Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 28
Posts 1 - 10

Caricatures become an obsession

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Newspaper | Los Angeles Times
Date | 14.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | smartphone, virtual reality
Summary | Bitmoji is an app that allows users to create avatars of themselves. Bitmoji images are funny and absurd, which is why the app has become so popular. 3D Bitmoji World Lenses allows users to create 3D Bitmojis in the real world; they can select specific scenes through their smartphone, and it looks like Bitmoji avatars are interacting with their environment. Jacob Blackstock claims that it is important to have a digital extension of oneself. Also, based on a focus group study with teenagers, users want diversity. Moreover, they like the app because it offers a kind of lightheartedness that they can't find elsewhere.
Image Description | Screenshot of Bitmoji World Lenses, and series of different Bitmojis.

What the Kitty Genovese Killing Can Teach Today's Digital Bystanders

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 4.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, smartphone, threat, video communication
Summary | There are a few services now which allow smartphone users to broadcast videos live, for example on Facebook and on the Perscope app. Multiple people have already livestremed crimes like murder or sexual assault with a live audience watching without anyone having called the police. This is not right even though bystanders are no legally obliged to step in if they see a crime happening in most states.
Image Description | N/A

Taking a break from the news

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 13.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | smartphone, technology-free, texting, youth
Summary | The author describes his vacation in Europe and notices a table of four Dutch teenagers in a café just talking to each other face to face like people used to do in the United States. No one was holding a smartphone, checking their messages, texting, posting something on social media or similar.
Image Description | Lake with hourses and boats.

Techie teens help bridge generational digital gap

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 16.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | email, emojis, smartphone, social media, youth
Summary | Teenagers are volunteering to teach elders about technology. They teach them simple things like how to use email, social media, how to connect to wifi, as well as how to use emojis. The elderly taking the courses love it because the kids do not use complicated language to explain the technology because they have learned it all intuitively as digital natives.
Image Description | Teenagers and elderly people using a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

The Smartphone’s Future: It’s All About the Camera

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | privacy, smartphone, translation, virtual reality
Summary | Now that smartphones are as thin and as fast as possible, they need to develop into another realm. The camera will be used in new ways to, for instance, improve privacy by unlocking your phone by showing your face. Another innovation is the possiblity of taking a picture of a restaurant menu and having it instantly translated. Augmented reality also relies on the camera enabling users to, for instance, project a 3D model of a piece of furniture they want into a picture of their living room to see what it would look like.
Image Description | Illustration showing a smartphone scanning a woman's face.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Why Kids Can't Write

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, punctuation, school, smartphone, social media, spelling, texting, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many students struggle with writing despite various pedagogical models that have been implemented in past years to tackle that perpetual issue. This is all the more suprising considering that today's students may do moret voluntary writing than any generation before it. They text and post on social media a lot but the writing register is different there. The format's main principle is shortness so grammar, spelling, and punctuation take a back seat.
Image Description | GIF of a hand writing and a group of teachers in a workshop.
Image Tags | female(s), gifs, text

Practice safe Internet on the road

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 31.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | email, privacy, smartphone, social media, threat
Summary | Traveling can be dangerous, especiallyin the digital age. Many travelers make themselves vulnerable to criminals by sharing their location on social media or by connecting to a password-free wifi which is often provided by scammers to hack into email accounts. In these cases virtual kidnapping becomes possible when travelers spend a few days somewhere off the grid and a local group claims to have kidnapped the traveler and blackmails their family for ransom.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman sitting in a train.
Image Tags | female(s)

Letter of recommendation: Duolingo

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | digitized education, game, smartphone, translation
Summary | Duolingo is a language learning app that is designed like a game and rewards users with points when they finish a lesson. It is similarly limited in its effectiveness, it may familiarize users with a foreign language but it is entirely text-based rather than spoken. It is just a mildly more productive way to waste time on a smartphone.
Image Description | Illustration showing greeting in various languages.
Image Tags | text

New Ways to Help Speed Up Your Travel Planning

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 24.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone
Summary | The travel industry is innovating to accommodate smartphone users. Some hotels have begun making their room locks smartphone-operated, automatic check-in services for your smartphone exist, and Kayak's digital assistant (available through Amazon's artificial intelligence assistant Alexa) lets users book hotel rooms via voice command.
Image Description | Landscape.

How can you protect your right to digital privacy at the border?

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 11.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | American customs now ask some flight passengers to give airport officers access to their digital devices. While it is still a rare case, some passengers are asked to turn on their smartphone/tablet/laptop to demonstrate that it is not hooked up to an explosive. They also check whether illegal data is being transmitted over the border on the hardware storage. Passengers are advised to clean their storage and store all their personal files on a cloud.
Image Description | iStock image of a woman using a smartphone at an airport.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

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