Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 17
Posts 1 - 10

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

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)

Die Stadt auf dem Handy

(The city on the smartphone)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 12.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, youth
Summary | A new tourist guide is available for St.Gallen. It is online on www.wohin.sg and optimized for mobile use with a smartphone. This decision was made with a young usership in mind. The website offers curated restaurant, club, and shop recommendations to tourists in St.Gallen. It is available in Standard German and English, as well as the local Swiss German variety.
Image Description | N/A

Die Welt mit jungen Augen sehen

(See the world with young eyes)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | smartphone, threat, youth
Summary | More and more fiction is not targeted at one age group in particular. It is debatable whether that means that the youth today is smarter than ever of whether our currents population consists various generations of eternal teenagers. Novels about young people have always embodies the hope for the future as well as anxieties about current developments like the question, what will happen to our society when smartphones replace all social contacts?
Image Description | N/A

Mit SMS zum Suizid gedrängt – Junge Frau muss 15 Monate ins Gefängnis

(Pressured to commit suicide with SMS - young woman get 15 months prison)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 4.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, law, texting, youth
Summary | A young woman has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for pressuring her ex-boyfriend to commit suicide via text messages. Although she was not physically involved in helping with his suicide, the woman is held accountable for encouraging him and not calling the police when she knew he was about to commit suicide.
Image Description | Image of a woman crying.
Image Tags | female(s)

Kopfschuss: Glatte Eins!

(Shot to the head: A+!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | game, gender, school, threat, youth
Summary | A school in Norway is offering a course in E-sport, i.e. playing online team sports in shooter video games like Counter:Strike. The course is very popular among the male students (only one female student has taken the course) and has shown that students at risk of failing the year tend to do better in school overall when they are in a video game class. They get boosts of self-confidence because they can hold presentations about something they are passionate about. The school wants to reflect their students' reality in their curriculum and video games are a passion of many students and a future job for some of them. Shooter games are less stigmatized in Norway than in Germany.
Image Description | Image of male students playing video games.
Image Tags | game, male(s), school

Hinter dem Hashtag #BlauerWal steckt eine verstörende Geschichte

(A disturbing story hides behind the hashtag #BlueWhale)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, hashtags, law, social media, threat, youth
Summary | Currently, a man is on trial in Russian courts for supposedly urging 15 teenagers to commit suicide. The case is connected to the #BlueWhale challenge that is said to circulate online on social media. It is a lethal game where one person gives another increasingly self-destructive tasks. Apparently, psychologically fragile teenagers are targeted online.
Image Description | Getty image of a blue whale and images of a man being arrested and in trial with his face pixellated.
Image Tags | male(s)

Generation Blödphone?

(Generation Dumbphone?)

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Newspaper | Der Bund
Date | 11.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | addiction, research/study, smartphone, threat, youth
Summary | A US study has conducted surveys among teenagers asking them how often they go out without their parents, whether they date or have had sex, how much they sleep , etc. The results show that teenagers go out/date less, sleep less, and have sex later in life since the advent of smartphones. Swiss media psychologist Gregor Waller criticizes the study because it bases its conclusions on mere correlation. It leaves out other important developments in the US since 2007 like the financial crisis. An equivalent Swiss study does not show similar results. Most Swiss teenagers continue to have a rich social life despite smartphones. Only about 10% of Swiss teenagers are at risk of smartphone addiction.
Image Description | Graphs showing results of the US study and a portrait of the interviewee (Swiss psychologist Gregor Waller).
Image Tags | chart, male(s)

Dieser Chatbot reserviert den Tisch fürs Abendessen

(This chatbot makes dinner reservations)

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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

E-Mails für verzweifelte Teenager

(Emails for desperate teenagers)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 13.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, email, Facebook, youth
Summary | The volunteer project U25 provides peer counseling for suicidal teenagers. All volunteers at U25 are between 17 and 25 years old and they get extensive training before they are given up to three cases at a time. They exchange emails with the suicidal peers trying to counsel them into psychological stability. The volunteer counselors are not allowed to give out their cell phone numbers or befriend clients on Facebook for their own protection.
Image Description | Image of one volunteer counselor with a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, male(s), TV

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