Publications in Communication & Textual Studies by NOMIS researchers

Classifying the Cartozians: rethinking the politics of visibility alongside Ottoman subjecthood and American citizenship

NOMIS Researcher(s)

January 1, 2022

Details

Tatos Cartozian was naturalized in Portland, Oregon in May 1923, a decision that was immediately challenged on racial grounds. This article follows the Cartozian family – from their sitting for an Ottoman expatriation portrait to exit the Ottoman empire in 1906 to their deft use of advertising and portrait photography in the United States in order to rethink the politics of visibility and legal belonging. As several Asian groups were deemed ineligible for citizenship on account of not being ”white,” the very grounds on which ”whiteness” was to be determined – whether scientific expertise or assumed common knowledge – was continually shifting. In order to become US citizens the Cartozians had to exit the category of “Asiatic” and join the ranks of the unmarked citizenry in the United States. Counterintuitively, they managed to do so while advertising their family business frequently and boldly as ”America’s Largest Oriental Rug Organization.”.

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

DOI
10.1080/17540763.2022.2108886

Aesthetic archaeology

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in Critical Inquiry

September 1, 2021

Details

The article’s aim is to clear the ground for the idea of aesthetic archaeology as an aesthetic analysis of remote artifacts divorced from aesthetic criticism. On the example of controversies surrounding the early Cycladic figures, it discusses an anxiety motivating the rejection of aesthetic inquiry in archaeology, namely, the anxiety about the heuristic reliability of one’s aesthetic instincts vis-à-vis remote artifacts. It introduces the claim that establishing an aesthetic mandate of a remote artifact should in the first place be part of a quest after the norms of engagement an artifact’s kind signaled to the intended audience by its appearance. Rather than advocating for a new subdiscipline, the concept of aesthetic archaeology serves to bring into theoretical focus an aesthetic engagement with an artifact’s appearance under circumstances that rule out any acquired competence in distinguishing its aesthetic mandate perceptually—and thus rule out any aesthetic expertise.

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

DOI
10.1086/715981

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

NOMIS Researcher(s)

Published in New Media and Society

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

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

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