Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 6
Posts 1 - 6

Popular People Live Longer

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 1.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, research/study, social media
Summary | Resent research has shown that popularity significantly improves one's longevity due to many genetic, psychological, and evolutionary reasons. This may explain why so many people value their popularity on social media, i.e. how many followers, retweets, or likes they get. That is however not the kind of popularity that significantly improves one's chances at a long life. That requires a stable and large social surrounding with nurturing relationships.
Image Description | Illustration of a tombstone saying "not enough likes" with a thumbs down symbol.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook

5 easy and simple ways to protect your privacy online - how to prepare for the next big threat

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 18.8.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | privacy, threat
Summary | Privacy expert Mark Weinstein shares some tips to protect your privacy online: use safe internet browsers, be careful where you search (for instance, Google saves all of your searches), WhatsApp is not as private as what you might think, use a cloud storage that can't see your information, etc. We should be worried about our privacy in the future as governments are trying to get backdoor access to apps and digital devices. Millennials seem to be the ones that are most concerned about their online privacy.
Image Description | Photographs of a woman in front of social media icons, two hands using computer mice and a keyboard, fingers touching a screen displaying the Google search bar, WhatsApp icon, cloud storage icons, hand holding a smartphone in front of the Facebook logo, portrait of Tim Cook, and Facebook "laughing" reaction button
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, female(s), Google, hand(s), keyboard, male(s), smartphone, social media, WhatsApp

China Disrupts WhatsApp Service in Online Clampdown

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, Google, Instagram, privacy, threat, Twitter, WhatsApp
Summary | The Chinese government has partly shut down the use of WhatsApp within their borders. The app is widely used around the globe and was used by some in China do communicate with people outside of Chine with end-to-end encryption. Other popular social media platforms and internet sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are blocked under the "Great Firewall" in China.
Image Description | Woman using a smartphone and women standing in front of Facebook and Instagram logos as well as emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, female(s), Instagram, logo, smartphone

Jetzt kommt die Sticker-Schwemme

(The sticker flood is on its way)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 15.11.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | abbreviations, emojis, Facebook, language threat, marketing, social media
Summary | Emoticons (f.i. ":-D") and abbreviations (f.i. "LOL") have trickled down from "geek speak" and established themselves in the mainstream. Emojis are nowadays ever present in our digital communication as well as in other arenas such as film or advertising. Now various social media platforms, among them Facebook, offer users various palettes of stickers. They are larger versions of emojis and are sent as an image file rather than included on the keyboard as a letter. Because many sticker palettes need to be purchased, a whole economy is beginning to form: The Japanese messaging app Line has sold over $250 mio worth of stickers last year. We do not need to fear that emojis and co. will replace language as we know it.
Image Description | Commodified emojis in various forms (as balls, as tattoos, as bed sheets, as food, on clothing, as masks, etc.) and Facebook messenger chats using/purchasing sticker collections.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, male(s), social media

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

Facebook unterscheidet "Lieben" und "Liken"

(Facebook differentiates between "love" and "like")

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Newspaper | Bayerischer Rundfunk
Date | 28.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook
Summary | Facebook has updated its "like" feature a year ago and now users have the opportunity to choose from a range of emojis to react to a post: love, laugh, suprised, sad, angry. Because this requires more clicks than a simple like, it can be inferred that users care more strongly about a post that they "reacted" to with an emoji. Facebook's algorithm is geared towards showing users much more content similar to the posts they reacted to.
Image Description | Photograph of a dog in a cone with the sad reaction emoji enlarged underneath.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook

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