The ninth edition of Media Ethics: Issues and Cases has been updated to reflect the most pressing ethical issues in media. Featuring 25 new cases on hot topic issues from fake news to drones and a new chapter on social justice, this authoritative case book gives students the tools to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment.

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur (...) in the mass media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments. (shrink)

This short piece draws on political philosophy to show how social media interference operations can be used by hostile states to weaken the apparent legitimacy of democratic governments. Democratic societies are particularly vulnerable to this form of attack because democratic governments depend for their legitimacy on citizens' trust in one another. But when citizen see one another as complicit in the distribution of deceptive content, they lose confidence in the epistemic preconditions for democracy. The piece concludes with policy recommendations (...) for how democratic governments should protect themselves. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Deception and Dishonesty A Right to Know? Media Bias Is Neutrality a Virtue?

Uses cinema both to depict a variety of situations in which questions of media ethics arise, and to illustrate classic and contemporary ethical theories.

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur (...) in the mass media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments. He draws upon the most recent developments in artificial intelligence, including dialogical theories of argument, which he developed, as well as speech act theory. Each chapter presents solutions to problems central to understanding, analyzing, and criticizing media argumentation. (shrink)

This study examines the complex dynamics of communication in the changing field of journalism influenced by the use of media. It specifically focuses on how thoughts and perceptions are expressed in this evolving landscape. Information and communication technologies significantly influence journalism by rapidly disseminating news, updates, and societal impacts. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, the study aims to reveal systematic language usages and uncover latent meanings beyond news texts. Focused on the 2023 Turkish Presidential Election, news texts from four prominent (...) international newslets Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and Euronews are analyzed. The comprehensive analysis of international media coverage investigates the interplay of linguistic and thematic choices in shaping narratives. With a dual focus on macro and micro levels of discourse, the study uncovers diverse approaches among foreign media outlets. Each outlet adopts a distinctive thematic approach at the macro level, emphasizing key figures and sociopolitical contexts. Al Jazeera spotlights competition, BBC underscores post-election polarization, CNN focuses on Erdogan's victory, and Euronews provides insights into national challenges. Visual elements, like photographs, contribute significantly to framing events, offering nuanced political messaging. Micro-level analysis explores linguistic choices, syntax, and rhetoric, emphasizing the active voice to underscore leaders' agency. Deliberate use of the passive voice in presenting election results maintains a neutral tone. The way sentences are structured and the cause-and-effect connections help readers understand political developments by providing context. The study underscores the importance of media literacy in decoding political event representations, emphasizing the multifaceted complexities of media discourse. (shrink)

Low levels of media literacy in Bulgaria have provided fertile soil for anti-vaxxers and spawned disinformation campaigns as a major means of influencing the public opinion. Bulgaria has gained a reputation as the poorest and most corrupt country in the European Union (EU) and the fastest-shrinking nation in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated some of the well-known, long-standing problems in the healthcare system in Bulgaria – rising morbidity, an insufficient number of hospital beds, a low rate of COVID-19 (...) vaccination, and, above all, a high mortality rate. (shrink)

This paper investigates Slovak migrants’ use of new media to build social capital. It draws on data from a pilot study with 36 Slovaks living in the UK, and on content analysis of the main Facebook page for Czechs and Slovaks in the UK. The data suggest that Facebook is used for sharing emotions rather than to build a community and share practical information. While Facebook and Skype are used to maintain preexisting strong ties in the country of origin, (...) face-to-face contact and mobile phones are used to maintain ties within the UK. However, social media do not seem to facilitate the formation of weak ties prior to migration, with face-to-face contact being dominant upon arrival. Transnational migration experience forms a separate dimension within the participants’ identity, independent from social capital. The data are discussed in relation to findings from previous studies about Slovak migrants in the Republic of Ireland. (shrink)

This paper analyses the international media coverage of the dispute surrounding the pardons the Polish President granted in 2015 to two politicians, arrested almost a decade later. However political this case has become, it is underlain by a specific interpretive problem concerning the presidential pardon power under the Constitution, particularly whether it can be exercised before a final conviction (the so-called ‘individual abolition’). This question has long been controversial in scholarship and, in recent years, has been addressed by top (...) Polish courts, passing conflicting rulings. Attempting to probe into the intersection of journalism, politics, law and linguistics, this paper evaluates the issue’s portrayal in 37 articles published on major news websites around the time of the arrest. It is argued that when reporting local legal news, international media engage in a dual translation, rendering legal communications in one language into media communications in another. While ‘lossless’ transfer cannot be expected, this research shows that certain limits should not be crossed to maintain journalistic standards. In particular, most articles entirely omit the scholarship and rulings confirming the validity of the pardons. Consequently, readers are not given an opportunity to become aware of all relevant facts and perhaps seek further information. On the positive side, it has been found that simple and accessible language does not necessarily mean material distortions in the coverage of legal issues. The research thus suggests that reporting domestic legal news for international audiences requires understanding the source context, conscious language use and a reliable selection of information. (shrink)

Introduction -- What is the current state of media ethics? -- Should telling the truth take precedence over other ethical concerns? -- Should journalists avoid actions that compromise objectivity? -- How have new technologies affected media ethics?

Global Media Ethics is the first comprehensive cross-cultural exploration of the conceptual and practical issues facing media ethics in a global world. A team of leading journalism experts investigate the impact of major global trends on responsible journalism. The first full-length, truly global textbook on media ethics; Explores how current global changes in media promote and inhibit responsible journalism; Includes relevant and timely ethical discussions based on major trends in journalism and global media; Questions existing (...) frameworks in media ethics in light of the impact of global media; Contributors are leading experts in global journalism and communication. (shrink)

How social media impacts the autonomy of its users is a topic of increasing focus. However, much of the literature that explores these impacts fails to engage in depth with the philosophical literature on autonomy. This has resulted in a failure to consider the full range of impacts that social media might have on autonomy. A deeper consideration of these impacts is thus needed, given the importance of both autonomy as a moral concept and social media as (...) a feature of contemporary life. By drawing on this philosophical literature, we argue that autonomy is broadly a matter of developing autonomy competencies, having authentic ends and control over key aspects of your own life, and not being manipulated, coerced, and controlled by others. We show how the autonomy of users of social media can be disrespected and harmed through the control that social media can have over its users’ data, attention, and behaviour. We conclude by discussing various recommendations to better regulate social media. (shrink)

In light of a history of an unethical news media system used by the state as an instrument of oppression, media ethics in South Africa is intended to uphold the foundational tenets of journalism and play a pivotal role in addressing issues of diversity, equity, and social justice. Most recently, the 2021 Inquiry into Media Ethics and Credibility report instructed media watchdogs, such as the South African Press Council, to track data concerning ethical breaches based on (...) the potential that such data can contribute to transparency and accountability. This study examines the trends in ethical issues raised in rulings by the South African Press Council (PCSA) over the period 2018–2022. Our analysis found that most of the South African news media publications registered with PCSA have a good track record when it comes to upholding ethical standards. However, a few publications have a disproportionate share of the complaints against them. (shrink)

Media and Moral Education demonstrates that the study of philosophy can be used to enhance critical thinking skills, which are sorely needed in today’s technological age. It addresses the current oversight of the educational environment not keeping pace with rapid advances in technology, despite the fact that educating students to engage critically and compassionately with others via online media is of the utmost importance. -/- D’Olimpio claims that philosophical thinking skills support the adoption of an attitude she calls (...) critical perspectivism, which she applies in the book to international multimedia examples. The author also suggests that the Community of Inquiry – a pedagogy practised by advocates of Philosophy for Children – creates a space in which participants can practise being critically perspectival, and can be conducted with all age levels in a classroom or public setting, making it beneficial in shaping democratic and discerning citizens. -/- This book will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy, education, critical theory and communication, film and media studies. (shrink)

This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social (...) class='Hi'>media experiences of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (shrink)

Previous research has established that the success of strikes, and social movements more broadly, depends on their ability to garner support from the public. However, there is scant published research investigating the response of the public to strike action by healthcare workers. In this study, we address this gap through a study of public responses to UK nursing strikes in 2022–2023, using a data set drawn from Twitter of more than 2300 publicly available tweets. We focus on negative tweets, investigating (...) which societal discourses social media users draw on to oppose strike action by nurses. Using a combination of corpus‐based approaches and discourse analysis, we identified five categories of opposition: (i) discourse discrediting nurses; (ii) discourse discrediting strikes by nurses; (iii) discourse on the National Health System; (iv) discourse about the fairness of strikers' demands and (v) discourse about potential harmful impact. Our findings show how social media users operationalise wider societal discourses about the nursing profession (e.g., associations with care, gender, vocation and sacrifice) as well as recent crises such as the Covid‐19 pandemic to justify their opposition. The results also provide valuable insights into misconceptions about nursing, strike action and patient harm, which can inform strategies for public communication. (shrink)

Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon a functioning arena for the formation of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy-making thus requires a reliable connection to processes of ‘public’ will formation. These processes formed the focus for Habermas’s influential study on the public sphere. This contribution presents a look at more recent ‘structural transformation’, the causes of which are by no means limited to social media communication, and examines its consequences. It proceeds in three (...) steps: 1) in some proximity to Habermas, but also by means of the theory of resonance, it seeks to determine the kind of public sphere that a democratic polity requires; 2) an analysis of problems within the contemporary public sphere will feed into 3) a discussion of the conditions for the restoration of a ‘functioning political public sphere’. These include changes in the realms of participation, representation and spaces of encounter. (shrink)

The Netherlands is one of the few countries where euthanasia is legal under strict conditions. This study investigates whether Dutch newspaper articles use the term ‘euthanasia’ according to the legal definition and determines what arguments for and against euthanasia they contain. We did an electronic search of seven Dutch national newspapers between January 2009 and May 2010 and conducted a content analysis. Of the 284 articles containing the term ‘euthanasia’, 24% referred to practices outside the scope of the law, mostly (...) relating to the forgoing of life-prolonging treatments and assistance in suicide by others than physicians. Of the articles with euthanasia as the main topic, 36% described euthanasia in the context of a terminally ill patient, 24% for older persons, 16% for persons with dementia, and 9% for persons with a psychiatric disorder. The most frequent arguments for euthanasia included the importance of self-determination and the fact that euthanasia contributes to a good death. The most frequent arguments opposing euthanasia were that suffering should instead be alleviated by better care, that providing euthanasia can be disturbing, and that society should protect the vulnerable. Of the newspaper articles, 24% uses the term ‘euthanasia’ for practices that are outside the scope of the euthanasia law. Typically, the more unusual cases are discussed. This might lead to misunderstandings between citizens and physicians. Despite the Dutch legalisation of euthanasia, the debate about its acceptability and boundaries is ongoing and both sides of the debate are clearly represented. (shrink)

Art history on the edge : iconology, media, and visual culture -- Four fundamental concepts of image science -- Image science -- Image X text -- Realism and the digital image -- Migrating images : totemism, fetishism, idolatry -- The future of the image : Rancière's road not taken -- World pictures : globalization and visual culture -- Media aesthetics -- There are no visual media -- Back to the drawing board : architecture, sculpture, and the digital (...) image -- Foundational sites and occupied spaces -- Border wars : translation and convergence in politics and media -- Art X environment -- The historical uncanny : phantoms, doubles, and repetition in the war on terror -- The spectacle today : a response to retort -- Coda : for a sweet science of images. (shrink)

_Imagologies: Media Philosophy_ is no ordinary book. Provocative, irritating and stimulating, this is a work to be engaged, questioned and pondered. As the web of telecommunications technology spreads across the globe, the site of economic development, social change, and political struggle shifts to the realm of media and communications. In this remarkable book, Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen challenge readers to rethink politics, economics, education, religion, architecture, and even thinking itself. When the world is wired, nothing remains the (...) same. To explore the new electronic frontier with Taylor and Saarinen is to see the world anew. A revolutionary period needs a revolutionary book. Get a head start of the 21st Century: Read _Imagologies: Media Philosophy_. (shrink)

Psychometrics firms such as Cambridge Analytica (CA) and troll factories such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) have had a significant effect on democratic politics, through narrow targeting of political advertising (CA) and concerted disinformation campaigns on social media (IRA) (U.S. Department of Justice 2019; Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate 2019; DiResta et al. 2019). It is natural to think that such activities manipulate individuals and, hence, are wrong. Yet, as some recent cases illustrate, the moral concerns (...) with these activities cannot be reduced simply to the effects they have on individuals. Rather, we will argue, the wrongness of these activities relates to the threats they present to the legitimacy of political orders. This occurs primarily through a mechanism we call “emergent manipulation,” rather than through the sort of manipulation that involves specific individuals. (shrink)

디지털 매체는 인간의 존재 방식, 사유 방식 그리고 소통방식에 변화를 가져왔다. 그뿐만 아니라, 문화예술에도 큰 변화를 가져왔다. 사실 매체와 예술은 분리 불가능하다. 예술은 무엇인가를 외부로 표현해야만 존재할 수 있고, 표현하기 위해서는 ‘도구’가 필요하기 때문이다. 그러므로 예술은 새로운 기술적 장치를 표현의 도구로 적극 사용했다. 그러나 점차 예술 생산에서 매체의 비중이 커지면서, 매체예술이 등장하게 되었다. 최초의 매체 예술은 사진이다. 사진이 이미지의 기술적 복제와 재생산을 가져왔다면, 디지털 매체는 이미지의 변형을 가져왔다. 디지털 매체 시대에서는 원본성과 무관한 이미지들이 등장하기도 하고, 또 이미지의 변형이 자유롭게 이루어진다. (...) 그뿐만 아니라, 이미지와 다른 장르의 예술이 혼종화 형태로 자유롭게 이루어진다. 이 글에서는 이러한 변화는 중심으로 매체와 이미지의 상관관계를 분석하고, 디지털 매체 시대에서의 이미지를 둘러싼 논쟁의 문제점들에 대해 비판하고자 한다. 그다음 벤야민과 플루서의 이론을 중심으로 디지털 이미지의 기능과 가치에 대해서 전망하려고 한다. (shrink)

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that (...) a higher CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence, a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity, and a stronger virality of the messages. Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation without investing more resources. As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media. (shrink)

This article explores the question of how to understand social media following the Habermasian theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere. We argue for a return to political-economic fundamentals as the basis for analysing the public sphere and seek to establish a characteristic connection between digital-behavioural control and singularised audiences in the context of proprietary markets. In the digital constellation, it is less a matter of immobilising the citizen as a consumer but rather of their political activation (...) – albeit in conditions under which commercial interests have primacy: privatisation without privatism. (shrink)

How we understand, protect, and discharge our rights and responsibilities as citizens in a democratic society committed to the principle of political equality is intimately connected to the standards and behaviour of our media in general, and our news media in particular. However, the media does not just stand between the citizenry and their leaders, or indeed between citizens and each other. The media is often the site where individuals attempt to realise some of the most (...) fundamental democratic liberties, including the right to free speech. -/- Media Ethics, Free Speech, and the Requirements of Democracy explores the conflict between the rights that people exercise in, and through, the modern media and the responsibilities that accrue on account of its awesome and increasing power. The individual chapters—written by leading scholars from the US, UK, and Australia—address several recent events and controversial developments in the media, including Brexit, the rise of Trump, Lynton Crosby, Charlie Hebdo, dog-whistle politics, fake news, and political correctness. This much-needed philosophical treatment is a welcome addition to the recent literature in media ethics. It will be of interest to scholars across political and social philosophy, applied ethics, media and communication studies, and political science who are interested in the important issues surrounding the media and free speech and democracy. (shrink)

Social media sites offer a huge data about our everyday life, thoughts, feelings and reflecting what the users want and like. Since user behavior on OSNS is a mirror image of actions in the real world, scholars have to investigate the use SM to prediction, making forecasts about our daily life. This paper provide an overview of different commonly used social media and application of their data analysis.

In _Media, Modernity and the Dynamic Plant_, Janet Janzen traces the motif of the “dynamic plant” through early 20th century German culture. In examples from film and literature, she demonstrates a shift in the perception of plants to living beings.

발터 벤야민(Walter Benjamin)은 매체와 놀이에 대해 본격적으로 고민한 최초의 철학자이다. 그는 기술복제 매체가 놀이공간(Spiel-Raum)을 확장할 것이라고 주장한다. 그의 이러한 주장은 『기술복제시대의 예술작품』(Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit)의 제2 판에 등장한다. 그곳에서 벤야민은 제1 기술과 제2 기술의 차이를 설명한다. 제1 기술은 인간이 자연조건에 지배받던 시대의 기술로서, 인간이 자신을 자연에 순응하고 일치시키는 방식을 의미한다. 이에 반해 제2 기술은 인간이 자신을 적게 투입하고 기계장치를 통해 자연을 재현하는 기술이다. 사진과 영화는 대표적인 제2 기술이다.BR 제2 기술에서 인간과 자연의 관계는 새롭게 정립된다. 즉 제2 기술에서 (...) 인간은 자연을 공포의 대상이 아니라 놀이의 대상으로 바라본다. 따라서 인간은 제2 기술 단계에서 자연의 공포에서 해방된다고 할 수 있다. 이 논문은 벤야민의 매체와 놀이의 관계를 제2 기술의 대표적 사례인 영화 매체를 중심으로 상론하는 것을 목표로 한다. 우선 제2 기술의 놀이적 특징을 살펴볼 것이다. 둘째, 영화의 촬영과 편집의 과정을 놀이의 관점에서 살펴볼 것이다. 셋째, 감상의 차원에서 영화가 초래한 감각의 재편을 놀이의 관점에서 접근할 것이다. 마지막으로 매체와 놀이에 관한 벤야민 이론의 공과를 검토할 것이다. (shrink)

매체와 놀이에 대한 논의를 촉발시킨 철학자는 발터 벤야민이다. 그는 전통적인 복제기 술을 제1 기술로, 기술적 복제를 제2 기술로 구별한다. 그는 기술에 기반한 복제 매체의 특징을 ‘놀이공간’(Spiel-Raum)의 확장으로 설명한다. 그가 주목한 매체는 영화이다. 매체이론가 마셜 매클루언은 매체를 ‘인간의 확장’으로 설명한다. 그에 따르면 놀이는 매체의 조건을 충족한다. 그는 전기시대 놀이의 중요성을 강조하면서, 실러의 놀이철학을 인용한다. 특히 전기시대의 놀이는 매체들간의 경쟁에서 비롯되는 과열을 식혀주는 냉각 제의 역할을 한다. 인터넷과 스마트폰으로 대변되는 우리 시대 매체와 놀이에 대한 철학적 논의는 다양한 형태로 이루어지고 있다. 디지털 시대 (...) 놀이는 일상 속 깊이 뿌리내리고 있 고, 노동과 놀이는 더 이상 대립관계가 아니다. 노르베르트 볼츠는 21세기를 놀이하는 사 람의 시대로 진단한다. 그에게 놀이는 삶의 즐거움을 가장 순수하게 표현하는 형식이다. 따라서 그에게 놀이는 삶을 위한 위대한 자극제이다. 본 논문은 기술적 복제, 전기 그리고 인터넷 시대를 대표하는 매체 이론가인 벤야민, 매클루언 그리고 볼츠의 매체와 놀이에 대 한 주장을 살펴보고 주장의 한계도 비판적으로 검토할 것이다. (shrink)

매체이론가 매클루언에 따르면 매체는 ‘인간의 확장’이다. 매클루언의 이 주장은 매체 가 가진 힘을 간결하게 표현할 뿐만 아니라 모든 매체 철학의 전제가 된다. 발터 벤야민은 매클루언에 앞서 매체와 감각의 재편에 대해 언급한다. 물론 그의 관심은 매체 자체에 있 기보다는 기술적 복제의 도입으로 예술과 예술작품의 정의와 역할의 변화를 추적하는 것 이다. 본 논문은 기술적 복제시대의 예술작품 (Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit)(1939)을 중심으로 벤야민의 주장을 매체철학의 관점 에서 상론한다. 먼저 우리는 매체와 감각의 재편, 매체와 세계관의 변화를 매클루언의 매체이론을 통해 확인한다. 둘째, (...) 우리는 벤야민의 매체에 대한 사유를, 특히 영화를 중심으로 살펴보되, 영화와 연극의 기술적 차이를 통해 드러낸다. 셋째, 벤야민의 매체와 감각의 재편 그리고 매체와 인식방법의 차이를 그림과 영화의 예시를 통해 살펴본다. 넷째, 벤야민의 매체와 사회변혁의 문제를 영화의 사회적 기능을 통해 고찰할 것이다. 마지막으로 우리는 벤야민 의 매체철학이 가진 한계를 살펴볼 것이다. (shrink)

‘예술의 종말’(the End of Art)과 관련된 논의에서 우리가 빠트려서는 안 되는 또 한 사람의 철학자가 있다. 그가 바로 발터 벤야민(W. Benjamin)이다. 헤겔과 단토와 마찬가지로 벤야민 역시 예술의 역사성에 주목한다. 벤야민에 따르면 예술에 대한 정의와 기능은 역사적 조건에 의존한다. 마르크스주의자로서 벤야민은 예술을 토대, 즉 당대의 기술수준의 반영물로 이해한다. 따라서 농업기반 수공업사회의 예술과 기술집약적 산업사회의 예술에 대한 정의와 역할은 다를 수밖에 없다. 벤야민은 전통적 예술과 기술적 복제시대의 예술을 구분하는 개념으로 ‘아우라’(Aura) 개념을 제시한다.BR 아우라는 전통적 예술작품의 물질적 조건인 진품성, 원본성 그리고 일회성에서 비롯된다. (...) 아우라에 근거한 예술작품은 복제품과 물질적으로 구별된다. 그러므로 예술작품은 고귀한 것이고 숭배되어야 하는 것으로 간주되었다. 그런데 19세기 후반 사진의 등장으로 대상에 대한 기술적 복제가 가능하게 되었고, 복제와 원본의 차이를 묻는 것은 무의한 것이 되었다. 사진과 영화로 대표되는 기술적 복제 예술은 인간의 감각을 재편하여 시간과 공간에 대한 새로운 이해를 가능하게 했을 뿐만 아니라, 예술과 예술작품에 대한 정의와 역할을 급진적으로 재규정한다. 벤야민은 기술적 복제 시대와 더불어 예술작품의 아우라는 종말을 고할 것으로 확신한다. 본 논문은 벤야민의 예술의 종말론을 매체철학의 관점에서 살펴보고 평가할 것이다. (shrink)

Introduction: Social media has become an integrated part of daily life, with an estimated 3 billion social media users worldwide. Adolescents and young adults are the most active users of social media. Research on social media has grown rapidly, with the potential association of social media use and mental health and well-being becoming a polarized and much-studied subject. The current body of knowledge on this theme is complex and difficult-to-follow. The current paper presents a scoping (...) review of the published literature in the research field of social media use and its association with mental health and well-being among adolescents. Methods and analysis: First, relevant databases were searched for eligible studies with a vast range of relevant search terms for social media use and mental health and well-being over the past five years. Identified studies were screened thoroughly and included or excluded based on prior established criteria. Data from the included studies were extracted and summarized according to the previously published study protocol. Results: Among the 79 studies that met our inclusion criteria, the vast majority (94%) were quantitative, with a cross-sectional design (57%) being the most common study design. Several studies focused on different aspects of mental health, with depression (29%) being the most studied aspect. Almost half of the included studies focused on use of non-specified social network sites (43%). Of specified social media, Facebook (39%) was the most studied social network site. The most used approach to measuring social media use was frequency and duration (56%). Participants of both genders were included in most studies (92%) but seldom examined as an explanatory variable. 77% of the included studies had social media use as the independent variable. Conclusion: The findings from the current scoping review revealed that about ¾ of the included studies focused on social media and some aspect of pathology. Focus on the potential association between social media use and positive outcomes seems to be rarer in the current literature. Amongst the included studies, few separated between different forms of (inter)actions on social media, which are likely to be differentially associated with mental health and well-being outcomes. (shrink)

The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet’s et al.’s :623–642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently (...) interpreted as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.’s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.’s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake. (shrink)

Students often multitask with technologies such as computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones during class. Unfortunately, numerous empirical studies firmly establish a significant drop in academic performance caused by this media multitasking. In this paper it is argued that cognitive studies may have clarified the negative consequences of this activity, yet they struggle to address the processes involved in it. A cognitive characterization of attention as a mental phenomenon neglects the interaction between bodies and technologies, and it is suggested that (...) a postphenomenological understanding is necessary to account for the materiality of practice. Notions of embodied habits and technical mediation are introduced, and an example of a postphenomenological account of media multitasking is introduced. It is argued that this approach enables researchers to investigate media multitasking as it occurs in everyday educational practice. (shrink)

This volume explores the construction of an ethics for news media that is global in reach and impact.

This chapter explores media-ontological suspicion as a specific manifestation of philosophical doubt. It begins by discussing how the suspicion that something is hidden behind the visible and experienceable surface of the world that cannot be observed or described by humans and that might be threatening to them has determined the entire history of Western philosophical discourse. At least since Plato, philosophy has tried again and again to recognize and name what is hidden so as to overcome the fear of (...) it. Yet the suspicion is a suspicion precisely because its object cannot be recognized but only presumed—and thus the suspicion can neither be confirmed nor refuted. This chapter examines how the transformation of ontological suspicion into philosophical, epistemological doubt eliminates the observer's anxiety with regard to his own fate. It also considers the degree to which one can administer his/her own doubt—a central question of every epistemological theory and media theory. Finally, it looks at the views of René Descartes, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Sigmund Freud concerning ontological suspicion. (shrink)

Though the rise of social media has provided countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, recent years have also seen some more detrimental aspects of these technologies come to light. In particular, the widespread social media culture surrounding fitness – ‘fitspiration’ – warrants attention for the way it encourages self-sexualization and -objectification, thereby epitomizing a wider issue with photo-based social media in general. Though the negative impact of fitspiration has been well documented, (...) what is less understood are the ways it potentially impacts and molds moral psychology, and how these same aspects may come to influence digital sports subcultures more broadly. In this theoretical paper, I rely on the insights of Friedrich Nietzsche to analyze the moral significance of a culture like fitspiration becoming normalized and influential in structuring and informing self-understanding, notions of value, and how to flourish in life. Using two doctrines central to Nietzsche’s philosophy—The Last Man and his conception of the ’higher self’ – I argue that fitspiration involves a form of hedonism that is potentially harmful to the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing. Through fitspiration, desire is elevated to a central moral principle, underlying the way users both consume and produce its content, catering simultaneously to their desires for external validation and instant gratification. It thereby creates conditions which foster a culture in adherence to the ethos of The Last Man. In doing so, I argue it impedes the cultivation of the virtues and higher values which define the higher individual, regarded by Nietzsche as essential for human flourishing. However, drawing on the ethical framework of the higher individual provides the philosophical and psychological resources with which resisting and overcoming the more harmful temptations of these trends may be possible. (shrink)

Self-control, the capacity to resist temptations and pursue longer-term goals over immediate gratifications, is crucial in determining the overall shape of our lives, and thereby in our ability to shape our identities. As it turns out, this capacity is intimately linked with our ability to control the direction of our attention. This raises the worry that perhaps social media are making us more easily distracted people, and therefore less able to exercise self-control. Is this so? And is it necessarily (...) a bad thing? This paper analyzes the nature of attention, its vices and virtues, and what currently available evidence has to say about the effects of social media on attention and self-control. The pattern that seems to be emerging is that, although there is an association between higher use of social media and lower attentional control, we do not yet know whether it is social media use that makes people more distracted, or whether those who use social media the most do so because they are more easily distracted. Either way, the rise of the ‘Web 2.0’ does raise questions about whether the virtues of attention will change in the future, and whether this will bring with it a transformation in the way we shape our selves. (shrink)

This paper reviews the actual and potential use of social media in emergency, disaster and crisis situations. This is a field that has generated intense interest. It is characterised by a burgeoning but small and very recent literature. In the emergencies field, social media (blogs, messaging, sites such as Facebook, wikis and so on) are used in seven different ways: listening to public debate, monitoring situations, extending emergency response and management, crowd-sourcing and collaborative development, creating social cohesion, furthering (...) causes (including charitable donation) and enhancing research. Appreciation of the positive side of social media is balanced by their potential for negative developments, such as disseminating rumours, undermining authority and promoting terrorist acts. This leads to an examination of the ethics of social media usage in crisis situations. Despite some clearly identifiable risks, for example regarding the violation of privacy, it appears that public consensus on ethics will tend to override unscrupulous attempts to subvert the media. Moreover, social media are a robust means of exposing corruption and malpractice. In synthesis, the widespread adoption and use of social media by members of the public throughout the world heralds a new age in which it is imperative that emergency managers adapt their working practices to the challenge and potential of this development. At the same time, they must heed the ethical warnings and ensure that social media are not abused or misused when crises and emergencies occur. (shrink)

Media archaeological methods for extending the lifetime of new media into ‘old media’ have experienced a revival during the past years. In recent media theory, a new context for a debate surrounding media archaeology is emerging. So far media archaeology has been articulated together with such a heterogeneous bunch of theorists as Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski, Thomas Elsaesser and to a certain extent Friedrich Kittler. However, debates surrounding media archaeology as a method seem (...) to be taking it forward not only as a subdiscipline of (media) history, but increasingly into what will be introduced as materialist media diagrammatics. This article maps some recent media archaeological waves in German media theory. The text addresses Wolfgang Ernst’s mode of media archaeology and his provocative accounts on how to rethink media archaeology as a fresh way of looking into the use and remediation of media history as a material monument instead of a historical narrative and as a recent media theoretical wave from Germany that seems to not only replicate Kittler’s huge impact in the field of materialist media studies but develop that in novel directions. However, as will be argued towards the end, Ernst’s provocative take that hopes to distinguish itself as a Berlin brand of media theory in its hardware materiality and time-critical focus resonates strongly with some of the recent new directions coming from US media studies, namely in software and platform studies. (shrink)

The question of how other consciousnesses appear via media has forced us to re-think the classical phenomenological accounts of sociality. However, as the phenomenological account of empathy is very much centred around the perception of the other’s living body, it has faced challenges in discussing the empathic experience in media-based contexts, where we cannot perceive the other’s body, but something else, such as a screen or a text. In this article, I provide the concept for describing the perceived (...) object in media-based empathy: a living textual body, based on Edith Stein’s concept of Wortleib (a living word body) referring to words as “living,” as bearers of meaning in her early work On the Problem of Empathy [Zum Problem der Einfühlung]. I divide the term Wortleib in two different cases—the empathic and non-empathic object—and thereby argue that, while the object of media-based empathic experience cannot be the other’s body, it is an empathic Wortleib, a communicative empathic object. While Stein herself discussed media-based empathy merely in paper media, I demonstrate the unique usefulness of these concepts in analysing any media-based communication and thus the timeliness of her work in this respect. (shrink)

How do social media affect interpersonal relationships? Adopting a Strawsonian framework, I argue that social media make us more likely to adopt the objective attitude towards persons. Technologically mediated communication tends to inhibit interpersonal emotions and other reactive attitudes. This is due to a relative lack of the social cues that typically enable us to read minds and react to them. Adopting the objective attitude can be harmful for two reasons. First, it tends to undermine the basis of (...) interpersonal relationships. In particular, I argue that friendship is a relationship between persons that requires the participant stance. Second, it is a morally risky attitude that makes us more likely to treat persons in problematic, thing-like ways. Some philosophers have rightly urged that social media are compatible with virtuous, Aristotelian friendship. Notwithstanding, I argue that the harms associated with the objective attitude are more pressing than they might appear if we restrict our focus to relatively virtuous people with the social competence to flourish in morally risky online environments. (shrink)

Digital Media: Human–Technology Connection examines the technologically textured world through case studies that illustrate the way humans and technology connect with each other and the world. An interdisciplinary array of sources from philosophy, postphenomenology, philosophy of technology, media studies, media ecology, and film studies shows that digital media and its content are not neutral. This technology textures the world in multiple and varied ways that transform human abilities, augment experience, and pattern the world.