The strengths of close ties: Taiwanese online entrepreneurship,gender and intersectionality

This article examines entrepreneurs who have started innovative Internet and mobile technology companies in Taiwan because they are at the forefront of industrial changes in the country. Similar to findings in Europe and the USA, education and careers in technology in Taiwan remain dominated by men. However, I argue that the gender inequality of the sector is partly the result of the fact that small new enterprises rely on family support and close social networks. Few women are able to join the sector with male friends and colleagues due to the close social ties of the founding teams (homophily). Among my female interviewees, half have started their nascent companies with their husbands and male partners (husband and wife teams). However, gender, family backgrounds and childcare responsibilities affect both men and women, and the interviewees in my study were open in discussing these personal factors in relation to being entrepreneurs. This article argues that starting an Internet company is a family decision, discussed within the household. Intersectionality, not only gender, explains the founders’ decision to start a company, and their choice of co-founders.     

Crossing borders with social media: Online social networks and FDI

Social media is embedded in today's internationalization strategy. Companies extend their reach into foreign countries by posting and tweeting. Firms also enhance their mobile capabilities in foreign markets (e.g., knowledge and reputation) through user-generated content in online social networks. Levering on the capabilities-based theory of the multinational enterprise, this paper builds upon a resource-based, industry/network-based, and institution-based view framework. The study provides a comprehensive conceptual and empirical model to explain the effect of social networks on foreign direct investment. Empirical analysis in a global panel dataset of >4500 multinational enterprises suggests that online social networks' activity stimulates foreign capital expenditure and new affiliates. In addition, the article explores the relevance of customer capabilities along with sectoral and institutional moderating effects.     

Mobility and sociality in proximity-sensitive digital urban ecologies: ‘Timid encounters’ and ‘seam-sensitive walks’

This paper is a case study of the use of a proximity-sensitive game played on mobile gaming terminals, in Japan and in France, Dragon Quest 9, and of distinctive forms of mobility and urban encounters which emerge around it. We show how players, when assembled together, walk the ‘connected walk,’ that is they adopt a particular gait, slower than the usual walking pace, with repeated pauses which appears as a tentative and exploratory kind of mobility oriented towards the random occurrence of proximity-based screen-mediated events, and therefore both adjusted to and constitutive of the proximity-sensitive hybrid ecology as a serendipitous place, to be experienced as such. With respect to urban encounters, we have identified a characteristic tension, relevant to locative media in general, in which concerns with potential identification and recognition ‘in the game’ contrasts with the interaction order of urban traffic encounters, characterized by ‘civil inattention.’ This gives rise to the phenomenon of ‘timid encounters,’ in which players strive to experience game encounters with other players a few meters away, while trying to elude visual or verbal recognition.     

文化遗产数字化与互动性推广模式——基于新媒介载体的文化产业开发

文化遗产的数字化不仅可以有效保护与传承文化,还可以与新媒介结合进行互动式推广。利用数字技术、网络技术、移动通信技术等新媒介推广文化的模式有:富媒体虚拟场景展示、IGA软性推广、虚拟真实互动等。通过这些方式可实现新媒介与文化遗产推广推介的结合、虚拟场景与真实景观的结合、线上互动与线下互动的结合。通过互动性推广,辐射大众、涵盖小众,并影响多目标人群的参与与关注。     

Sport and disability: Pistorius does not fit with the categories

Oscar Pistorius presents a major issue to sports organisations, as exposed in the media. First and foremost, media wrongly perceive him as the first disabled athlete to participate in the Olympic Games. Second, they openly question the legitimacy of his participation mainly based on the inequity introduced by his prosthetic legs. Content analysis, in English and French, of written press, International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) texts, from 2004 to 2012, confirms that Pistorius presents a new puzzle to sports organizations. This is partly because they are not able to determine whether his performances are a result of his body strength or if they are biased by his artificial limbs. Furthermore, when he is competing against able-bodied athletes, sports organizsations put him in a ‘monstrous’ position. Similarly, while categorising him as an ‘athlete’ they do not grant him the characteristic feature of this category: certified comparability of performances to ultimately establish ranks.     

A bibliographic study of public relations in Spanish media and communication journals, 2000–2012

This study analyses the trends and visibility of research on public relations in the most relevant Spanish media and communication journals between the years 2000 and 2012. Bibliometrics and content analysis are used to show the reduced presence of articles on public relations in these publications. A trend towards gender parity in authorship is confirmed in the sample, as well as a plurality of universities and a variety of research themes. The study also proves preference for generic questions rather than for specialised topics. Another finding is that almost one fourth of the specific articles on this discipline do not contain the term “public relations”. This can hint towards the need to have a specific high-impact publication on public relations to bring together and provide visibility to the contributions of researchers in this field.     

Embodied versus Disembodied Information: How Online Artifacts Influence Offline Interpersonal Interactions

This article examines how the sheer volume of personal information recorded and searchable online (online artifacts) has transformed the situated activity system central to Goffman's dramaturgical theories. In‐depth interviews reveal that individuals believe disembodied information based on online artifacts is a more accurate representation of others than embodied information from spatially and temporally bounded face‐to‐face (FTF) processes because they represent how others have behaved over time and are attested by their online contacts. However, the n‐adic structure of online interaction leads to mismatched expectations about whether disembodied information is taken into account during FTF encounters, and consequently can result in embarrassment.     

Community Resilience and Decision Theory Challenges for Catastrophic Events

Extreme and catastrophic events pose challenges for normative models of risk management decision making. They invite development of new methods and principles to complement existing normative decision and risk analysis. Because such events are rare, it is difficult to learn about them from experience. They can prompt both too little concern before the fact, and too much after. Emotionally charged and vivid outcomes promote probability neglect and distort risk perceptions. Aversion to acting on uncertain probabilities saps precautionary action; moral hazard distorts incentives to take care; imperfect learning and social adaptation (e.g., herd‐following, group‐think) complicate forecasting and coordination of individual behaviors and undermine prediction, preparation, and insurance of catastrophic events. Such difficulties raise substantial challenges for normative decision theories prescribing how catastrophe risks should be managed. This article summarizes challenges for catastrophic hazards with uncertain or unpredictable frequencies and severities, hard‐to‐envision and incompletely described decision alternatives and consequences, and individual responses that influence each other. Conceptual models and examples clarify where and why new methods are needed to complement traditional normative decision theories for individuals and groups. For example, prospective and retrospective preferences for risk management alternatives may conflict; procedures for combining individual beliefs or preferences can produce collective decisions that no one favors; and individual choices or behaviors in preparing for possible disasters may have no equilibrium. Recent ideas for building “disaster‐resilient” communities can complement traditional normative decision theories, helping to meet the practical need for better ways to manage risks of extreme and catastrophic events.     

充分发挥大众传媒思想政治教育功能的对策研究

本文归纳总结了切实发挥大众传媒思想政治教育功能应遵循的基本原则,深入分析当前我国发挥大众传媒思想政治教育功能的现状、存在的主要问题以及导致这些问题的原因,并进而深入挖掘隐藏在这些问题背后的深层次制约因素,提出了如何充分发挥大众传媒思想政治教育功能的对策性意见。     

The reification of celebrity: global newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie*

This paper examines global English-language newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie. Drawing upon the concept of reification, it is argued that the notion of celebrity is discursively (re)produced and configured through a ‘public face’ that is defined, maintained and shaped via media reports and public responses that aim to know and reflect upon celebrity. The findings highlight how Bowie’s reification was supported by discourses that represented him as an observable, reified form. Here, Bowie’s ‘reality’, that is, his authentic/veridical self, was obscured behind a façade of mediation, interpretation and representation that debated and decided his ‘authenticity’ as a cultural icon. Such debates, however, were engagements with a reified image, enveloped in continual (re)interpretation. As a result, Bowie’s reification was grounded in a polysemous process that allowed numerous versions of ‘himself’ to be aesthetically reimagined, reinvented and repeated.