Monica Mitarcă

This report presents the results of a qualitative study made over seventeen countries exploring how children between zero and eight engage with digital technologies, how far parents mediate this engagement and their awareness on the risksopportunities balance. It concludes on recommendations to parents, schools, industries and policymakers. Title Young children (0-8) and digital technology, a qualitative study across Europe How digital technology is used by young children today? • Today, young children between o and 8 acquire their digital skills mainly in the home context. • Young children learn quickly by observing and mirroring the behaviour of the adults and older children close to themparents and older siblings following a trial and error strategy not exempt of risks. • Yet young children lack of agency and of clear representation of the tools they use daily such as the Internet, Wi-Fi or social networks. • Young children diversify their digital skills and are more aware of ris...

Neotelevision, as represented by the new TV shows featuring ‘ordinary’ people living their ordinary or extraordinary lives, is shaping our image of ‘reality’ with different tools than the paleotelevision. In Eco’s terms, the two terms merged two aspects of television: the technological advancements, making possible the current commercial, multi-channel offer on our TV sets and departing from the national, public service stations specific to European nations; and the philosophical view of what television is, the Weltanschauung it creates, with its many shows aimed towards great ratings and, ultimately, profits. Contrasting the Life Below Zero TV show to The Bachelor (Australia), we shall question reality and realism, in an attempt of identifying those aspects that make both shows ‘defining’ for our current culture.

The emergence and the democratization of touch screen-based digital technology represented a landmark in young children’s engagement with digital technology as it enabled more intuitive, sensory and embodied forms of interaction with digital media, engagement which is possible independently from children’s literacy level, as traditionally defined by their reading and writing abilities (Holloway et al., 2013, Chaudron et al., 2015). Although we assist to a steep decrease of the age children and even toddler (Marsh et al., 2015) access digital technology in home, school or community settings, little is known about the development of the digital literacy skills of young children, the general assessment grid proposed at the European level (e.g. DIGCOMP grid, Ferrari, 2013) totally ignoring young children. The MakEY project, in which Romanian is part, sets itself to filling this gap and to investigating young children’s digital skills in the context of their engagement in makerspaces act...

From April, 29 to May the First, 2011, world witnessed, via television (and not only) a string of events with solid symbolic charge. In a world lacking strong ceremonials, where everything is sized down and fragmented, once broadcasted, with the multiplicity of voices broadcasting, recording, writing, the Royal Wedding of Prince William of England, the beatification of former Pope John Paul II and the capturing of Ossama bin Laden were strangely unique events, covered in a rather coherent way. Their rather mainstream broadcast, with few dissonant voices only to be heard/read, but not seen, turned the coherent coverage of three different events into potential media events. We shall discuss various aspects regarding the coverage, the monopoly over the footage and the media event quality of these events

As new forms of online commerce evolve, issues related to online vendors and buyers' credibility are getting scrutinized within various perspectives, some of them, industry related and others, inside the very acts of trading things online. As such, efficient bidding and personal commerce sites have to develop tools in order to build credibility: some, site-related and some, related to vendor and buyer themselves. Our analysis on ebay.com and okazii.ro would compare the discursive and quantitative tools of creating and maintaining users' online reputation and circumscribe those tools to the wider logic of the new online ethics, emerging as a necessity. Our research revealed a tendency towards expressing only the positive trading experiences and privately mediating the less positive ones. Although the form provided by ebay.com, for users to rate each other, is an open form, with no limits, they still tend to imitate each other and express their own personal views in the pre-existing ‚template' other users might have used. The rating system, beyond its quantitative aspect, is a discursive tool of enforcing the positiveness. It also propagates further a certain cheering, non-problematizing discourse, which we might best express through the phrase coined, without a doubt, on ebay.com: " great ebayer! " .

From hero to zero in Web 2.0: online cult heroes. Chuck Norris vs. Fuego As we move forward towards a participatory culture, made possible by the Web2.0, new phenomena arise, stirring researchers' interest. The online cults around showbiz figures are among these phenomena, mobilizing Internet users to put their creativity to work in formulaic ways. Our paper focuses on two such cases: the Chuck Norris cult – enhanced during the January street movements, when it has been taken over and broadcasted by the main TV stations, spreading its awareness to something else than its previous audience – and the Fuego 'anti-cult'. Thus, we shall uncover the mechanism underneath this very productive process of creating online content and meaning. For this, we'll by analyzing the precise, condensed 'facts' attributed to them, and also some of the communication instances where these online cult or anti-cult heroes were circulated, in a secondary, re-signifying process. As such, Chuck Norris has been circulated during the January 2012 street demonstrations, in Romania, as a savior figure – the hero who would save the day – while Fuego was used, recently, in a similar process, to explain and account for, metaphorically, the political crisis of June and July 2012, in some of the online constructions.

Neotelevision, as represented by the new TV shows featuring 'ordinary' people living their ordinary or extraordinary lives, is shaping our image of 'reality' with different tools than the paleotelevision. In Eco's terms, the two terms merged two aspects of television: the technological advancements, making possible the current commercial, multi-channel offer on our TV sets and departing from the national, public service stations specific to European nations; and the philosophical view of what television is, the Weltanschauung it creates, with its many shows aimed towards great ratings and, ultimately, profits. Contrasting the Life Below Zero TV show to The Bachelor (Australia), we shall question reality and realism, in an attempt of identifying those aspects that make both shows 'defining' for our current culture.



If you would like to be able to read the whole article, please write me and I will send it to you!

Despre pornografie se scrie tot mai des; cuvinte precum pornografie
sau porno apar în scrieri de tot felul, articole de presã, lucrãri academice,
discursuri, etc.; unde cel din urmã apare în special în presa tabloidã, ca
adjectiv al unor substantive cu care este aparent incompatibil (eleva por -
no, funcþionara porno, piticul porno). În mass media, tot mai saturate
de conþinuturi sexuale, pornografia se regãseºte atât sub forma discursu -
lui-despre, adicã a articolelor, îngrijorate sau nu, despre pornografie (în
care termenul apare explicit pentru a se referi la aceastã practicã, una
care este mereu „a altora”2), cât ºi sub forma unor imagini sau conþinuturi
aflate la limita pornograficului, articole despre „cum se face” (se -
xul, relaþiile) ºi „la ce foloseºte” (pornografia). Aceste imagini satureazã
produsele ºi fluxurile mass media – fie cã vorbim despre televiziune sau
presã scrisã, sau chiar de „online” – ºi sunt corelate cu sexualizarea cres -
cândã a mass media ºi a societãþii.
Obiect al unor practici de consum considerate tabu, dar despre care
se discutã din ce în ce mai des ºi mai mult în ultimul timp3, ºi al unor pa -
nici morale pe mãsurã, pornografia reprezintã o denumire pentru o gamã
întreagã de producþii textuale, vizuale ºi audiovizuale, care au în centru
sexualitatea umanã, din ce în ce mai întâlnite şi consumate, pe mãsurã
ce tehnologiile moderne permit accesul tot mai multor consu matori la
postura de producãtor-consumator (prosumer), specificã pe rioa dei actuale, începute odatã cu Web 2.0 (Paasonen, 2010; Mowlabocus, 2010).