Francesca Comunello

Will the revolution be tweeted? A conceptual framework for understanding the social media and the Arab Spring

The goal of this article is to build a conceptual framework for understanding the role of social media in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, considering two different disciplinary perspectives: International Relations and Internet Studies. More specifically, it relies on literature on Middle Eastern political systems and on social network sites. It also refers to literature that examines the relationship between (social) media engagement and civic engagement. Building on this foundation, the article analyses the main attempts to evaluate the ‘impact’ of social media on the ‘Arab Spring’ from specific perspectives. Commentators have tended to adopt a dichotomous vision of the topic, either emphasizing the ‘revolutionary’ role of social media or totally minimizing its role; this article defines them as digital evangelists and techno-realists respectively. In order to prove their point of view, both sides focus on the same issues. The study critically analyses the main issues, discussing how they have been interpreted by both digital evangelists and techno-realists. Through a multidisciplinary framework, it proposes a more nuanced picture of the relationship between the social media and the ‘Arab Spring’.

Networked sociability and individualism: Technology for personal and professional relationships

A deep understanding of user social interaction in social network sites (SNSs) can provide important insights into questions of human social and relational behavior, as well as shape the design of new social platforms and applications. Recent studies have shown that a majority of user interactions on SNSs are latent interactions—passive actions such as profile browsing that cannot be observed directly by traditional research methods. This chapter presents a new technique to capture natural latent social interaction in Renren, the most popular SNS in China. As such, it offers a better understanding of both visible (e.g., comments and wall posts) and latent (e.g., passive profile browsing) user social interactions in SNSs than has been possible to date. We show that latent interactions are much more prevalent and frequent than visible interactions, are somewhat nonreciprocal in nature, and that visits by non-friends make up a significant portion of profile views. Our results augment earlier findings on such concepts as lurking and interpersonal electronic surveillance, and in some cases, shed new light on these phenomena.

Women, youth and everything else: age-based and gendered stereotypes in relation to digital technology among elderly Italian mobile phone users

In the context of an international research project on older people’s relations with and through mobile telephony, Italian participants spontaneously provided narrations on mobile phones that appeared to be structured around strong stereotypes. Respondents show a twofold representation of mobile phones either as a simple communication tool or as a ‘hi-tech’ device, which generates multifaceted stereotypes. More specifically, when the mobile phone is considered as a simple communication tool, age-based stereotypes address younger people’s bad manners, while gendered stereotypes depict women as ‘chatterboxes’ or ‘social groomers’. On the other hand, when the mobile phone is considered a ‘hi-tech’ device, age-based stereotypes underline younger people’s advanced user skills, while gendered stereotypes focus on women’s lack of competencies. Based on that, we provide a conceptual framework for analysing such stereotyped – and apparently conflicting – representations. Interestingly, while some issues also emerged in other countries, the masculine assumption that women are less-skilled mobile phone users appears as a peculiarity of Italian respondents.

Vieni via con me. Consumo televisivo, social media e civic engagement

Obiettivo di questo articolo e ragionare sul rapporto tra consumo mediale, uso dei social media e definizione del senso di appartenenza sociale e partecipazione culturale dei soggetti alla vita quotidiana. In particolare, oggetto del nostro lavoro sono le pratiche partecipative messe in campo dagli utenti dei social media (e, in particolare, di Twitter) a ridosso di Vieni via con me, un programma televisivo andato in onda sulla Rai nel mese di novembre 2010, condotto da Fabio Fazio e Roberto Saviano. Il programma e stato recepito come un’occasione di riflessione politica, con forti connotazioni anti governative, al punto che la sua stessa fruizione e stata interpretata, da molti degli spettatori attivi sui social media, come un momento di civic engagement.

My Grandpa and I “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” A Research Design on Intergenerational Gaming Focusing on Pokémon Go

Intergenerational gaming is gaining growing scholarly attention, as it can be considered a means of fostering relationships between younger and older players, a way of overcoming real or perceived differences between generations, a chance to (re)negotiate norms and roles, and a way to question age-related stereotypes. In this paper, we conduct a literature review on intergenerational gaming and pervasive gaming and present a research design to conduct an intergenerational gaming study focusing on Pokemon Go. We aim at exploring gaming practices, role negotiations, and the presence/absence of age-related stereotypes. To reach our goals, we elaborate and evaluate different research methods and tools, discussing their strengths and weaknesses and designing further research steps.

User-Generated Video Gaming Little Big Planet and Participatory Cultures in Italy

Digital technology users are growingly involved in what has been described as convergence culture or participatory cultures. In this context, a major role is played by user-generated content. This article focuses on the participatory practices related to Little Big Planet (LBP) 1, a PlayStation platform video game that encourages users to create and share their own gaming levels. Our theoretical framework refers both to convergence culture and to a specific perspective of game studies that focuses on the cultural and social dimensions that are to be found in gaming and modding practices. A total of 8,829 Italian PlayStation Network (PSN) users were surveyed regarding their gaming practices, their attitude toward digital technology, and their LBP usage experiences. The results show that familiarity with digital technology and a socially oriented attitude to digital technology are clearly related to “active LBP engagement.” Moreover, PSN users are more likely than other digital platforms users to create their own content.

Shaken and stirred: Social representations, social media, and community empowerment in emergency contexts

Abstract In this paper we examine the use of Twitter and Facebook in two dramatic earthquakes that hit Italy: L’Aquila (in 2009) and Emilia (in 2012). Indeed, disasters disrupt everyday life and engage people in meaning-making processes aimed at recovering meaning and control of their world. In these cases, we argue that the use of social media may contribute to social representations processes and functions: cognitive coping, social sharing of emotions, preserving self-efficacy, boosting identity, and community empowerment. Different methods were adopted to examine the use of social media in the immediate aftermath, a few days after, and in the medium-long term. Differences between the events, combined with the differences between Twitter and Facebook, entailed a multiplicity of uses. Nevertheless, the analyses point to the same conclusions: by fostering new forms of communication and encounters, social media played an increasingly important role during and after the earthquakes. First, they were used for providing information and material coping, then they favored the social sharing of emotions and joint remembering, and finally they contributed to claiming voice and control. Results thus suggest that the use of social media favored different representational functions, which progressively contributed to community empowerment.

Book review: Douglas Rushkoff, Present shockRushkoffDouglas, Present shock, New York, NY: Current, 2013. 296 pp. ISBN-10 1591844762, US

and tong (mutuality). Her ability to weave the notions of yuanfen and tong together in explaining how her informants construct their social relations with relatives and strangers is extraordinary. Given all the obvious contributions, one wishes Wallis could have shared more of her methodology and research process in the fieldwork section. More detailed descriptions of how the interviews were conducted, the kinds of questions asked, strategies she used to establish rapport with her informants other than relying upon her Chinese connections and nonprofit organizations, and even challenges she encountered, would have been extremely valuable for scholars who are interested in carrying out similar projects. The absence of the digital divide in her framework and analysis is also somewhat disappointing. Digital divides are pervasive—in the young migrant women’s purchase of domestic-brand mobile phones and tailored low-rate, limited service plans, their reliance on prewritten text messages, and limited technological literacy. In one of the footnotes, Wallis points out the dualism between haves and have-nots that the concept of digital divide implies. But it does not justify the total omission of the issue from the book, precisely because she challenges the faulty premise that technology will pave the road to prosperity and demonstrates how digital divides are almost always about social and economic inequality.

26.95 (hbk).

ogy can be useful – as long as both preventive and not absolute – there are high barriers to its institutionalization. It raises privacy and ethical issues: there is no universal way to see the faces. The risk is to create disembodied identites. Today people are ever more known through electronic information. The social representation of human beings comes about within a system based for the most part on electronics. These transformations end up involving the anthropology of people as well, through modification of their bodies, creating people who are ‘configured’ with their electronic data. In this way the individuality instead risks being translated into a simple binary code. This is an intelligent and invisible surveillance not so much and not only because it is carried out with detection systems that are, by now, in place everywhere or with hidden video cameras, but principally because of the invisible nature of the processes of categorization, social selection and classification that are undertaken technologically. Monica Zuccarini # 2013 Monica Zuccarini http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.687007