Despite research establishing emojis as sites of critical racial discourse, there is a paucity of literature examining their importance in the increasingly popular context of mobile payments. This is particularly important as new forms of social payment platforms such as Venmo bridge the seamlessness of mobile payments with the vibrant communicative practices of social networks. As such, they provide a unique medium to examine how emojis are used within the context of digital consumption, and by extension, self-representation. This study analyzes (...) approximately 325 million public transactions on the U.S. payment platform Venmo to understand whether emoji usage in mobile payments is more hedonic or utilitarian. We then explore how race is represented across emoji usage on Venmo via tone-modified emojis, a subset of emojis whereby users can choose a skin tone. We found that while emojis in general are used for more hedonic purposes than utilitarian ones, darker tone-modified emojis indicate a proportionately higher use in hedonic consumption as compared to lighter tone-modified emojis, and also show a higher representation of utilitarian categories in transactions. Thematic analysis revealed that subsets with darker tone-modified emojis have a greater lexical variety and engage in more playful uses of emoji in mobile payments. (shrink)

Student support services are the cardinal features of the Open and Distance Learning System. In India, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, 13 state open universities and over 200 Distance Education Institutes attached to conventional universities and private/autonomous institutes offering programmes through the distance mode have all created adequate provisions for learner support services and the systems, rules, regulations and norms have been put in place. However, it is significant that a learner in the ODL system remains away from the (...) teacher and the peer group. Thus, the learner feels isolated and needs the empathy of all the functionaries concerned. It has been our experience at IGNOU that more often than not the functionaries fail to realize the value of a learner and the learner fails to understand the value attributed to him by the ODL system. Without such realization the rules and regulations lose their significance. Hence, inculcation of values is of paramount importance in the functioning of the ODL system. In this article we have discussed about ‘inculcation of values’ among the ‘learners’ as well as the ‘functionaries’ for developing ‘best practices’ in learner support services in the ODL system. The inputs are based primarily on direct experiences of the authors. (shrink)

In this overview, I begin by situating De-Moralizing Gay Rights within the field of queer studies/queer theory. I then delineate the book’s principal arguments. The book critically interrogates three sets of distortions in 21st century public discourse on LGBT+ rights in the United States. The first relates to the critique of pinkwashing, often advanced by scholars who claim to be proponents of a radical politics. I suggest that this critique sometimes suffers from analytical overreach. The second concerns a recent US (...) Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), a judgment that established marriage equality across the 50 states. I argue that this judgment mobilizes the Court’s endorsement of two elements of homonormativity: amatonormativity and repronormativity. Instead of endorsing homonormativity, the Court should have employed an approach based on decisional minimalism. The third distortion occurs in Kenji Yoshino’s theorization of the concept of gay covering. Yoshino’s calls to dismantle cultural demands for gay covering turn out, I argue, to constitute an oppressive command to ‘gay-flaunt.’. (shrink)

In this overview, I begin by situating De-Moralizing Gay Rights within the field of queer studies/queer theory. I then delineate the book’s principal arguments. The book critically interrogates three sets of distortions in 21st century public discourse on LGBT+ rights in the United States. The first relates to the critique of pinkwashing, often advanced by scholars who claim to be proponents of a radical politics. I suggest that this critique sometimes suffers from analytical overreach. The second concerns a recent US (...) Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), a judgment that established marriage equality across the 50 states. I argue that this judgment mobilizes the Court’s endorsement of two elements of homonormativity: amatonormativity and repronormativity. Instead of endorsing homonormativity, the Court should have employed an approach based on decisional minimalism. The third distortion occurs in Kenji Yoshino’s theorization of the concept of gay covering. Yoshino’s calls to dismantle cultural demands for gay covering turn out, I argue, to constitute an oppressive command to ‘gay-flaunt.’. (shrink)