The ‘digital glimpse’ as imagining home

This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.     

(Un)ethical practices: intimacy and Internet in the media coverage of the Ashley Madison hack

In the summer of 2015, the “cheating website” known as Ashley Madison came under scrutiny, as a group calling itself the Impact Team revealed users’ private information. This case study explores the controversy’s Canadian media coverage and sheds light on the main discourses about intimacy and the Internet that were made visible during this event. It interrogates how cheaters, hackers, and the company were represented. To varying degrees, the mainstream press condemns the cheaters, the hackers, and the company for their behaviour. The article also addresses the ways intimate practices are politicized and commercialized in the digital context, including a discussion of the emphasis on “privacy.” To conclude the article, I discuss the transparency and privacy issues implicated in digital intimacies and the power–knowledge (im)balance implied by hackers’ online anonymity.     

Curating the Soul: Foucault's concept of hupomnemata and the digital technology of self-care

This paper explores how online actions such as the practice of digital self-writing shape our offline identity. We start with an examination of the concept of hupomnemata – a practice of self-writing in which notes are kept as a ‘material record of things read, heard, or thought’ in the intent of shaping the self [Foucault (1997). Self writing. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics, subjectivity and truth. The essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984. Volume 1 (pp. 207–222). New York, NY: The New Press p. 209] – before arguing that the practice of digital content curation can be understood as a modern-day variant of the Greco-Roman hupomnemata. Although the work of the digital curator is conducted online, this paper positions contemporary curatorial practices as acts of self-exploration, self-cultivation, and self-care, which nourish offline identity and which ultimately work to shape the offline, corporeal self.     

Information society and digital divide in South Africa: results of longitudinal surveys

Integration into the information society implies that information plays an increasingly important role in all sectors of society and holds distinct social and economic benefits. Discourses on the information society are, however, also associated with the digital divide and inequalities in access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Within sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa is often regarded as one of the most information-integrated societies due to widespread mobile phone ownership, among other things. However, while ICT access has been emphasized, research also points to the role of demographic, socio-economic and cultural factors such as ethnicity, income, education and gender. This article discusses the results of questionnaire surveys conducted by Afrobarometer among probability South African samples in 2008 and 2011. The results indicate that individual Internet use and mobile Internet access were lower than estimated in the literature. Furthermore, gender gaps, as well as considerable gaps between population groups and educational levels, were found in Internet and computer use, mobile ownership and access to mobile Internet and accessing news via the Internet. Conclusions regarding strategies for bridging the digital divide and integrating South Africa into the information society are discussed.     

In search of African history: the re-appropriation of photographic archives by contemporary visual artists

The digital revolution has fundamentally changed our relationship to archives, by accelerating their “dusting off” and their re-appropriation, particularly in the art world. This article will show the ways in which some contemporary visual artists use new digital technologies to provide new ways of storing, reading and retrieving contemporary African history. Such artists do so by revisiting diverse forms of archives that are mainly photographic, and which were produced during the colonial and independence eras.     

北京城市社区数字化管理

北京作为中国的首都,在城市社区数字化建设方面成绩显著,但也存在着一些问题。本文在调查分析的基础上,提出了具体的解决方案,并就其未来发展作了展望。     

Reconceptualizing the generation in a digital(izing) modernity: digital media,social networking sites,and the flattening of generations

As digitalization binds society to an apparently perpetual acceleration, questions about the nature of time and speed have gained new urgency in the social sciences. Yet, theorizations of these issues have neglected their implications for social life and generations. Linking these lacunae, this article articulates how digital media and social networking sites (SNS) shape social life through cultural transformations in the generation. This article rationalizes predominant patterns of SNS user behaviors in the context of social theoretical and philosophical frameworks informed by Mannheim, Simmel, Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt, social presence, action, and acceleration theories to offer a relational reconceptualization of the generation as a set of social relations and processes for visualizing changing conceptions of time and speed in a digital (izing) modernity. This article introduces the concept of general and local generationing processes to articulate the processual nature of the generation and to assert that trends in SNS use and content production are underwritten by grammatical logics that collectively “flatten” separate traditional generations to form a cross-demographic and cross-temporal digital generation.     

The disembedded digital economy: Social protection for new economy employment in China

This research focuses upon employment in the new economy, exploring labour protection and social protection in the digital age in China. Through an empirical survey conducted in three Chinese cities, social insurance and the labour rights of employees in the digital economic sector, such as gig employment, e-commerce, and various other forms of online employment, have been examined in-depth. This study reveals new regulatory loopholes in the digital labour market, which have substantially eroded the basis of social policy arrangements in China, “softening” participation in social insurance branches and compliance with labour regulations remarkably. Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of Polanyi on embeddedness and disembeddedness, we argue that the digital employment sector in China has been increasingly disembedded from social institutions and social control. The new configuration in the digital field of social policy requires novel conceptual models and institutional settings to cope with increasing social risks in virtual spaces.     

基于客户需求的移动数据产业生态系统研究

围绕移动数据业务的发展,立足于移动数据业务价值网络的研究,从产业生态系统的角度分析了价值网络各环节价值增值的原理.按照马斯洛的需求层次理论,提出了在有效运作客户资源的基础上,对移动数据业务市场需求进行分析的方法.根据移动数据业务的服务对象,对市场需求进行了分类.提出了以移动运营商为核心,包括网络设备供应商、系统集成商、终端设备制造商、内容及服务提供商、虚拟运营商和用户在内的移动数字产业生态系统的基本架构.     

数字内容产品消费扩散与模仿的空间模式——基于空间面板模型的计量研究

数字内容产品具有非实物特征,其网络生产与交易几乎不包含地理距离成本,因而企业需要认识其扩散模式,重新制定与传统方式不同的全域营销策略。此研究借助空间面板数据模型,对某类数字内容产品的省级销售数据进行分析,从消费扩散角度检验了其在网络销售过程中存在的空间相关性与空间固定效应。本文的主要实证发现包括,数字内容产品的网络销售并没有因为物理距离的消失而失去其空间相关性,消费者之间的模仿行为是驱动区域内产品扩散的直接动力,此外,相邻区域间的消费存在着同步增长。