Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates Indian popular-cultural media as technology, through the lens of the Tibetan diaspora. It proposes a wider understanding of everyday technologies of Bollywood film that extends into the availability of representations and objects in the marketplace, and social practices of consumption, adornment and creative display.

Paper long abstract:

Tibetans in the diaspora in India construct identities through which Indians appear as radical 'other'. Yet, Bollywood films and other Indian popular-cultural media are immensely popular among Tibetans in India, and Indian television has had a significant impact on the historicity and cultural imagination of Tibetans in India.

In this paper, I will explore how the everyday technologies specific to Bollywood media work to not only influence cultural imaginations of beauty and romance, but ultimately to offer alternative 'technologies of self' to diasporic Tibetans within the field of tension maintained by identity politics in exile. In my analysis, the mundane sense of 'technology', for example as Indian cable television programming and TV sets, is expanded to include wider existing markets, as well as sophisticated practices of consumption, discourse and creative display among Tibetan youths in India. These practices culminate in spectacular "multi-cultural shows" organised by Tibetan youths, in which both Tibetan folklore and Bollywood dance routines are performed and consumed.

The paper demonstrates that the everyday technologies of Bollywood film extend into social practices of consumption, adornment and creative display, and offer a creative imagination of the Indian 'other' through the Tibetan self.

Paper short abstract:

Based on the analysis of its most visible contents present in the internet, this paper aims to discuss and explore the emergence and consolidation of ‘A migrant Portuguese voice’ in Canada through the production of an ‘ethnic minority media’ – The TV show Gente da Nossa.

Paper long abstract:

New networks of communication, are transforming our senses of locality/community and of "belonging" to either, national and transnational communities. Migrants, indigenous populations and other traditionally less "empowered" people, usually subjects of representation and not producers of contents, are using communication technologies in the construction of the idea of "nation" and "nationalism" producing technological mediated "imagined communities".

This paper corresponds to one research line of a broader project focused on the constituency of a 'migrant Portuguese voice' in Canada through the production of an 'ethnic minority media' - the TV show Gente da Nossa. The show is created, produced and presented by a team of Portuguese migrants and is broadcasted to all Canadian territory, Bermuda and also in the internet (www.gentetv.com).

Since internet is becoming a major medium for the "consolidation, strengthening and definition of collective identities" (Eriksen, 2006), and like any other (potential) multisided audience, the projects' first research stage used it as a privileged medium to access the Gente da Nossa contents. The main objectives at this stage are to explore the constituency of an "imagined Portuguese audience community" through the understanding of the processes of establishing a "migrant discursive space" supported by a media production, and scrutinize the most visible representations and discourses about Portugal, the Portuguese culture and the Portuguese-Canadian community. We are particularly interested in the rhetoric's of modernism and tradition, and also in the "sociotechinal frames" (Morely and Silverstone, 1990) involved in this communication process.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to review anthropological literature about indigenous media production and to discuss two case studies of First Nation media technology production in the geographical and cultural contexts of Northern Ontario, Canada. In both cases indigenous organizations have been taking initiative to produce and distribute their own media services.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims on the one hand to review anthropological literature about indigenous media production and on the other to introduce and discuss two case studies of First Nation media technology production in the geographical and cultural contexts of Northern Ontario, Canada. In both cases indigenous organizations have been taking initiative to produce and distribute their own media services.

The Wawatay Native Communication Society, established in the 1970s, provides the First Nation communities of the region, which is called the Nishnawbe Aski by its Ojibwe, Oji-Cree and Cree speaking indigenous inhabitants, with newspapers, radio and TV programs as well as online news.

The Kuhkenah Network (K-Net), which was founded by the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council in the 1990s, is an indigenous broadband internet program offering services, such as telehealth, videoconferencing, online learning, and free personal e-mail and homepages. By concentrating on the actual situations and life worlds of First Nation people in Northern Ontario, both media producers have developed culturally and linguistically appropriate alternatives to mainstream mass media.

Through ethnographic fieldwork in the Nishnawbe Aski, this paper intends to contribute to the understanding of the history, the challenges and the possible future of indigenous media technology production in this part of the world. How are these media producers interconnected? Which similarities and which differences can be identified? What role does local/regional media technology production plays in the transnational media landscape?

Paper short abstract:

By looking at everyday practices of technology in relation to boredom, the paper will ascertain how specific arrangements between “humile” technical objects (to follow Miller 1987) and “works of imagination” (to follow Appadurai 1986) create social meaning.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the last century it has been extensively argued that technology plays a key role in the mediation of the emotional experience of the modern man. In this paper I will depart from this flattened perspective in order to interrogate specific forms of social subjectivities shaped at the confluence between boredom and new technologies.

I will start by showing how, through the use of mobile phones, teenagers practice their newly gained subjectivities inside particular private spaces far from school and parents surveillance. Stressing teenagers' blurred social status, mobile phones constitute themselves into unexpected objects of negotiation between the families' need to expand their authority beyond the domestic space and the teenagers' strong tendency to defend their newly conquered space and avoid such authority. I will also look at how certain techniques of appropriation of mobile phones objectify particular forms of social engagement, throughout teenagers' perpetual swing between monotony and excitement.

Under this perspective, I will consider boredom within its shared intimacy with technology. Beyond the "problem of boredom" that societies are supposed to resolve somehow, as Kopytoff seems to claim (1994), I will look at how individuals experience, internalise and ultimately transform boredom. I will consider boredom not as a sort of suspension of the individual, trapped inside an overwhelmingly congested society, but as an unexpected account for intense creation of subjective meaning. I will look on how mere boredom mediates social practice at the confluence between individual subjectivities and the technology available at their fingertips.

Paper short abstract:

This study is an attempt to understand how and in what ways the urban poor use mass mediation technologies in everyday life. Applying audience ethnography and utilizing a multiperspectival approach, we examine the ways that the poor families, representing different ethnical, dinominational affiliations and political preferences, consume media technologies in their own cultural environment.

Paper long abstract:

This study is an attempt to understand how and in what ways the urban poor conceive and use the mass mediation technologies in their everyday life. Applying audience ethnography and utilizing a multiperspectival approach -long-term participant observations and survey analysis-, we examine the ways that the urban poor families, representing different ethnical, dinominational affiliations and political preferences, consume media technologies in their own cultural environment. The data was collected from two discrete districts, representing the most diverse locations in Eskisehir, the sixth developed city, Turkey.

The rate of poverty in Turkey is incomparably higher than it is in all over EU member and candidate states. However, the poor people, marginalized in the public spheres and suffered by social exclusion, almost always "othered" by the phobic media representations (e.g. crime). Despite the socio-economic commonalities of the poor families, the media, on the other hand, remain as primary source of information and channels of discourse through which the different cultural, national and political identities of the poor are (re)constructed.

This study aims to assess the dominant cultural roles that conventional (e.g. television, newspapers) and new media (e.g. Internet, mobile phones) play in the everyday life of the poor families to show how gender-based, ethnical, political and denominational diversities reflect on the ways in which the families consume the media technologies in their own social network and private domains. Moreover, the ethnografic data enables us to interrogate the ways global images circulated by mass media were perceived in economically and socially isolated localities.

Paper short abstract:

This research observes computer-mediated nonverbal communication as a boundary area between computer-generated and user-generated embodied knowledge, and it indicates that computational models emerge as interpretative models of reality, leading into re-articulation of cultural concepts and categories.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents results of a six-months long ethnographic research of nonverbal communication (NVC) in the "Second Life" (SL) virtual environment. The research was conducted in 108 SL areas selected in a non-structured manner, and it included a microethnographic analysis of naturally-occurring user interaction. A non-structured selection of observational settings yielded a wide range of communicative contexts (e.g., religious sites, bars, art galleries, etc.).

The results pointed to a significant difference between user-generated and computer-generated NVC. User-generated NVC was observed in the use of proxemic cues, and it had an important role in communicating interactional intent, structuring interaction, and communicating relational messages. User-defined NVC was not significantly correlated with users' physical appearance (human or other) and gender, or with the communicative context. Although often consistent with social norms of the physical world, user-defined NVC showed adaptability to the symbolic system of the analyzed virtual setting. Computer-generated NVC was identified in the use of kinesic cues, provided as predefined nonverbal acts. Predefined NVC often represents stereotypical, gender and culture biased nonverbal acts. By striving to mimic social norms of the physical world, predefined cues convey specific cultural assumptions through representation and modeling of users' nonverbal behavior.

This research indicates that a computer-mediated nonverbal act is an epistemic tool juxtaposed with users' agency. This juxtaposition produces a boundary area between computer-generated and user-generated embodied knowledge, in which computational models emerge as interpretative models of reality, leading into re-articulation of cultural concepts and categories.

Paper short abstract:

With the popularisation of digital imaging amateur photography has been structured and val-orised newly. This process has often been described as a development which would necessar-ily lead to perfect photographs and to a democratisation of the means of producing and dis-tributing images. The analysis of the contemporary developments in amateur photography must not concentrate on the description of the mere technological changes, it has to take into account the historical, economic, political and social context and also the practices

Paper long abstract:

"Our tools are mutating quickly, promising ever faster, clearer, brighter and cheaper pictures. Meanwhile telephones become cameras, desktop printers morph into mini-printing labs, and high-definition screens threaten to dislodge the venerable photographic print from gallery walls."

With the popularisation of digital imaging amateur photography has been structured and val-orised newly. This process has often been described as a development which would necessar-ily lead to perfect photographs and to a democratisation of the means of producing and dis-tributing images. The analysis of the contemporary developments in amateur photography must not concentrate on the description of the mere technological changes, it has to take into account the historical, economic, political and social context and also the practices. This al-lows some relevant questions as on new imaging practices, their perception, uses of and per-spectives on technology and subjectivities of the practitioners.

Firstly I would like to define "amateur": In public and scientific discourses, amateur is not de-fined in respect to specific practices but in distinction to the professional. Thus a heterogene-ous spectrum of practices is called amateurish: from eventual family photography to the im-ages of ambitious hobbyists. It is also important to analyse how social class, gender and gen-eration of the photographer influence their practices.

Further I would like to ask:

- How the digitalisation influences the production and distribution of images by amateurs.

- What consequences this change has on the distinction of amateur and professional.

- Whether this means an emancipation of the amateur as consumer or as creative participant.