Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Between Autonomy And Automation: Mapping Practices Among Syrian Delivery Drivers In Beirut, Blake Atwood

Human-Machine Communication

This article studies the tension between autonomy and automation as it is experienced by Syrian refugee food-delivery drivers who work on the Toters app in Beirut, Lebanon. Central to this study are the freedom narratives these drivers construct, which reflect their ambivalent relationship with digital labor platforms. These narratives highlight how the algorithmic nature of the Toters app provides opportunities for self-employment and flexible work, crucial for refugees facing employment barriers and limited physical and social mobility in Lebanon. However, in these narratives, the drivers’ sense of autonomy is also often compromised by the app’s increasing automation, which imposes surveillance …

Wired To Offend: Cancel Culture Meets Generative Artificial Intelligence, Andrew Prahl, Shanice Koh Jie Qing, Justina Tan Ann Qi

Human-Machine Communication

Cancel culture has been limited to individuals and corporations being cancelled. However, AI is also getting cancelled, challenging our understanding of machine autonomy and cancel culture. This paper investigates how AI cancellation is discussed on X (Twitter) using a recent AI cancellation incident involving Nothing, Forever, an AI-generated parody of Seinfeld. Qualitative content analysis is performed on 734 relevant posts to extract the main categories dominating the discourse, including emotional expression, attitudes toward AI, and discussion of human versus AI qualities. The results provide insights regarding how people perceive the autonomy of AI and who is responsible for AI output.

Autonomy And Agency In Farming: Exploring Human, Machine, And Animal Dynamics, Ricarda Drüeke, Corinna Peil

Human-Machine Communication

Human-Machine Communication is reshaping the agricultural sector as digital technologies and automated systems transform farms into complex communicative environments. Farms, which serve as both workplaces and living spaces, uniquely integrate these technologies, yet their impact on farmers’ daily practices, labor, and decision-making remains underexplored. Through an ethnographic approach involving qualitative interviews and farm visits in Austria and southern Germany, the study investigates the interactions among farmers, automated technologies, smart devices, and animals. Using Actor-Network Theory, the redistribution of labor and agency in smart farming is explored. This analysis examines two forms of human-machine relations: the dynamics of automation and autonomy …

Lindenwood Digest, November 20, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Lindenwood Digest, November 13, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Guiding Students Down That “Old Town Road:” Writing Pedagogy, Relatability And The Sitch, Lynn D. Zimmemran

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This study draws on media literacy to suggest pedagogical techniques that aim to combat boredom and enhance student engagement in freshman writing classes. Students often complain they cannot relate to course work; they maintain that course materials do not connect to their real lives and are therefore uninteresting. Because writing classes can serve as an introduction to academic discourse and skillful writing promotes academic success, negative attitudes about writing matter. Instructors craft courses to achieve learning outcomes but also to foster the habits of mind effective writing demands. I contend that discussing and writing about timely, controversial topics from students’ …

Society Doesn’T Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games As Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, popular and scholarly commentators have been looking for speculative and/or dystopic literary works that might provide analogues for the Trump-era. Perhaps the most famous of these was the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this regard, though, video games remain an underexplored fictional form. With its exaggerated and parodic satire of an America ruled by the corruption and greed of extreme right-wing populism, Grand Theft Auto (GTA): San Andreas (2004) offers a speculative fiction that players can enact as well as imagine, and simulate as well as prepare. …

Pop Culture And Politics: Engaging Students In American Government Through Art, Music, And Film, Laura Merrifield Wilson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Strategically and thoughtfully employing popular culture in teaching political science can enable students to better understand, analyze, and relate to the material. In a discipline that can be viewed by students as too boring, too distant, and too polarizing, the use of relevant music, TV/film clips, toys, memes, and other popular culture artifacts can engage otherwise unengaged students in a meaningful way. This paper argues that using popular culture in teaching political science can demonstrate relevance, serve as a generational translator, expose the bias of experience, and enable an expression of self. In demonstrating relevance, popular culture makes material fresh …

D&D Beyond Bikini-Mail: Having Women At The Table, Daniel Carlson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Dungeons and Dragons represents a space that is often treated as an echo chamber for young (usually white) men to act out fantasies of power and control, which makes up for their inability to perform such actions in the real world. Using the work of Sherry Turkle and Michelle Dickey, I posit that this game is a nuanced location acting as a safe space for people to act out different aspects of their identity or life experiences in a low-risk environment enhanced by the connections made between the players and their characters. In this work, I have utililzed feminist frames …

Hell You Talmbout: Mixtapes As Method For Online Environmental Justice Pedagogy, Elspeth Iralu, Caitlin Grann

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper takes on the mixtape as a pedagogical method for approaching urgent and critical topics within the undergraduate online classroom. Drawing on two case studies from different sections of an introductory course on environmental and social justice taught in an American studies department, we demonstrate how mixtape-inspired assignments offer a method for theorizing and enacting the connections between popular culture and critical scholarship around injustice in the humanities and social sciences while also altering the space of the classroom to promote deeper student engagement, comprehension, and reflection. We argue that introducing popular culture as both content and method within …

Sexual Harassment Effects On Bodies Of Work: Engaging Students Through The Application Of Historical Context And Communication Theory To Pop Culture And Social Media, Bryan Vizzini, Kristina Drumheller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rarely do professors have the opportunity to branch out and create a course that is literally shaped by the day’s news. The mediated unveiling of sexual predators in the summer of 2018 provided an opportunity to teach an honors seminar that wrote itself over the course of five weeks. Professors from the communication and history disciplines drew on theory commonly used in the communication discipline and used historical readings to frame a discussion of popular culture and its relation to current events. Each week, a film was incorporated for discussion and student projects were drawn from examples of popular culture, …

Triple Threat Or Triple Opportunity: When A Pop Culture Course Goes Online At A Community College, Lance Eaton, Alex Rockey

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Teaching popular culture comes with many opportunities and challenges in a traditional classroom, but equally interesting and valuable are the possibilities that teaching such a course online can provide. This article explores how “Popular Culture in the US,” an online course at a community college, embraces some key attributes of the digital world such as multimodal communication and Web 2.0 interactivity. Evolved from a face-to-face community college course, the online version has increasingly developed to move from an instructor-centered to a student-centered approach that relies upon various engagement strategies. By using student choice, OER-enabled pedagogy, and constructivist approaches, the instructor …

Renegade Or Paragon?: Categorizing Narrative Choice In Video Game Storylines, Graham Oliver

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Choices made during video game gameplay set the stories told in that media apart from other media. Narrative-affecting choices have existed since the earliest games, from character creation in role-playing games to performance-based narrative changes in Metroid to morality-based choices in Ogre Battle. In the contemporary gaming landscape, some games derive a significant portion of their gameplay from character decisions: exploration, dialogue options, quick-time event reactions, etc. In this article, I give a history and breakdown of how choices have existed and evolved in gaming narratives since their inception. I then propose three categories for significant narrative choices: aesthetic, …

The “Hate Wall” Project To Eradicate And Dismantle Discrimination In Higher Education: Lessons Learned From The Well-Intended Initiative Gone Awry!, Bahaudin G. Mujtaba

Learning and Educational Center Virtual Teaching and Learning Conference

Deeply rooted prejudices and hatred of others based on people’s ethnic backgrounds, disabilities, or religious affiliations are realities of every society. To allow students, faculty, and staff on campus to de-stress by metaphorically destroying experienced hate, the Diversity Student Council of Nova Southeastern University built a “Hate Wall” so everyone can write negative biases they have heard to then dismantle it physically and symbolically. During the day, people wrote comments on the wall, and some were antisemitic regarding the Jewish community. Within a few hours, it turned into a publicity failure while deeply stressing many.

This case study discusses what …

Echoes Of Exiled Journalists From Africa: Motivation, Resilience, Values And Innovation Of Global Journalism, Gregory Gondwe, Elodie Viale

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This study examines the motivations, resilience and innovative contributions of

exiled journalists from sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on those from the Democratic

Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

It categorises these journalists into voluntary exiles, who leave due to a commitment

to journalistic integrity and dissatisfaction with censorship and corruption,

and involuntary exiles, who flee threats, violence or imprisonment linked to their

investigative work. Through in-depth interviews with 32 exiled journalists, the study

explores their adaptation strategies in host countries, their persistent motivations

despite significant challenges and their use of new communication technologies and

online platforms …

Lindenwood Digest, November 6, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Book Review Of Motorsport And Fascism. Living Dangerously. By Paul Baxa. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 313 Pages., Alessio Giovene

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Lazzaro: A Man And His Machines. By Ron Moshier. Newburyport, Ma: Coastal 101, 2023. 180 Pages., Elton G. Mcgoun

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

A Book Review Of Speed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing And The Making Of Modern America. By Brian M Ingrassia. Urbana, Chicago, And Springfield, Il: University Of Illinois Press, 2024., Paul Baxa

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Euphemism In Ai Discourse As Colonial Harm & Effect: Learnings From Subaltern Puerto Rico, Jacqueline Oquendo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Through three integrated studies, this dissertation explores complex human-AI interactions by comparing the perceptions of two groups of U.S. citizens: subaltern Puerto Ricans and stateside Americans’ interactions with ChatGPT. This corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis or CLCDA, triangulated with 1:1 semi-structured interviews, validates scholars’ concerns about the biases inherent in generative AI. Contributing to those concerns, this dissertation reveals that ChatGPT deploys discourse strategies that, when executed, facilitate digital colonialism. Euphemistic language is prominent among its discourse strategies, replacing controversial words, phrases, and topics with more palatable ones. When prompted on events of historical significance, I find that ChatGPT’s discourse obscures …

Digital India, Rajendra Srivastava, Vijay Shankar S, Aman Rajeev Kulkarni

Asian Management Insights

At the heart of India’s ongoing digital transformation lies a ‘perfect storm’ of pivotal elements: a robust telecom industry, groundbreaking digital technologies, an evolving payments ecosystem, and widespread smartphone adoption. Together, these elements have redefined connectivity, communication, and financial transactions, positioning India as a leader in the digital age.

Lindenwood Digest, October 30, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Biden's Puppet And Mcconnell's Protege: Manipulative Political Communication Design In The 2023 Kentucky Govenors Race, Ryan Cheek, Samuel Allen

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

Building on research identifying manipulative communication design (MCD) tactics, including clickbait and dark patterns, in the 2020 U.S. election, we analyzed the interface of political emails from the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial contest between Andy Beshear (D) and Daniel Cameron (R). This extended abstract reports study results from a critical interface analysis of 291 emails to answer the question: How does political ideology influence the use of MCD tactics? Such tactics exploit cognitive biases to gain political advantage by maximizing the extraction of donations from supporters. Five MCD tactics were prominent in both campaigns (individualization and personalization, inverted authority appeals, political …

"You Want Me To Teach What?!": Emerging Technologies, Required Knowledge, And Pedagogical Practice, Rachel Bryson, Ryan Cheek, Sam Clem, Hannah Stevens

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

Being assigned to teach unfamiliar content is an experience that many technical communication (TC) instructors can relate to. In this experience report, four TC instructors describe their experiences teaching unfamiliar and emerging technology, providing takeaways for readers about how they might approach similar tasks, particularly when constrained by a lack of time and resources when teaching a class for the first time. The instructors had to adapt their pedagogical approaches to teach a range of technology and software. These approaches include building students' visual and rhetorical literacy, diving deep into ethics, explicitly teaching students how to learn, and humbly showing …

Lindenwood Digest, October 23, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Theoretical Logics And National Practices Of Science And Technology Diplomacy—From Perspective Of Two Meta-Terms: “Science And Technology” And “Diplomacy”, Yiyan Zhang, Chunliang Fan

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Science and technology diplomacy is the intersection of two meta-terms: “science and technology” and “diplomacy”. Whether it leans towards the dimension of “science and technology” or “diplomacy”, the basic theoretical logics and national policy practices of science and technology diplomacy will be different. Research has found that the value foundation of science and technology diplomacy includes: sustainable development, national power, and common interests. In the dimension of “technology”, the corresponding theoretical logic of science and technology diplomacy is “science and technology for good”, and the representative conceptual framework is the meta activity framework, which reflects the ideals and cooperation perspectives. …

Lindenwood Digest, October 16, 2024, Lindenwood College

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Hub Brief: Spamouflage Targeting Of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Darren Linvill, Patrick Warren

Media Forensics Hub Reports

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) campaign known as Spamouflage Dragon has targeted sitting U.S. Senator Maroc Rubio with an ongoing disinformation campaign. Attacks on Senator Rubio began in 2022 during his reelection campaign, apparently paused for nearly two years, but began again in September 2024 though at a much lower rate. This report will briefly outline the changing tactics Spamouflage has employed in their work against Senator Rubio.

Introducing The Transcendent Media Experience Model (Tmem), Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Eudaimonic media experiences are vast. A comprehensive theoretical model of inward- and outward-focused eudaimonic media outcomes, that can explain how they come about and how they can be discriminated, is still missing. The current manuscript introduces the Transcendent Media Experiences Model (TMEM) to categorize eudaimonic content and experiences as they pertain to healthy self-focus or outward-focused (transcendent) responses and outcomes using self-construal theory as a backbone. This model allows for a more cohesive understanding of when, how, and for whom inward- or outward focused eudaimonic media experiences develop and the mechanisms for why they do so. As such, the model …

Lindenwood Digest, October 9, 2024, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.