Number of Posts: 7
Posts 1 - 7
Es postet, also bin ich
(It posts so I am)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 19.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | brain, emojis, language threat, selfie, social media
Summary | In his new book called "Facebook generation", Roberto Simanowski positions himself between the cultural pessimists and the digital euphorics. He does fear for our language competence and tied to it our memory. We tend to posts selfies and emojis rather than put our feelings into words. We tend to post a link to a song, a video, or an article rather than paraphrase that information make our point in an original sentence. This leads to the degeneration of our language ability and that inability to process information in our own words prevents the creation of memories. Instead we leave a huge digital data trail online.
Image Description | Woman's hands holding a smartphone while using a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), hand(s), smartphone
Dieser Chatbot reserviert den Tisch fürs Abendessen
(This chatbot makes dinner reservations)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, language threat, youth
Summary | Facebook messenger now has the chatbot Botmio on offer which lets users make dinner reservations at restaurants. This is perfect for younger generations who are reluctant to pick up the phone to call a human to make a reservation - digital natives are "language lazy". They would rather just make a reservation online without interacting with another human.
Image Description | A hand holding a smartphone using a Facebook chatbot and a portrait of the Botmio inventer.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), male(s), smartphone
Smartphones können Spracherwerb bei Kindern behindern
(Smartphones can hinder the language learning of children)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 15.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Children learn language by being interacted with and spoken with. Smartphones can get in the way of that, say when a parent waits for the bus with their child. Before smartphones, the parent would comment on the surroundings and interact with the child. Now, the parent might check their messages and pass up a valuable learning opportunity for their child.
Image Description | A hand holding a smartphone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone
Die Frau, die ungewollt mit Emojis ein Haus mietete
(The woman who inadvertently rented a house with emojis)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 24.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, law, misunderstanding
Summary | The debate around whether emojis count as words or seriously meaningful content is very heated - not only in academics but also in law. The Oxford English dictionary only reheated that fire by choosing an emoji as word of the year. Multiple law cases have centered on misunderstandings around emoji use, most recently a case where a woman indicated interest in renting a house with emojis (flamenco dancer, dancer girls, squirrel, comet, a victory sign, and a bottle of Champagne). The house owner sued her for using misleading emojis after she decided not to rent the house after all.
Image Description | An image of a woman's hand holding a smartphone and picking out an emoji and a portrait of the Israely judge who worked on the emoji case.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone
Kommunikation ist alles
(Communication is everything)
Newspaper | Frankfurter Neue Presse
Date | 4.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | abbreviations, childhood, language threat, smartphone
Summary | Many young children already have smartphones. It is problematic if youths spend too much time on new media - they don't learn how to interact face-to-face so that they whip out the phone even if they are hanging out with a friend. They increasingly write in abbreviations which makes them do badly in school. Parents are part of the problem, because they demand that their children be available on the smartphone at all times. It is important to give children positive offline experiences.
Image Description | Image of a man holding a cell phone and holding his thumb up.
Image Tags | cell phone, hand(s), male(s)
Schriftliche Forschheiten: Vom Niedergang der Höflichkeit
(Written briskness: On the demise of politeness)
Newspaper | Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Date | 1.9.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | email, language threat, politeness, school, texting, WhatsApp, word/writing
Summary | Communication researchers agree that politeness in professional writing has decreased with the rise of digital communication. Rules of formal writing are omitted: what was“Honored Professor So-and-so” is now a simple “Hello”. Both students and also professors are reported to have a relaxed level of formality in email exchanges. This is usually seen as an influence of texting, where traditional messages of respect are omitted, but it can also be argued that the new brief communication style is a form of respecting the addressee’s time by writing efficiently.
Image Description | Photograph of a female texting; the shot does not show the person's face but emphasizes the phone.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone, text
Digitale Bilderflut: Raubt uns nicht die Phantasie!
(Digital image flood: Don’t rob us of our imagination!)
Newspaper | Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Date | 9.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | language threat, WhatsApp
Summary | New messaging apps make it really easy to send snapshots and users have increasingly conventionalized the inclusion of image material in their messages. The image material is usually a quick snap of the situation the sender is in (morning coffee, etc.) or of something the sender is messaging about (herb garden, etc.), as if to provide evidence of their actually experiencing/doing something. Some voices now proclaim the replacement of language by images but the same prognosis was made in the mid-19th century when postcards were invented. What might suffer by our inflationary sharing of photographs is our imagination.
Image Description | Photograph of adults taking pictures of the Mona Lisa; the shot mostly shows hands and three smartphones.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone
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