nations, 2023). Gebärdensprachen sind keine gebärdeten Versionen gesprochener Sprachen, sondern haben ihre eigenen Grammatiken und Lexika. Sie werden mit Händen, Gesicht und Oberkörper produziert und mit den Augen rezipiert. Ikonische Elemente im Vokabular können Kultur, Gesellschaft und Normen abbilden. Gebärdensprachen sind Sprachen der Tauben-Communities – kleinen, verletzlichen Gemeinschaften, die täglich gegen Diskriminierung kämpfen. Dies gilt umso mehr für Taube queere Gemeinschaften. Sie sind aufgrund ihres Hörstatus und der Verwendung einer Minderheitensprache sowie aufgrund ihrer sexuellen Orientierung und/oder geschlechtlichen Identität mit zahlreichen Barrieren konfrontiert.

Der Artikel untersucht aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven, wie Wissen und Bewusstsein, das durch Queer und Deaf Studies gewonnen wird, die deutschen Tauben queeren Communities und ihre Sprache beeinflussen. Der Fokus liegt darauf, wie neue Perspektiven auf Gender ihren Weg in Gebärdensprachen finden. Sie eröffnen neue Wege, Identität auszudrücken und Normen und Barrieren zu bekämpfen. Die veränderte Wahrnehmung von Geschlecht als Spektrum, nicht als binäres System, beeinflusst das Vokabular der Deutschen Gebärdensprache. Gebärden wie jene für ‚trans*‘ wurden früher mit zwei ausgestreckten Fingern gebärdet, um den binären Geschlechtswechsel von einem zum anderen darzustellen. In den Tauben queeren Communities wird diese Gebärde mit der ganzen Hand gebärdet, um die Bandbreite der Geschlechtsidentitäten zu repräsentieren. Der Beitrag stellt relevante Begriffe aus den Deaf Studies, den Queer Studies und der Gebärdensprachlinguistik vor und diskutiert Beispiele wie das oben genannte.
“We Deh”: Women-Loving Women, Rurality, and Creole Linguistic Potentials
Authors: Kumar Preity
Published: March 2024

This paper draws on ethnographic interviews with women-loving women (WLW) in Berbice, Guyana, South America, to interrogate the Creole linguistic term “deh” as a cultural heuristic device central to the visibility politics in this rural community. The linguistic concept of “deh” is a localized Creole (a dialect produced from the mixing of African, Indian, and Indigenous languages), which unsettles the Western image of the “closet” and the discourse of “coming out.” “Deh” is a double-entendre referring to a spatial location, like “over there,” and to a romantic or sexual relationship between two people. How might the linguistic concept of “deh” open up a discursive epistemological space where same-sex desires are not marginalized or relegated in rural spaces? How do women loving women (WLW) create the conditions for their existence in rural spaces? Analyzing nine interviews with WLW, this paper explores how Black and Brown women-loving women embody and express their same-sex desires through the Creole concept of “deh” and argues that “deh” exposes the colonial violence of language. Through “deh,” WLW offers a framework for rethinking self-making and repositioning their relationship to the broader society and the state. The colonial/modern system imposes and projects LGBTQ as a global framework for understanding human sexuality; as a transgressive linguistic and embodied sexual praxis, “deh” destabilizes the colonial knowledge of gender and sexual practices in Berbice. As such, this paper can be read as an act of decolonizing Western knowledge systems.
Bireysel ve Sosyal Faktörlerin Madde Bağımlılığı Şiddeti Üzerindeki Yordayıcı Etkilerinin Karşılaştırılması
Authors: Şen Selçuk , Sapancı Ahmet
Published: March 2024

Amaç: Bu çalışma, madde bağımlılığının önlenmesinde bireysel ve sosyal faktörlerin etkilerini inceleyerek, bu süreçte koruyucu bir rol oynayan faktörleri belirlemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Özellikle, hangi faktörlerin daha etkili olduğunu belirlemek amacıyla yapılan değerlendirmeye odaklanılmıştır.
Yöntem: Araştırmaya dahil edilen 18-65 yaş aralığında 101 erkek katılımcıya, “Kişisel Sosyodemografik Bilgi Formu”, “Ailedeki Koruyucu Etkenler Ölçeği”, “Çok Boyutlu Algılanan Sosyal Destek Ölçeği”, “Kısa Psikolojik Sağlamlık Ölçeği”, “Başa Çıkma Stilleri Ölçeği Kısa Formu”, “Kısa Öz Kontrol Ölçeği”, “Bağımlılık Profil İndeksi Kısa Formu” ve “Duygu Düzenleme Ölçeği” anketleri uygulanmıştır.
Bulgular: Algılanan sosyal arkadaş desteği, dürtüsellik, duygulara odaklanma ve ortaya koyma, bağımlılık şiddetini en iyi şekilde açıklayan koruyucu faktörler oldukları saptanmıştır. Ayrıca sosyal koruyucu faktörlerin, bireysel koruyucu faktörlere göre madde bağımlılığını açıklama gücü daha yüksek olduğu saptanmıştır.
Sonuç: Madde bağımlılığıyla mücadele stratejileri geliştirilirken bireylerin sosyal destek sistemlerini güçlendirmeye, duygusal düzenleme becerilerini artırmaya ve dürtüselliği azaltmaya odaklanmak etkili olabilir. Ayrıca, bu çalışmanın sonuçları, bağımlılıkla mücadelede geniş bir perspektifin önemini vurgulayarak, bireysel ve sosyal faktörler arasındaki etkileşimleri anlamak için daha fazla araştırmaya ihtiyaç olduğunu göstermektedir.
Eğitim Kurumlarında İnsan Kaynakları Yönetimi Bağlamında Eğitim İhtiyaçlarının Önemi ve Amaçları
Authors: Arı Simay
Published: March 2024

Educational needs are the starting point in the cycle of education and skill acquisition, and this cycle forms a continuous cycle that begins with identifying the learning needs of the target community. In addition, if the evaluation ignored the opinions of stakeholders or posed the wrong questions or contained incorrect information, the training to be provided will not coincide with the actual needs of the organization or its employees. It is possible for education to be effective by applying an effective educational needs analysis. The effectiveness of educational needs analysis, on the other hand, requires good planning, including its execution and clear returns. Learning objectives, designing education provides a high-quality tool to the organization in revealing the results of the education provided. Similarly, some researchers have stated that designing an education and development program involves a number of stages that can be grouped into five stages: educational needs analysis, educational objectives, design, implementation and evaluation. Long before a real education takes place, the education manager should determine down to the finest details in advance which methods and tools the education will be conducted in which educational institutions under the supervision of which experts. For this purpose, it is essential to determine the purpose of the educational needs analysis if the purpose of education is in the real sense. The purpose of the training needs analysis is to determine the performance requirements in the organization in order to direct those who are closely related to the areas where they are most needed, to fulfill the goals and objectives of the institution, to increase productivity, to provide quality products and services. Accordingly, educational needs are used as the basis for determining educational goals, choosing and designing educational programs, implementing programs, and evaluating the provided education as the first step in establishing an educational and development program. As a result of data collection and analysis, the need for education is determined, it becomes clear which education is required, and the type and scope of resources required to support an educational program can be examined. Key Words: Educational Institutions, Human Resources Management, the Importance and Purpose of Educational Needs
Eğitimde İhtiyaçların Belirlenmesi Sürecinde Katılımcı Odaklı Yaklaşımın İncelenmesi
Authors: Demir Erdoğan
Published: March 2024

Education (training/education) is defined as a series of planned effects that serve to provide certain improvements in people's behavior according to previously determined goals, or education and development in a certain subject, knowledge or science branch. In the process of determining educational conflicts, the participant-centered approach is often based on self-assessment as a source of information. This approach is a bottom-up, individual-oriented approach that puts the needs of employees ahead of business needs by identifying people's own shortcomings through self-assessment. Research findings show that self-assessment can be a true reflection of the development needs of personnel and should be considered as an important component of a valid needs assessment process. On the other hand, the determination of educational needs related to self-assessment is seriously criticized, because participants are likely to reflect their own educational aspirations instead of the actual educational needs. This situation, on the other hand, creates a misleading situation in the achievement of educational success. Participants can make more moderate and biased assessments in determining their own educational needs. In this case, the results that will arise will inevitably undermine the reliability of the data to be used in the analysis of educational needs. When the literature of educational needs analysis is considered, it is quite difficult to say that one of the frameworks of the mentioned approaches is more widespread than the other. While organization representatives tend to use a demand-oriented approach, trainers and trainees may adopt a participant-oriented approach. Trainers are not concerned with personal and organizational level interests, but with the data-based levels and competencies of trainee groups. Its participant-centered approach also means that trainers will take an active role in assessing educational needs. Examples of these methods include interviews or observations, in which trainers play an important role in needs assessment, as well as questionnaires designed by trainers to collect inputs from workplaces in a specific job position. Dec. It can be said that the participant-centered approach is mostly done in order to increase managerial and professional effectiveness in determining the training needs. The determination of the educational need can be macro, i.e. business performance), micro, i.e. individual performance) or somewhere in between. Dec. Key Words: Education, Educational Needs, Participant-Oriented Approach
GLOBAL PLATFORMS, LOCAL MARKETS: THE PLATFORMIZATION OF MEDIA AND PUBLISHING IN THE PHILIPPINES
Authors: Parnell Claire
Published: March 2024

The cultural industries have transformed due to processes of platformization (Poell et al., 2021). This paper examines the platformization of media and publishing in the Philippines, using Wattpad a case study. Wattpad has embedded itself in the Filipino media and publishing industries by developing partnerships with book publishers and television studios, and is transforming and adapting the local media industries. What opportunities exist for decolonization of media content in the platformization of the cultural industries in the Philippines? What are the conditions of the Filipino media landscape that contribute to the success of Wattpad’s pan-entertainment strategy in this territory? This paper brings together publishing studies, platform studies and media ecology and draws on interviews with Wattpad authors in the Philippines. It argues that post-colonial tensions play out in the dominant languages of traditional and platformed cultural production, Wattpad is creating opportunities for greater diversity and inclusion in Filipino book and media culture, and media products developed from Wattpad benefit from distinctly Filipino modes of reception.
THESE GIRLS (STRIP) FOR THE CLOUT: EXPLORING ASPIRATIONAL, EMOTIONAL AND EROTIC LABOR OF BLACK WOMEN HIP-HOP ARTISTS ON ONLYFANS
Authors: Evans Jabari Miles
Published: March 2024

In the digital age, OnlyFans is suggested to be a new form of sexual empowerment, financial autonomy and social agency for Black women working as strippers, backup dancers and video models, particularly those ancillaries to the rap music industry. Through interviews and participant observation, I examine the everyday labor of Black women who work as sexually explicit content creators on OnlyFans while also building a public persona as artists in Hip-Hop culture. Findings suggested that despite financial opportunities, respondents felt ambivalent by the monetization opportunities afforded by this digital space. Even so, respondents enjoyed the affordances of promoting their OnlyFans content on social media to gain digital clout - a form of Hip-Hop influenced cultural capital that follows the logic of likes, followers, and re-shares of one’s social media content. Ultimately, this study introduces insights on the evolution of Hip-Hop culture’s relationship with sex work, digital Black feminism and the attention economy.
PROACTIVE MEMEFICATION AND POLITICAL CATHARSIS: HOW ONLINE HUMOR PROMPTS POLITICAL EXPRESSION AMONG SUDANESE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
Authors: Abdelbagi Abubakr
Published: March 2024

Striving to advance our understanding of how social media is used by Sudanese people to engage in politics and continue their resistance against an authoritarian regime, this study examines how online humor facilitated political expression after the December Revolution. Using thematic analysis of user-generated content posted on the Shabab Hilween Facebook page, the main social media outlet of prominent Sudanese youth content creators, this research attempts to highlight how youth-created humorous videos prompted political expression among Sudanese social media users. The findings highlight the significance of proactive memefication and templatization as an act the page owners use to generate community user-generated content. Hundreds of memefied screenshots created or appropriated by users were observed in the comment section to address unfolding political events. This begs the question of what content is essentially popular culture for Sudanese people, especially youth, who, due to years of censorship and propaganda, have no interest in mainstream media? This study discusses the role of Sudanese content creators in addressing this cultural void. The analysis also reveals how Sudanese social media users sought political catharsis and collective relief from the Shabab Hilween page’s humorous videos and the comment section.
GAMING PLATFORMS AS CHAOTIC NEUTRAL?: TOXIC PERFORMANCE, COMMUNITY RESISTANCE, AND AGONISTIC POTENTIAL
Authors: Adams Philippa R , Scholl Ben , Sommers Maria
Published: March 2024

In the post-gamergate era, much has been written about the toxicity of online multiplayer video gamespaces. Yet, game scholars agree that the actual definition of the term ‘toxic’ is slippery. There is also consensus that toxicity is a highly context-dependent phenomenon reliant on the relation of players to one another but extending further to include the technical elements of the game (Canossa et al., 2021; Hilvert-Bruce & Neill, 2020; Kou, 2020; Kowert, 2020). Past scholarship in this area also illustrates that these spaces are deeply gendered and center masculine normativity (Cote, 2020; Gray, 2020; Ruberg, 2019; Shaw, 2015). Players from various positionalities may enter conflict when there is dissent over the definition and norms of the space. In these instances of conflict there is the potential for agonism (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). We employed cultural probes in tandem with focus groups and interviews to better understand how players experience toxicity in online gaming spaces. Emerging from participants’ conversations, this paper explores performative behaviours which are emblematic of performing toxicity or ‘counterplay’. We propose three common instances of counterplay: antagonistic counterattack, when a player reciprocates or matches the toxic behaviour of an antagonist; ludic mithridatism, when a player develops a threshold for tolerating toxicity in a gamespace; and playful transgression, when a player or group of players performs counter-hegemonic identity-work.
RESEARCHING UNDER PLATFORMS’ GAZE: RETHINKING THE CHALLENGES OF PLATFORM GOVERNANCE RESEARCH
Authors: Are Carolina
Published: March 2024

Researching on platforms through platforms poses challenges to researchers, particularly when observing subcultures and content at the margins. Inspired by Massanari’s essay on researching under the “alt-right” gaze, this paper uses autoethnography to address the impact the system of platform governance has on researcher vulnerability in data collection, persona management and results dissemination, particularly for researchers gathering data censored by platforms and for early-career researchers constructing their personae through digital media. My goal is to examine how the intersection of platform power, academic precarity and the creator economy affects early-career researchers and academics. At the heart of this are the questions: How can researchers gather data, disseminate results and establish a professional profile under platforms’ all-encompassing gaze? What does platform governance and its focus on specific areas of control mean for researching content and users at the margins? What risks do platforms themselves pose to researchers’ work? And how does the broader precarity of particularly early-career academic work intersect with the effects of platform power? To this end, this paper starts with personal experiences of censorship in research to define ‘platform’s gaze’ as gendered, raced, heteronormative and puritan surveillance, constructing a social reality where marginalised individuals and dissent are both hyper-visible and vulnerable to harassment and silencing. It continues by discussing the increasing digital labour required by the ‘impact agenda’ and the difficulty of managing a researcher online persona in an age of growing digital censorship, concluding with considerations on activist interventions in the platform governance field.
EVERYDAY HATE ON FACEBOOK: VISUAL MISOGYNY AND THE ANTI-FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN INDIA
Authors: Badola Anand
Published: March 2024

The #metoo movement has been one of the key social movements which has ushered in a change in structural relations in the society. In the Indian context, the movement has meant giving a powerful platform to women address generations of sexual assault in the Indian society. However, the #metoo movement has also witnessed a counter-response from the growing online ‘men’s rights activists’ (MRA) community.

This study focuses on the online presence of MRA movement in India and the practice of everyday visual misogyny on their Facebook pages. I specifically focus on the public Facebook page of Save Indian Family Movement. The paper focuses on visual posts like images in form of memes and distorted news clips shared on their public page with the aim of capturing visual misogyny.

The selection criteria were to manually collect all posts with an image for a duration of three months (17 October, 2022 – 21 January, 2023). I focus on this timeframe to cover the three months after Justice Chandrachud--who is not seen favourably amongst the MRA community for his progressive judgements --was appointed as the new Chief Justice of India.

The dataset of images only contains either memes or cartoons or news clips. I employ an iterative multimodal critical discourse analysis approach to analyse the visual posts and categorise them based on the schema of explicit and implicit misogyny developed by Strathern and Pfeffer (2022). The findings suggest majority of the visual posts fall within the implicit misogyny category.
EXPLORING PARENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF DARK DESIGN AND ITS IMPACT ON CHILDREN’S DIGITAL WELL-BEING
Authors: Bessant Claire , Cook Laurel Aynne , Ong Luei Lin , Fox Alexa , Hoy Mariea Grubbs , Gan Pingping , Nottingham Emma , Pereira Beatriz , Steinberg Stacey
Published: March 2024

Dark design (also known as deceptive design; Colin et al., 2018 and dark patterns; Mathur et al., 2019) is evidenced by “a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do” (Brignull, 2022; page 1). Much dark design is constructed with monetization as the primary goal- even in spaces without ecommerce design (e.g., free-to-play apps representing >95% of all mobile apps; Fitton et al. 2021). Many recent dark design strategies are also oriented towards collecting user information. Concerns about children’s vulnerability to inappropriate online marketing and economic fraud, and the impact of organisational data collection upon children’s privacy are increasing (European Commission, 2022; OECD, 2011; OFCOM, 2022). Regulators have begun to recognize, challenge, and fine deceptive design practices aimed at children (e.g., $245 million Epic Games settlement; FTC 2022), however, the scope and extent of dark design practices is such that regulators alone cannot safeguard children from such practices. Parents, who are widely understood to be primarily responsible for children’s online experiences, and children themselves, need to be mindful of and resistant to dark design practices in online spaces. With this in mind, this paper explores the following questions:

(a) What is the influence of dark design (1) across mediums (e.g., apps, video games, social media platforms, websites) and (2) across differently-aged children?

(b) To what extent are parents aware of their children’s exposure to dark design and the risks such exposure poses?

(c) How effective are marketplace and regulatory controls?
DATA REPRESENTATION AS EPISTEMOLOGICAL RESISTANCE
Authors: Bhargava Rahul
Published: March 2024

Over the last two decades quantitative data representation has moved from a specialization of the sciences, economics, and statistics, to becoming commonplace in settings of democratic governance and community decision making. The dominant norms of those fields of origin are not connected to the governance and activism settings data is now used in, where practices emphasize empowerment, efficacy, and engagement. This has created ongoing harms and exclusion in a variety of well-documented settings. In this paper I critique the singular way of knowing embodied and charts and graphs, and apply the theories of epistemological pluralism and extended epistemology to argue for a larger toolbox of data representation. Through three concrete case studies of data representations created by activists I argue that social justice movements can embrace a broader set of approaches, practicing creative data representation as epistemological resistance. Through learning from these ongoing examples the fields of data literacy, open data, and data visualization can help create a broader toolbox for data representation. This is necessary to create a pluralistic practice of bringing people together around data in social justice settings.
ALGORITHMS, AESTHETICS AND THE CHANGING NATURE OF CULTURAL CONSUMPTION ONLINE
Authors: Bimo Sara , Bhandari Aparajita
Published: March 2024

This paper examines the development of digital subcultures and microtrends in a social media landscape increasingly driven by algorithms. We explore the increasing proliferation of subcultures defined by aesthetic categories which we refer to as “microtrends. In this paper we draw from a combined mixed-methods exploration– a visual discourse analysis taken in conjunction with critical technoculture analysis (CDTA) – of content shared to the popular hashtag #aesthetic across three different algorithmically driven social media platforms: TikTok, Instagram and Youtube. We aim to extend scholarship on digital subculture formation by examining the intersection of identity formation, algorithmic capitalism and user practices surrounding microtrends through the lens of user engagement and self identity guided by three central questions: (1) What tactics and practices constitute user participation in microtrends? (2) How does user engagement with microtrends function as an act of relational self expression? (3) What are user discourses surrounding microtrend participation? Three novel user practices are identified - aesthetic consistency, aesthetic anxiety, and aesthetic creation- which when taken together comprise of a process that we term “self-discretization” wherein users “do the work” of abstracting and fragmenting their identities for the sake of attaining visibility within a datafied digital environment. Ultimately this paper argues that in an increasingly algorithmic cultural landscape users begin to internalize not just the messaging, but also the logics of algorithmic capitalism and regimes of datafication.
PRACTICES AND PARTICIPATION OF MARGINALISED YOUTH IN NON-FORMAL AND DIGITALISED EDUCATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
Authors: Bosse Eva Maria , Wiese Amelie
Published: March 2024

Educational inequality is prevalent in Germany and depends on different levels of social, economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1987). Yet, non-formal and informal educational arrangements are increasingly considered relevant to tackle those inequalities, specifically when it comes digitalised societies (Jeong et al. 2018). Non-formal educational providers increasingly target marginalised youth to reduce educational inequalities.

However, those programmes have scarcely been researched. The question emerges, whether non-formal digitialised educational arrangements succeed at enabling educational participation of marginalised youth.

In comparing two non-formal educational institutions, the research project “DILABoration” identifies conditions under which marginalised youth are able to profit off of those providers’ programmes and reconstructs them on a subjective level. In an ethnographic and reconstructive approach, a) different conditions in non-formal educational arrangements, b) learning and educational processes, specifically respective digital media use as well as c) the accessibility of participation within those arrangements are being investigated from a marginalised youths’ perspective.

In order to empirically reconstruct the mechanisms of educational participation, the participants’ and employees’ practices within those arrangements are examined through participatory observation and videography. The data is analysed through Grounded Theory Methodology (Strauss/Corbin) as well as Artefact Analysis (Lueger / Froschauer 2018). Situational Analysis (Clarke/Washburn/Friese 2018) is applied in order to visualise constellations and relations between different human and non-human entities. Additionally, group discussions with non-participants of the programmes help identifying conditions that enable or constrain participation.
VICARIOUS NOSTALGIA? PLAYING RETROGAMES FOSTERS AN APPRECIATION FOR GAMING HISTORY
Authors: Bowman Nicholas David , Condis Megan , Yoshimura Koji , Bohaty Emily
Published: March 2024

In recent research, video games have been implicated as vehicles for feelings of nostalgia. Retrogames present a unique context in which to explore the elicitation of nostalgia, especially historical nostalgia among younger gamers who may lack first-hand experience with older games and gaming technologies. As part of a larger study investigating nostalgia and retrogames, n = 102 younger individuals wrote briefly about their thoughts and feelings after playing the game Double Dragon II, a video game representative of the “Beat ‘em Up” genre popular in the 1990s. Via a thematic analysis, we identified eight themes clustered into three groups: retrogames as unique experiences, retrogames and important others, and retrogames and the self. Players connected their feelings of nostalgia to distinctive features of retrogames and the experience of playing them, social thoughts, and recollections (mostly involving close friends and family), and their own personal identities via autobiographical memory. The present findings align with previous research on nostalgia more broadly and illustrate some unique aspects of nostalgic experiences evoked by retrogames. Our data have implications for how younger players take up and experience video game history through replaying retrogames of yesteryear, and might explain the enduring and increasing popularity of retrogames among myriad gaming cohorts. Furthermore, this research adds conceptual refinement to historical nostalgia (nostalgia for bygone eras), and introduces the notion of vicarious nostalgia as a perception of how others (such as parents and older siblings) would experience and make sense of older media content from their respective generations.
THEORIZING ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIATION THROUGH IRELAND'S PEATLANDS
Authors: Brodie Patrick
Published: March 2024

In colonial and postcolonial Ireland, boglands were seen as "wastelands" to be "improved" by large-scale enterprise. Today, they are strategic landscapes for carbon sequestration and climate solutions, both for the state and multinationals located in Ireland. Various contemporary projects, co-funded by industry and state partners, have facilitated the expansion and proliferation of sensing, monitoring, and mapping technologies across Ireland's bogs to measure and maximize their value in these economies. However, by doing so, they are laying the foundations for a "green grab" of Ireland's land resources by tech companies.

This paper situates the historical resource and conservation landscape of Ireland’s peat boglands within their emerging role in datafied “green” revolutions. Emphasizing the stakes of land, resources, technologies, and research institutions within green transitions, the paper theorizes peat bogs an emerging site of digital climate solutionism. In doing so, I offer a framework for understanding resource landscapes in so-called “post-extractive” contexts where networked forms of extraction are innovated through public/private technoscientific research at the intersections of digital technology and ecosystemic interactions between geologies, atmospheres, and cultures. Bringing together literature from environmental media studies, STS, and geography, and performing participant observation and discourse analysis on emerging projects of peatland science in academic and industry settings, I theorize how “environmental mediation” offers an aperture for understanding how digital technologies network landscapes towards “ecosystem services” and other capital-driven climate projects.
GROUPS ARE EASY, FEDERATING IS HARD
Authors: Brown James J
Published: March 2024

When Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, many users sought a place of refuge, and Mastodon was seen as an early candidate. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, a decentralized network of social media services. But people arriving in this network were confused, a problem that many chalked up to a clunky interface and a confusing user experience. Such a reading of the situation misses something much more fundamental. This reaction to Mastodon signals something important about a narrowed network imagination amongst some users, a narrowed imagination that is not shared by all. On Mastodon, users engage in labor-intensive federating practices – they manage both the internal dynamics of their home server and that server’s relations to other servers. Groups are relatively easy to create, but federation can be quite difficult. Federation faces a number of obstacles, but some groups, including far-right political activists, have effectively responded to those obstacles. Researchers should study not only federated social media but also the federating practices used by groups both online and offline, practices that move past the easy labor of group formation into the more difficult work of federation.
A RIVER OF DATA RUNS THROUGH IT: EXAMINING URBAN CIRCULATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Authors: Burns Ryan , Mouton Morgan
Published: March 2024

There is a deepening need for dialogue between (digital) urbanists and Internet Studies scholarship. In this paper we are interested in "urbanizing" Internet Studies by thinking about how digital infrastructures create and control circulations, movement, flows, and streams within urban contexts. More specifically, we think about circulations and concentrations of natural, human, and digital resources by way of Urban Political Ecology to better understand smart cities, digital urban labor, and Anthropocene literatures.

As data, infrastructures, apps, capital, and natural phenomena concentrate in cities, and are instantiated to create and constrain flows and circulations, we contend that Internet Studies can play a key role in analyzing and understanding these new socio-technical entanglements. Drawing on Nost and Goldstein's notion of "data infrastructures", we think about how the materiality of data and digital technologies shape cities, and cities shape data and technologies. We suggest several conceptual and methodological overlaps with Urban Political Ecology, to signal what an urbanized Internet Studies, concentrated on circulations and flows, might look like.
_EVEN MORE_ COMPLICATED: THE NETWORKED LIVES OF TEENAGERS IN A CONTEXT OF EXCLUSION IN BRAZIL
Authors: Cardozo Sarli André
Published: March 2024

This paper stems from a chapter of my Doctoral dissertation. It borrows from the work of boyd (2014) on the experiences of teenagers in social media. In this paper I will present the different usages of the internet and social media by teenagers that live in a context of exclusion. I will focus on teenagers that are placed in care institutions in Brazil, and their struggle with everyday forms of stigma and oppression.

To live in a care institution, a.k.a shelters, is a unique experience that is the consequence of rights violations against children and teenagers (Brazilian Statute of the Child and of the Adolescent, 1990). The placement in a shelter is an extreme measure that remove children from their families and communities. To legitimate the state intervention and highlighting the exceptionality and temporality of that measure, the law prioritises family and community conviviality. This is not the case for most of teenagers, as it is unlikely they will be adopted or return, and they will spent most of their teen years there.

I will present the narratives of institution and especially teenagers, with which I highlight the link between their experiences of exclusion, the formation of identity and their digital personas. For such, I will use the concept of reflexive identity (Giddens, 1991) and the script approach (Akrich, 1992) to portray how their actions show some kind accomodation and appropriation of the affordances of social media to seek stability in a context of high uncertainty.