Workshop organisé dans le cadre du séminaire de Marcel Burger "Langages de la communication digitale".
Korina Giaxoglou (The Open University, London)
Sharing stories of life and death online: curating last(ing) moments as small stories
This presentation focuses on the impact of the increased (social) mediatization of everyday life on the way we tell and share stories of life and death in and across online environments. Based on the examination of a select set of cases attesting to this phenomenon, this paper will explore how social media affordances combine with narrative affordances for creating tellable and shareable stories that prompt specific types of positions for (co)tellers and networked audiences. The findings of the analysis suggest that social-mediatized practices of sharing stories of life and death online involve the curation of last(ing) moments; these practices contribute to the emergence and negotiation of participatory spectacles of affect in and through which reactions to death get personalized and upscaled as mourning activities. The presentation provides a small story lens on sharing practices (Androutsopoulos, 2014; Georgakopoulou, 2013; 2015). It aims to shed light on the forms, norms, and implications of emotional communication online in the context of an attested shift to personal experience as sharing (John, 2017).
Piia Varis (Tilburg University)
Digital media as ‘context’: platforms, affordances and media literacies
Digital media, as any other context of human interaction, comes with its own affordances framing and mediating our interactions. However, except for branches of research which specifically study the shape of our media (platform studies; software studies), scholars surprisingly often ignore or give scant attention to the specific affordances of each medium, and the ways in which these shape digital interactions. Consequently, it seems that one ‘context’ of digital communication remains largely unexamined. Using privacy, digital privacy practices and surveillance literacy as an example, my talk focuses on the shape and role of digital affordances, and the ways in which digital ethnographic research can address these aspects of communication.