Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 416
Posts 1 - 10

Weißt du, was diese Emojis wirklich bedeuten?

(Do you know what these emojis really mean?)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 30.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, misunderstanding, punctuation, texting
Summary | We cannot imagine texting nowadays without emojis. They have become as important to us as punctuation. They serve to add a specific tone to our messages or to present them in a specific light. They are however also very easy to misunderstand. Do we really know what the emojis stand for? Here is an emoji quiz to text your emoji literacy!
Image Description | Artsy photograph of women texting and using emojis, a GIF, and emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), gifs, smartphone

Alexa ist jetzt immer und überall

(Alexa is now anywhere, anytime)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 28.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence
Summary | Amazon has presented many devices which operate with Alexa, their artificially intelligent assistant. Actually, all Amazon devices now incorporate Alexa, except Kindle. They aspire that Alexa become a member of the family, present in all parts of your house - including the garage and even the bedroom, as well as your car. Amazon has made a deal with BMW Seattle that their on-board assistant will be Amazon's Alexa. Other tech firms like Google, Apple, and Samsung also offer AI assistants.
Image Description | A series of Amazon's AI devices presented by hands or entire men.
Image Tags | hand(s), male(s)

Sie erklären Rezepte von Foodie zu Foodie

(They explain recipes from foodie to foodie)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 29.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | Facebook, marketing, YouTube
Summary | The Hamburg-based company Foodboom creates high-quality cooking videos and distributes them online on Facebook and YouTube reaching millions of viewers. They try to hit the balance between high-quality content, food-wise as well as visually, and simplicity in the sense of easy to recreate in anyone's home kitchen. They finance themselves with product placement which they always indicate very clearly.
Image Description | A picture of a hamburger, a dinner party, and a portrait of the two owners of Foodboom.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Doppelte Zeichenzahl bei Twitter? Nicht für Donald Trump

(Doubled number of characters for Twitter? Not for Donald Trump)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 28.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | politics, texting, threat, Twitter
Summary | Twitter has announced that they will be testing a doubled 280 characters limit per tweet with a small test group. The 140 character limit is a remnant of Twitter's text-message related past and they have considered expanding it before, now they finally test it. The expansion of the character limit is meant to apply to all languages except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean because these languages already require less characters to express more content. Multiple Twitter users already panicked on Twitter saying that nothing can stop an international conflict if Donald Trump gets twice as much space on Twitter now. Twitter however confirmed that @realDonaldTrump is not included in the small test group.
Image Description | A screenshot of @realDonaldTrump's profile and a tweet about the new 280 character limit.
Image Tags | female(s), hashtag, male(s), Twitter

Wege aus der Peinlichkeit

(Exit ways out of embarrassment)

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Newspaper | die Weltwoche
Date | 28.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, gender, misunderstanding, online dating, politeness, research/study, texting, youth
Summary | Emojis have entered our communication with no turning back but using them is a minefield of misunderstanding. It is especially risky in the initial stages of texting with a love interest: studies show that people tend to imitate the communication patterns of their interlocutor if they are in love with them. Because women are more communicative than men, they tend to be the ones who are imitated in such a scenario. But men, beware! Do not go overboard with your heart emojis, it's too girly. One should however also refrain from making overly abrupt changes to ones emoji habits as it can seem distanced and elitist if one stops to use emojis altogether.
Image Description | N/A

Segen für Schreibfaule

(A blessing for lazy writers)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | smartphone, texting, WhatsApp
Summary | Many people love voice messages because they just quickly want to share something that needs to be told rather than transformed into text. But it is not possible to listen to voice messages in all social situations like in a lecture. Now there are apps to help with that: textify and textr can transform voice messages into text so that one can discretely get the message if one cannot listen to it right then and there. The apps work for WhatsApp and most other similar messaging apps.
Image Description | N/A

Twitter testet doppelt so lange Tweets

(Twitter is testing twice as long tweets)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 27.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | texting, Twitter, word/writing
Summary | Twitter has announced that they will be allowing a test group tweets of up to 280 characters in length instead of just 140 characters. The extreme shortness dictated by Twitter is a remnant of its early beginnings when Twitter was mimicking text messages. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean will not be included in this update because those languages can express far more content in fewer characters already.
Image Description | Twitter logo with colorful hashtags.
Image Tags | hashtag, logo, Twitter

Facebook ließ gezielte Werbung an "Judenhasser" zu

(Facebook allowed targeted advertising for "Jew Haters")

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 15.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, diversity, Facebook, politics, threat
Summary | Facebook is one of the biggest advertising platforms world-wide. It lists target groups for advertisers to choose from. One of those groups used to be "Jew Haters". Facebook removed the target group saying that they will do a better job at curating users into appropriate target groups based on how they position themselves in their profiles.
Image Description | The Facebook logo on a computer screen with a mouse cursor over it.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, Facebook, hand(s), logo

Das Vong zum Sonntag

(The vong for Sunday)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 27.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | anglicisms, language threat, social media, texting
Summary | The German internet and social media have produced a new language in the last two years: the "vong" language, its main feature being an attributive construction of "vong (noun) her" which roughly translates to and the English phrase (noun)-wise with "vong" replacing the "-wise". It is a language between English and German, uses numericals wherever possible as is known from texting language and is highly influenced by hip hop jargon. Now a German artist has translated the Bible into vong-language.
Image Description | N/A

Schamlosigkeit hilft

(Shamelessness helps)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, social media, spelling, threat
Summary | A German TV show host has just responded to a hate comment on social media by mimicking the commenter's faulty spelling and reversing his accusations and insults. The commenter, confronted with an imitation of himself, apologized. A German artist sprayed hateful tweets on the Twitter building to show how much illegal hate speech they have not managed to remove. This strategy of shaming is nothing new in disciplining members of a community but it seems to work.
Image Description | Portrait of the TV show host.
Image Tags | female(s)

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