Session
Contemporary Communication Issues. Digital Futures
XX ISA World Congress of Sociology (June 25-July 1, 2023)
Session
Civic Engagement, Political Consumerism and Participatory Communication: New Challenges of Social Media at 21st Century
IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)
Many claims have been made about the emergence of a digital turn that has radically transformed the possibilities for politics through traditional, modernist and postmodernist binaries of subject/object, state/society, politics/economics, public/private, consumption/production, time/space, mind/body, labour/leisure, culture/nature, and human/post human. This turn has run through several phases,...
Many claims have been made about the emergence of a digital turn that has radically transformed the possibilities for politics through traditional, modernist and postmodernist binaries of subject/object, state/society, politics/economics, public/private, consumption/production, time/space, mind/body, labour/leisure, culture/nature, and human/post human. This turn has run through several phases, beginning from cybernetics, databases, artificial intelligence, personal computers, at 20th century, up to social media, targeted digital advertising, self-quantification, big data, and cloud computing, at 21st century. This session will develop interdisciplinary assessments of the digital’s impact on society. It will interrogate the claims of both positive features and critical rethinking of social media activities. “Digital optimists” assert that Internet and social media create new forms of community and solidarity, creative innovation, participatory communication, social activism, and distributed democracy. “Digital critics” argue that digital technologies have not brought only positive change, but have rather engendered controversial phenomena as political consumerism, purchasing practices, and at the same time extended domination through new forms of control as well as networked authoritarianism, digital divide and new digital alienation 2.0, or the rise of the surveillance society.
Presenters will engage with the possibilities, potentials, pitfalls, limits, and ideologies of digital activism through social media practices. And participants are welcomed to explore main challenges of Internet participatory culture, futures, places and possibilities of critique in the age of digital subjects and digital objects.
Read More
Session
Media Narratives and Contemporary Culture
XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)
Among the huge communicational changes occurring in contemporary society (compared to the 20thcentury) is the use of terms which are no more able to signify reality. For example politics are mostly “mediated” and “virtual” (power coming “into scenes” as argued G. Balandier); “leisure culture” remains dominant at the same time that economic crisis augments almost everywhere. Many pop...
Among the huge communicational changes occurring in contemporary society (compared to the 20thcentury) is the use of terms which are no more able to signify reality. For example politics are mostly “mediated” and “virtual” (power coming “into scenes” as argued G. Balandier); “leisure culture” remains dominant at the same time that economic crisis augments almost everywhere. Many populations ought to affront war and dislocation. These reversals coexist with the “refugee problem” and therefore we believe that this problem (appearing as “European” given that people wishing to avoid war, search asylum in the neighboring European countries) is certainly “global” (it may be associated to the migration problem in the U.S.) and characterizes many contemporary general ideas (as for instance the meaning of “borders”, the definitions of identities and otherness, the notions of security and of “zones of danger”). Our world seems mostly “divided” between “security zones” and “dangerous zones”. The analysis of the (world) media narratives on this problem would reveal social representations of the meaning of borders, as well as of the meaning of “tourism” and “travel mobility” -associated to refugee mobility. New challenges, new realities: it is time to redefine some existing social (and sociological) categorizations (important for media and knowledge) associated nowadays to the life-style culture.
This session, invites papers on media analysis dealing with this kind of emerging issues with the goal to describe, analyze and understand the social understanding of identities and borders which in fact “shape” our world (and our ways to understand it).
Read More
Session
Identities and Borders in the Contemporary Society: Media Narratives Joint with AISLF-RC38
XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)
We believe that the refugee problem (together with the "new technologies" issues) is central for the contemporary communication and culture, not only because of its importance but also because of its definition of the contemporary identities (which are in the center of any social system). The world “frame news” (which are diffused by some major press agencies of the world), seem to character...
We believe that the refugee problem (together with the "new technologies" issues) is central for the contemporary communication and culture, not only because of its importance but also because of its definition of the contemporary identities (which are in the center of any social system). The world “frame news” (which are diffused by some major press agencies of the world), seem to characterize the contemporary society. Among them, figure the geopolitical problems and war (in other words the “others” elsewhere: western audience is asked to recognize them, be aware of the “problem” and be happy as far as “those people” stay “where they belong”: in the war area or in a refugee camp at the “borders” of the “civilized world"); postmodern identities are thus shaped between “us” leaving our life according to the civil standards and the “others”. During the Cold War, the World was divided in two blocs (where everybody was supposed to be part of this division). Nowadays, there’s a new geographical distribution: the world is divided into “citadels” well barricaded and impossible to touch, conceived to be “security zones” (such as European North, United States or Canada). Around these citadels, we can find vague territories as “no man’s land” which are interpreted as potential threats to the citadels’ peace and tranquility (these threats are immigration or economic crisis). This session, invites analyses of the media narratives on the refugee problem all over the world.
Read More
Session
Social Media and Contemporary Communication Issues /Médias Sociaux Et Problèmes Contemporains De Communication Joint with Aislf-RC38
XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)
The ambiguous role of social media in today’s social context is well known and determined by their binaries as creators of a new communicative environment, new sociality that contributes to the finding of personal and national authenticity as against a field of information wars, political games and exploitation for the economic interests of the big Internet corporations. Social media a...
The ambiguous role of social media in today’s social context is well known and determined by their binaries as creators of a new communicative environment, new sociality that contributes to the finding of personal and national authenticity as against a field of information wars, political games and exploitation for the economic interests of the big Internet corporations. Social media are deinstitutionalized so that users have multi dimensional features to create and modify personal values and identities by transforming networking content and sharing it with other users. The audience of social media can be divided into extremely active users or "insiders", then those who are in process of training and searching for personal behavior in networks - "newbies", and also those who are “lurkers" of social media – the readers of blogs or the visitors of social networks without active participation and creation of own content. Nevertheless, so long the Internet users are included in different network resources; they become both influential founders of production and object of the hidden or open commercial or political interests of big Internet corporations and political actors.
Digital activists assert that social media have radically transformed the world promising new forms of community, alternative ways of knowing and sensing, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Digital pessimists argue that digital culture has not brought about positive change, but has rather deepened and extended domination through new forms of control as well as networked authoritarianism, digital dehumanization, alienation 2.0, networked exploitation and violence.
Read More
Session
The Power of Heritage:Encountering Differences and Marking Identities
XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)
Aware of the increasing interest in the movement of policies between places, sites and settings, this JS aims to show how people learn to live with “difference”, one of the most challenging issues of the contemporary society. How people of different heritages being in a common space (coexistence due to migration, refugee problem and globalization) could forge some kind of shared sensibilit...
Aware of the increasing interest in the movement of policies between places, sites and settings, this JS aims to show how people learn to live with “difference”, one of the most challenging issues of the contemporary society. How people of different heritages being in a common space (coexistence due to migration, refugee problem and globalization) could forge some kind of shared sensibility? How could it be possible to realize some kind of common life together, without retreating into “war tribes” one against the other, but being able to understand and live together (peacefully).
We suggest to focus on contemporary cities, the contact zones of globalizing, urbanizing, super diverse world. One good example could be some field research on the “border zones” of Europe (Spain, Italy and Greece) where the refugee problem reveals some of the most urgent problems nowadays: who is the emblematic “other” for the contemporary (Western?) culture? Because the “identity” problem is central for communication and characterizes the communicational system of a society, these issues become central for the analysis of communication, knowledge and culture. In these zones is “played” the game between identities (describing “otherness” and the ways to deal with it): expressing merged identities is a capital problem apparently in these zones (unfortunately creating social violence and conflict) but we argue that it is an ideal topic to investigate the contemporary postmodern culture: we invite papers on analyses of facts and or propositions on eventually constructing new social Heritages (and Identities).
Read More
