Suchergebnisse

"This volume critically analyses the multiple lives of the 'gamer' in India. It explores the 'everyday' of the gaming life from the player's perspective, to not just understand how the games are consumed but also analyses how the gamer influences the products' many (virtual) lives. Using an intensive ethnographic approach and in-depth interviews, this volume, Situates the practice of gaming under a broader umbrella of digital leisure activities and foregrounds the proliferation of gaming as a new media form and cultural artifact; Critically questions the term 'gamer', and the many debates surrounding the gamer tag, to expand on how the gaming identity is constructed and expressed; Details participants' gaming habits, practices and contexts from a cultural perspective and analyses the participants' responses to emerging industry trends, reflections on playing practices and their relationships to friends, communities and networks in gaming-spaces; Examines the offline and online spaces of gaming as sites of contestation between developers of games and the players. A holistic study, covering one of the largest video game bases in the world, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, media and communication studies, science and technology studies, as well as be of great appeal to the general reader"--

Abstract
The absence of an entry on digital humanities in the last volume of The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory due to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the exacerbation of academic precarity (that was acknowledged in the editorial preface of the last volume) predicates that this chapter develop a narrative bibliography of notable scholarship in the digital humanities from both 2021 and 2022. Therefore the unprecedented circumstances that have extended the scope of scholarly review for this chapter beyond a single chronological year also provide the unique opportunity to not only 'trace and expand upon currents in critical and cultural theory, and to engage in [the] areas' key debates' (Quinn and Ghosh, 'Preface' to YWCCT 2022) but also (and more importantly, one might argue) understand some of the radical thematic transformations brought about and anticipated by the legacies, presents, and futures of digital humanities within the supposedly 'new normal' of a post-Covid world.
Through consolidating diverse conversations from varied contexts that are shaping contemporary digital humanities and in anticipating the futures of the discipline, this chapter locates scholarship in the digital humanities and related fields from the years 2021 and 2022 within the interconnected themes of resistive ontologies, organizations, and new directions in the digital humanities. While the focus remains on the scholarship produced within the aforesaid chronological period, our methodological attempt in this intervention has been to acknowledge and put into dialogue relevant contributions related to the three primary themes of analysis that may fall beyond the ambit of a specific period.

Set in the context of India's second Covid-19 wave (April–June 2021), this article examines the transformation of a WhatsApp group originally created to study a pool of fantasy sport players into a site of care, concern, and support. By using netnography and in-depth interviews to chart the various challenges faced by the study's participants, the article analyzes how key health information was curated, moderated, and shared by the group's participants during the period. Our findings indicate that during the Covid-19 wave, users of WhatsApp relied on the personal connections it offered as they found ways to make the platform their own. By harnessing WhatsApp's capabilities with regard to accessing and sharing essential information that was both timely and locationally relevant, users of the service found ways to stay informed in moments that were fraught with uncertainty. By analyzing the various ways in which the group's participants shared information with each other and outside of the group, this study argues that the insights obtained can be used to understand broader social realities and the possibilities offered by platforms such as WhatsApp that could help navigate the various challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic in the Global South.