New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have allowed for changes in media content and in practices of media reception. How these changes have impacted on practices of citizenship, is the key question for this article. It starts by showing how notions of citizenship are closely related to public opinion formation, which, in turn is felt to be nurtured by journalism. The demise in newspaper readership is in that regard a worrying phenomenon. By first looking more closely at how the news itself has changed (the inclusion of vox pop segments; the wide use of polls) and by then turning to how practices of representing ordinary people point to the possibility of more inclusive notions of citizenship, the article proposes ‘cultural’ citizenship as a sensitizing concept. As ICTs are most visibly embodied by the Internet, a number of examples are discussed from this perspective. The article concludes that ICTs do not necessarily produce new citizens but that they do provide for new and important citizenship practices.
The COVID-19 pandemic massively changed the context and feasibility of developmental research. This new reality as well as considerations, e.g., about sample diversity and naturalistic settings for developmental research, indicate the need for solutions for online studies. In this article, we present e-Babylab, an open-source browser-based tool for unmoderated online studies specifically targeted at studying young children and babies. e-Babylab offers an intuitive graphical user interface for study creation and management of studies, users, participant data, and stimulus material with no programming skills required. Various kinds of audiovisual media can be presented as stimuli and possible measures include webcam recordings, audio recordings, key presses, mouse-click/touch coordinates, and reaction times. Information pages, consent forms, and participant forms are all customizable. e-Babylab was used with a variety of measures and paradigms in 14 studies with children aged 12 months to 8 years (n = 1516). We briefly summarize some results of these studies to demonstrate data quality and that participants’ engagement and the overall results are comparable in lab and online settings. We then present in more detail one replication of an established preferential-looking paradigm with gaze directions manually coded from the webcam captures. Finally, we discuss useful tips for using e-Babylab and present plans for upgrades.
The wide use of social media has facilitated new social practices that influence place meaning. This paper uses a double case study of two neighborhood blogs in gentrifying communities, to explore the role of social media in sharing place associations and community formation. Drawing on Collins' theory of interaction ritual chains, this research project investigates how the intertwining of online and offline interaction around the blogs creates interaction chains whereby the place associations of participants in the blog become more aligned, creating an alternative place narrative. Analyses of the dynamics of involvement with the blogs show how social interactions spurred by the blogs generate emotional energy, group solidarity, feelings of morality, meaningful symbols, and feelings of place attachment among the participants. This article illuminates how the emerging process of place (re)making spurred by interaction with the blog emerges from both everyday unplanned behavior and strategic aims of the actors.
Audience research, this paper suggests, is an excellent field to test the claims of Media Studies 2.0. Moreover, 2.0 claims are a good means to review qualitative audience research itself too. Working from a broad strokes analysis of the theory, politics and method of interpretative
research with audiences, it is argued that the new media ecology demands new roles of researchers, and an open approach to audiencehood as practice and innovative research method. The paper ends with a case study of the co-creation project of a research team and a Moroccan-Dutch Internet community-writing
team working together on an Internet telenovela.
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