Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 11
Posts 1 - 10

Auf Facebook und Co. haben die Rassisten Hochkonjunktur

(Racists boom on Facebook and co. )

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 7.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, politeness, politics, threat
Summary | Racists are much more vocal on social media. But social media are no lawless space - actions on Facebook or Twitter can also lead to legal persecution under the Swiss anti-racism law. Ever since the advent of social media, more cases of racism lead to conviction (usually just entailing a fee).
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Die Maschine erziehen und trainieren

(Raising and training the machine)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 20.11.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, computer programming, research/study, threat
Summary | Some researchers say that artificial intelligence may eliminate the need for human programmers. Modern programs are becoming more similar to human brains in that it is no longer just the programmer who creates every step of the program but the program itself is capable of learning from experience (technically: exposure to large amounts of data). Some find this idea that computers will become intellectual equals of humans frightening.
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Verzerrte Fakten

(Distorted data)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 27.11.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | Facebook, fake news, politics, Twitter
Summary | Fake news have been very influential in the American presidential election. Many untrustworthy news sources reach a large readership through Facebook and Twitter. The platforms have first denied responsibility for what is shared by their users but are now beginning to look into ways to stop fake news from spreading on their platforms.
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Grosse Politik in 140 Zeichen

(Politics in 140 characters)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 18.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | politics, Twitter
Summary | Not just Donald Trump utilizes Twitter as a platform to dominate the political discourse: Swiss politicians are on Twitter as well. They do not have nearly as many followers but over 130 parlamentarians are active Twitter-users. Left-wing politicians tend to be more active on Twitter, center (conservative) parties have the least presence on Twitter.
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Leserbriefe

(Letters to the editor)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 18.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, research/study, school, texting, Twitter, word/writing
Summary | The Pisa study results show that the Swiss language education concept has failed. The reading skills of Swiss students are very poor. More time is being dedicated to foreign languages than to the native language - are children now supposed to learn German from Tweets and text messages in Swiss German?
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Die Qual der Wahl

(The agony of choice)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 9.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | A new iOS app called "Emoji" allows users to vote on which new emojis should become available. Front runners right now are the shush emoji where the index finger is held up to the shushing mouth and the fingers crossed emoji (index and middle finger crossed).
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Buch

(Book)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 5.6.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | A new book by Gavin Lucas called “The Story of Emoji” informs readers of how emoticons were invented and gradually developed into the variety of emojis we know today. The sequence of punctuation marks depicting a smiley face “: -)” was first used by a Pittsburgh-based computer scientist in 1982.
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Muttis Welt

(Mommy’s world)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 28.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, social media
Summary | Three women from Boston developed an app with 250 new emojis all depicting various aspects of parenthood and especially motherhood. The emojis address taboo topics of childcare and pregnancy such as being in labor, baby’s spit-up, and milk-pumping. Many parents however overshare these personal experiences on social media; a phenomenon previously named ‘sharenting’.
Image Description | Digital image representing three pregnant women emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

Love Machine

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 27.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, youth
Summary | Chinese chat robot Xiaoice is gaining popularity among teenagers. Many admit their love to the robot despite knowing that they are communicating with a machine. Xiaoice has even done the weather forecast on TV and achieved a score of 4.32 (out of 5) in linguistic naturalism. This example shows how far the development of AI has come. While robots still cannot think or are intelligent in the human sense, they can recognize patterns very quickly and can observe huge amounts of data. The robot thus compares language input to data from online chat forums to construct an appropriate answer.
Image Description | Screenshot of a scene from the movie 'Ex Machina'.

Der Mann zieht seine Nummer ab

(A man takes off his number)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 14.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, research/study, smartphone, technology-free
Summary | A 29-year old man has decided to live without a cell phone because it causes anxiety and is not as necessary as everybody thinks. Recent studies have shown that many smartphone users can effectively be labeled as addicts because they check their phones more than 60 times a day. This obsession, paired with the fact that push notifications effect the release of dopamine, confirm the claim that smartphones increase anxiety.
Image Description | Photograph of the 29-year old man, crouching.
Image Tags | male(s)

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