Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 102
Posts 41 - 50

Kopfschuss: Glatte Eins!

(Shot to the head: A+!)

Hyperlink

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)

Hyperlink

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)

Wenn's der Menschheit nutzt

(If it's useful for humanity)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 11.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, brain, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Artificial intelligence is creeping into all aspects of life. The police are already working with big data to predict crimes before even the culprits know they will commit a crime. Medicine is using kinds of artificial intelligence for prosthetics like exoskeletons. Facebook is also looking into ways to read brain activity and translate it into text. All these innovations are very risky and can become very destructive.
Image Description | N/A

Ausbruch aus dem sexuellen Gefängnis der Monogamie

(Break free of the sexual prison of monogamy)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 1.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | online dating, threat
Summary | Polyamory is a new social trend: it entails having multiple sexual/emotional relationships which are not equal like in polygamy. Some see it as a symptom of our over-saturation with choices in all aspects of life. The more choices there are, the more content one becomes with ones choices. This also plays into the fascination with Tinder and other online dating platforms. There are so many options that we are never satisfied.
Image Description | Getty images of multiple arms touching each other, men and women having sex, a black and white picture of a couple (man and woman) with child, and a wedding with two men and a woman.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s)

Generation Blödphone?

(Generation Dumbphone?)

Hyperlink

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)

Erwischt!

(Gotcha!)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 5.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, social media, threat
Summary | A marathon detective has been investigating multiple major marathons to make sure no one cheats. He shockingly realized that very many people take illegal shortcuts. He explains it with the social pressure to post about personal victories on social media. Social media seduces people to show off, even if they have to cheat to be able to show something off.
Image Description | N/A

So fressen Apps ihr Geld auf

(This is how apps eat your money)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 24.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | childhood, game, marketing, smartphone, threat
Summary | Many seemingly free gaming apps off in-app purchases after being downloaded. This is dangerous when unsuperised children use the app - some parents have already received in-app purchase bills of several thousand euros. It is best to either supervise children when playing game apps or to only let them play offline games which do not have pop-up advertising for in-app purchases.
Image Description | A PacMan head.

Wie der Selfie-Wahn unseren Urlaub ruiniert

(How the selfie craze is ruining our vacation)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 28.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | addiction, selfie, smartphone, social media, threat
Summary | It has become more important to post on social media than to experience. We evaluate our life based on social media likes. This is very visible in holiday destinations, for instance in skiing destinations in Austria which have introduced free wifi on all slopes. People care more about their selfies than about the skiing. This fuels the addictive potential of social media and smartphones.
Image Description | N/A

"Wir wollen die Menschen aus ihrem Zombiesein aufwecken"

("We want to wake people up from their zombie existence")

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 3.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | game, smartphone, threat, virtual reality
Summary | Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game. It is different from virtual reality in that it uses the real topography around the player as the site of the game which is virtually enhanced with Pokémon which can be "caught". It was designed to make people engage with the outside world and each other while playing, to lead people into parks they never went to. The most effective way to do that nowadays is to create an incentive with the smartphone.
Image Description | Getty image of Pokémon Go players at night and a portrait of the interviewee.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Die gefährlichen Nebenwirkungen der totalen Vernetzung

(The dangerous side effects of the complete network)

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Welt
Date | 29.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politics, social media, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | In this age of massive amounts of data being generated every day, we face a lot of dangers. We are at greater risk of being ideologically radicalized because the social media only show us content that we like and even so, there is too much information being thrown at us that we can even comprehend. There is no protection against online slander and bullying. People are becoming reluctant to take political offices because of it. We should be mindful of our data use in the same way that we try to minimize our energy use. We waste a lot of our concentration on irrelevant WhatsApp messages.
Image Description | An @-sign made our of a lit bomb fuse and a compilation of Facebook sites.
Image Tags | Facebook

Page 5 of 11
Back | Next