Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 66
Posts 61 - 66

Schriftliche Forschheiten: Vom Niedergang der Höflichkeit

(Written briskness: On the demise of politeness)

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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

Man kann Smartphones mit Drogen vergleichen

(Smartphones are comparable with drugs)

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Newspaper | Der Standard
Date | 30.5.2016
Language | German
Country | Austria
Topic Tags | childhood, school, technology-free, threat, youth
Summary | Media scholar Gerald Lembke pleads for a more careful usage of new technologies. He has banned laptops from his classes and was able to observe an increase in concentration and in grade averages. Further, Lembke urges parents and schools not to let children use computers or tablets until they are ten because they are not able to understand and engage critically with digital media earlier. This apprehensive stance towards new media usage is rooted in the fact that people use their smartphones an average of 3 hours a day (young people use them an average of 7 hours a day).
Image Description | One photograph of children playing on a tablet and one photograph of the author of the article.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), tablet

Multitasking ist ein Mythos

(Multi-tasking is a myth)

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Newspaper | St. Galler Tagblatt
Date | 13.12.2014
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | addiction, school, smartphone, technology-free, threat
Summary | A group of students from the College of Economics in St. Gallen (HSG) have launched a campaign to encourage fellow students to put their smartphones away during lectures. Having a smartphone available all the time significantly distracts students from the task at hand. According to a study, every hour spent studying with a smartphone at hand includes 36 minutes of smartphone activity.
Image Description | Photograph/digital image of two monkeys taking notes in a lecture hall.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, smartphone

Sklaven des Smartphones

(Slaves to smartphones)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.3.2015
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | school, smartphone, threat
Summary | Japan and South Korea – both highly digitized nations – experience the negative effects of omnipresent internet access. The article infers that conversations have become a rarity because smartphones and the need to update social media profiles distract people. A South Korean literature scholar states that students hardly read books anymore; therefore, government incentives for reading have been established. The article even predicts a return to analphebetization in these nations.
Image Description | Photograph of a young man's face half-hidden by his iPhone.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Antiquiert chatten

(An antiquated chat)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 11.11.2015
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, school, WhatsApp, youth
Summary | Two Swiss high school students adapted the antique myth of Aeneas and Dido into a WhatsApp chat. A school assignment for their Latin class asked students to adapt ancient stories into other media. The two students reinterpreted the storyline as a WhatsApp chat between Dido and Aeneas in Latin with a lot of dramatic language (e.g. indicate shouting with all capital letters or word length with letter repetitions, and communicate emotions with emojis).
Image Description | Screenshot of a WhatsApp chat in Latin with words, emojis, and images.
Image Tags | emojis, WhatsApp

Der Punk des neuen Jahrtausends

(The punk of the new millennium)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | addiction, school, smartphone, youth
Summary | In the light of statistics saying that people who look at their smartphones more than 60 times a day are at risk of being addicted, teacher Claudia Senn consciously incorporates smartphone use in her class. She lets students research things on their smartphones in class and lets them listen to music while doing individual exercises in class. While she cannot fully control how students use their devices, she thinks it is important to learn about all the affordances of this new omnipresent technology.
Image Description | Photograph of a teenage girl taking a selfie while doing the hand-horns (rock-on sign).
Image Tags | female(s), selfie, smartphone

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