Digital technology permeates the physical world. Social media and virtual reality, accessed via internet capable devices - computers, smartphones, tablets and wearables - affect nearly all aspects of social life. The contributions to this volume apply innovative forms of ethnographic research to the digital realm. They examine the emergence of new forms of digital life, such as political participation through comments on East Greenlandic news blogs, the personal use of video broadcasting applications, the rise of transnational migrant networks facilitated by social media, or the effects of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on global conflicts.

With the title serving as an umbrella term to distinguish simulated places from real places, Digital Environments signifies a shift in how we think about interactions with places and spaces, both real and simulated. The very idea of digital environments, though, complicates such distinctions, asking simultaneously (and perhaps reductively) as to how agents engage networks, and if there can be such distinctions between virtual and real place, between agents and networks. For ecocritics, the term brings together two concepts that are frequently cast as oppositional: digital standing in for technology/technological and environments often used to represent nature/wilderness. Thus, reading digital environments as technological nature asks us to consider not only the relationships between technologies and natures, but the very idea that there can be such distinctions, or that there might be technological natures and natural technologies. In this way, then, the play of digital/environment exposes complexities in how we theorize both technology and nature, complexities that often result in the inevitable exclusivity and polarity between the two ideas. The real and the simulated, the technological and the natural, all unfold in flagrant and complex ways that make evident the need for framing technological theories within the gaze of ecocriticism and the need for framing ecocritical theories within technological gazes. This collection considers the possibilities of bringing ecocritical approaches into conversation with digital environments. The intent is to initiate a dialogue between two areas of research often understood as disparate. This book was originally published as a special issue of Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism.

Digital systems, such as phones, computers and PDAs, place continuous demands on our cognitive and perceptual systems. They offer information and interaction opportunities well above our processing abilities, and often interrupt our activity. Appropriate allocation of attention is one of the key factors determining the success of creative activities, learning, collaboration, and many other human pursuits. This book presents research related to human attention in digital environments. Original contributions by leading researchers cover the conceptual framework of research aimed at modelling and supporting human attentional processes, the theoretical and software tools currently available, and various application areas. The authors explore the idea that attention has a key role to play in the design of future technology and discuss how such technology may continue supporting human activity in environments where multiple devices compete for people's limited cognitive resources.

While self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems have received a great deal of attention in media and research, the general requirements of ethical life in today’s digitalizing reality have not been made sufficiently visible and evaluable. This collection of articles from both distinguished and emerging authors working at the intersections of philosophy, literary theory, media, and technology does not intend to fix new moral rules. Instead, the volume explores the ethos of digital environments, asking how we can orient ourselves in them and inviting us to renewed moral reflection in the face of dilemmas they entail. The authors show how contemporary digital technologies model our perception, narration as well as our conceptions of truth, and investigate the ethical, moral, and juridical consequences of making public and societal infrastructures computational. They argue that we must make the structures of the digital environments visible and learn to care for them.

This book offers a toolkit of methods and technologies to undertake qualitative research on digital spaces. Unlike commonly used traditional methodological strategies, which are ‘retrofitted’ to digital spaces, Qualitative Research in Digital Environments offers researchers a set of ‘digitally native’ tools that are designed for online social environments. Thanks to a broad range of cases including Louis Vuitton, YouTube and the concept of ‘hipsterism’, this text illustrates the practical applications of techniques and tools over the most popular social media environments. This book will be a valuable guide to qualitative research for marketing students, researchers and practitioners, as well as a central reference point for tutors in the growing field of Digital Sociology.

Information retrieval is a central and essential activity. It is indeed difficult to find a human activity that does not need to retrieve information in an environment which is often increasingly digital: moving and navigating, learning, having fun, communicating, informing, making a decision, etc. Most human activities are intimately linked to our ability to search quickly and effectively for relevant information, the stakes are sometimes extremely important: passing an exam, voting, finding a job, remaining autonomous, being socially connected, developing a critical spirit, or simply surviving. The author of this book presents a summary of work undertaken over several years relative to the behaviors and cognitive processes involved in information retrieval in digital environments. He presents several examples of theoretical models and studies to better understand the difficulties, behaviors and strategies of individuals searching for information in digital environments.

This collection explores the mediation of a wide range of processes, texts, and practices in contemporary digital environments through the lens of a multimodal theory of communication. Bringing together contributions from renowned scholars in the field, the book builds on the notion that any form of digital communication inherently presents a rich combination of different semiotic modes and resources as a jumping-off point from which to critically reflect on digital mediation from three different perspectives. The first section looks at social and semiotic practices and the implications of their mediation on artistic production, cultural heritage, and commerce. The second part of the volume focuses on dynamics of awareness, cognition, and identity formation in participants to digitally-mediated communicative processes. The book’s final section considers the impact of mediation on shaping new and different types of textualities and genres in digital spaces. The book will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers and students in multimodality, digital communication, social semiotics, and media studies.

Event marketing is a powerful tool of brand communication and used within many different fields. Florian Neus extends the existing scientific literature to events of higher education institutions and events within digital environments. Different aspects of event marketing efforts within these fields are addressed and evaluated. Based on conducted studies and coherent analysis new insights are derived. Furthermore, valuable implications for research and management are presented. ​About the Author: Florian Neus works as a research assistant at the chair of marketing and retailing at the University of Siegen. His research focusses around higher education marketing and event marketing in digital environments.

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of academic writing and information literacy in a new digital dimension, drawing on recent trends towards project-based writing, digital writing and multimodal writing in Education, and synthesising theory with practice to provide a handy toolkit for teachers and researchers. The author combines a practical orientation to teaching academic writing and information literacy with a grounding in current theories of writing instruction in the digitalized era, and argue that as digital environments become more universal in modern society - particularly in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic - the lines between traditional academic writing and multi-modal digital writing must necessary become blurred. This book will be of use to teachers and instructors of academic writing and information literacy, particularly within the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), as well as students and researchers in Applied Linguistics, Pedagogy and Digital Writing.

This book gathers peer-reviewed papers presented at the 1st International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Digital Environments for Education, Arts and Heritage (EARTH2018), held in Brixen, Italy in July 2018. The papers focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research concerning cutting-edge cultural heritage informatics and engineering; the use of technology for the representation, preservation and communication of cultural heritage knowledge; as well as heritage education in digital environments; innovative experiments in the field of digital representation; and methodological reflections on the use of IT tools in various educational contexts. The scope of the papers ranges from theoretical research to applications, including education, in several fields of science, technology and art. EARTH 2018 addressed a variety of topics and subtopics, including digital representation technologies, virtual museums and virtual exhibitions, virtual and augmented reality, digital heritage and digital arts, art and heritage education, teaching and technologies for museums, VR and AR technologies in schools, education through digital media, psychology of perception and attention, psychology of arts and communication, as well as serious games and gamification. As such the book provides architects, engineers, computer scientists, social scientists and designers interested in computer applications and cultural heritage with an overview of the latest advances in the field, particularly in the context of science, arts and education.