Publications in Arts & Humanities by NOMIS researchers

Digital contact does not promote wellbeing, but face-to-face contact does: A cross-national survey during the COVID-19 pandemic

NOMIS Researcher(s)

January 1, 2021

Details

With restricted face-to-face interactions, COVID-19 lockdowns and distancing measures tested the capability of computer-mediated communication to foster social contact and wellbeing. In a multinational sample (n = 6436), we investigated how different modes of contact related to wellbeing during the pandemic. Computer-mediated communication was more common than face-to-face, and its use was influenced by COVID-19 death rates, more so than state stringency measures. Despite its legal and health threats, face-to-face contact was still positively associated with wellbeing, and messaging apps had a negative association. Perceived household vulnerability to COVID-19 reduced the positive effect of face-to-face communication on wellbeing, but surprisingly, people’s own vulnerability did not. Computer-mediated communication was particularly negatively associated with the wellbeing of young and empathetic people. Findings show people endeavored to remain socially connected, yet however, maintain a physical distance, despite the tangible costs to their wellbeing.

Research field(s)
Arts & Humanities, Communication & Textual Studies, Communication & Media Studies

DOI
10.1177/14614448211062164

Do Trompe l’oeils Look Right When Viewed from the Wrong Place?

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

June 1, 2020

Details

Picture perception and ordinary perception of real objects differ in several respects. Two of their main differences are: (1) Depicted objects are not perceived as present and (2) We cannot perceive significant spatial shifts as we move with respect to them. Some special illusory pictures escape these visual effects obtained in usual picture perception. First, trompe l’oeil paintings violate (1): the depicted object looks, even momentarily, like a present object. Second, anamorphic paintings violate (2): they lead to appreciate spatial shifts resulting from movement. However, anamorphic paintings do not violate (1): they are still perceived as clearly pictorial, that is, nonpresent. What about the relation between trompe l’oeil paintings and (2)? Do trompe l’oeils allow us to perceive spatial shifts? Nobody has ever focused on this aspect of trompe l’oeil perception. I offer the first speculation about this question. I suggest that, if we follow our most recent theories in philosophy and vision science about the mechanisms of picture perception, then, the only plausible answer, in line with phenomenological intuitions, is that, differently from nonillusory, usual picture perception, and similarly to ordinary perception, trompe l’oeil perception does allow us to perceive spatial shifts resulting from movement. I also discuss the philosophical implications of this claim.

Research field(s)
Arts & Humanities, Visual & Performing Arts, Art Practice, History & Theory

DOI
10.1111/jaac.12750

Depolarization of echo chambers by random dynamical nudge

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Scientific Reports

December 1, 2019

Details

In social networks, users often engage with like-minded peers. This selective exposure to opinions might result in echo chambers, i.e., political fragmentation and social polarization of user interactions. When echo chambers form, opinions have a bimodal distribution with two peaks on opposite sides. In certain issues, where either extreme positions contain a degree of misinformation, neutral consensus is preferable for promoting discourse. In this paper, we use an opinion dynamics model that naturally forms echo chambers in order to find a feedback mechanism that bridges these communities and leads to a neutral consensus. We introduce the random dynamical nudge (RDN), which presents each agent with input from a random selection of other agents’ opinions and does not require surveillance of every person’s opinions. Our computational results in two different models suggest that the RDN leads to a unimodal distribution of opinions centered around the neutral consensus. Furthermore, the RDN is effective both for preventing the formation of echo chambers and also for depolarizing existing echo chambers. Due to the simple and robust nature of the RDN, social media networks might be able to implement a version of this self-feedback mechanism, when appropriate, to prevent the segregation of online communities on complex social issues.

Research field(s)
Arts & Humanities, Communication & Textual Studies, Communication & Media Studies

DOI
10.1038/s41598-022-12494-w

Days of those made like me: Retrospective pleasure, sexual knowledge, and C. P. Cavafy’s homobiographics

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies

August 1, 2013

Details

This article begins with a comparison between the anonymous Roman d’un inverti (1894/5) and Cavafy’s poem ‘?α μεíνει ‘, and then proceeds to read Cavafy’s private notes and key erotic poems in the context of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses about non-normative sexuality. During that period, and in a discursive domain dominated by sexological case studies, the deviant sexual life story was published in order to titillate, check, control and medicalize. In Cavafy’s texts we see, instead, a network of homosexual life stories proposed as a platform for the conceptualization of novel sexual, aesthetic and social technologies, as well as a new ethics of contact. © 2013 Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham.

Research field(s)
Arts & Humanities, Historical Studies, History

DOI
10.1179/0307013113Z.00000000031

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