Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 36
Posts 1 - 10

Ban mobile phones in schools to protect pupils' mental health

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 26.9.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | (mental) health, childhood, school, smartphone, threat
Summary | According to Shannon Turner, schools should ban smartphones to protect their pupils. Screens and social media can have a negative impact on children's health, which is why some schools have already put in place new rules (e.g. give children 6 hours of digital-free time).
Image Description | Photograph of two pupils in a classroom; one of them is showing her friend a smartphone and the other is giggling.
Image Tags | female(s), school, smartphone

Young people don't have tribes any more. We have smartphones instead

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 18.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | addiction, smartphone, threat
Summary | Every generation had its rebellion (e.g. skinheads, punk, new romantics). What about the millennials? How do they deal with boredom? We have smartphones, and we can do anything with them. The difference between us and the older generations is that we are not "tribal" anymore. We are more "individual".
Image Description | Photograph in black and white of one punk and two other people.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

'It was so simple and easy': the nursing home improving care with tech

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 26.7.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone
Summary | A nursing home in London developed an app to faciliate administrative work. Many social organisations still use more traditional ways of recording data; for instance, they take notes by hand about their residents. But this can be time consuming. The London-based nursing home called Nightingale worked with a team to create a smartphone app that would facilitate workers and nurses' work. Thanks to the app, care workers can now enter patient information digitally. The app uses algorithms and language recognition.
Image Description | Photograph of a nurse using a tablet.
Image Tags | female(s), tablet

How a Canadian app is helping refugees find food, clean water and medical care

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 16.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, threat
Summary | A new app called Services Advisor was created by Canadian nonprofit PeaceGeeks. The goal of the app is to give refugees basic information about food, shelter, or medical care. The app is available in English and Arabic. A lot of refugees are tech-saavy people and already owned a smartphone before they had to leave their country.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of refugees, and screenshot of the app displaying different categories
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Tech may rule, but the human backlash is coming

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 24.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, technology-free, threat
Summary | Movies have a special relationship with new media: they hate it. Romcoms prefer showing people who fall in love while meeting face-to-face rather than on dating apps, sci-fi movies show apocalyptic scenes representing the future, and movies such as "Her" or "Ex Machina" show how artificial intelligence can lead to downfall. Why is the movie industry tech-sceptic? Maybe because the internet is ruining the movie business.
Image Description | Screenshot of a movie scene with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Forget India - Lenovo is betting on Africa as next big smartphone market

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 27.2.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone
Summary | Eric Cador, president of Lenovo in Europe, Middle East and Africa, wants to reach Africa. Africa can be the next great market and smartphone superpower. By 2020, around 70 per cent of Africans will be using smartphones. Lenovo is the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
Image Description | Photograph of a woman taking a picture of someone with a smartphone, photograph of Eric Cador, chart representing 2015 smartphone vendor market share, photograph of a laptop
Image Tags | chart, computer/laptop, female(s), male(s), smartphone

Has tech ruined our relationship with time?

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 29.9.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, technology-free
Summary | When the Oxford University Press revealed a list of the most commonly used nouns, number one was "time". Our lives seem to be dominated by (digital) clocks. If you take a look at available smartphone apps, you'll notice that they are designed to save us time. The author of the article wrote a book about people's obssesion with time. It is now almost impossible to experience time independently of technology.
Image Description | Photograph of an arm and a smart watch, and people gathered under the Waterloo station clock
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s)

Rise of the defrienders: Nine in ten young people have been 'ghosted' by their friend or partner

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 6.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone, social media, texting, youth
Summary | “Ghosting” or defriending someone by text or social media is a new phenomenon. It seems that young people prefer using their smartphones and laptops to end relationships instead of doing it face-to-face. The term "ghosting" came from Katy Perry's song "Ghost" where she talks about ex-husband Russell Brand who had not spoken to her after demanding a divorce via text. Thanks to social media and the fact that you can hide behind your phone it is now easier to defriend people by ghosting.
Image Description | Photographs of two hands holding a smartphone, Russell Brand and Katy Perry, a man using his phone and looking at it, a hand holding a smartphone displaying the Facebook icon.
Image Tags | Facebook, female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone

New ideas for treating concussions

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 12.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, smartphone, texting
Summary | Doctors are looking into new ways to treat concussions and one of those ways is to stop texting or using a smartphone. Concussion-related headaches are often visually triggered so staring at a screen for hours like many people routinely do does not help heal from a concussion.
Image Description | Hands of a woman placing a football helmet on a boy's head.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s)

Hey Siri, Can I Rely on You in a Crisis? Not Always, a Study Finds

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | Researchers have tested various artificial intelligence assistants like Siri and Cortana to see how they respond to emergencies. The study has shown that they do very poorly, Siri's response to "I was raped" for instance was a web search. Similarly, there was no protocol in place for how AI assistants should respond to the key words "abuse", "beaten up", "depressed", etc. Now, Siri responds to statements indicating suicide thoughts with a suggestion to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman speaking on the smartphone and screenshots of Siri conversations.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

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