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The primary aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive review and elaboration of model matching and its theoretical propositions. Model matching explains and predicts individuals' outcomes related to gameplay by focusing on the interrelationships among games' systems of mechanics, relevant situations external to the game, and players' mental models. Formalizing model matching theory in this way provides researchers a unified explanation for game-based learning, game performance, and related gameplay outcomes while also providing a theory-based direction for advancing the study of games more broadly. The propositions explicated in this article are intended to serve as the primary tenets of model matching theory. Considerations for how these propositions may be tested in future games studies research are discussed.

Digital data have become a form of "objectivation", which affect how we construct social knowledge and organize social space (Couldry & Hepp, 2017). The workplace is one sphere that is increasingly datafied. This study explores how Uber drivers, a form of digitally-enabled service workers, contribute to the normalization of the social production of space through their interpretative practices of digital data in an online forum. Drawing on Uber's corporate discourse and an Uber driver online forum, we analyze two facets of the Uber app and drivers' mediated experiences: (1) the quantification and discipline of drivers' performance through Uber's rating system and (2) the coordination of spatial movement through location-related metrics. We argue that the underlying workings of the Uber app premediate expectations of service encounters and spatial movement. Uber drivers meanwhile develop practices which respond to and circumvent their own data contributions to the system. Drivers' practices, we argue, are largely in compliance with the calculative logics set by Uber. The article addresses implications of Uber drivers' practices for the reproduction of social space and power-relations in digitally-enabled service work and the gig economy.

Dieser Betrag untersucht den Begriff der Partizipation im medialen Kontext, indem er ihn mit seinem Schattenbegriff "Propaganda" in Dialog bringt. Propaganda bildet dabei den Gegenpol zu einem demokratiepolitischen Verständnis von Partizipation. Ausgangspunkt ist die scheinbare Abwesenheit von Partizipation im Kontext der klassischen Massenkommunikationstheorie, die jedoch von ihrem ursprünglichen kulturpessimistischen Verständnis der Masse zusehends abrücken musste, um Raum für einen aktiveren und komplexeren Publikumsbegriff zu schaffen. Parallel dazu hat sich ein Theoriestrang gebildet, der Partizipation als Eigenschaft des medialen Apparats sieht, also des technischen Mediums selbst und der sozialen Struktur seiner Produktion. Beide Theoriestränge konvergieren im Kontext der digital vernetzten Medien, wo Propaganda und Partizipation in eine neue Beziehung zueinander und zu den Nutzer_innen eintreten, in der die Trennung der beiden Begriffe ihre Selbstverständlichkeit verliert.

Kaum im Job eingearbeitet, ist er schon wieder beendet… Befristete Verträge von Arbeitnehmern sind geeignet, die Biografie der Betroffenen kräftig durcheinanderzuwirbeln – mit allen Folgen bis hin zu sozialer Desintegration und Prekarisierung. Selbst eine hohe Qualifikation schützt hiervor nicht automatisch. Immer mehr Hochqualifizierte mit akademischem Abschluss sind von Befristungen im Arbeitsleben betroffen, welche zu völlig neuen Herausforderungen führen. In ihrer qualitativen Studie untersucht Nadine Sander, wie sich Arbeitsfrist und Lebensplan vereinbaren lassen und ob ein Zwang zur kreativen Lebensgestaltung ohne Sicherheit und Orientierungshilfen entsteht oder ob sich Normalbiografien nicht vielleicht doch noch mit den Erfahrungen von befristet Erwerbstätigen vereinbaren lassen. In erster Linie analysiert sie dabei die Perzeption und das Management der spezifischen Lebenssituationen befristet beschäftigter Akademiker.

"This work­ing paper traces the changes under­gone by anonymity - and by the dis­courses sur­rounding it - in liberal Western societies. The author asks whether the current politi­cization of the issue is likely to have any impact on the gra­dual dis­appearance of oppor­tunities for anonymity that we are currently witnes­sing and argues that anonymity is an ambi­valent but critical feature of the demo­cratic public sphere. The argu­ment proceeds in three stages. It begins with a number of concep­tual ob­ser­vations on anonymity. From these, a heuristic frame­work emerges with which the changes in anony­mous communi­cation, and in the role this communi­cation plays in society, can be described. The author then analyses the extent to which options for anonymity have been affected by the rev­olution in infor­mation and communi­cation techno­logies and concludes by con­sidering how anonymity is framed in public dis­course and what impacts this has." (author's abstract)

The topic of supranational organizations of East-European émigrés during the Cold War still remains a lesser-known topic. There were a number of anti-Communist organizations between 1948-1989, consisting of former politicians, diplomats, soldiers, lawyers or academics from behind the Iron Curtain. The community of exiled journalists was represented by the International Federation of Free Journalists, officially founded in November 1948 in Paris by delegates from twelve nations. Its membership base soon grew to 1,400 people. The Federation warned the Western public against the injustices, false propaganda and the red terror in Eastern Europe for four decades.

Este artigo procura discutir o conceito de história pública digital e sua importância, por meio da apresentação do portal Memória Massacre Carandiru. Inicialmente, como pesquisadores do filme O Homem da Grade de Ferro (2003), que trata de narrativas orais e imagéticas de presos do complexo Carandiru, entramos em contato com as criadoras e organizadoras do site, cujo objetivo é reunir o maior número de documentos -iconográficos, judiciais, jornalísticos, fílmicos e orais- relativos ao massacre ocorrido no Complexo Penitenciário de São Paulo, no ano de 1992, e disponibilizá-los a uma audiência e debate público. O projeto pretende, ainda, criar um acervo de narrativas orais dos sujeitos envolvidos no evento, valorizando a memória esquecida/impedida sobre o trauma histórico, ainda hoje não devidamente enfrentado.

Im Zentrum von Soziologie im Allgemeinen und interpretativer Sozialforschung im Besonderen stehen in der Regel unhinterfragt Menschen und ihre Weltdeutungen. In aktuellen sozialtheoretischen Debatten und empirischen Forschungen wird die Zentralstellung des Menschen in soziologischen Analysen jedoch zunehmend infrage gestellt. Vor diesem Hintergrund geht der vorliegende Beitrag der Frage nach, wie Sozialität jenseits der Fixierung auf menschliche Akteur/innen konzipiert werden kann und wie sich Grenzziehungen zwischen Sozialem und Nicht-Sozialem in gegenstandsangemessener Perspektive untersuchen lassen. Hierzu werden in Auseinandersetzung mit konkurrierenden Überlegungen (insbesondere der Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie und Ansätzen, die subjektive Sichtweisen von Akteuren und Akteurinnen fokussieren), eine kommunikationstheoretische Perspektive auf die Grenzen des Sozialen und eine darauf aufbauende Methodologie entwickelt, die ergebnisoffene Forschung an und zu den Grenzen des Sozialen anleiten können. Wie sich entsprechende empirische Analysen konkret umsetzen lassen, wird exemplarisch an einem Fall der Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation in einer virtuellen Welt gezeigt. (Autorenreferat)

The dissertation analyses the emergence of UNESCO's policy discourse on the information society between 1990 and 2003. Taking into account the historical, political and institutional background of UNESCO and its history in the field of information and communication, the empirical analysis focuses on three different policy processes that contributed to this policy discourse: the INFOethics conference series; the creation of UNESCO's intergovernmental Information For All Programme (IFAP); and the preparation of the Recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace. The empirical research is based on an analytical framework that combines Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) with selected concepts and tools from Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Building on extensive archive research and interviews, these approaches are combined in such a way as to make possible a detailed account of UNESCO's policy-making and to analyse the emergence of its policy discourse on the information society as the outcome of discursive struggles among networks of actors.

This paper, based on theories of ecological perception, embodied motivated cognition, and evolutionary psychology, proposes that pictures elicit evolved biologically imperative responses more quickly and thoroughly than do words. These biologically imperative responses are directly responsible for evolved automatic reactions away from biological threats (e.g. escaping predators, avoiding disease and noxious stimuli) and towards opportunities (e.g. consuming food, approaching mates, finding shelter) in the environment. When elicited, these responses take time to occur and may delay or interfere with other types of behavior. Thus, when environmental information is presented in pictures (which should elicit larger biological responses than words) biological responses should interfere more with higher order tasks like information processing and cognitive decision-making. To test this proposition we designed an experiment in which participants performed speeded categorizations of 60 pairs of matched pleasant and unpleasant environmental opportunities and threats. They categorized the items based on their form (is this a word or a picture?) or based on how the picture made them feel (is this pleasant or unpleasant to you?). If pictures do elicit greater biologically imperative responses than their word counterparts, participants should be able to make form decisions faster than feeling decisions, especially when presented with words rather than pictures and especially when the words and pictures have less biological relevance. This main proposition was supported. Implications for this proposition in terms of communication theory are discussed.

In Bergsonism, we come to a halt when it comes to communication because it involves static immobile elements such as concepts and words, which, for Bergson, make it impossible to gain an adequate understanding of each other's nature. Peirce offers an epistemological model, where the immobility of a linguistic sign is dissolved in semiosis. Peirce's concept of interpretant, reflecting the dynamic relation of the subject, object and the sign that is being interpreted, offers a model of cognition that is based on the dynamism of meaning making, which provides a foundation for communication as a meaning making process, a case of duration in its own right.

This aim of this study is to examine the relationship between reward administration system and organizational commitment. A survey method was employed to gather self-report questionnaires from employees in Malaysian private institutions of higher learning. The outcomes of SmartPLS path model analysis showed two important findings: first, communication was positively and significantly correlated with organizational commitment. Second, participation was positively and significantly correlated with organizational commitment. This result demonstrates that the reward administration system does act as an important predictor of organizational commitment in the studied organizations. Further, this study provides discussion, implications and conclusion.

Social Media dienen immer häufiger als Disseminationsmechanismen für Medieninhalte. Auf Twitter ermöglicht besonders die Retweet-Funktion den schnellen und weitläufigen Transfer von Nachrichten. In diesem Beitrag etablieren neue methodische Ansätze zur Erfassung, Visualisierung und Analyse von Retweet-Ketten. Insbesondere heben wir hervor, wie bestehende Netzwerkanalysemethoden ergänzt werden können, um den Ablauf der Weiterleitung sowohl temporal als auch spatial zu erfassen. Unsere Fallstudie demonstriert die Verbreitung des Videoclips einer am 9. Oktober 2012 spontan gehaltenen Wutrede der australischen Premierministerin Julia Gillard, in der sie Oppositionsführer Tony Abbott als Frauenhasser brandmarkte. Durch die Erfassung von Hintergrunddaten zu den jeweiligen NutzerInnen, die sich an der Weiterleitung des Videoclips beteiligten, erstellen wir ein detailliertes Bild des Disseminationsablaufs im vorliegenden Fall. So lassen sich die wichtigsten AkteurInnen und der Ablauf der Weiterleitung darstellen und analysieren. Daraus entstehen Einblicke in die allgemeinen Verbreitungsmuster von Nachrichten auf Twitter.

In this comment, the author reflects on surveillance from a critical theory approach, his involvement in surveillance research and projects, and the status of the study of surveillance. The comment ascertains a lack of critical thinking about surveillance, questions the existence of something called "surveillance studies" as opposed to a critical theory of society, and reflects on issues such as Edward Snowden's revelations, and Foucault and Marx in the context of surveillance.

Besides the potential advancement of technology, the global and local communication is framing itself within bigger dimensions. The messages delivered by actual media means and the intensive exchange of experiences and ideas are conceived by the communication specialists as the most effective ways to configure the positions and therefore, are offering new models for solutions to challenges of the life. Under the influence of electronic media, highly urbanized areas like remote provinces and lost, suffer the impact of a communication process only, support on standardization, repeatability and homogeneity. This influence increases much more in terms of a social organization nonsolid and isolation relative to individuals. Also, under the influence of technology, communication transcends, institutional and legal barriers by providing to citizen unlimited messages in time and space. This dimension will be limited to some form of analysis within the Albanian-speaking scope. As we already know, some powerful media companies based in Tirana are dominating the Albanian-speaking trade, deploying a business with clear geo-cultural and geo-linguistic orientation. Precisely, these cultural products are having national nuances and are stimulating homogenous tendencies of the thought, "threatening" the cultural nuances of diverse social groups included in the communication process. The "center" that is producing linguistic and cultural standards is enforcing the "periphery", inflicting the demonstration of nuances, dialects, mentalities and different points of view. This mode, cannot avoid hegemonic reproduction phenomenon due to the effect structuring speech by "mighty" you have the opportunity to deliver the and transmit it. Thereupon, social group, that has access to the media reaches impose cultural patterns off majority of the population.