Number of Posts: 21
Posts 11 - 20
Das Monster lebt
(The monster is alive)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone
Kopfschuss: Glatte Eins!
(Shot to the head: A+!)
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
"Wir wollen die Menschen aus ihrem Zombiesein aufwecken"
("We want to wake people up from their zombie existence")
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
Du bist nicht allein
(You are not alone)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 1.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | online dating, smartphone, Snapchat, social media, threat
Summary | Smartphones have revolutionized social life. They promise us that we will never be alone again if we stay online. We are always connected wia social media, we can communicate with select people directly by speaking, texting them, or sending them images and video. While we are all digitally connected, we become more isolated face-to-face. On the street, nobody interacts anymore. Smartphones have also begun to be our matchmakers thanks to Tinder and seemingly intuitive swiping which is rather learned in reality.
Image Description | N/A
Sprich mit dem Bot
(Talk to the bot)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, threat, Twitter
Summary | Most big tech companies seem to agree: chatbots are the future. They mean a move from downloading several apps to using just one app that incorporates services (chatbots) from third parties. These third party services are accessible through a conversational interface: chatting with a bot. Artificial intelligence research is making huge strides but is still faulty as the Tay debacle showed. Microsoft let their AI chatbot Tay loose on Twitter to learn how people actually speak. What Tay learned however was mostly racist and otherwise inappropriate so the experiment was ended prematurely.
Image Description | Reuters image of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Image Tags | male(s)
Da hilft auch das Internet nicht
(The internet won't help with that)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, politics, smartphone, threat
Summary | The access to internet has been declared a basic human right because it was thought that the internet is the only way to access unbiased information that may be censored elsewhere. While it is true that the internet opens up a flood of information unavailable outside of it, it does not guarantee that people become less biased or more tolerant. This is exemplified by the clash of cultures which happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne where foreign refugees sexually harrassed German women publicly despite all having had smartphones and thus access to the internet which could have taught them that this is inappropriate behavior in Germany.
Image Description | Portrait of the author.
Image Tags | male(s)
Im Gefühlsextremismus
(In the middle of emotional extremism)
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!)
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)
Wo geht's hier zur #bikinibridge?
(Which way is the #bikinibridge?)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, gender, hashtags, Instagram, threat
Summary | Instagram is the new place where beauty ideals are reproduced and policed. Such hashtags as the #thighgap and the #bikinibridge let users pull up a sea of skinny women's bodies which can be compared with each other. Although these trends are said to be about fitness and health, but the comments and likes show that the trends are more about a beauty ideal. This is misleading and dangerous.
Image Description | Shutterstock Image of a woman in a gym taking a selfie.
Image Tags | female(s), selfie, smartphone
Emoji: Rolle vorwärts
(Emoji: rolling forward)
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
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