Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 11
Posts 1 - 10

Liebesgeschichte, Heldenreise, Flachwitze, Kacke

(Love story, a hero's journey, flat jokes, poop)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | childhood, emojis, marketing, smartphone, texting, threat, youth
Summary | The new emoji movie for children is an animated film starring emojis as its main protagonists. Critics find it quite distasteful because it is full of casual advertising for major tech companies and because it does not address the danger of the internet at all. In Textopolis, the world in which emojis live, alphabetic letters are depicted as elderly with walking canes because the youth does not use letters anymore.
Image Description | Screenshots from the Emoji movie.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), male(s)

Review: When the Digital World Is Judging Your Every Thought

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 17.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | marketing, politics, social media, threat
Summary | The new novel "I Hate The Internet" by Jarett Kobek poses a lot of interesting questions about how social media is affecting our society. The main question is: why is everyone willingly giving away their intellectual property on platforms owned by for-profit corporations? How did these capitalist platforms become to be perceived as the most appropriate space to exercise one's freedom of speech? Wannabe social activists think they are helping a cause by posting provocative comments on social media but few people are getting active for real social change.
Image Description | Image of the book and a portrait of the author holding a giant plush emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s)

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

Im Gefühlsextremismus

(In the middle of emotional extremism)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, pornography, privacy, sexting, social media, threat
Summary | Social media have messed with our sense of privacy. Celebrities can now address their fans from a seemingly private realm of self-orchestrated social media presence and regular people can become famous very quickly when they embarrass themselves enough on social media. Additionally, one can be made famous on social media by cyberbullies and previous partners by sharing "revenge porn" (nudes shared during a romantic relationship) after a breakup. The general tenor on all social media sites entails schadenfreude (rejoicing over other people's misfortune) - whether it be directed towards celebrities' faux-pas or normal people.
Image Description | The crying tears from laughter emoji.
Image Tags | emojis

Sag noch einmal Wasserpistole!

(Say water pistol one more time!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 2.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, politics, threat
Summary | Apple will replace the pistol emoji with a water pistol emoji as a political statement. Apple has been known to take political sides but it is questionable whether censoring guns will help any cause, especially because the bomb, sword, and knife emojis are not being removed.
Image Description | A photoshopped scene from Pulp Fiction showing Samuel L. Jackson pointing a water pistol emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s)

Emoji: Rolle vorwärts

(Emoji: rolling forward)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 16.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook, threat
Summary | A bunch of new emojis have been included in the latest Apple update: the taco, a lion, and the eye-roll emoji which is the most popular of them all. In our age where online language is dominated by hyperbole, that is quite calm for a change. Simultaneously, Facebook enhances the like function with six emotions depicted by emojis.
Image Description | A bunch of eye-roll emojis with a few different emojis in between.
Image Tags | emojis

Quand les émotions mènent le bal

(When emotions are leading the way)

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 9.5.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook, privacy, social media, threat
Summary | Nowadays, people don't take the time to "think" and go from one emotion to another very quickly, especially on social media. For instance, Facebook introduced its "reaction" buttons. Today, it seems that a laughing emoji is worth a long speech. Facebook can also gather its users' personal information thanks to the reaction buttons. Our communication is now based on emotions, which can be dangerous.
Image Description | Cartoon representing four people chatting; one of the speech bubbles includes a series of different emojis.
Image Tags | emojis

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

Apple va remplacer l'emoji revolver par un pistolet à eau

(Apple is going to replace the gun emoji with a squirt gun)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 2.8.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, misunderstanding, threat
Summary | Apple decided to get rid of its gun emoji because authorities thought it was difficult to interpret this new form of communication. With this decision, Apple takes a stand in the U.S. gun debate. The expansion of emojis in the world reminds us of the idiom "a picture is worth a thousand words". The emoji trend can also lead to problems; sending a bomb emoji or gun emoji to someone can be perceived as a threat and people can be arrested for that.
Image Description | Series of gun emojis next to squirt emojis.
Image Tags | emojis

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