Journal articles on the topic 'Wei hai tie gong chang'

BackgroundClimate change is one of the most significant threats to public health we currently face. While the link between climate change and health is clear, many nurses have not received education on climate change, as it may not routinely be included in nursing curricula. This lack of knowledge can prevent nurses from engaging in climate solutions, incorporating climate change into their practice or research, or participating in climate advocacy within their institutions or with policymakers.MethodsNurses Drawdown is a web-based platform that builds on the work of Project Drawdown, which identifies and quantifies effective, evidence-based climate solutions. Nurses Drawdown utilizes evidence-based techniques for web design and movement building to engage a global nursing audience on five areas of action that have clear links to health: Energy, Food, Gender Equity, Mobility, and Nature-Based Solutions.ResultsSixteen nursing organizations signed on with Nurses Drawdown as official partners; within 1 month of going live, nurses from 16 countries had committed to take action. Web-based movement building can effectively engage a global nursing audience. However, new partnerships with nursing organizations may not form until there is proof of nursing engagement.

Political thrillers often encourage the feeling that a mere individual has the power to make a difference on a large scale. Caught up in a chain of events they wished they had never uncovered, a protagonist can occupy a position in which their actions have far-reaching consequences, with the rookie CIA analyst accidentally bringing down a whole corrupt political system being only one example. Much of the critical attention these films have garnered falls under the rubric of detective work in that the protagonist is seen as exposing a web of corruption which would otherwise have gone on unnoticed. However, this paper is focused on how the scale of the individual comes into contact with other, larger scales of events. Points of contact between scales are important because they are where change can take place, thus allowing an individual to influence the supra-individual.

No other infectious disease that has had a long-lasting impact on humanity in recent times has caused as much hardship as the coronavirus disease, COVID-19. While several cross-sectional surveys have reported the effects of the pandemic on daily life, there have been very few longitudinal reports from Japan. Therefore, we conducted web-based questionnaire surveys 131 and 610 days after the first case of COVID-19 infection was reported in Japan. There were 244 and 220 participants in the first and second surveys, respectively. The percentage of participants who felt stressed increased from 76 to 97% from the first to the second survey, while the frequency of going out and playing sports/exercising did not change. Regarding the problems faced due to COVID-19, the number of people who mentioned the word “stress” increased significantly in the second survey. The changes in perceived stress under difficult circumstances over a period of time can aid prediction and support during the COVID-19 pandemic in the future.

ObjectiveTo review the experiences of patients attending NHS Health Checks in England.DesignA systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies with a thematic synthesis of qualitative studies.Data sourcesAn electronic literature search of Medline, Embase, Health Management Information Consortium, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Global Health, PsycInfo, Web of Science, OpenGrey, the Cochrane Library, National Health Service (NHS) Evidence, Google Scholar, Google, Clinical Trials.gov and the ISRCTN registry to 09/11/16 with no language restriction and manual screening of reference lists of all included papers.Inclusion criteriaPrimary research reporting experiences of patients who have attended NHS Health Checks.Results20 studies met the inclusion criteria, 9 reporting quantitative data and 15 qualitative data. There were consistently high levels of reported satisfaction in surveys, with over 80% feeling that they had benefited from an NHS Health Check. Data from qualitative studies showed that the NHS Health Check had been perceived to act as a wake-up call for many who reported having gone on to make substantial lifestyle changes which they attributed to the NHS Health Check. However, some had been left with a feeling of unmet expectations, were confused about or unable to remember their risk scores, found the lifestyle advice too simplistic and non-personalised or were confused about follow-up.ConclusionsWhile participants were generally very supportive of the NHS Health Check programme and examples of behaviour change were reported, there are a number of areas where improvements could be made. These include greater clarity around the aims of the programme within the promotional material, more proactive support for lifestyle change and greater appreciation of the challenges of communicating risk and the limitations of relying on the risk score alone as a trigger for facilitating behaviour change.

When the COVID-19 emergency raised, the entire world -and small communities with it- had to stop, adapt, find ways to face the big ongoing challenge. The article reports the reaction and the changes undertaken with an ongoing project that was, in February 2020, experimenting, inside the hospital environment, the therapeutic effects of knitting on people with physical and psychological pathologies. The project, driven by scientific studies made in universities, hospitals and research centers worldwide, had the aim to bring the intervention of designers on the topic, to answer the emerged need to promote research in what is considered a low-investigated and high-promising field. Experimental pilot actions, designed and led by designers on-field, were going on when the emergency changed the scenario, limited the environment, shifted the eye on a new, wider target of healthy people, made knitting a tool to face new circumstances and improve everyday-life quality.Observing the newly emerged scenario and the spontaneous initiatives risen on the web (and on social media in particular) to help individuals in spending the forced time at home in meaningful ways, designers involved in the ongoing project identified in knitting an activity that could be beneficial on a psychological and physical level also for quarantined individuals. The project took a new perspective and evolved in the #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA (#IKNIT) social media campaign, linked to the globally spread #STAYHOME campaign, aimed at inviting people to remain home for preventing the diffusion of the infection, while proposing at the same time new solutions for positively living the emergency times. #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA was embraced by many users and it also became a weekly scheduled live virtual workshop, with a direct reference to the workshops in the hospital of XXXX, temporarily stopped during lockdown.The two projects, on-field and online, proved how knitting can be a meaningful solution not only for healthcare, but also for the daily life of people, both in normal times and in emergency situations.Moreover, the role of the designer and of a design driven approach proved to be fundamental, for the product and service creation, improvement and consolidation and for its communication for valorization and promotion.

Customers are no longer at the receiving end in the new digital economies. They have a say in everything and are co-creating products and services. Their connection with other customers is stronger and the influence they exert collectively on businesses is phenomenal. All this has been made possible by the technologies that the collaborative internet has made possible. Businesses have discarded hierarchies and functional pyramid structures in favor of flat empowered structures to improve decision responsiveness in the new age. Competency is fast replacing compatibility amongst successful employees. Geography is dead and interactions take place across boundaries of distance, time, language and culture. This transformation of the business enterprise to Enterprise 2.0 has become possible due to the use of Web 2.0 tools becoming common place and has had far reaching implications. The question that it raises is that are all organizations equally well equipped to take advantage of these changes or is it going to change the relative power equation amongst them to make some small forward looking technology savvy organizations suddenly more powerful than the erstwhile successful large giants who had built themselves on the strength of their products and markets over time. This paper aims at creating a framework that can help evaluate this emerging equation and assess the state of readiness of all organizations to meet this onslaught of business change. The framework addresses these technologies, the way they are impacting business strategy and spells out all that organizations need to do to be able to gear up to face the changing fabric of the new age enterprise.

Abstract. The idea that human health is tied to the soil is not a new one. As far back as circa 1400 BC the Bible depicts Moses as understanding that fertile soil was essential to the well-being of his people. In 400 BC the Greek philosopher Hippocrates provided a list of things that should be considered in a proper medical evaluation, including the properties of the local ground. By the late 1700 and early 1800s, American farmers had recognized that soil properties had some connection to human health. In the modern world, we recognize that soils have a distinct influence on human health. We recognize that soils influence (1) food availability and quality (food security), (2) human contact with various chemicals, and (3) human contact with various pathogens. Soils and human health studies include investigations into nutrient supply through the food web and routes of exposure to chemicals and pathogens. However, making strong, scientific connections between soils and human health can be difficult. There are multiple variables to consider in the soil environment, meaning traditional scientific studies that seek to isolate and manipulate a single variable often do not provide meaningful data. The complete study of soils and human health also involves many different specialties such as soil scientists, toxicologists, medical professionals, anthropologists, etc. These groups do not traditionally work together on research projects, and do not always effectively communicate with one another. Climate change and how it will affect the soil environment/ecosystem going into the future is another variable affecting the relationship between soils and health. Future successes in soils and human health research will require effectively addressing difficult issues such as these.

Las redacciones de los diarios viven modificaciones en un tiempo de revolución digital, que varios autores coinciden en definir como la más importante desde la imprenta de Gutenberg. Los medios están acostumbrados a los cambios. Los historiadores británicos Asa Briggs y Peter Burke afirman que los medios deben ser vistos como “un sistema en cambio perpetuo” y agregan que esas modificaciones han tenido “importantes consecuencias sociales y culturales”. Los diarios vivieron el advenimiento de la radio, la radio el de la televisión y la televisión el de Internet. Y, a diferencia de lo que muchos futurólogos pronosticaron, ni los diarios desaparecieron por la radio ni la radio por la televisión. Al contrario, los medios convivieron. Hoy es Internet la supuesta amenaza. Sin embargo, los periódicos –que hasta hace un tiempo tenían sus sitios web relegados– parecen apostar al otrora hermano menor. No lo hacen porque sí: los diarios viven en la incertidumbre. Para adaptarse apuestan a reorganizar el corazón de los diarios: la redacción. Llegó la convergencia de redacciones de papel e Internet; es un camino hacia el futuro. En este artículo, la autora analiza experiencias y plantea las preguntas más fundamentales para pensar este tema. Palabras clave: convergencia y cambio en las redacciones, prensa digital y en papel periodismo digital, diarios, producción periodística, edición periodística.Editorial departments of newspapers are going through times of change amidst the digital revolution which ome authors catalogue as the most important since the Gutenberg press. The media are used to changes. British historians Asa Briggs and Peter Burke say that the media have to be perceived as “a system in perpetual change” and add that these modifications have had “important social and cultural consequences”. Newspapers have seen the advent of the radio, radio of TV and TV of the Internet. Despite the predictions of many futurologists, neither newspapers have disappeared because of the radio, nor radio with TV. On the contrary, they coexist together. The Internet is today a sudden threat. Nevertheless, newspapers –which up until recently had their websites in a relegated position– seem to begin to bet their stakes for their younger sibling. Newspapers live in uncertainty. In order to adapt they try to reorganize the heart of their business: the editorial department. These are times of convergence of the print and web editorial departments, it's a time to the future. In this article the author analyzes different experiences and raises key issues to approach the topic.Key words: convergence and change at the editorial departments, digital and paper media, digital journalism, newspapers, journalistic production, journalistic edition.

Purpose – The interoperability of cloud data between web applications and mobile devices has vastly improved over recent years. The popularity of social media, smartphones and cloud-based web services have contributed to the level of integration that can be achieved between applications. This paper investigates the potential security issues of OAuth, an authorisation framework for granting third-party applications revocable access to user data. OAuth has rapidly become an interim de facto standard for protecting access to web API data. Vendors have implemented OAuth before the open standard was officially published. To evaluate whether the OAuth 2.0 specification is truly ready for industry application, an entire OAuth client server environment was developed and validated against the speciation threat model. The research also included the analysis of the security features of several popular OAuth integrated websites and comparing those to the threat model. High-impacting exploits leading to account hijacking were identified with a number of major online publications. It is hypothesised that the OAuth 2.0 specification can be a secure authorisation mechanism when implemented correctly. Design/methodology/approach – To analyse the security of OAuth implementations in industry a list of the 50 most popular websites in Ireland was retrieved from the statistical website Alexa (Noureddine and Bashroush, 2011). Each site was analysed to identify if it utilised OAuth. Out of the 50 sites, 21 were identified with OAuth support. Each vulnerability in the threat model was then tested against each OAuth-enabled site. To test the robustness of the OAuth framework, an entire OAuth environment was required. The proposed solution would compose of three parts: a client application, an authorisation server and a resource server. The client application needed to consume OAuth-enabled services. The authorisation server had to manage access to the resource server. The resource server had to expose data from the database based on the authorisation the user would be given from the authorisation server. It was decided that the client application would consume emails from Google’s Gmail API. The authorisation and resource server were modelled around a basic task-tracking web application. The client application would also consume task data from the developed resource server. The client application would also support Single Sign On for Google and Facebook, as well as a developed identity provider “MyTasks”. The authorisation server delegated authorisation to the client application and stored cryptography information for each access grant. The resource server validated the supplied access token via public cryptography and returned the requested data. Findings – Two sites out of the 21 were found to be susceptible to some form of attack, meaning that 10.5 per cent were vulnerable. In total, 18 per cent of the world’s 50 most popular sites were in the list of 21 OAuth-enabled sites. The OAuth 2.0 specification is still very much in its infancy, but when implemented correctly, it can provide a relatively secure and interoperable authentication delegation mechanism. The IETF are currently addressing issues and expansions in their working drafts. Once a strict level of conformity is achieved between vendors and vulnerabilities are mitigated, it is likely that the framework will change the way we access data on the web and other devices. Originality/value – OAuth is flexible, in that it offers extensions to support varying situations and existing technologies. A disadvantage of this flexibility is that new extensions typically bring new security exploits. Members of the IETF OAuth Working Group are constantly refining the draft specifications and are identifying new threats to the expanding functionality. OAuth provides a flexible authentication mechanism to protect and delegate access to APIs. It solves the password re-use across multiple accounts problem and stops the user from having to disclose their credentials to third parties. Filtering access to information by scope and giving the user the option to revoke access at any point gives the user control of their data. OAuth does raise security concerns, such as defying phishing education, but there are always going to be security issues with any authentication technology. Although several high impacting vulnerabilities were identified in industry, the developed solution proves the predicted hypothesis that a secure OAuth environment can be built when implemented correctly. Developers must conform to the defined specification and are responsible for validating their implementation against the given threat model. OAuth is an evolving authorisation framework. It is still in its infancy, and much work needs to be done in the specification to achieve stricter validation and vendor conformity. Vendor implementations need to become better aligned in order to provider a rich and truly interoperable authorisation mechanism. Once these issues are resolved, OAuth will be on track for becoming the definitive authentication standard on the web.

Background Approximately 2 million Chinese people die annually from tobacco-related diseases, mostly men; yet, fewer than 8% of Chinese smokers ever receive any smoking cessation advice or support. A social network–based gamified smoking cessation intervention (SCAMPI: Smoking Cessation App for Chinese Male: Pilot Intervention) is designed to help Chinese male smokers to quit smoking. Objective This paper aims to present the protocol of a study examining the preliminary effectiveness of SCAMPI by comparing the prolonged abstinence rate of a group of users with a comparator group during a 6-week follow-up period. Methods A two-arm pilot randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of the SCAMPI program as a smoking cessation intervention. After initial web-based screening, the first 80 eligible individuals who had gone through the required registration process were registered as participants of the trial. Participants were randomly allocated to the intervention group (n=40) and the control group (n=40). Participants in the intervention group used the full version of the SCAMPI program, which is a Chinese smoking cessation program developed based on the Behavior Change Wheel framework and relevant smoking cessation and design guidelines with involvement of target users. The program delivers a range of smoking cessation approaches, including helping users to make quitting plans, calculator to record quitting benefits, calendar to record progress, gamification to facilitate quitting, providing information about smoking harms, motivational messages to help users overcome urges, providing standardized tests to users for assessing their levels of nicotine dependence and lung health, and providing a platform to encourage social support between users. Participants in the control group used the restricted version of the SCAMPI program (placebo app). Results Recruitment for this project commenced in January 2019 and proceeded until March 2019. Follow-up data collection was commenced and completed by June 2019. The primary outcome measure of the study was the 30-day bio-verified smoking abstinence at the 6-week follow-up (self-reported data verified by the Nicotine Cotinine Saliva Test). The secondary outcome measures of the study included participants’ cigarette consumption reduction (compared baseline daily cigarette consumption with end-of-trial daily cigarette consumption), participants’ 7-day smoking abstinence at 4-week and 6-week follow-up (self-reported), participants’ 30-day smoking abstinence at 6-week follow-up (self-reported data only), and participants’ acceptability and satisfaction levels of using the SCAMPI program (measured by the Mobile App Rating Scale questionnaire). Conclusions If the SCAMPI program is shown to be preliminary effective, the study will be rolled out to be a future trial with a larger sample size and longer follow-up (6 months) to identify if it is an effective social network–based tool to support Chinese male smokers to quit smoking. Trial Registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12618001089224; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=375381 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR1-10.2196/18071

Background:There are reported concerns of patient misunderstanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination safety. It is particularly important that these are understood in patients taking complex immunusuppressive therapies. Rapid delivery of targeted and up-to-date video messages from clinicians sent directly to patients could address patient uncertainty, and improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake. Innovative SMS (short message service) based video message has already shown promise in delivering COVID-19 information to patients [1]. We present our experience in creating a tailored vaccine information video sent directly to our large cohort of patients in the UK with a range of rheumatic diseases and report on the learning points going forward.Objectives:Our three objectives were: (1) educate our patients using an interactive mobile video information resource outlining the safety of the COVID vaccination in these patient groups; (2) better understand our patients’ views of the COVID-19 vaccine; (3) evaluate the patient experience of this approach.Methods:We designed and recorded an 8-minute interactive web-based video delivered education resource designed for mobile phones. This included: aims of the video; details of licenced vaccines; UK vaccination schedule; frequently asked questions; links to national charity resources; our clinician recommendations; a rheumatologist being vaccinated; case studies; and summary data. We produced a simple mobile phone web-based evaluation of the resource, including anonymised patient demographics, their understanding of the safety of the vaccine pre/ post video, and their user experience. Resource and evaluation were piloted by local healthcare professionals, our Patient Participation Group, a national charity, and approved by senior management. We distributed this to our follow-up patient cohort via our hospital SMS provider on 21.12.20, at the start of roll-out of UK vaccines, containing a link to the resource and evaluation.Results:Of a cohort of 10,981 patients, we had 8886 mobile phone numbers. At Day 14, we recorded 2358 video views (26.3%) and 664/2358 completed evaluations (28.1%). Only one person reported being unable to watch the video. Before watching the video, 348/664 patients (52.4%) were unsure if the vaccine was safe and/or recommended for them, rising to 626/664 (94.3%) post-video.Reasons for uncertainty after the video (38/664) included drug allergy and fertility concerns. Following the video, 509/664 patients (76.6%) reported that they were more likely to have the vaccination. The majority of the patients (614/660, 93.0%) agreed that the method was a helpful method to share such information.Age distribution of our whole cohort, patients with mobile phones, and responders were similar: Age >50 was 80.4%,76.3%,and 88.6% respectively. A large proportion was treated with immunosuppressive medication (61.3% conventional DMARD, 39.4% biological DMARD and 17.6% corticosteroids). Gender and case mix for responders were similar to published data from our cohort: female 74.0%; rheumatoid arthritis commonest disease (389/664, 58.5%).Conclusion:To our knowledge, this is the first study to show the potential for SMS linked interactive multimedia message for patient education. The multimedia component allows users to easily navigate to relevant sections, and access a choice of linked resources. We demonstrate this low-cost technology is simple, effective and well placed to assist physicians in educating patients during a time when face-to-face contact is proving to be difficult. We have shown high levels of patient satisfaction, reassurance, and self-reported behaviour change. Such technology has potential utility for national bodies, primary and secondary care groups, and merits further research.References:[1]The Lancet Rheumatology. Rapid distribution of information by SMS-embedded video link to patients during a pandemic. June 2020,Volume2,Number 6,e309-e368Acknowledgements:We would like to thank the Hibbs Lupus Trust, and our Patient Participation Group.Disclosure of Interests:None declared

Background and Objective: Suicide attempts are 10-20X more common than completed suicide and an important risk factor for death by suicide, yet most people who attempt suicide do not die by suicide. The process of recovering after a suicide attempt has not been well studied. The Reasons to go on Living (RTGOL) Project, a narrative web-based study, focuses on experiences of people who have attempted suicide and made the decision to go on living, a process not well studied. Narrative research is ideally suited to understanding personal experiences critical to recovery following a suicide attempt, including the transition to a state of hopefulness. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize this work. This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. Material and Methods: A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery, a process which enabled participation from a large and diverse group of participants. The only direction given was “if you have made a suicide attempt or seriously considered suicide and now want to go on living, we want to hear from you.” The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Over 5 years, data analysis occurred in several phases over the course of the study, resulting in the identification of data that were inputted into an Excel file. This analysis used stories where participants described positive involvement with the mental health system (50 stories). Results: Several participants reflected on experiences many years previous, providing the privilege of learning how their life unfolded, what made a difference. Over a five-year period, 50 of 226 stories identified positive experiences with mental health care with sufficient details to allow analysis, and are the focus of this paper. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories, from suicidal ideation only to medically severe suicide attempts. Most described one or more suicide attempts. Three themes identified included: 1) trust and relationship with a health care professional, 2) the role of friends and family and friends, and 3) a wide range of services. Conclusion: Stories open a window into the experiences of the period after a suicide attempt. This study allowed for an understanding of how mental health professionals might help individuals who have attempted suicide write a different story, a life-affirming story. The stories that participants shared offer some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers, including immediately after a suicide attempt. Results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a tremendous difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. Key Words: web-based; suicide; suicide attempt; mental health system; narrative research Word Count: 478 Introduction My Third (or fourth) Suicide AttemptI laid in the back of the ambulance, the snow of too many doses of ativan dissolving on my tongue.They hadn't even cared enough about meto put someone in the back with me,and so, frustrated,I'd swallowed all the pills I had with me— not enough to do what I wanted it to right then,but more than enough to knock me out for a good 14 hours.I remember very little after that;benzodiazepines like ativan commonly cause pre- and post-amnesia, says Google helpfullyI wake up in a locked rooma woman manically drawing on the windows with crayonsthe colors of light through the glassdiffused into rainbows of joy scattered about the roomas if she were coloring on us all,all of the tattered remnants of humanity in a psych wardmade into a brittle mosaic, a quilt of many hues, a Technicolor dreamcoatand I thoughtI am so glad to be able to see this. (Story 187)The nurse opening that door will have a lasting impact on how this story unfolds and on this person’s life. Each year, almost one million people die from suicide, approximately one death every 40 seconds. Suicide attempts are much more frequent, with up to an estimated 20 attempts for every death by suicide.1 Suicide-related behaviours range from suicidal ideation and self-injury to death by suicide. We are unable to directly study those who die by suicide, but effective intervention after a suicide attempt could reduce the risk of subsequent death by suicide. Near-fatal suicide attempts have been used to explore the boundary with completed suicides. Findings indicated that violent suicide attempters and serious attempters (seriousness of the medical consequences to define near-fatal attempts) were more likely to make repeated, and higher lethality suicide attempts.2 In a case-control study, the medically severe suicide attempts group (78 participants), epidemiologically very similar to those who complete suicide, had significantly higher communication difficulties; the risk for death by suicide multiplied if accompanied by feelings of isolation and alienation.3 Most research in suicidology has been quantitative, focusing almost exclusively on identifying factors that may be predictive of suicidal behaviours, and on explanation rather than understanding.4 Qualitative research, focusing on the lived experiences of individuals who have attempted suicide, may provide a better understanding of how to respond in empathic and helpful ways to prevent future attempts and death by suicide.4,5 Fitzpatrick6 advocates for narrative research as a valuable qualitative method in suicide research, enabling people to construct and make sense of the experiences and their world, and imbue it with meaning. A review of qualitative studies examining the experiences of recovering from or living with suicidal ideation identified 5 interconnected themes: suffering, struggle, connection, turning points, and coping.7 Several additional qualitative studies about attempted suicide have been reported in the literature. Participants have included patients hospitalized for attempting suicide8, and/or suicidal ideation,9 out-patients following a suicide attempt and their caregivers,10 veterans with serious mental illness and at least one hospitalization for a suicide attempt or imminent suicide plan.11 Relationships were a consistent theme in these studies. Interpersonal relationships and an empathic environment were perceived as therapeutic and protective, enabling the expression of thoughts and self-understanding.8 Given the connection to relationship issues, the authors suggested it may be helpful to provide support for the relatives of patients who have attempted suicide. A sheltered, friendly environment and support systems, which included caring by family and friends, and treatment by mental health professionals, helped the suicidal healing process.10 Receiving empathic care led to positive changes and an increased level of insight; just one caring professional could make a tremendous difference.11 Kraft and colleagues9 concluded with the importance of hearing directly from those who are suicidal in order to help them, that only when we understand, “why suicide”, can we help with an alternative, “why life?” In a grounded theory study about help-seeking for self-injury, Long and colleagues12 identified that self-injury was not the problem for their participants, but a panacea, even if temporary, to painful life experiences. Participant narratives reflected a complex journey for those who self-injured: their wish when help-seeking was identified by the theme “to be treated like a person”. There has also been a focus on the role and potential impact of psychiatric/mental health nursing. Through interviews with experienced in-patient nurses, Carlen and Bengtsson13 identified the need to see suicidal patients as subjective human beings with unique experiences. This mirrors research with patients, which concluded that the interaction with personnel who are devoted, hope-mediating and committed may be crucial to a patient’s desire to continue living.14 Interviews with individuals who received mental health care for a suicidal crisis following a serious attempt led to the development of a theory for psychiatric nurses with the central variable, reconnecting the person with humanity across 3 phases: reflecting an image of humanity, guiding the individual back to humanity, and learning to live.15 Other research has identified important roles for nurses working with patients who have attempted suicide by enabling the expression of thoughts and developing self-understanding8, helping to see things differently and reconnecting with others,10 assisting the person in finding meaning from their experience to turn their lives around, and maintain/and develop positive connections with others.16 However, one literature review identified that negative attitudes toward self-harm were common among nurses, with more positive attitudes among mental health nurses than general nurses. The authors concluded that education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 This paper is one part of a larger web-based narrative study, the Reasons to go on Living Project (RTGOL), that seeks to understand the transition from making a suicide attempt to choosing life. When invited to tell their stories anonymously online, what information would people share about their suicide attempts? This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. The focus on the positive impact reflects an appreciative inquiry approach which can promote better practice.18 Methods Design and Sample A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery. Participants were required to read and agree with a consent form before being able to submit their story through a text box or by uploading a file. No demographic information was requested. Text submissions were embedded into an email and sent to an account created for the Project without collecting information about the IP address or other identifying information. The content of the website was reviewed by legal counsel before posting, and the study was approved by the local Research Ethics Board. Stories were collected for 5 years (July 2008-June 2013). The RTGOL Project enabled participation by a large, diverse audience, at their own convenience of time and location, providing they had computer access. The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Of the 226 submissions to the website, 112 described involvement at some level with the mental health system, and 50 provided sufficient detail about positive experiences with mental health care to permit analysis. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories: 8 described suicidal ideation only; 9 met the criteria of medically severe suicide attempts3; 33 described one or more suicide attempts. For most participants, the last attempt had been some years in the past, even decades, prior to writing. Results Stories of positive experiences with mental health care described the idea of a door opening, a turning point, or helping the person to see their situation differently. Themes identified were: (1) relationship and trust with a Health Care Professional (HCP), (2) the role of family and friends (limited to in-hospital experiences), and (3) the opportunity to access a range of services. The many reflective submissions of experiences told many years after the suicide attempt(s) speaks to the lasting impact of the experience for that individual. Trust and Relationship with a Health Care Professional A trusting relationship with a health professional helped participants to see things in a different way, a more hopeful way and over time. “In that time of crisis, she never talked down to me, kept her promises, didn't panic, didn't give up, and she kept believing in me. I guess I essentially borrowed the hope that she had for me until I found hope for myself.” (Story# 35) My doctor has worked extensively with me. I now realize that this is what will keep me alive. To be able to feel in my heart that my doctor does care about me and truly wants to see me get better.” (Story 34). The writer in Story 150 was a nurse, an honours graduate. The 20 years following graduation included depression, hospitalizations and many suicide attempts. “One day after supper I took an entire bottle of prescription pills, then rode away on my bike. They found me late that night unconscious in a downtown park. My heart threatened to stop in the ICU.” Then later, “I finally found a person who was able to connect with me and help me climb out of the pit I was in. I asked her if anyone as sick as me could get better, and she said, “Yes”, she had seen it happen. Those were the words I had been waiting to hear! I quickly became very motivated to get better. I felt heard and like I had just found a big sister, a guide to help me figure out how to live in the world. This person was a nurse who worked as a trauma therapist.” At the time when the story was submitted, the writer was applying to a graduate program. Role of Family and Friends Several participants described being affected by their family’s response to their suicide attempt. Realizing the impact on their family and friends was, for some, a turning point. The writer in Story 20 told of experiences more than 30 years prior to the writing. She described her family of origin as “truly dysfunctional,” and she suffered from episodes of depression and hospitalization during her teen years. Following the birth of her second child, and many family difficulties, “It was at this point that I became suicidal.” She made a decision to kill herself by jumping off the balcony (6 stories). “At the very last second as I hung onto the railing of the balcony. I did not want to die but it was too late. I landed on the parking lot pavement.” She wrote that the pain was indescribable, due to many broken bones. “The physical pain can be unbearable. Then you get to see the pain and horror in the eyes of someone you love and who loves you. Many people suggested to my husband that he should leave me in the hospital, go on with life and forget about me. During the process of recovery in the hospital, my husband was with me every day…With the help of psychiatrists and a later hospitalization, I was actually diagnosed as bipolar…Since 1983, I have been taking lithium and have never had a recurrence of suicidal thoughts or for that matter any kind of depression.” The writer in Story 62 suffered childhood sexual abuse. When she came forward with it, she felt she was not heard. Self-harm on a regular basis was followed by “numerous overdoses trying to end my life.” Overdoses led to psychiatric hospitalizations that were unhelpful because she was unable to trust staff. “My way of thinking was that ending my life was the only answer. There had been numerous attempts, too many to count. My thoughts were that if I wasn’t alive I wouldn’t have to deal with my problems.” In her final attempt, she plunged over the side of a mountain, dropping 80 feet, resulting in several serious injuries. “I was so angry that I was still alive.” However, “During my hospitalization I began to realize that my family and friends were there by my side continuously, I began to realize that I wasn't only hurting myself. I was hurting all the important people in my life. It was then that I told myself I am going to do whatever it takes.” A turning point is not to say that the difficulties did not continue. The writer of Story 171 tells of a suicide attempt 7 years previous, and the ongoing anguish. She had been depressed for years and had thoughts of suicide on a daily basis. After a serious overdose, she woke up the next day in a hospital bed, her husband and 2 daughters at her bed. “Honestly, I was disappointed to wake up. But, then I saw how scared and hurt they were. Then I was sorry for what I had done to them. Since then I have thought of suicide but know that it is tragic for the family and is a hurt that can never be undone. Today I live with the thought that I am here for a reason and when it is God's time to take me then I will go. I do believe living is harder than dying. I do believe I was born for a purpose and when that is accomplished I will be released. …Until then I try to remind myself of how I am blessed and try to appreciate the wonders of the world and the people in it.” Range of Services The important role of mental health and recovery services was frequently mentioned, including dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT)/cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), recovery group, group therapy, Alcoholics Anonymous, accurate diagnosis, and medications. The writer in Story 30 was 83 years old when she submitted her story, reflecting on a life with both good and bad times. She first attempted suicide at age 10 or 12. A serious post-partum depression followed the birth of her second child, and over the years, she experienced periods of suicidal intent: “Consequently, a few years passed and I got to feeling suicidal again. I had pills in one pocket and a clipping for “The Recovery Group” in the other pocket. As I rode on the bus trying to make up my mind, I decided to go to the Recovery Group first. I could always take the pills later. I found the Recovery Group and yoga helpful; going to meetings sometimes twice a day until I got thinking more clearly and learned how to deal with my problems.” Several participants described the value of CBT or DBT in learning to challenge perceptions. “I have tools now to differentiate myself from the illness. I learned I'm not a bad person but bad things did happen to me and I survived.”(Story 3) “The fact is that we have thoughts that are helpful and thoughts that are destructive….. I knew it was up to me if I was to get better once and for all.” (Story 32): “In the hospital I was introduced to DBT. I saw a nurse (Tanya) every day and attended a group session twice a week, learning the techniques. I worked with the people who wanted to work with me this time. Tanya said the same thing my counselor did “there is no study that can prove whether or not suicide solves problems” and I felt as though I understood it then. If I am dead, then all the people that I kept pushing away and refusing their help would be devastated. If I killed myself with my own hand, my family would be so upset. DBT taught me how to ‘ride my emotional wave’. ……….. DBT has changed my life…….. My life is getting back in order now, thanks to DBT, and I have lots of reasons to go on living.”(Story 19) The writer of Story 67 described the importance of group therapy. “Group therapy was the most helpful for me. It gave me something besides myself to focus on. Empathy is such a powerful emotion and a pathway to love. And it was a huge relief to hear others felt the same and had developed tools of their own that I could try for myself! I think I needed to learn to communicate and recognize when I was piling everything up to build my despair. I don’t think I have found the best ways yet, but I am lifetimes away from that teenage girl.” (Story 67) The author of story 212 reflected on suicidal ideation beginning over 20 years earlier, at age 13. Her first attempt was at 28. “I thought everyone would be better off without me, especially my children, I felt like the worst mum ever, I felt like a burden to my family and I felt like I was a failure at life in general.” She had more suicide attempts, experienced the death of her father by suicide, and then finally found her doctor. “Now I’m on meds for a mood disorder and depression, my family watch me closely, and I see my doctor regularly. For the first time in 20 years, I love being a mum, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a cousin etc.” Discussion The 50 stories that describe positive experiences in the health care system constitute a larger group than most other similar studies, and most participants had made one or more suicide attempts. Several writers reflected back many years, telling stories of long ago, as with the 83-year old participant (Story 30) whose story provided the privilege of learning how the author’s life unfolded. In clinical practice, we often do not know – how did the story turn out? The stories that describe receiving health care speak to the impact of the experience, and the importance of the issues identified in the mental health system. We identified 3 themes, but it was often the combination that participants described in their stories that was powerful, as demonstrated in Story 20, the young new mother who had fallen from a balcony 30 years earlier. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize our clinical work. Results are consistent with, and add to, the previous work on the importance of therapeutic relationships.8,10,11,14–16 It is from the stories in this study that we come to understand the powerful experience of seeing a family members’ reaction following a participant’s suicide attempt, and how that can be a potent turning point as identified by Lakeman and Fitzgerald.7 Ghio and colleagues8 and Lakeman16 identified the important role for staff/nurses in supporting families due to the connection to relationship issues. This research also calls for support for families to recognize the important role they have in helping the person understand how much they mean to them, and to promote the potential impact of a turning point. The importance of the range of services reflect Lakeman and Fitzgerald’s7 theme of coping, associating positive change by increasing the repertoire of coping strategies. These findings have implications for practice, research and education. Working with individuals who are suicidal can help them develop and tell a different story, help them move from a death-oriented to life-oriented position,15 from “why suicide” to “why life.”9 Hospitalization provides a person with the opportunity to reflect, to take time away from “the real world” to consider oneself, the suicide attempt, connections with family and friends and life goals, and to recover physically and emotionally. Hospitalization is also an opening to involve the family in the recovery process. The intensity of the immediate period following a suicide attempt provides a unique opportunity for nurses to support and coach families, to help both patients and family begin to see things differently and begin to create that different story. In this way, family and friends can be both a support to the person who has attempted suicide, and receive help in their own struggles with this experience. It is also important to recognize that this short period of opportunity is not specific to the nurses in psychiatric units, as the nurses caring for a person after a medically severe suicide attempt will frequently be the nurses in the ICU or Emergency departments. Education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 Helping staff develop the attitudes, skills and approach necessary to be helpful to a person post-suicide attempt is beginning to be reported in the literature.21 Further implications relate to nursing curriculum. Given the extent of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide, this merits an important focus. This could include specific scenarios, readings by people affected by suicide, both patients themselves and their families or survivors, and discussions with individuals who have made an attempt(s) and made a decision to go on living. All of this is, of course, not specific to nursing. All members of the interprofessional health care team can support the transition to recovery of a person after a suicide attempt using the strategies suggested in this paper, in addition to other evidence-based interventions and treatments. Findings from this study need to be considered in light of some specific limitations. First, the focus was on those who have made a decision to go on living, and we have only the information the participants included in their stories. No follow-up questions were possible. The nature of the research design meant that participants required access to a computer with Internet and the ability to communicate in English. This study does not provide a comprehensive view of in-patient care. However, it offers important inputs to enhance other aspects of care, such as assessing safety as a critical foundation to care. We consider these limitations were more than balanced by the richness of the many stories that a totally anonymous process allowed. Conclusion Stories open a window into the experiences of a person during the period after a suicide attempt. The RTGOL Project allowed for an understanding of how we might help suicidal individuals change the script, write a different story. The stories that participants shared give us some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers immediately after a suicide attempt. While we cannot know the experiences of those who did not survive a suicide attempt, results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a crucial difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. We end with where we began. Who will open the door? References 1. World Health Organization. Suicide prevention and special programmes. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/index.html Geneva: Author; 2013.2. Giner L, Jaussent I, Olie E, et al. 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Rapid urbanization rates impact significantly on the nature of Land Cover patterns of the environment, which has been evident in the depletion of vegetal reserves and in general modifying the human climatic systems (Henderson, et al., 2017; Kumar, Masago, Mishra, & Fukushi, 2018; Luo and Lau, 2017). This study explores remote sensing classification technique and other auxiliary data to determine LULCC for a period of 50 years (1967-2016). The LULCC types identified were quantitatively evaluated using the change detection approach from results of maximum likelihood classification algorithm in GIS. Accuracy assessment results were evaluated and found to be between 56 to 98 percent of the LULC classification. The change detection analysis revealed change in the LULC types in Minna from 1976 to 2016. Built-up area increases from 74.82ha in 1976 to 116.58ha in 2016. Farmlands increased from 2.23 ha to 46.45ha and bared surface increases from 120.00ha to 161.31ha between 1976 to 2016 resulting to decline in vegetation, water body, and wetlands. The Decade of rapid urbanization was found to coincide with the period of increased Public Private Partnership Agreement (PPPA). Increase in farmlands was due to the adoption of urban agriculture which has influence on food security and the environmental sustainability. The observed increase in built up areas, farmlands and bare surfaces has substantially led to reduction in vegetation and water bodies. The oscillatory nature of water bodies LULCC which was not particularly consistent with the rates of urbanization also suggests that beyond the urbanization process, other factors may influence the LULCC of water bodies in urban settlements. Keywords: Minna, Niger State, Remote Sensing, Land Surface Characteristics References Akinrinmade, A., Ibrahim, K., & Abdurrahman, A. (2012). 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The article analyzes the research and design documentation "Historical and architectural basic plan of the city of Lviv" (2020) in terms of identification and protection of fortifications. The analysis of the documentation revealed little attention of the authors to the study and coverage of the stages of development of the fortification lines of Lviv from the XIII to the XIX century. This approach has led to the debatable identification of many objects by their historical, urban and architectural value, inaccurate dating, lack of proposals for their protection. In particular, the assessment of a complex of fortifications, the so-called "F. Hetkant's defensive line" from 1635. The authors of the documentation did not analyze the stages of development and assess the time-varying urban structure of the quarters, even in the city center. The development of buildings in the areas of the former suburbs was also not covered in detail. But these are areas that have been filled with very important facilities and functions in the past. The nature of the development of the quarters took different forms depending on the time of the site. The sites themselves developed abruptly along with the movement of the lines of urban fortifications further from the city center. The construction of a new, more modern line of fortifications and its advancement made it possible to intensify construction in areas that were previously outside the fortified territory. Lviv has gone through six such major stages of urban transformation associated with the development and modernization of fortifications from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. This relationship between the development of fortification systems and the architectural-spatial and planning structure is the key to understanding the urban history of the city. Without a detailed reconstruction of the phases of construction of fortifications, it is impossible to properly navigate the nature of changes in the architectural-compositional and planning structure of the city. For example, after the removal of fortifications far beyond the central district of the city, began active changes and intensification of housing and public buildings in areas of former suburbs, where previously dominated by large monastic complexes and palaces of wealthy burghers. The quarters here began to change the character of their urban structure, evolving from the shape of a quarter with a palace and a garden-park in the suburbs (there were dozens of them in Lviv in the suburbs) to a densely built-up quarter during the XVIII-XIX centuries. However, today in the slums of such neighborhoods with their careful study can be found hidden relics of the original history of the city. The web of neighborhoods laced with dense lace around the city center also has encoded individual pages of unique urban history. The historical and architectural reference plan of the city is a scientific documentation that should reveal all the specific features of different urban planning formations - including the emergence and development of fortification lines, changes in hydrography, changes in street planning, changes of the nature of each quarter. According to the provisions of the State Building Norms for the development of historical and architectural reference plans (2012) should be performed scientific study, analysis and classification of immovable cultural heritage of the city by type (archeology, history, monumental art, architecture, urban planning, landscaping art, natural landscape, science and technology). This study and analysis should end with the definition of the stages of formation of each complex. Characteristic features and values of all objects of cultural heritage by types should be revealed for each city site. Fortifications were a particularly important element in the development of the city structure in the past. Their complexes had the greatest impact on the planning structure of the city. Fortifications often dictated the development of the city in one direction or another. Therefore, the theoretical reconstruction of the stages of development of urban defense systems is an important task for the historical and architectural reference plan. Our research was implemented in the framework of the research topic of the Department of Architecture and Restoration of the National University "Lviv Polytechnic" "Regeneration of historic architectural and urban complexes" (№ state registration 0116U004110).

The work begins with the following question: why study and analyze the segment da public ad-ministration, in particular public buildings? If in the end, segments: industrial, commercial, and residential, are the major consumers of the electricity supply and the graph the Figure 1 shows the evolution of electricity consumption in the industrial segment in the period between 1998 and 2010. The answer to that question requires in a way o understanding about discipline of the public manager and legislative acts.The public segment is directly linked to the executive, which through legislative acts can issue Decrees, Norms, Infra-Standards and Regulations that affect directly the public manager and consequently the units of public buildings, with this the answers to the changes, are of habits and customs or adaptation to the conditions that prevail at the moment, are more effective and allow us to measure with greater precision, these actions are reapplicable in the spheres, federal, state and municipal levels. The other segments only change their working conditions in the routine of the increase in the amounts charged in the tariffs and even then instead of implementing immediately measures to reduce spending prefer to pass on in some way the increase in tariffs, in addition to of this, the residential consumer does not usu-ally have the immediate sensitivity of the needs of changes habits because they are immediately impacted by increases in in the values of tariffs, and they think you already make the contributi-on by paying for the raise and often find that reducing costs is continue paying the same amount as the bill and don't know that that's an illusion making your perception disorderly. After a cer-tain time from delay all end up surrendering the reduction of spending on the electricity supply, returning the accounts to levels stipulated by the government measures as can be seen in the graph da Figure 1, that the effects of 2001 only impact more intensely on the industry in 2004. One of the objectives of this work is subsidize the Society in general and decision makers at various levels of public administration, with information, concepts, and suggestions for the de-velopment of actions aimed at reducing spending on the electricity supply, without prejudice to the environment. The work is based on the study impacts on the consumption, in demand, in number of units the public buildings and investments of the energy efficiency actions, in period understood between 1998 e 2010, in Brazil, but than addresses also from 1984 the effects cau-sed by rationings electric power, as crisiss in the financial system, legislative changes (Consuption) and elections (changes in guidelines of the policies of insvestiments). After constitutional reform, 1988, some functions that belonged to the passed to the municipality, how for example, the issue of public health, and the public administration had to adapt in a short time to its new role next to society, but these changes have not reduced the number of public buildings, such as education, where many buildings Were Sha-red between the state and the municipality, and in the following years it become imperative to increase the number of administrative units to meet the new functions of public administration and the increase in the economically active population. The issues relating to conservation of energy only begun to be developed with greater depth after 1998, in special with the lesson le-arned after the rationing of 2001, when many public managers have begun to consider reducing electricity consumption for avoid a uncomfortable situation penalties depending on the legislati-ve measures applied at the time. But it was found that from 2003, the effects of electricity ratio-ning have been dissipated and the escalation to increase consumption returned similar to what had occurred before 2001. One of the factors that corroborates the above is explained in the growth of eletricity consumption by the government, represented in the graph from figure 2. This information is also analyzed from the point of view of the regions of Brazil (north, south, center-west, and southeast). With the result of the application of this work we can induce an administrative vision focused on efficiency generating the reduction of spending on the electri-city supply in the public administration [5], we can show for society in general and to public managers, such as the behavior of the electricity supply in the public administration segment, through the studies of evolution the number of units of public buildings, the consumption and demand of electricity, when through: financial crises, electric power rationing and changes in these investment policies (Elections). In addition, to show the actions implemented aimed at the search for solutions and among them we can mention legislative measures, implementation of decrees aimed at reducing spending on electricity, such as the maintenance of internal energy conservation commissions, CICE, techno-logical update of equipment performing a pre-diagnosis [3], and the energy saved in the public sector between 2008 and 2018. This work has as relevance the analysis of a long information period and many of them in the past had periodicity of up to five years, and one of the possibilities in applications is the deter-mination of indexes for reference of expenses with the electric energy, as for example we can mention: consumption of electricity per employee public of administrative units, consumption per square meter of public administrative unit, and also from the point of view of electricity de-mand, in addition serves as orientative in the search for solutions for managers of public admi-nistration in the actions taken in the uncomfortable periods of the economy and rationing of electricity energy. Currently we are going through new challenges determined after the year 2020, which are: pan-demic infection through the COVID-19 virus, which generated the lockdown of minimally one year and which still persists the fighting in the year 2022; the change in the load profile as a function of the reduction of consumption and demand, with a view to the closure of the publics units; the Russia-Ukraine war that started oil scarcity, rising food prices, severe uncertainty in the international financial market due to the possibility of non-compliance with Russia's payments, increased inflation in the United States, Elections that generate changes or policy maintenance of the government in Brazil and the World. The only certainty we have at this moment is that there is still no forecast of the impacts, conse-quences, and the end of these effects. In the development of this work, a necessary time was allocated to the compilation and modeling of the data obtained, software development, interac-tion, and partnership with The National Eletric Energy Agency in data acquisition, web search of information, for example at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and United Nati-ons Development Program.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: To access obesity risk perceptions, knowledge and behaviors of Hispanic taxi cab drivers and develop a better understanding of the factors that influence health outcomes in this population. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Focus groups were conducted at NYC H+H/Lincoln, where subjects were screened and recruited from taxi bases with the help of the local Federation of Taxi Drivers. This was done by utilizing flyers, messages through taxi-base radios, and referrals from livery cab drivers. Approval from the local Institutional Review Board was obtained. The research investigators, developed a structured focus group procedural protocol of open-ended interview questions related to cardiovascular disease. Participants for the focus groups were older than 18 years old and working as livery cab drivers in NYC for at least 6 months. Three focus groups were held with informed consent obtained from each participant in their primary language before the start of each session. After completion of the focus group, participants received a gift voucher for attending the approximately 1-hour session. Focus groups were moderated by trained research staff members at Lincoln. Three main categories of questions were organized based on perception, knowledge, and behavior. Participants were questioned on topics about obesity, CVD and diabetes knowledge; knowledge about etiology, risk perception, possible prevention and interventions. Responses were recorded using audiotapes and transcribed verbatim. If participants did not elaborate on the initial question, a probing question was asked to clarify. The transcript was translated from Spanish by trained bilingual staff and analyzed using standard qualitative techniques with open code method. Four research investigators read the transcript separately and formulated concepts, which were then categorized and formulated into dominant themes. These themes were then compared and analyzed with a group consensus to ensure representative data. Once recurring themes emerged and the saturation point was reached, the study concluded, after enrolling 25 participants. The Health Believe Model (HBM) was employed to understand and explain the perceptions and behaviors of taxi drivers. HBM is one of the most widely recognized models and is used to understand, predict and modify health behavior. HBM helps to identify perception of risks of unhealthy behavior, barriers for having healthy behavior, actions taken by patients to stay healthy, self-efficacy and commitment to goals [12]. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Of the 25 Hispanic livery cab drivers, 92% were male. The majority of taxi drivers that participated in the study were immigrants (96%), with a mean age of 53 years (ranged 21–69), and 92%, were spoke Spanish. In total, 52% participants identified themselves as Hispanic, 20% White, 4% Black, and 20% did not identify their race. Mean body mass index (BMI) was 31 (22.8–38.7) kg/m2. In all, 56% were obese and another 40% were overweight. From this sample, 50% had been diagnosed with hypertension and 27% were living with diabetes. In all, 64% had a high school education or higher. Answers provided by the taxi drivers to focus group questions were recorded, reviewed and divided into 8 dominant themes based on concepts that emerged from the focus groups discussions. (a) Focus group study findings: Themes recorded during the focus group discussions, include poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, comorbidities/risk factors, stress, health not being a priority, discipline, education, and intervention. Participants shared their opinions in regards to these themes with minimal differences, making an emphasis on the fact that the nature of their profession was the root cause. Of the themes, the top 3 dominant themes include poor diet, sedentary/lifestyle and comorbidities/risk factors. (1) Diet: The theme “Poor diet” evolved from 151 related concepts that were described by participants. All 25 participants perceived their diet as bad due to eating high-fat meals associated with the cultural food and restaurant chains with lower food prices and ease of car parking. Drivers also reported that they did not have enough time to eat healthy foods based on their long working hours. They say: “comemos muy tarde por que preferimos montar un pasajero” … stating that they preferred to pick up passengers and delay their meals. However, they consider poor diet as the most decisive factor in their increased risk for obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. (2) Life Style: The theme “Sedentary lifestyle” was derived from 147 similar concepts described by participants. They believe that physical inactivity is another leading risk factor for obesity, diabetes, and CVD. The demands of the profession force them to drive more than 10 hours per day. They understand the importance of daily exercise but they admit that at the end of the workday they are too tired to exercise or “stop working” to participate in exercise as this means less money. They also understand that family history of obesity in addition to poor diet increases their risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular risks. (3) Comorbidity: The theme “Comorbidities” developed from 143 concepts grouped together. Taxi-drivers perceived that obesity complications directly affects many vital organs, such as the kidneys, the heart, and vasculature. Participants perceive obesity as important risk factor for high blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Taxi drivers see an association between their health condition and their work as a taxi driver. However, taxi-drivers reported that they are more concerned about the economic well-being of their families than themselves. Taxi-drivers begin to intervene in their own health only when more serious health conditions related to obesity, diabetes, and hypertension developed. (4) Work Stress: The theme “Stress/other risk factors” was derived from 141 concepts. Taxi-drivers perceive their profession with lack of organization and high-stress levels as one of the leading risk factors contributing to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. They also attribute a combination of stressful lifestyle, poor diet, lack of exercise, consumption of alcohol and cigarettes as determining factors in developing negative health outcomes. “One participant says; Tenemos el paquete completo” … we have the entire package. (5) Health as a priority: The theme “Health is not a priority” was derived from 120 concepts based on the cab drivers’ responses. Taxi drivers prioritize their work while their health takes a back seat. They work long shifts as they feel the pressures of financial responsibilities of their family. They admitted lack of intentions to change their behavior and they consider themselves as “hard headed.” Drivers changed their behavior only when serious health conditions develop that require professional medical attention. Taxi drivers explain that the lack of time as being a big factor in pursuing preventative care. (6) Personal Discipline: The theme “Discipline” evolved from 80 concepts derived from the driver’s transcripts. Taxi drivers are aware of their lack of organizational skills in general, especially when it comes to the balance between work and a healthy lifestyle. Taxi drivers recognize that not being disciplined results in the development of their obesity and chronic health conditions. Drivers admit that they do not have a fixed schedule, with no direct supervision, and cannot find the time to go to the doctor or change their behavior. (7) Health Education: The theme “Education” was derived from79 concepts noted from the focus group discussion. Taxi drivers know that their lack of health education is affecting them. With little understanding about the severity of the disease process it is difficult to take proactive measures. They are interested in the development of programs that will educate them about obesity, diabetes and CVD prevention. They want to attend programs that can educate them about prevention of obesity, diabetes, and CVD prevention with strong focus on healthy eating. They understand that this would increase their ability to change their unhealthy behavior. (8) Health interventions: The last major theme “Intervention” was derived out of 71 concepts. When asked about possible interventions that might help them towards healthy behaviors, taxi drivers think that the use of technology as a means of education is very effective. They understand the most direct route to reach them is by cellphone, email, and social media such as Facebook. They also feel that it would be good to use this type of communication to not only to inform them about health issues, but to also educate them directly. (b) Application of Health Behavior Model: We employed the HBM, one of the most utilized and easy to understand health models (18, 20–22) to explain the knowledge, perception, and health behaviors of our study participants. The HBM consist of 6 posits: (1) risk susceptibility, (2) risk severity, (3) benefits of action, and (4) barriers to action, (5) self-efficacy, and (6) cues to action [23]. According to the HBM, people’s beliefs about their risk and their perception of the benefits of taking action to avoid it, influence their readiness to take action [15, 21–22, 24]. Using the HBM, health behavior can be modified positively if the 6 posits are perceived by the person [23]. According to the results of our study, taxi drivers that participated in our study, do not perceive the severity of their risk. Participants admitted that they go to the doctor and start paying attention to their health condition only when they get seriously sick. Another posit of the HBM, understanding benefit of actions, is also not perceived by taxi drivers. Participants understand that they should be involved in physical activity, but do not pursue physical activity. They stated that they are too busy and tired to exercise daily without realizing the benefits of having a healthy life style. Findings from the focus groups also demonstrate that taxi drivers do not possess self-efficacy, as they are not confident that they are able to change their own health behavior. They openly admitted to having poor discipline, lack of organizational skills, and lack of time management skills. But, they expressed their wish to get information about time management, healthy snacks, places where they can get affordable and healthy food, learn more about different physical activities, and places where they can exercise. The sixth posit of the HBM model is the cues for action which should trigger the action to change behavior. Cues such as physical pain or illness in them or family members of cab drivers, trigger a visit to the physician’s office. Cab drivers were open to receiving educational material provided by physicians or health information provided on TV/cellphone about disease prevention. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Obesity is steadily on the increase in the US population and has become a major public health concern [1–3]. Latinos are at the higher risk of heart diseases such as obesity, hypertension compared to other ethnical groups [3, 13]. There is a higher prevalence of obesity among particular occupational groups with cab drivers having one of the highest obesity prevalence among all professions [5, 7–9, 13]. Obesity risks therefore seem to affect NYC cab drivers who are of Latino background more than others. Surveys conducted in different countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa reported that taxi, truck, and bus show that drivers are at a higher risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and hypertension [5, 8–11]. This study is the first to evaluate the knowledge, perception, and behaviors of NYC Latino taxi cab drivers with respect to obesity. The study uncovers factors and barriers that contribute to their behavior, and identify possible ways that can modify their behavior and decrease their chances of developing obesity. The study results demonstrated that Latino immigrant taxi drivers perceive themselves at a high risk for obesity development. As the result of discussions with focus groups, the eight dominant themes were identified. Participants perceive their risk susceptibility and understand that working as a driver is a sedentary occupation with lack of physical activity significantly contributing to obesity development. Additionally, taxi drivers report that their unhealthy diet is a major factor that contributes to their weight gain. Taxi drivers perceive their poor diet as the result of the food they consume being high in fat content. Due to financial constraints and their cultural diet requirements, they feel limited to unhealthy food options. They acknowledge the risk that poor diet contributes to obesity, high cholesterol, obesity development. Participants also expressed that work stress is another important factor. Busy traffic, lack of organization, financial stress to support their families-push them to work prolonged hours. Participants also admitted that in their leisure time, they use alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and watch TV, instead of going to the gym, because they feel too tired to exercise. Taxi drivers perceive their barriers as a lack of education and knowledge about healthy food choices, places where they can buy healthy affordable snacks, information about physical activities, stress management skills, and organizational skills. Other perceived barriers that prevent them from leading healthy lifestyle include lack of discipline, lack of time for physical activity, economic uncertainty, financial responsibility and the perception that the wellbeing of their families is more important than themselves and their health. HBM is a widely used model that helps to identify perception of risks of unhealthy behavior, barriers to healthy behavior, actions taken by patients to stay healthy, self-efficacy, and commitment to goals. Based on the Glasgow theory, the core of health behavior models is the identification of the barriers and self-efficacy [25]. Our study is unique as it involves using the HBM to explain the basis of taxi cab drivers’ behavior. Results of our research study showed that our participants perceived barriers very well. However, lack of self-efficacy, lack of perceiving benefits of action, lack of cues to action, and lack of understanding the risk of disease severity explain why taxi drivers have greater risk for obesity among occupations, and are not ready to embrace health behavior modification. This qualitative study shows us where the window of opportunity for intervention lies, how we can intervene and modify the health behavior of the at-risk NYC Latino cab driver population. By Glasgow theory, self-efficacy is an important factor in behavior modification models [25]. If the barriers that are perceived by participants as too high, and self-efficacy is low, one can intervene by improving self-efficacy. Bandura has offered ways to increase patients’ self-efficacy by using three strategies: (a) setting small, incremental, and achievable goals; (b) using formalized behavioral contracting to establish goals and specify rewards; and (c) monitoring and reinforcement, including patient self-monitoring by keeping records [20]. We can also improve perception of the benefits of action by providing cues to action namely education during the office visits, by providing reading materials, and the use of modern technology (emails, interactive Web sites, apps, etc.). A study was conducted in South Asia, encouraging taxi drivers to exercise through the use of pedometers [7]. This study provides an example of ways to motivate taxi drivers, improve their self-efficacy, overcome barriers, and provide cues to action. As one of the theories that can explain and help in behavioral modification, the Health Belief model includes the impact of the environment and elements of social learning. Using this model, we were able to differentiate and identify the factors that influence their behavior that need to be addressed by health care workers and public health representatives to improve obesity related risks among inner city taxi cab drivers in NYC.

Graphene-based composites have received a great deal of attention in recent year because the presence of graphene can enhance the conductivity, strength of bulk materials and help create composites with superior qualities. Moreover, the incorporation of metal oxide nanoparticles such as Fe3O4 can improve the catalytic efficiency of composite material. In this work, we have synthesized a composite material with the combination of reduced graphene oxide (rGO), and Fe3O4 modified tissue-paper (mGO-PP) via a simple hydrothermal method, which improved the removal efficiency of the of methylene blue (MB) in water. MB blue is used as the model of contaminant to evaluate the catalytic efficiency of synthesized material by using a Fenton-like reaction. The obtained materials were characterized by SEM, XRD. The removal of materials with methylene blue is investigated by UV-VIS spectroscopy, and the result shows that mGO-PP composite is the potential composite for the color removed which has the removal efficiency reaching 65% in acetate buffer pH = 3 with the optimal time is 7 h. Keywords Graphene-based composite, methylene blue, Fenton-like reaction. References [1] Ma Joshi, Rue Bansal, Reng Purwar, Colour removal from textile effluents, Indian Journal of Fibre & Textile Research, 29 (2004) 239-259 http://nopr.niscair.res.in/handle/123456789/24631.[2] Kannan Nagar, Sundaram Mariappan, Kinetics and mechanism of removal of methylene blue by adsorption on various carbons-a comparative study, Dyes and pigments, 51 (2001) 25-40 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0143-7208(01)00056-0.[3] K Rastogi, J. N Sahu, B. C Meikap, M. N Biswas, Removal of methylene blue from wastewater using fly ash as an adsorbent by hydrocyclone, Journal of hazardous materials, 158 (2008) 531-540.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2008.01. 105.[4] Qin Qingdong, Ma Jun, Liu Ke, Adsorption of anionic dyes on ammonium-functionalized MCM-41, Journal of Hazardous Materials, 162 (2009) 133-139 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat. 2008.05.016.[5] Mui Muruganandham, Rps Suri, Sh Jafari, Mao Sillanpää, Lee Gang-Juan, Jaj Wu, Muo Swaminathan, Recent developments in homogeneous advanced oxidation processes for water and wastewater treatment, International Journal of Photoenergy, 2014 (2014). http://dx. doi.org/10.1155/2014/821674.[6] Herney Ramirez, Vicente Miguel , Madeira Luis Heterogeneous photo-Fenton oxidation with pillared clay-based catalysts for wastewater treatment: a review, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, 98 (2010) 10-26 https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.apcatb.2010.05.004.[7] Guo Rong, Jiao Tifeng, Li Ruifei, Chen Yan, Guo Wanchun, Zhang Lexin, Zhou Jingxin, Zhang Qingrui, Peng Qiuming, Sandwiched Fe3O4/carboxylate graphene oxide nanostructures constructed by layer-by-layer assembly for highly efficient and magnetically recyclable dye removal, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 6 (2017) 1279-1288 https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b03635.[8] Sun Chao, Yang Sheng-Tao, Gao Zhenjie, Yang Shengnan, Yilihamu Ailimire, Ma Qiang, Zhao Ru-Song, Xue Fumin, Fe3O4/TiO2/reduced graphene oxide composites as highly efficient Fenton-like catalyst for the decoloration of methylene blue, Materials Chemistry and Physics, 223 (2019) 751-757 https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.matchemphys.2018.11.056.[9] Guo Hui, Ma Xinfeng, Wang Chubei, Zhou Jianwei, Huang Jianxin, Wang Zijin, Sulfhydryl-Functionalized Reduced Graphene Oxide and Adsorption of Methylene Blue, Environmental Engineering Science, 36 (2019) 81-89 https://doi. org/10.1089/ees.2018.0157.[10] Zhao Lianqin, Yang Sheng-Tao, Feng Shicheng, Ma Qiang, Peng Xiaoling, Wu Deyi, Preparation and application of carboxylated graphene oxide sponge in dye removal, International journal of environmental research and public health, 14 (2017) 1301 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14111301.[11] Yu Dandan, Wang Hua, Yang Jie, Niu Zhiqiang, Lu Huiting, Yang Yun, Cheng Liwei, Guo Lin, Dye wastewater cleanup by graphene composite paper for tailorable supercapacitors, ACS applied materials & interfaces, 9 (2017) 21298-21306 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b05318.[12] Wang Hou, Yuan Xingzhong, Wu Yan, Huang Huajun, Peng Xin, Zeng Guangming, Zhong Hua, Liang Jie, Ren MiaoMiao, Graphene-based materials: fabrication, characterization and application for the decontamination of wastewater and wastegas and hydrogen storage/generation, Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 195 (2013) 19-40 https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cis.2013.03.009.[13] Marcano Daniela C, Kosynkin Dmitry V, Berlin Jacob M, Sinitskii Alexander, Sun Zhengzong, Slesarev Alexander, Alemany Lawrence B, Lu Wei, Tour James M, Improved synthesis of graphene oxide, ACS nano, 4 (2010) 4806-4814 https://doi.org/10.1021/nn1006368.[14] Zhang Jiali, Yang Haijun, Shen Guangxia, Cheng Ping, Zhang Jingyan, Guo Shouwu, Reduction of graphene oxide via L-ascorbic acid, Chemical Communications, 46 (2010) 1112-1114 http://doi. org/10.1039/B917705A [15] Gong Ming, Zhou Wu, Tsai Mon-Che, Zhou Jigang, Guan Mingyun, Lin Meng-Chang, Zhang Bo, Hu Yongfeng, Wang Di-Yan, Yang Jiang, Nanoscale nickel oxide/nickel heterostructures for active hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis, Nature communications, 5 (2014) 4695 https:// doi.org/10.1038/ncomms5695.[16] Wu Zhong-Shuai, Yang Shubin, Sun Yi, Parvez Khaled, Feng Xinliang, Müllen Klaus, 3D nitrogen-doped graphene aerogel-supported Fe3O4 nanoparticles as efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 134 (2012) 9082-9085 https://doi.org/10.1021/ja3030565.[17] Nguyen Son Truong, Nguyen Hoa Tien, Rinaldi Ali, Nguyen Nam Van, Fan Zeng, Duong Hai Minh, Morphology control and thermal stability of binderless-graphene aerogels from graphite for energy storage applications, Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, 414 (2012) 352-358 https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2012.08.048.[18] Deng Yang, Englehardt James D, Treatment of landfill leachate by the Fenton process, Water research, 40 (2006) 3683-3694 https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.watres.2006.08.009.

A mobile phone is a wireless handheld device that allows users to make and receive calls. While the earliest generation of mobile phones could only make and receive calls, today’s mobile phones do a lot more, accommodating web browsers, games, cameras, video players and navigational systems. While mobile phones used to be mainly known as “cell phones” or cellular phones, today’s mobile phones are more commonly called “smartphones” because of all of the extra voice and data services that they offer. Objectives: To assess the behavioral changes related to mobile phone usage observed by parents of school going children. To find out association with selected demographic variables and behaviour changes. And the total sample of the research is 60. Methodology: The research approach was descriptive approach and research design is a one group. The study was conduct on school going children at selected areas of Sasaram. Non-probability convenience sampling techniques adopt. Number of sample size is 60 who played the video games frequently. Data collection was done by the survey by the researcher. Data was analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics came up with the following findings. Result: The result show of the study in there 60 sample (8%) day students were having mild behavior change, (83.33%) students were having moderate behaviour change and (8.67%) students were having severe behavior change. Due to excessive time spent on the phone. Found that those participants who spent more time with phone lead to more behaviour changes. Statically there is no any significant association was found. Recommendation: The findings of the present study can be used as a guide of future research. Interventional study can be undertaken to reduce the behavior change. A study can be conducted in preventing aspect of stress. To make the recommendation to the government to arrange compulsory medical check-up on the yearly basis for the nursing personnel. Conclusion: The present study was aimed at assessing the level behaviour change among school going student and its consequences. This show that these variables had influence level of behaviour change in the study.

The first two months of 2021 saw Google and Facebook ‘go dark’ in terms of news content on the Australia versions of their platforms. In January, Google ran a so-called “experiment” which removed or demoted current news in the search results available to a segment of Australian users. While Google was only darkened for some, in February news on Facebook went completely dark, with the company banning all news content and news sharing for users within Australian. Both of these instances of going dark occurred because of the imminent threat these platforms faced from the News Media Bargaining Code legislation that was due to be finalised by the Australian parliament. This article examines how both Google and Facebook responded to the draft Code, focussing on their threats to go dark, and the extent to which those threats were carried out. After exploring the context which produced the threats of going dark, this article looks at their impact, and how the Code was reshaped in light of those threats before it was finally legislated in early March 2021. Most importantly, this article outlines why Google and Facebook were prepared to go dark in Australia, and whether they succeeded in trying to prevent Australia setting the precedent of national governments dictating the terms by which digital platforms should pay for news content. From the Digital Platforms Inquiry to the Draft Code In July 2019, the Australian Treasurer released the Digital Platforms Inquiry Final Report which had been prepared by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). It outlined a range of areas where Australian law, policies and practices were not keeping pace with the realities of a digital world of search giants, social networks, and streaming media. Analysis of the submissions made as part of the Digital Platforms Inquiry found that the final report was “primarily framed around the concerns of media companies, particularly News Corp Australia, about the impact of platform companies’ market dominance of content distribution and advertising share, leading to unequal economic bargaining relationships and the gradual disappearance of journalism jobs and news media publishers” (Flew et al. 13). As such, one of the most provocative recommendations made was the establishment of a new code that would “address the imbalance in the bargaining relationship between leading digital platforms and news media businesses” (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Digital Platforms Inquiry 16). The ACCC suggested such a code would assist Australian news organisations of any size in negotiating with Facebook, Google and others for some form of payment for news content. The report was released at a time when there was a greatly increased global appetite for regulating digital platforms. Thus the battle over the Code was watched across the world as legislation that had the potential to open the door for similar laws in other countries (Flew and Wilding). Initially the report suggested that the digital giants should be asked to develop their own codes of conduct for negotiating with news organisations. These codes would have then been enforced within Australia if suitably robust. However, after months of the big digital platforms failing to produce meaningful codes of their own, the Australian government decided to commission their own rules in this arena. The ACCC thus prepared the draft legislation that was tabled in July 2020 as the Australian News Media Bargaining Code. According to the ACCC the Code, in essence, tried to create a level playing field where Australian news companies could force Google and Facebook to negotiate a ‘fair’ payment for linking to, or showing previews of, their news content. Of course, many commentators, and the platforms themselves, retorted that they already bring significant value to news companies by referring readers to news websites. While there were earlier examples of Google and Facebook paying for news, these were largely framed as philanthropy: benevolent digital giants supporting journalism for the good of democracy. News companies and the ACCC argued this approach completely ignored the fact that Google and Facebook commanded more than 80% of the online advertising market in Australia at that time (Meade, “Google, Facebook and YouTube”). Nor did the digital giants acknowledge their disruptive power given the bulk of that advertising revenue used to flow to news companies. Some of the key features of this draft of the Code included (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, “News Media Bargaining Code”): Facebook and Google would be the (only) companies initially ‘designated’ by the Code (i.e. specific companies that must abide by the Code), with Instagram included as part of Facebook. The Code applied to all Australian news organisations, and specifically mentioned how small, regional, and rural news media would now be able to meaningfully bargain with digital platforms. Platforms would have 11 weeks after first being contacted by a news organisation to reach a mutually negotiated agreement. Failure to reach agreements would result in arbitration (using a style of arbitration called final party arbitration which has both parties present a final offer or position, with an Australian arbiter simply choosing between the two offers in most cases). Platforms were required to give 28 days notice of any change to their algorithms that would impact on the ways Australian news was ranked and appeared on their platform. Penalties for not following the Code could be ten million dollars, or 10% of the platform’s annual turnover in Australia (whichever was greater). Unsurprisingly, Facebook, Google and a number of other platforms and companies reacted very negatively to the draft Code, with their formal submissions arguing: that the algorithm change notifications would give certain news companies an unfair advantage while disrupting the platforms’ core business; that charging for linking would break the underlying free nature of the internet; that the Code overstated the importance and reach of news on each platform; and many other objections were presented, including strong rejections of the proposed model of arbitration which, they argued, completely favoured news companies without providing any real or reasonable limit on how much news organisations could ask to be paid (Google; Facebook). Google extended their argument by making a second submission in the form of a report with the title ‘The Financial Woes of News Publishers in Australia’ (Shapiro et al.) that argued Australian journalism and news was financially unsustainable long before digital platforms came along. However, in stark contrast the Digital News Report: Australia 2020 found that Google and Facebook were where many Australians found their news; in 2020, 52% of Australians accessed news on social media (up from 46% the year before), with 39% of Australians getting news from Facebook, and that number jumping to 49% when specifically focusing on news seeking during the first COVID-19 pandemic peak in April 2021 (Park et al.). The same report highlighted that 43% of people distrust news found on social media (with a further 29% neutral, and only 28% of people explicitly trusting news found via social media). Moreover, 64% of Australians were concerned about misinformation online, and of all the platforms mentioned in the survey, respondents were most concerned about Facebook as a source of misinformation, with 36% explicitly indicating this was the place they were most concerned about encountering ‘fake news’. In this context Facebook and Google battled the Code by launching a public relations campaigns, appealing directly to Australian consumers. Google Drives a Bus Across Australia Google’s initial response to the draft Code was a substantial public relations campaign which saw the technology company advocating against the Code but not necessarily the ideas behind it. Google instead posited their own alternative way of paying for journalism in Australia. On the main Google search landing page, the usually very white surrounds of the search bar included the text “Supporting Australian journalism: a constructive path forward” which linked to a Google page outlining their version of a ‘Fair Code’. Popup windows appeared across many of Google’s services and apps, noting Google “are willing to pay to support journalism”, with a button labelled ‘Hear our proposal’. Figure 1: Popup notification on Google Australia directing users to Google’s ‘A Fair Code’ proposal rebutting the draft Code. (Screen capture by author, 29 January 2021) Google’s popups and landing page links were visible for more than six months as the Code was debated. In September 2020, a Google blog post about the Code was accompanied by a YouTube video campaign featuring Australia comedian Greta Lee Jackson (Google Australia, Google Explains Arbitration). Jackson used the analogy of Google as a bus driver, who is forced to pay restaurants for delivering customers to them, and then pay part of the running costs of restaurants, too. The video reinforced Google’s argument that the draft Code was asking digital platforms to pay potentially enormous costs for news content without acknowledging the value of Google bringing readers to the news sites. However, the video opened with the line that “proposed laws can be confusing, so I'll use an analogy to break it down”, setting a tone that would seem patronising to many people. Moreover, the video, and Google’s main argument, completely ignored the personal data Google receives every time a user searches for, or clicks on, a news story via Google Search or any other Google service. If Google’s analogy was accurate, then the bus driver would be going through every passenger’s bag while they were on the bus, taking copies of all their documents from drivers licenses to loyalty cards, keeping a record of every time they use the bus, and then using this information to get advertisers to pay for a tailored advertisement on the back of the seat in front of every passenger, every time they rode the bus. Notably, by the end of March 2021, the video had only received 10,399 views, which suggests relatively few people actually clicked on it to watch. In early January 2021, at the height of the debate about the Code, Google ran what they called “an experiment” which saw around 1% of Australian users suddenly only receive “older or less relevant content” when searching for news (Barnet, “Google’s ‘Experiment’”). While ostensibly about testing options for when the Code became law, the unannounced experiment also served as a warning shot. Google very effectively reminded users and politicians about their important role in determining which news Australian users find, and what might happen if Google darkened what they returned as news results. On 21 January 2021, Mel Silva, the Managing Director and public face of Google in Australia and New Zealand gave public testimony about the company’s position before a Senate inquiry. Silva confirmed that Google were indeed considering removing Google Search in Australia altogether if the draft Code was not amended to address their key concerns (Silva, “Supporting Australian Journalism: A Constructive Path Forward An Update on the News Media Bargaining Code”). Google’s seemingly sudden escalation in their threat to go dark led to articles such as a New York Times piece entitled ‘An Australia with No Google? The Bitter Fight behind a Drastic Threat’ (Cave). Google also greatly amplified their appeal to the Australian public, with a video featuring Mel Silva appearing frequently on all Google sites in Australia to argue their position (Google Australia, An Update). By the end of March 2021, Silva’s video had been watched more than 2.2 million times on YouTube. Silva’s testimony, video and related posts from Google all characterised the Code as: breaking “how Google search works in Australia”; creating a world where links online are paid for and thus both breaking Google and “undermin[ing] how the web works”; and saw Google offer their News Showcase as a viable alternative that, in Google’s view, was “a fair one” (Silva, “Supporting Australian Journalism”). Google emphasised submissions about the Code which backed their position, including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee who agreed that the idea of charging for links could have a more wide-reaching impact, challenging the idea of a free web (Leaver). Google also continued to release their News Showcase product in other parts of the world. They emphasised that there were existing arrangements for Showcase in Australia, but the current regulatory uncertainty meant it was paused in Australia until the debates about the Code were resolved. In the interim, news media across Australia, and the globe, were filled with stories speculating what an Australia would look like if Google went completely dark (e.g. Cave; Smyth). Even Microsoft weighed in to supporting the Code and offer their search engine Bing as a viable alternative to fill the void if Google really did go dark (Meade, “Microsoft’s Bing”). In mid-February, the draft Code was tabled in Australian parliament. Many politicians jumped at the chance to sing the Code’s praises and lament the power that Google and Facebook have across various spheres of Australian life. Yet as these speeches were happening, the Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was holding weekend meetings with executives from Google and Facebook, trying to smooth the path toward the Code (Massola). In these meetings, a number of amendments were agreed to, including the Code more clearly taking in to account any existing deals already on the table before it became law. In these meetings the Treasurer made in clear to Google that if the deals done prior to the Code were big enough, he would consider not designating Google under the Code, which in effect would mean Google is not immediately subject to it (Samios and Visentin). With that concession in hand Google swiftly signed deals with over 50 Australian news publishers, including Seven West Media, Nine, News Corp, The Guardian, the ABC, and some smaller publishers such as Junkee Media (Taylor; Meade, “ABC Journalism”). While the specific details of these deals were not made public, the deals with Seven West Media and Nine were both reported to be worth around $30 million Australian dollars (Dudley-Nicholson). In reacting to Google's deals Frydenberg described them as “generous deals, these are fair deals, these are good deals for the Australian media businesses, deals that they are making off their own bat with the digital giants” (Snape, “‘These Are Good Deals’”). During the debates about the Code, Google had ultimately ensured that every Australian user was well aware that Google was, in their words, asking for a “fair” Code, and before the Code became law even the Treasurer was conceding that Google’s was offering a “fair deal” to Australian news companies. Facebook Goes Dark on News While Google never followed through on their threat to go completely dark, Facebook took a very different path, with a lot less warning. Facebook’s threat to remove all news from the platform for users in Australia was not made explicit in their formal submissions the draft of the Code. However, to be fair, Facebook’s Managing Director in Australia and New Zealand Will Easton did make a blog post at the end of August 2020 in which he clearly stated: “assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram” (Easton). During the negotiations in late 2020 Instagram was removed as an initial target of the Code (just as YouTube was not included as part of Google) along with a number of other concessions, but Facebook were not sated. Yet Easton’s post about removing news received very little attention after it was made, and certainly Facebook made no obvious attempt to inform their millions of Australian users that news might be completely blocked. Hence most Australians were shocked when that was exactly what Facebook did. Facebook’s power has, in many ways, always been exercised by what the platform’s algorithms display to users, what content is most visible and equally what content is made invisible (Bucher). The morning of Wednesday, 17 February 2021, Australian Facebook users awoke to find that all traditional news and journalism had been removed from the platform. Almost all pages associated with news organisations were similarly either disabled or wiped clean, and that any attempt to share links to news stories was met with a notification: “this post can’t be shared”. The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacted angrily, publicly lamenting Facebook’s choice to “unfriend Australia”, adding their actions were “as arrogant as they were disappointing”, vowing that Australia would “not be intimidated by big tech” (Snape, “Facebook Unrepentant”). Figure 2: Facebook notification appearing when Australians attempted to share news articles on the platform. (Screen capture by author, 20 February 2021) Facebook’s news ban in Australia was not limited to official news pages and news content. Instead, their ban initially included a range of pages and services such as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, emergency services pages, health care pages, hospital pages, services providing vital information about the COVID-19 pandemic, and so forth. The breadth of the ban may have been purposeful, as one of Facebook’s biggest complaints was that the Code defined news too broadly (Facebook). Yet in the Australian context, where the country was wrestling with periodic lockdowns and the Coronavirus pandemic on one hand, and bushfires and floods on the other, the removal of these vital sources of information showed a complete lack of care or interest in Australian Facebook users. Beyond the immediate inconvenience of not being able to read or share news on Facebook, there were a range of other, immediate, consequences. As Barnet, amongst others, warned, a Facebook with all credible journalism banned would almost certainly open the floodgates to a tide of misinformation, with nothing left to fill the void; it made Facebook’s “public commitment to fighting misinformation look farcical” (Barnet, “Blocking Australian News”). Moreover, Bossio noted, “reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions” (Bossio). If going dark and turning off news in Australia was supposed to win the sympathy of Australian Facebook users, then the plan largely backfired. Yet as with Google, the Australian Treasurer was meeting with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook executives behind closed doors, which did eventually lead to changes before the Code was finally legislated (Massola). Facebook gained a number of concessions, including: a longer warning period before a Facebook could be designated by the Code; a longer period before news organisations would be able to expect negotiations to be concluded; an acknowledgement that existing deals would be taken in to account during negotiations; and, most importantly, a clarification that if Facebook was to once again block news this would both prevent them being subject to the Code and was not be something the platform could be punished for. Like Google, though, Facebook’s biggest gain was again the Treasurer making it clear that by making deals in advance on the Code becoming law, it was likely that Facebook would not be designated, and thus not subject to the Code at all (Samios and Visentin). After these concessions the news standoff ended and on 23 February the Australian Treasurer declared that after tense negotiations Facebook had “refriended Australia”; the company had “committed to entering into good-faith negotiations with Australian news media businesses and seeking to reach agreements to pay for content” (Visentin). Over the next month there were some concerns voiced about slow progress, but then major deals were announced between Facebook and News Corp Australia, and with Nine, with other deals following closely (Meade, “Rupert Murdoch”). Just over a week after the ban began, Facebook returned news to their platform in Australia. Facebook obviously felt they had won the battle, but Australia Facebook users were clearly cannon fodder, with their interests and wellbeing ignored. Who Won? The Immediate Aftermath of the Code After the showdowns with Google and Facebook, the final amendments to the Code were made and it was legislated as the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code (Australian Treasury), going into effect on 2 March 2021. However, when it became legally binding, not one single company was ‘designated’, meaning that the Code did not immediately apply to anyone. Yet deals had been struck, money would flow to Australian news companies, and Facebook had returned news to its platform in Australia. At the outset, Google, Facebook, news companies in Australia and the Australian government all claimed to have won the battle over the Code. Having talked up their tough stance on big tech platforms when the Digital Platforms Inquiry landed in 2019, the Australian Government was under public pressure to deliver on that rhetoric. The debates and media coverage surrounding the Code involved a great deal of political posturing and gained much public attention. The Treasurer was delighted to see deals being struck that meant Facebook and Google would pay Australian news companies. He actively portrayed this as the government protecting Australia’s interest and democracy. The fact that the Code was leveraged as a threat does mean that the nuances of the Code are unlikely to be tested in a courtroom in the near future. Yet as a threat it was an effective one, and it does remain in the Treasurer’s toolkit, with the potential to be deployed in the future. While mostly outside the scope of this article, it should definitely be noted that the biggest winner in the Code debate was Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp. They were the strongest advocates of regulation forcing the digital giants to pay for news in the first place, and had the most to gain and least to lose in the process. Most large news organisations in Australia have fared well, too, with new revenue flowing in from Google and Facebook. However, one of the most important facets of the Code was the inclusion of mechanisms to ensure that regional and small news publishers in Australia would be able to negotiate with Facebook and Google. While some might be able to band together and strike terms (and some already have) it is likely that many smaller news companies in Australia will miss out, since the deals being struck with the bigger news companies appear to be big enough to ensure they are not designated, and thus not subject to the Code (Purtill). A few weeks after the Code became law ACCC Chair Rod Sims stated that the “problem we’re addressing with the news media code is simply that we wanted to arrest the decline in money going to journalism” (Kohler). On that front the Code succeeded. However, there is no guarantee the deals will mean money will support actual journalists, rather than disappearing as extra corporate profits. Nor is there any onus on Facebook or Google to inform news organisations about changes to their algorithms that might impact on news rankings. Also, as many Australia news companies are now receiving payments from Google and Facebook, there is a danger the news media will become dependent on that revenue, which may make it harder for journalists to report on the big tech giants without some perceptions of a conflict of interest. In a diplomatic post about the Code, Google thanked everyone who had voiced concerns with the initial drafts of the legislation, thanked Australian users, and celebrated that their newly launched Google News Showcase had “two million views of content” with more than 70 news partners signed up within Australia (Silva, “An Update”). Given that News Showcase had already begun rolling out elsewhere in the world, it is likely Google were already aware they were going to have to contribute to the production of journalism across the globe. The cost of paying for news in Australia may well have fallen within the parameters Google had already decided were acceptable and inevitable before the debate about the Code even began (Purtill). In the aftermath of the Code becoming legislation, Google also posted a cutting critique of Microsoft, arguing they were “making self-serving claims and are even willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival” (Walker). In doing so, Google implicitly claimed that the concessions and changes to the Code they had managed to negotiate effectively positioned them as having championed the free and open web. At the end of February 2021, in a much more self-congratulatory post-mortem of the Code entitled “The Real Story of What Happened with News on Facebook in Australia”, Facebook reiterated their assertion that they bring significant value to news publishers and that the platform receives no real value in return, stating that in 2020 Facebook provided “approximately 5.1 billion free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimated AU$407 million to the news industry” (Clegg). Deploying one last confused metaphor, Facebook argued the original draft of the Code was “like forcing car makers to fund radio stations because people might listen to them in the car — and letting the stations set the price.” Of course, there was no mention that following that metaphor, Facebook would have bugged the car and used that information to plaster the internal surfaces with personalised advertising. Facebook also touted the success of their Facebook News product in the UK, albeit without setting a date for the rollout of the product in Australia. While Facebook did concede that “the decision to stop the sharing of news in Australia appeared to come out of nowhere”, what the company failed to do was apologise to Australian Facebook users for the confusion and inconvenience they experienced. Nevertheless, on Facebook’s own terms, they certainly positioned themselves as having come out winners. Future research will need to determine whether Facebook’s actions damaged their reputation or encouraged significant numbers of Australians to leave the platform permanently, but in the wake of a number of high-profile scandals, including Cambridge Analytica (Vaidhyanathan), it is hard to see how Facebook’s actions would not have further undermined consumer trust in the company and their main platform (Park et al.). In fighting the Code, Google and Facebook were not just battling the Australian government, but also the implication that if they paid for news in Australia, they likely would also have to do so in other countries. The Code was thus seen as a dangerous precedent far more than just a mechanism to compel payment in Australia. Since both companies ensured they made deals prior to the Code becoming law, neither was initially ‘designated’, and thus neither were actually subject to the Code at the time of writing. The value of the Code has been as a threat and a means to force action from the digital giants. How effective it is as a piece of legislation remains to be seen in the future if, indeed, any company is ever designated. For other countries, the exact wording of the Code might not be as useful as a template, but its utility to force action has surely been noted. Like the inquiry which initiated it, the Code set “the largest digital platforms, Google and Facebook, up against the giants of traditional media, most notably Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation” (Flew and Wilding 50). Yet in a relatively unusual turn of events, both sides of that battle claim to have won. At the same time, EU legislators watched the battle closely as they considered an “Australian-style code” of their own (Dillon). Moreover, in the month immediately following the Code being legislated, both the US and Canada were actively pursuing similar regulation (Baier) with Facebook already threatening to remove news and go dark for Canadian Facebook users (van Boom). For Facebook, and Google, the battle continues, but fighting the Code has meant the genie of paying for news content is well and truly out of the bottle. References Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Digital Platforms Inquiry: Final Report. 25 July 2019. <https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/inquiries/digital-platforms-inquiry/final-report-executive-summary>. ———. “News Media Bargaining Code: Draft Legislation.” Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, 22 July 2020. <https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code/draft-legislation>. Australian Treasury. Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Act 2021. Attorney-General’s Department, 2 Mar. 2021. <https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021A00021/Html/Text>. Baier, Jansen. “US Could Allow News Distribution Fees for Google, Facebook.” MediaFile, 31 Mar. 2021. <http://www.mediafiledc.com/us-could-allow-news-distribution-fees-for-google-facebook/>. 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Park, Sora, et al. Digital News Report: Australia 2020. Canberra: News and Media Research Centre, 16 June 2020. DOI:10.25916/5ec32f8502ef0. Purtill, James. “Facebook Thinks It Won the Battle of the Media Bargaining Code — but So Does the Government.” ABC News, 25 Feb. 2021. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-02-26/facebook-google-who-won-battle-news-media-bargaining-code/13193106>. Samios, Zoe, and Lisa Visentin. “‘Historic Moment’: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg Hails Google’s News Content Deals.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 Feb. 2021. <https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/historic-moment-treasurer-josh-frydenberg-hails-google-s-news-content-deals-20210217-p573eu.html>. Shapiro, Carl, et al. The Financial Woes of News Publishers in Australia. 27 Aug. 2020. <https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Google%20Annex.PDF>. Silva, Mel. “An Update on the News Media Bargaining Code.” Google Australia, 1 Mar. 2021. <http://www.google.com.au/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/>. ———. “Supporting Australian Journalism: A Constructive Path Forward – An Update on the News Media Bargaining Code.” Google Australia, 22 Jan. 2021. <https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/jan-6-letter/>. Smyth, Jamie. “Australian Companies Forced to Imagine Life without Google.” Financial Times, 9 Feb. 2021. <https://www.ft.com/content/fa66e8dc-afb1-4a50-8dfa-338a599ad82d>. Snape, Jack. “Facebook Unrepentant as Prime Minister Dubs Emergency Services Block ‘Arrogant.’” ABC News, 18 Feb. 2021. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-unrepentant-scott-morrison-dubs-move-arrogant/13169340>. ———. “‘These Are Good Deals’: Treasurer Praises Google News Deals amid Pressure from Government Legislation.” ABC News, 17 Feb. 2021. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-17/treasurer-praises-good-deals-between-google-news-seven/13163676>. Taylor, Josh. “Guardian Australia Strikes Deal with Google to Join News Showcase.” The Guardian, 20 Feb. 2021. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/20/guardian-australia-strikes-deal-with-google-to-join-news-showcase>. Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018. 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AbstractFor about a century, biodiversity in the tidal Wadden Sea (North Sea, European Atlantic) has increased by more than one hundred introduced species from overseas. Most originate from warmer waters and could facilitate the transformation of this coastal ecosystem to comply with climate warming. Some introduced species promote sediment stabilization and mud accretion. This could help tidal flats to keep up with sea level rise. Although some introduced species also entail negative effects, introductions have diversified lower food web levels, and may benefit foraging birds. So far, no resident populations have gone extinct because an introduced species had established. Rather than degrading the ecosystem, the establishment of introduced species seems to have raised the capacity to follow environmental change. We support increasing efforts against introductions to avoid risk. However, once species are integrated, the common condemnation attitude against “non-natives” or “aliens” ought to be reconsidered for tidal ecosystems of low biodiversity.

Introduction Australia’s mobile communications industry has been slower to embrace the convergence of digital communication technology compared to other areas of the Asia-Pacific region, in particular Japan. However, the introduction of new mobile networks and spread of broadband (albeit still limited in some areas) has given Australians opportunities to experience the new technosocial communications. As a result mobile communication resources have become embedded within a sociocultural infrastructure that is at once mobile, personalised and consumerist. This paper examines how the iGeneration (or ‘Internet Generation’, those born in the first half of the 1980s and who were the first to grow up in a networked and communications media driven society) of young Australians have taken up and embraced the mobile technologies as part of their everyday sociability. This journal issue is concerned to understand the significance of the convergence of mobile media. In this paper ‘mobile’ is taken to refer to the range of digital media that are owned and used by the iGeneration. These can include mobile phones, laptops, computers alongside an array of other digital social software and Web 2.0 resources such as email, Social Networking Systems (SNS), e.g. Facebook, that enable individuals to situate themselves and communicate across their social networks. The discussion that follows will touch on all of these mobile communication resources. It is argued that these should be seen as more than technical tools, as they offer a constant ‘tether’ to personalised and intimate connections (Ito et al, 2005). This in itself is significant because the emphasis is on a digitally mobile and connected sociability rather than any single device or piece of software. It will be concluded that this connected sociability means that for the iGeneration there is a seamless movement across what has been previously depicted as an off/online and disembodied dichotomy. Researching the iGeneration The paper draws on the data from 40 in-depth and open-ended interviews with undergraduate students who were in the last term of their first year at University in Australia in 2006. The conventions of anonymity have been followed to ensure that no individual may be identified. All interviews were digitally recorded (with permission) and detailed analysis undertaken utilising AtlasTi. The analysis involved identifying themes and issues as they emerged from reading and re-reading of the data. This group was chosen as they had established non-university social networks and new connections amongst university peers. The focus on what constitutes one of the more privileged sections of young people in terms of education, if not material resources, is appropriate in a study that seeks to explore those who are likely to be able to take advantage of innovative communications technology. Extracts from the interview data for this paper, are not intended to be representative, but rather are used for illustrative purposes. Mobile Life The diffusion of communications media has become ubiquitous amongst the iGeneration who are socially, temporally and spatially mobile and likely to immerse themselves in their social connections. This is a generation that has been said to “inhabit a different world” (Muller), where seemingly unregulated flows of information and methods of staying in touch with others ‘situate’ social lives as part of mobile sociability. Part of this more mobile sociability is the crossover between global and localised connections. Indeed, globalisation theorists have emphasised how the world is characterised by the flows of such information. Urry has paid particular attention to the forms of mobility that take place in a society characterised by the exchange and sharing of information and communication practices. This paper has a narrower focus and is concerned with what might be thought of as ‘local’ communicative practices between people situated in the same city and at the same, but dispersed, institutions. Mobile communications technology takes on an increasingly ‘invisible’ sociotechnological power that underlies the structure and shapes the experience of everyday sociability and relationships (Graham). Identified as “Digital Natives” by Prensky these individuals ‘thrive’ on their constant connectivity to one another. The following quote reflects the sentiments of many of the students interviewed: I would never be without my phone, or at least having some way of being in touch with my friends. People tend to have ties everywhere now and I find that I am always in touch at the click of a button anytime. (Jon) Key to social interaction for the iGeneration is to be constantly ‘switched on’ and available to others. Significantly, the mediated aspects of mobile technology means that social connections are valued for their ‘liveness’, whereby interactions are expected to take place in ‘real time’. In this way the iGeneration have become both the producers and consumers of ‘live’ content where personal engagements are ‘active’. This ensures that individuals are (and are seen to be) socially and digitally engaged. The new social practices that form part of an ‘on-the-go’ and ‘ever-current’ lifestyle means that to be ‘in touch’ has taken on a new symbolic and social form. All 40 of the students interviewed mentioned that they could not ‘imagine’ being detached from their social networks, or without some form of communication device on their person. The relationship between previously defined on and offline lives, or ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ situations are not separate entities in this context. Instead they are inextricably linked together as the individual is continually socially connected. Individuals are part of a constant present-ness and engagement to what is experienced as a lived or ‘worldspace’, rather than static ‘real’/’virtual’ world duality (Steinberg cited by White). As a result members of the iGeneration have to maintain two active and dynamic social presences, one that is ‘real’ world and the other that is virtual. They are always ‘situated’ in both their embodied and disembodied digital lives, and yet this is a duality that many do not consciously recognise as they move ‘seamlessly’ across different venues for sociability. In order to remain ‘up-to-date’ communication strategies are employed, as one student explained: Things are changing so fast, like you go away for just one day and you are just so out of the loop, things change continually and it’s nice to be part of that. It’s hard if you miss a message because then you are behind and don’t know what’s going on… you have to continue to make the effort if you want to stay in touch. (Kim) In Goffman’s classic analysis of face-to-face interaction he revealed the complexity of social communication and the nuanced use of ‘props’ and ‘backstage work’. In a similar fashion the mediated and real time interaction amongst the iGeneration is full of symbolic meanings and rituals. Ironically in what is often thought of as a disembodied sociability, where time and place cease to matter, it is the immediacy or live presence that is valued. Thus social life rotates around the emergence of a set of continually updated communications between individuals. Social relationships are ‘reworked’ as mobile communications introduces a new layer of social connectiveness. The process of communicating with someone is not just about what is expressed, but includes a set of subjective meanings as to the ‘whom’ an individual is and value of a relationship. Successful communication and development of relations through technology require the engagement of the self with shared social conventions and representations. Mobile technology has enabled a whole generation to mobilise relationships and connections whilst ‘on the move’ in a way that strengthen social bonds and facilitates a sense of social connectedness (Wei and Lo). Getting to Know Each Other For members of the iGeneration traditional forms of social meetings, and indeed settings, have become modified to take into account constant social connectivity. Students employ technologies to provide new ways of ‘getting-to-know’ others and to develop relationships. In particular, SNS is used to find out about potential new friends by drawing on the profiles and connections that are displayed on resources such as Facebook. Profiles involve the creation of a virtual ‘identity’ that represents an individual and may include digital photographs, music, a detailed self-description, lists of interests and of other ‘friends’ etc. Sites such as Facebook are popular because (at the time the research was undertaken) they require an email address from an academic institution in order to join. Consequently, users trusted the information displayed on these sites and rarely questioned whether the descriptions that they read were accurate (Jones and Soltren). Not only would it be seen as breaking communicative norms to, for example fabricate an identity on Facebook, it would also be a fabrication that would be difficult to maintain across the various media that are in use. Indeed it would be ultimately pointless in terms of a sociability that moves across media and between the virtual and non-virtual domains. Such sites are geared to the student population and it is often taken-for-granted that amongst students that they will have a Facebook profile. Reflecting this university clubs and societies distribute notices of events and so forth through Facebook. Individual profiles may also display mobile phone numbers and other points of contact so that the online descriptions of the self are linked to other forms of connection. As this Melbourne student explains, these resources provide new means of ‘getting to know’ others. The way in is different now if you are getting to know someone, before maybe you went out a few times and got to know their circle of friends, but now you can check out their MySpace profile, or send them a message on Facebook BEFORE you meet up. Just by messaging each other you know that there’s no awkwardness or danger of gaps in conversation before you get together. (Tom) In effect the individual is digitally represented in a range of digital spaces so that a stranger can imagine or construct a sense of the ‘real’ person without ‘knowing’ or engaging with them. Such imaginings represent an important means of being on familiar terms with others and the ‘social value’ or individuals ‘place’ within a social network (Gotved). In the early stages of becoming acquainted with someone the status of the individual was related to the how frequently they were contacted and the form of interaction that took place. As noted earlier Goffman’s (1978 [1959]) work is useful as social ceremonies and rules for interaction can be detected although these are often taken-for-granted unless people are prompted to talk about how they communicate with others. They are perhaps best exemplified by the following descriptions from students talking about how they ‘got-to-know’ one another at the beginning of the university term: When you are getting to know someone it’s interesting to see if they’ll message you or call, then your like ‘oh he’s a caller’ and can go from there. (Emma) If I don’t know the person well I like to text, I am not good on the phone and so it creates a way to say ‘hi’ without the danger of awkward gaps. Then you find yourself messaging back and forth and can meet up later… (Katie) You have to play to their agenda otherwise you never hook up. (Stu) Instant messaging like on MSN or texts or whatever totally helps with getting to know someone. Before you meet up you can find out whether you’ll get on or not and whether it’s worth you while meeting up. Kind of like a filtering process. (Dan) This mediated process may involve text messages, emails and mobile calls before individuals meet offline. Members of the iGeneration therefore use an integrated set of devices and software resources to initiate and maintain friendship networks. In effect the often-rich descriptions created in SNS reflect a visualisation of what Bourdieu has described as ‘habitus’. This notion of habitus, that can basically be seen as set of acquired dispositions is appropriate, as “when habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a “fish in water” ... it takes the world about itself for granted” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 127). This neatly describes how the iGeneration incorporates mobile communications technology into their everyday lives. An Etiquette for Mobility The ‘rules’, attitudes and expectations, that come into play as part of these new mobile communication practices continue to remain tied to a recognised and preconceived social ordering. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of this kind of mobile communication is the adherence to a set of social rules through which individuals continually control the process of interaction itself. This includes for example, the pace of communication, when to text, to make a voice call, or to email, and so forth. Galloway has argued that there is a “decidedly playful” aspect to mobile interaction. However, a range of communicative strategies underwrites this ‘play’ as periods of non-contactability have to be ‘justified’ or explained. If such episodes are not explained these can become problematic, generate misunderstandings or cause anxieties within networks and emergent relationships. Indeed, the “simple fact of carrying a mobile phone generates in the carrier the expectation of being immediately available” (Licoppe and Heurtin 100). For this reason a sense of disappointment, or cause for concern, may be experienced if an individual receives for example no text messages for a period of time. Amongst those students who were in regular contact with one other a set of what can be thought of as ‘communicative regimes’ is negotiated. These arise out of social practices for connectivity that are part of virtual and face-to-face meetings. Such negotiations may be largely implicit but occur out of a shared sense of ‘knowing’ the other. Actions or non-actions such as not answering a voice call or responding to a message straight away can be seen as a social distancing. For example, a student talked about how he always immediately returned a text message to his housemate because “it was expected” and to delay a response without an explanation would not be seen as an appropriate response to a “close mate” (Riley). Consequently communication regimes are developed around relationships and may be layered in terms of status within a peer group. For the iGeneration such practices reflect what in pervious times would have been thought of as etiquette. It is interesting to note that at the time of writing this paper there were 11 global groups with some 2,870 members on Facebook dedicated to what is described as ‘Facebook etiquette’. Conclusion A purpose of this paper is to suggest that recent changes in the provision of information and communications services in Australia have created new opportunities for an iGeneration to incorporate the technologies within their everyday lives. There are similarities here with the practices found amongst young people in Japan, South Korea and other counties that have some of the most advanced publicly available communications infrastructures (Ito et al). It is worth noting that 3rd Generation mobile phones, and video technologies are less common in Australia, hence future convergence remains open to speculation and dependent upon improved network infrastructures and marketing. The emphasis in Australia is on the seamless use of different mobile communications technologies and the embedding of these within broader social practices. The convenience and ‘pocketability’ of communications devices has become one of the most important innovations for an iGeneration that desires communication, information and entertainment accessible in the palm of their hand, a first step “towards a digital paradise” (Standage). However, care has to be taken to differentiate between media and marketing hype and actual social practices. Commentaries and research in the early days of the Internet tended to focus on the possibilities it offered to escape the fleshy body through the screen into new identities, genders and bodily forms (Turkle; Haraway). While there are resources such as Second Life that provide a means to escape form the embodied self the main concern of the iGeneration is to promote sociability across the digital and real worlds. One reinforces and reflects the other so that the virtual self is always anchored in the embodied self. It is the convergence of the self through such representations that whilst not exactly embodied in a physical sense refer to a ‘real’ physicality and presence. This suggest that in terms of social practices for the iGeneration the virtual/place dichotomy is unhelpful and as Daniel Miller and Don Slater note “we need to treat Internet media as continuous with and embedded in other social spaces” (5). The convergence of mobile communicative resources highlighted in this paper and their embodiment into social practices suggests that users may have little more to gain in terms of sociability from, for example, streaming video on mobile phones. The emotive experience of being ‘in touch’ with one another remains a fundamental amongst the iGeneration who draw upon a range of mobile media and social software to form and sustain interactions. Such connections are conducted through a more or less nuanced set of communicative regimes that move across what for them is a seamless landscape of mediated and off line resources and relationships. References Bourdieu, Pierre, and L. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978 [1959]. Gotved, S. “Time and Space in Cyber Social Reality.” New Media and Society 8.3 (2006): 467-486. Graham, S. “Beyond the ‘Dazzling Light’: From Dreams of Transcendence to the ‘Remediation’.” New Media Society 6 (2004): 16-25. Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda. Personal, Portable Pedestrian. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. Harvey Jones, H., and J.H. Soltren. “Facebook: Threats to Privacy.” MIT, Dec. 2005. 6 Feb. 2007 http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/ facebook.pdf>. Licoppe, Christian, and J.P. Heurtin. “Managing One’s Availability to Telephone Communication through Mobile Phones.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 5 (201): 99-108. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Muller, D. “Y Bother? This Generation Inhabits a Different World.” Sydney Morning Herald 3 Oct. 2006. Prensky, M. “The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native.” Marcprensky.com 2004. 2 Jan. 2007 http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp>. Standage, T. “Your Television Is Ringing.” The Economist: A Special Report on the Future of Telecoms. 14-20 Oct. 2006. Turkle, S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Urry, John. “Mobile Sociology.” British Journal of Sociology 51.1 (2000): 185-203. White, M. “Television and Internet Differences by Design.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12.3 (2006): 341-355. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hardey, Mariann. "Going Live: Converging Mobile Technology and the Sociability of the iGeneration." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/09-hardey.php>. APA Style Hardey, M. (Mar. 2007) "Going Live: Converging Mobile Technology and the Sociability of the iGeneration," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/09-hardey.php>.

Abstract Background Niemann-Pick Disease Type C (NPC) is an autosomal recessive rare disease characterised by progressive neurovisceral manifestations. The collection of on-going large-scale NPC clinical data may generate better understandings of the natural history of the disease. Here we report NPC patient data from the International Niemann-Pick Disease Registry (INPDR). Method The INPDR is a web-based, patient-led independent registry for the collection of prospective and retrospective clinical data from Niemann-Pick Disease patients. Baseline data from NPC patients enrolled into the INPDR from September 2014 to December 2019 was extracted to analyse the demographic, genetic and clinical features of the disease. Results A total of 203 NPC patients from six European countries were included in this study. The mean age (SD) at diagnosis was 11.2 years (14.2). Among enrolled patients, 168 had known neurological manifestations: 43 (24.2%) had early-infantile onset, 47 (26.4%) had late-infantile onset, 41 (23.0%) had juvenile onset, and 37 (20.8%) had adult onset. 10 (5.6%) patients had the neonatal rapidly fatal systemic form. Among the 97 patients with identified NPC1 variants, the most common variant was the c. 3182T > C variant responsible for the p.lle1061Thr protein change, reported in 35.1% (N = 34) of patients. The frequencies of hepatomegaly and neonatal jaundice were greatest in patients with early-infantile and late-infantile neurological onset. Splenomegaly was the most commonly reported observation, including 80% of adult-onset patients. The most commonly reported neurological manifestations were cognitive impairment (78.5%), dysarthria (75.9%), ataxia (75.9%), vertical supranuclear gaze palsy (70.9%) and dysphagia (69.6%). A 6-domain composite disability scale was used to calculate the overall disability score for each neurological form. Across all with neurological onset, the majority of patients showed moderate to severe impairments in all domains, except for ‘swallowing’ and ‘seizure’. The age at diagnosis and death increased with increased age of neurological symptom onset. Miglustat use was recorded in 62.4% of patients and the most common symptomatic therapies used by patients were antiepileptics (32.9%), antidepressants (11.8%) and antacids (9.4%). Conclusion The proportion of participants at each age of neurological onset was relatively equal across the cohort. Neurological manifestations, such as ataxia, dysphagia, and dysarthria, were frequently observed across all age categories.

IntroductionCan a person’s tastes in art, music, literature, cinema, sport, humour or other fields be changed through online activity? This article explores that question by comparing recent research findings in the areas of neuroplasticity and flow. Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, is the idea that the human brain can change its structure and function through thought and activity, even into old age (Doidge). The second concept—flow—comes from the field of psychology, and refers to a deeply satisfying state of focused attention that people sometimes experience while engaging in an enjoyable activity such as browsing the Web (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow). Research into the experiences of web users, conducted from these two different perspectives, reveal interesting connections to the acquisition of taste and opportunities for further investigation. Neuroplasticity The term neuroplasticity comes from the words neuron and plastic. Neurons are the nerve cells in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic, in this context, means flexibility or malleability. Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held belief that the brain is a physiologically static organ, hard-wired like a machine (Kolb, Gibb and Robinson). For much of the last century, scientists believed that adult brains, unlike those of children, could not produce new neurons or build new pathways or connections between neurons. According to this view, any brain function that was lost through damage was irretrievable. Today, research into neuroplasticity has proven that this is not the case. In the late 1960s and 1970s pioneering scientists such as Paul Bach-y-Rita demonstrated that brains change their structure with different activities they perform (Kercel). When certain parts fail, other parts can sometimes take over. Subsequent research by many scientists has validated this once-controversial idea, leading to practical benefits such as the restoration of limb function in stroke victims, and improved cognition and perception in people with learning disabilities (Nowak et al.). Merzenich, for example, has demonstrated how a brain’s processing areas, called brain maps, change in response to what people do over the course of their lives. Different brain maps exist for different activities and functions, including sensory perception, motor skills and higher mental activities. Brain maps are governed by competition for mental resources and the principle of “use it or lose it.” If a person stops exercising particular mental skills, such as speaking Spanish or playing piano, then the brain map space for those skills is handed over to skills that they practise instead. Brain maps are also governed by a principle that is summarised by the expression, “neurons that fire together wire together” (Doidge 63). Neurons in brain maps develop stronger connections to each other when they are activated at the same moment in time. Consequently people are able to form new maps by developing new neural connections. Acquiring Tastes Doidge has illustrated the role that neuroplasticity plays in acquiring new tastes by explaining how habitual viewing of online pornography can shape sexual tastes (102). In the mid- to late-1990s, Doidge (a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) treated several men who had lost interest in their sexual partners as a consequence of their addiction to online pornography. Doidge explains their change of sexual taste in terms of neuroplasticity, noting that “pornography, delivered by high-speed Internet connections, satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change” (102). The sexual excitement of viewing pornography releases a chemical neurotransmitter named dopamine that activates the brain’s pleasure centres. Since “neurons that fire together wire together”, the repeated viewing of pornography effectively wires the pornographic images into the pleasure centres of the brain with the focused attention required for neuroplastic change. In other words, habitual viewers of pornography develop new brain maps based on the photos and videos they see. And since the brain operates on a “use it or lose it” principle, they long to keep those new maps activated. Consequently, pornography has an addictive power. Like all addicts, the men who Doidge treated developed a tolerance to the photos and videos they observed and sought out progressively higher levels of stimulation for satisfaction. Doidge explains the result: The content of what they found exciting changed as the Web sites introduced themes and scripts that altered their brains without their awareness. Because plasticity is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images increased at the expense of what had previously attracted them—the reason, I believe, they began to find their girlfriends less of a turn-on. (109) If the habitual viewing of online pornography can change sexual tastes, what other tastes can be changed through online activity? Art? Music? Literature? Cinema? Sport? Humour? One avenue for investigating this question is to consider existing research into the flow experiences of web users. The term flow refers to a deeply satisfying state of focused attention that was first identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Beyond Boredom) in his studies of optimal experiences. According to Csikszentmihalyi, people in flow “are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Flow 4). Flow experiences are characterised by some common elements, which include a balance between the challenges of an activity and the skills required to meet those challenges; clear goals and feedback; concentration on the task at hand; a sense of control; a merging of action and awareness; a loss of self-consciousness; a distorted sense of time; and the autotelic experience. The term autotelic refers to an activity that is done, not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward. Whenever people reflect on their flow experiences, they mention some, and often all, of these characteristics. Support for Csikszentmihalyi’s characterisation of flow can be found in studies of many diverse activities, such as playing computer games (Chen) and participating in sport (Jackson), to mention just two examples. The activities that people engage in to experience flow vary enormously, but they describe how it feels in almost identical terms. Pace has developed a grounded theory of the flow experiences of web users engaged in content-seeking activities including directed searching and exploratory browsing. The term grounded in this instance refers to the fact that the theory was developed using the Grounded Theory research method, and its explanations are grounded in the study’s data rather than deduced from research literature (Charmaz). A review of that theory reveals many similarities between the flow experiences of web users engaged in content-seeking activities and the experiences of habitual viewers of online pornography described by Doidge. The following sections will consider several of those similarities. Focused Attention Focused attention is essential for long-term neuroplastic change. Goleman notes that “when practice occurs while we are focusing elsewhere, the brain does not rewire the relevant circuitry for that particular routine” (164). In a series of brain mapping experiments with monkeys, Merzenich discovered that “lasting changes occurred only when his monkeys paid close attention” (Doidge 68). When the animals performed tasks without paying close attention, their brain maps changed, but the changes did not last. Focused attention also plays a central role in the flow experiences of web users. The higher-than-average challenges associated with flow activities require a complete focusing of attention on the task at hand, or as Csikszentmihalyi puts it, “a centering of attention on a limited stimulus field” (Beyond Boredom 40). An important by-product of this fact is that flow leaves no room in one’s consciousness for irrelevant thoughts, worries or distractions (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow 58). People who experience flow frequently report that, while it lasts, they are able to forget about the unpleasant aspects of life. Consider the following comment from a 42-year-old male’s recollection of experiencing flow while using the Web: “It’s a total concentration experience. You’re so interested in doing what it is you’re doing that nothing’s interrupting you.” In everyday life, one’s concentration is rarely so intense that all preoccupations disappear from consciousness, but that is precisely what happens in a flow experience. All of the troubling thoughts that normally occupy the mind are temporarily suspended while the pressing demands of the flow activity consume one’s attention. Let’s now consider a second similarity between the flow experiences of web users and the taste-changing experiences of habitual viewers of online pornography. Enjoyment The pleasure experienced by the pornography addicts treated by Doidge played an important role in the alteration of their brain maps and sexual tastes. Since “neurons that fire together wire together”, the repeated viewing of pornographic photos and videos wired those images into the pleasure centres of their brains with the focused attention required for neuroplastic change. Web users in flow also experience enjoyment, but possibly a different kind of enjoyment to the pleasure described by Doidge. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi make the following distinction between pleasure and enjoyment: Pleasure is the good feeling that comes from satisfying homeostatic needs such as hunger, sex, and bodily comfort. Enjoyment, on the other hand, refers to the good feelings people experience when they break through the limits of homeostasis—when they do something that stretches them beyond what they were—in an athletic event, an artistic performance, a good deed, a stimulating conversation. (12) The enjoyment experienced by people in flow is sometimes described as “the autotelic experience.” According to Csikszentmihalyi, an autotelic experience is “a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward” (Flow 67). Because autotelic experiences are so satisfying, they create a strong desire to repeat the activity that produced the experience. Consider the following comment from a web user about the reasons he enjoys online content-seeking activities that have led to flow: It’s like going to somewhere new. You’re always learning something. You’re always finding something. And you don’t know what it is you’re going to find. There’s so much out there that you’ll go there one day and then you’ll come back, and you’ll actually end up on a different path and finding something different. So it’s investigation of the unknown really. This comment, like many web users’ recollections of their flow experiences, points to a relationship between enjoyment and discovery. This connection is also evident in flow experiences that occur during other kinds of activities. For example, Csikszentmihalyi suggests that “the reason we enjoy a particular activity is not because such pleasure has been previously programmed in our nervous system, but because of something discovered as a result of interaction” (The Evolving Self 189). He illustrates this point with the example of a person who is at first indifferent to or bored by a particular activity, such as listening to classical music. When opportunities for action in the context of the activity become clearer, or when the individual’s skills improve, the activity may start to be interesting and finally gratifying. For example, if a person begins to understand the design underlying a symphony he or she might begin to enjoy the act of listening. This example hints at how discovery, enjoyment and other rewards of flow may engender change in a person’s taste. Let’s now consider a third similarity between the two areas of research. Compulsive Behaviour One consequence of flow experiences being so enjoyable is that they create a strong desire to repeat whatever helped to make them happen. If a person experiences flow while browsing online for new music, for example, he or she will probably want to repeat that activity to enjoy the experience again. Consider the following comment from a 28-year-old female web user who recalled experiencing flow intermittently over a period of three days: “I did go to bed—really late. And then as soon as I got up in the morning I was zoom—straight back on there […] I guess it’s a bit like a gambling addiction.” This study informant’s use of the term addiction highlights another similarity between the flow experiences of web users and habitual viewing of online pornography. Flow experiences can, in a very small percentage of cases, encourage compulsive behaviour and possibly addiction. A study by Khang, Kim and Kim found that “experiences of the flow state significantly influenced media addiction” across three media forms: the Internet, mobile phones and video games (2423). Examples of problems associated with excessive Internet use include sleep deprivation, poor eating and exercise habits, conflict with family members, and neglect of academic, interpersonal, financial and, occupational responsibilities (Douglas et al). Some heavy Internet users report feelings of moodiness and anxiety while they are offline, along with an intense desire to log in. Doidge states that “the addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor” (106), but many researchers are reluctant to apply the term addiction to heavy Internet use. Internet addiction first came to the attention of the research community in the mid-1990s when Young conceptualised it as an impulse-control disorder and proposed a set of diagnostic criteria based on the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, after more than fifteen years of research on this subject, there is still no agreement on a definition or diagnostic criteria for Internet addiction. Some researchers argue that Internet addiction is not a true addiction and may be no more than a symptom of other existing disorders such as anxiety or depression (Weinstein and Lejoyeux). Regardless of this controversy, the potential for compulsive behaviour is another clear similarity between the flow experiences of web users and the neuroplastic change caused by habitual viewing of online pornography. One more similarity will be considered. Sidetracks In Pace’s study of the flow experiences of web users, informants reported engaging in two general types of content-seeking behaviour: (1) a directed searching mode in which one is motivated to find a particular piece of content such as the answer to a question or a specific music video; and (2) an exploratory browsing mode that is characterised by diffuse motives such as passing time or seeking stimulation. Directed searching and exploratory browsing are not dichotomous forms of navigation behaviour. On the contrary, they are closely interrelated. Web users move back and forth between the two modes, often many times within the same session. Just as web users can change from one navigation mode to another, they can also get sidetracked from one topic to another. For instance, it is reportedly quite common for a web user engaged in a content-seeking activity to decide to pursue a different goal because his or her curiosity is aroused by interesting content or links that are not directly relevant to the task at hand. Consider the following comment from a 21-year-old female web user whose desire to find contact details for a local Tai Chi group disappeared when a link to the Sportsgirl web site attracted her attention: I think I typed in “sports” […] I was actually looking for a place to do Tai Chi and that sort of thing. So I was looking for a sport. And it ended up coming up with the Sportsgirl web site. And I ended up looking at clothes all afternoon. So that was kind of cool. Sidetracks are a common feature of the flow experiences of web users. They are also a prominent feature of the description that Doidge provided of the pornography addicts’ neuroplastic change (109). The content of what the men found exciting changed as the web sites they viewed introduced “themes and scripts” or sidetracks that altered their brain maps. “Without being fully aware of what they were looking for, they scanned hundreds of images and scenarios until they hit upon an image or sexual script that touched some buried theme that really excited them”, Doidge notes (110). Conclusion Can a person’s tastes in art, music, literature, cinema, sport, humour or some other field be changed through online activity, just as sexual tastes can? This article alone cannot conclusively answer that question, but significant similarities between the flow experiences of web users and the neuroplastic change experienced by habitual viewers of online pornography suggest that flow theory could be a fruitful line of investigation. Can the flow experiences of web users lead to changes in taste, just as the neuroplastic change caused by habitual viewing of online pornography can lead to changes in sexual taste? What is the relationship between flow and neuroplastic change? Is the Internet the most appropriate environment for exploring these questions about taste, or do offline flow activities provide insights that have been neglected? These are some of the unanswered questions arising from this discussion that require further investigation. Advances in the field of neuroplasticity have been described as some of “the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century” (Doidge xv). These advances provide an opportunity to revisit related theories and to enhance our understanding of phenomena such as flow and taste. References Charmaz, Kathy. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2006. Chen, Jenova. “Flow in Games (and Everything Else).” Communications of the ACM 50.4 (2007): 31–34. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play in Work and Games. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1975. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990. Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2010. Douglas, Alecia C., Juline E. Mills, Mamadou Niang, Svetlana Stepchenkova, Sookeun Byun, Celestino Ruffini, Seul Ki Lee, Jihad Loutfi, Jung-Kook Lee, Mikhail Atallah, and Marina Blanton. “Internet Addiction: Meta-Synthesis of Qualitative Research for the Decade 1996-2006.” Computers in Human Behavior 24 (2008): 3027–3044. Goleman, Daniel. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. Jackson, Susan. “Toward a Conceptual Understanding of the Flow Experience in Elite Athletes.” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 67.1 (1996): 76–90. Khang, Hyoungkoo, Jung Kyu Kim, and Yeojin Kim. “Self-Traits and Motivations as Antecedents of Digital Media Flow and Addiction: The Internet, Mobile Phones, and Video Games.” Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013): 2416–2424. Kercel, Stephen W. “Editorial: The Wide-Ranging Impact of the Work of Paul Bach-y-Rita.” Journal of Integrative Neuroscience 4.4 (2005): 403–406. Kolb, Bryan, Robbin Gibb, and Terry E. Robinson. “Brain Plasticity and Behavior.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12.1 (2003): 1–5. Merzenich, Michael. Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life. San Francisco: Parnassus Publishing, 2013. Nowak, Dennis A., Kathrin Bösl, Jitka Podubeckà, and James R. Carey. “Noninvasive Brain Stimulation and Motor Recovery After Stroke.” Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 28 (2010): 531–544. Pace, Steven. “A Grounded Theory of the Flow Experiences of Web Users.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 60.3 (2004): 327–363. Seligman, Martin E. P., and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “Positive Psychology: An Introduction.” American Psychologist 55.1 (2000): 5–14. Weinstein, Aviv, and Michel Lejoyeux. “Internet Addiction or Excessive Internet Use.” The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 36 (2010): 277–283. Young, Kimberly S. Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction—And a Winning Strategy for Recovery. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Urban nature sites are crucial places for the promotion of human health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are few interdisciplinary studies that simultaneously investigate the impact of a range of social and environmental factors on potential shifts in urban nature site visitation. We sought to do this by analyzing both geospatial data of the amenities and environmental features of urban nature sites with a web-based survey of urban nature site visitation in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. We found that 53% of surveyed participants decreased visitation during the pandemic, while 26% increased visitation, 21% had no change, and only 1.7% were first-time visitors of urban nature sites. We developed a multiple linear regression model for shifts in visitation frequency during the pandemic, and found that a relative increase in visitation was positively associated with higher ratings of the physical and mental health contribution of the urban nature sites, higher nature maintenance and accessibility ratings, and visiting with a spouse, but negatively associated with variables such as car transportation, visit length, shrub habitat, age, and visiting alone or for romantic dates. Our results suggest that the perceived health benefits and accessibility of urban nature sites could be key in motivating visitation during the pandemic more than the specific environmental features or amenities of these sites. Given the on-going threats of the pandemic and other environmental crises, it is imperative to continue supporting the creation, maintenance, and monitoring of urban nature sites for not only urban ecosystems and biodiversity, but also so that they can contribute to the health of all urban residents.

One night in 2014, Mike, the head manager of Mellow Mushroom Tampa, paused from his exhausting evening to stare at the paper schedule posted on the wall. The schedule was covered in a mess of writing from employees drawing arrows to swap shifts, or asking others to pick up shifts. He had always tried to accommodate people’s schedules, but the task was becoming stressful and exasperating. That night one of the employees scheduled to work had neglected to show up, and none of the other employees Mike called could cover the shift. This meant that Mike would spend the remainder of the evening filling in at the bar as well as covering a few tables. Meanwhile, he would still be dealing with customer questions and complaints. Mike wished this was a rare occasion, but at least once a month he would have no-shows, either due to a conflict with an employee’s schedule, or because they did not even know they had been scheduled to work. Mike knew there had to be a way to fix the scheduling issues. Usually employees covered for one another by swapping shifts, or adjusting the time they came in to work. However, that was not always possible. At times a “he said/she said” situation would occur, where one employee would swear he/she had switched shifts with another, while the other would be equally fervent in arguing that no such agreement had been made. Occasionally there would be text message evidence as a means of proof, but that did not happen often. Again Mike wished there was a solution to this problematic situation. Recently, one of Mike’s more reliable employees had brought up a possible solution. She had come to the Tampa location from a different Mellow Mushroom in Florida, where the entire scheduling system ran on a web-based service. According to the employee, everyone at her old location loved using the website, except the ones who had their overtime hours cut. Mellow Mushroom Tampa had been using a paper method to schedule employees for nine years, so Mike knew he would have to make a solid argument to the owner if he was going to justify the change and added expense. The owner might think Mike was trying to make his own job easier at the expense of the company. Also, Mike would have to consider the potential problems with online software like glitches, costs and implementation issues. He would have to decide if this service was right for the Tampa location, and if so, how he could make a convincing argument for it to be implemented.

Abstract Background The web-based BeUpstanding program supports desk workers to sit less and move more. Successfully translated from a research-delivered intervention, BeUpstanding has gone through iterative development and evaluation phases in preparation for wide-scale implementation. In the third planned “early-adopters” phase (01/09/2017–11/06/2019), the program was made freely-available online. An integrated delivery and evaluation platform was also developed to enable workplace champions to run and evaluate the intervention within their work team independent of researcher support. Using the RE-AIM (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance) framework, this study reports on the extent to which the program and processes were “fit-for-purpose” for a national implementation trial across the indicators of uptake (reach and adoption), implementation and engagement, and effectiveness for behaviour change. Methods Data were collected via the online surveys embedded in the program and through program access analytics. Descriptive data (with linearized variance for the clustered staff-level data) and results from mixed models (repeated data and clustering for pre-post changes) are reported. Results Despite purposeful limited promotion, uptake was good, with 182 Australian users initially registering (208 total) and 135 (from 113 organisations) then completing the sign-up process. Recruitment reached users across Australia and in 16 of 19 Australian industries. Implementation was inconsistent and limited, with signed-up users completing 0 to 14 of the program’s 14 steps and only 7 (5.2%) completing all seven core steps. Many champions (n = 69, 51.1%) had low engagement (1 day toolkit usage) and few (n = 30, 22%) were highly engaged (> 1 day toolkit usage and surveyed staff). Although only 18 users (7 organisations) performed the pre- and post-program staff evaluations (337 and 167 staff, respectively), pre-post changes showed the program effectively reduced workplace sitting by − 9.0% (95% CI -12.0, − 5.9%). Discussion The program had uptake across industries and across Australia, but implementation and engagement varied widely. Few workplaces completed the evaluation components. In those that did, the program was effective for the primary outcome (workplace sitting). Conducting a planned early adopters phase and a comprehensive evaluation according to RE-AIM helped highlight necessary program improvements to make it more suitable for wide-scale implementation and evaluation. Trial registration Australian and New Zealand Clinic Trials Registry ACTRN12617000682347. Date registered: 12/05/2017.

Starting with this issue, Acta Medica Philippina is doing away with its printed copy format and is going entirely online! What’s more, we will now be putting out two issues every month. This is to be able to serve not only our UP-Manila community better but the expanding regional interests as well. Our journal has had an online presence since 2008, but it has also continued to print hard copies. Just like its printed copies, our website has gone through several changes in its internet domains and appearances for various creative and logistical reasons through those years. Currently, it is hosted in the UP-Manila server (https://actamedicaphilippina.upm.edu.ph/index.php/acta), an optimal arrangement, in my opinion, highlighting that UP Manila is the publisher of Acta Medica Philippina. This transition to a purely online publication strategy allows us to save on the printing costs being provided by the Dean’s Office of the UP College of Medicine. Now, our College can use it instead for other purposes. By conserving paper, we also help save the environment in our little way. Over and above these practical considerations are the longer-term benefits. Of course, online technologies and platforms have been long with us in many aspects of our personal and professional lives that justifying such an online strategy may not be needed. After all, the internet has become our go-to information resource – literally at the tips of our fingers with the help of our gadgets. Especially for us in the field of health sciences, whether in the clinical, academic, and/or policy-making spheres, updated data and scientific information are vital as bases for timely decision-making. The online approach is most suitable to promote wider and timely access, search, verification, archiving, and ascription. There are however additional benefits for authors who are responsible for content generation in the case of scientific articles. Starting from a more personal perspective, for those in the academe and/or conducting research, a track record of publication is commonly used as criteria for the promotion of faculty and assessment of qualification to do research. An online platform allows the Journal to more immediately publish those articles that have undergone proper peer reviews and scrutiny. Peer review, among its other benefits, can help improve the quality of the written material. Many of the indexing services (e.g., Clarivate® – formerly Web of Science (WoS) - Scopus®, PubMed™, etc.) also require such publication in the online space to facilitate inclusion in their databases. Such databases allow a targeted search favored by many scientists and other researchers. By actively applying for inclusion of its articles in these databases, the Journal may achieve wider exposure of the articles within its pages. Ultimately, adding value to the scientific work of others helps justify the resources we invest in these research activities. Google Scholar® (https://scholar.google.com/) has added another dimension useful for both authors of published articles and researchers, including students. Although it is not the same compared to the more traditional databases like Web of Science® and Scopus® (both of which are available only as paid subscriptions), Google Scholar® uses its proprietary algorithm to crawl for articles that appear in the world-wide-web. WoS and Scopus® require that journals apply and be accepted to be included in their databases. But Google Scholar® automatically does this, using its tried and tested Google search engine. A particularly useful feature of Google Scholar® is the ability to find out the number of citations of the said articles and provide these data for free. Funding agencies, among other parameters, can find these useful in identifying research areas that are most relevant and/or identify most likely researchers who are engaged in doing research in specific areas. As one of its early digital strategies, our Journal subscribed to a paid web hosting that is optimally configured for appearing on Google Scholar®. Although we have since opted out of that, articles in Acta Medica Philippina now appear in Google Scholar almost as soon as it is posted online! But the cloud can be an “impermanent” thing. That is, a document that exists solely on the web can change its physical location. This is most commonly seen when websites change their domain names for whatever reason/s – as the case was for Acta Medica Philippina in the past. Looking for the same article can be problematic in this regard. This is where a Document Object Identifier, or doi for short, can come in. A doi is a unique and never-changing string assigned to online (journal) articles, books, and other works. Since October 2020, Acta Medica Philippina has provided a doi for the articles it posts online through CrossRef®. We are currently working on securing doi for the past articles that have been published in the journal. There are other digital strategies that Acta Medica Philippina has undertaken in recent years to fully leverage the available technology. For example, our submission, review, and production process are fully online as well for more than a year now, integrated into a single portal. This helps us to work more efficiently and remain in touch with the growing number of our stakeholders – from authors to reviewers and even copy editors and layout artists. At the same time, the publication process has become more and more complex, with evolving and stricter requirements to ensure proper ethics and integrity. Our journal – designated as the National Health Sciences Journal – fully embraces these challenges and remains motivated to expand its capabilities. The journal staff and its Editorial Board aim to grow further the benefits to its readers and authors who choose to publish with Acta Medica Philippina. We thank all of you for your continuing confidence and support. Joven Jeremius Q. Tanchuco, MD, MHA Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines Manila Clinical Professor, Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and Philippine General Hospital, University of the Philippines Manila

Abstract Background and Aims In general population, there are weekly and seasonal variabilities of blood pressure (BP) which are supposed to be the risk of cardiovascular disease. Home BP is well correlated to the cardiovascular risk compared to clinic BP. We already reported home and clinic BP of hemodialysis (HD) patients fluctuate seasonally partly due to temperature. The aim of this study is to determine in large number of HD patients whether the seasonal BP variability correlates to the volume status and temperature. Method One hundred sixty nine dialysis patients (93 male, 76 female) in ten Saiseikai hospitals in various districts in Japan were recruited. All patients were asked to measure BP at least four times a day in a sitting position, twice consecutively in the morning after urination before breakfast and medication and twice consecutively in the evening just before going to bed. The mean of twice measurements was defined as the data of measurement time. Data from Oct. 2015 to Oct. 2017 were analyzed. If the dialysis were performed 3 times a week (Mon, Wed, Fri), Monday was defined as 1st day. If the dialysis were performed on Tue. Thurs. and Sat., Tuesday was defined as 1st day. Seasonal variabilities in morning home BP and night home BP were evaluated. Seasonal changes in clinic BP just before and after HD were also evaluated in 61 patients. Results Weekly home BP variability in the morning, 1st day 153±16 / 78±13 mmHg, 2nd day 144±28 / 76±12, 3rd day 150±14 / 77±13, 4th day 142±26 / 75±13, 5th day 149±14 / 77±12, 6th day 144±24 / 76±13, 7th day 149±16 / 78±13. Systolic home BPs in 1st, 3rd and 5th days were significantly elevated compared with 2nd, 4th and 6th days. Morning home BP significantly elevated gradually from 6th, 7th and to 1st day. Lowest SBP in the morning was 4th day but not 6th day which was the same as the previous result (CJASN 3: 416-422, 2008). Seasonal variability of morning home BP in 1st day was evident with the rise in autumn and winter (spring 153±19 / 78±12, summer 146±17 / 77±12, autumn 158±16* / 80±12, winter 156±19* / 80±13, * p&lt;0.05 vs summer) (figure). There was almost same seasonal morning home BP variability in 4th day which had the lowest value of morning home BP in a week. Seasonal changes of night home BP in 5th day were not significant through four seasons, which night was supposed to be the driest volume status in a week. Seasonal changes in clinic BP just before and after HD, in 1st day before HD: spring 147±19 / 74±13 mmHg, summer 144±20 / 71±11, autumn 150±19 / 74±13, winter 147±21 / 74±12. Systolic BP in autumn was significantly elevated compared to summer. In the other clinic BPs before and after HD in 3rd and 5th days, there were no significant seasonal changes observed. Seasonal changes of highest temperature were significant (spring 19.9±3.1*°C, summer 30.9±2.6, autumn 23.3±2.7*, winter 8.5±2.8*, *p&lt;0.05 vs summer). Morning BP of 1st day in a randomly selected patient was correlated with highest temperature (r=-0.397 p&lt;0.0001). Discussion There is seasonal home BP variability probably due to temperature change because BP was correlated well with temperature. Seasonal morning BP variability was evident in the 1st day of the HD week, but this seasonal home BP variability was disappeared measuring BP in the night without volume overload. We assumed that vasoconstriction due to change in temperature was enhanced by volume overload and sympathetic activation in the morning. Conclusion In the large number of HD patients in multicenter of various districts in Japan, seasonal BP variabilities were affected by the volume status and temperature.

Affect theory is generally associated with the lifetime’s work of Silvan S. Tomkins, whose four volume work, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, was published between 1962-92. The volumes argue that humans are subject to a range of innate affects: two positive (interest/excitement; enjoyment/joy), one neutral (surprise/startle) and six negative (distress/anguish; fear/terror; anger/rage; shame/humiliation; dissmell [reaction to a bad smell]; disgust). In a crude “advanced search” using Google, affect is related to emotion in 3,620,000 Web references; to intellect in 1,530,000 instances; and to both intellect and emotion in 1,670,000 cases (Google). Affect may consequently be constructed as a common but complicated response which cannot be simply elided with either emotion or intellect but which involves the integration of both. In particular, affect is generally constructed as a human response to a precipitating stimulus (be it an idea, a physical event, etc). If this is accepted, then Tomkins’s Affect theory might imply that the innate affects only reach conscious awareness as a result of a change in circumstance (e.g., idea or event) which requires a response. The importance of affect as a motivator for action has long been put to good use by advertising and marketing professionals who recognised early in their professions’ development that it is the ESP (emotional selling proposition) that delivers more punch, more quickly, than rational argument. An organisation’s (or individual’s) unique selling point can be rational or emotional, but it is easier for many people marketing a product or service to craft a perceived (unique) difference using emotion rather than logical rationality. For example, Coke and Pepsi are generally constructed as fighting their turf wars based on their emotional appeals, rather than any logical difference between the brands. This paper deals with the use of affect to craft an online therapeutic Website (HeartNET) as a joint ARC-Linkage research project between the National Heart Foundation of Australia (WA Division) and Edith Cowan University’s School of Communications and Multimedia. The research originally started with the idea that heart patients would appreciate the opportunity to communicate online with people going through similar experiences, and that this might create a virtual community of mutually supportive recovering participants. The reality held a few surprises along the way, as we discuss below. HeartNET has been designed to: 1) reduce the disadvantage experienced by people in regional and remote areas; 2) aid the secondary prevention of heart disease in Australia; and, 3) investigate whether increased interaction with an organisation-sponsored affective environment (e.g., the Website) impacts upon perceptions of the organisation. (This might have long-term implications for the financial viability of charitable organisations). In brief, the purpose of the research is to understand the meanings that Web-participants might generate in terms of affective responses to the notion of a shared HeartNET community, and investigate whether these meanings are linked to lifestyle change and responses to the host charity. Ultimately the study aims to determine whether the Website can add value to the participants’ communication and support strategies. The study is still ongoing and has another 18 months to run. Some early results, however, indicate that we need more than a Website and a common life experience to build an affective relationship with others online. The added extra might be what makes the difference between interaction and affective interaction: this needs conscious strategies to generate involvement, aided by the construction of a dynamic (and evolving) Web environment. In short, one stimulus is not enough to generate persistent affective response; the environment has to sustain multiple, evolving and complex stimuli. Online support groups are proliferating because they are satisfying unmet needs and offering an alternative to face-to-face support programs (Madara). Social support also combines some elements of affective community, namely belongingness, intimacy and reciprocity. These community elements can be observed through three levels or layers of social support: 1) belongingness or a sense of integration, 2) bonding which is somewhat more personal and involves linkages between people, and, 3) binding whereby a sense of responsibility for others is experienced and expressed (Lin). Here, social support may prompt an affective response and provide a useful measure of community because it incorporates other elements. Initial Design The project was initially designed to build “an affective interactive space” in the belief that an effective online community might develop thereafter. However, the first stumbling block came in terms of recruiting participants: this took almost nine-months longer than anticipated (even once Ethics approval had been granted). Partly this was due to a specific focus on recruiting people born between 1946–64 (“baby boomers”), partly it was due to the requirement that participants had access to the Web, and partly it was because we sought to specifically recruit non-metropolitan Western Australians who had suffered a health-challenging heart-related episode. We were hoping to identify at least 80 such people, to allow for a control group in addition to the people invited to join the online community. Stage 1 was to be the analysis of the functioning of the online community; Stage 2 would take the form of interviews of both community members and the control group. One aspect of the research was to determine whether online participants perceived themselves as belonging to an online community (as opposed to “interacting on a Website”) and whether this community was constructed as therapeutic, or in other ways beneficial. Once the requisite number of people had been recruited, the Website went “live”. Usage was extremely hesitant, and this was the case even though more people were added to the Website than originally planned. (In the end we had to rely upon the help of cardiologists publicising the research among their heart patients. This had a continuing trickle effect that meant that the Website ultimately had 68 people who agreed to participate, of whom 15 never logged in. Of the remaining 53 participants, 31 logged in but never posted anything. Of the 22 people who posted, 17 made between one and four contributions. The remaining five people posted five or more times, and included the researcher and an experienced facilitator, Sven (name changed), who was serving in a “professionally-supportive” role (as well as a recovering heart patient himself). This was hardly the vibrant, affectively-supportive environment for which we had been planning. Even with the key researcher-moderator calling people individually and talking them through the mechanics of how to post, the interactions fell away and eventually ceased, more or less, altogether after 11 weeks. One of the particularly distressing implications of the lack of interaction was the degree of self-revelation that some participants had offered when first logging onto the site. New members, for example, were encouraged to “share their heart story”. Susan’s (name changed) is an example of how open these could be: I had a heart attack in February 2004. This came as a huge shock. I didn’t have any of the usual risk factors. Although my father has Coronary Vascular Disease, he didn’t have any symptoms until his mid 60s and never had a heart attack. I had angioplasty and a stent. I accept I will be taking medication for the rest of my life. I’m fine physically but am having treatment for depression, which was diagnosed 6 months after my heart attack. In normal social situations an affective revelation such as “I’m fine physically but am having treatment for depression” would elicit a sympathetic response. In fact, such “stories” did often get responses from active members (and always got a response from the researcher-moderator), but the original poster would often not log in again and would thus not receive the group’s feedback. In this case, it was particularly relevant that the poster should have learned that other site users were aware that some heart medication has depression as a common side effect and were urging Susan to ask her doctor whether this could be a factor in her case. A further problem was that there was no visible traffic on much of the Website. During the first 12 weeks, only seven of 155 posts were made to the discussion forums. Instead, participants tended to leave individual messages for each other in “private spaces” that had been designed as blogs, to allow people to keep online diaries (and where blog-visitors had the opportunity to post comments, feedback and encouragement). It was speculated that this pattern of invisible interaction was symptomatic of a generation that felt most comfortable with using the internet for e-mail, and were unfamiliar with discussion boards. (Privacy, ethics, research design and good practice meant that the only way that participants could contact each other was via the Website; they couldn’t use a private e-mail address.) The absence of visible interactive feedback was a disincentive to participation for even the most active posters and it was clear that, while some people felt able to reveal aspects of themselves and their heart condition online, they needed more that this opportunity to encourage them to return and participate further. Effectively, the research was in crisis. Crisis Measures After 10 weeks of the HeartNET interaction stalling, and then crashing, it was decided to do four things: write up what had been learned about what didn’t work (before the site was “polluted” by what we hoped would be the solution); redesign the Website to allow more ways to interact privately as well as publicly; throw it open to anyone who wished to join so that there was a more dynamic, developing momentum; use a “newbie” icon to indicate new network members joining in the previous seven days so that these people could be welcomed by existing members (who would also have an incentive to log in at least weekly). Five weeks into the revamped Website a number of things have become apparent. There is some “incidental traffic” apart from research-recruited participants and word-of-mouth, for example (Jane): “I discovered this site while surfing the net. I haven’t really sought much support since my heart attack which was nearly a year ago, but wish I had since it would have made those darker days a lot easier to get through.” An American heart patient has joined the community (Sam): “I have a lot to be positive about and feel grateful to have found this site full of caring people.” Further, some returnees, who had experienced the first iteration of the site, were warm with acknowledgement (Betty): “the site is taking off in leeps [sic] and bounds. You should all be so proud.” People are making consecutive postings, updating and developing their stories, revealing their need for support and recognising the help when they receive it. It is not hard to empathise with “Wonky” (name changed) who may not have family in whom s/he can confide: (Wonky, post 12, Wed) [I need] preventative surgery of this aorta [addressing a bi-cuspid aortic valve] before it has an aneurysm or dissects … and YES I AM SCARED … but trying to be brave cos at least now I know what is wrong with me and its kinda fixable … After being asked by interested members to update the community on his/her progress, Wonky makes the following posts: (Wonky, post 13, Wed) […] I am currently petrified … And anxiously waiting to see the cardio at 3 pm Thursday regarding the results of my aorta echo … and when they are going to decide I need lifesaving surgery … (Wonky, post 15, Fri) ok…so I am up to Friday morning and fasting for the CT scan of the dodgy aorta etc … this morning … why do I get hungry when I have to fast yet any other day I really have to force myself to remember to even eat … (Sven, online support person, Fri) great news [Wonky] and I sense a more ‘coming to terms’ understanding of your situation on your part. You’re in good hands believe you me and you are surrounded by a great number of friends who are here to cheer you on. Keep smiling. […] (Wonky, post 16, Sun) Yes [Sven], you are exactly right […] [declining health] I guess is what scared me and plus I had pretty-much not bothered to research into the condition early on when I was first diagnosed … but yeah … my cardio guy is wonderful and has assured me I am not going to drop dead any-time soon from this … For people who had experienced heart disease without support, the value of the HeartNET site was self-evident (Jace): “My heart attack was 18 months ago and I knew no one with a similar experience. My family and friends were very supportive but they were as shocked as me. Heartnet has given me the opportunity to hear other people’s stories.” Almost two weeks later, Jace was able to offer the benefit of her experience to someone suffering from panic attacks: I had several panic attacks post my heart attack. They are very frightening aren’t they? They seemed to come out of nowhere and I felt very out of control. I found making myself breath[e] more slowly and deeply, while telling myself to calm down, helped a lot. I also started listening to relaxation CDs as well. Take care, [Jace]. Others have asked for advice: (Anne): “Everyone, and I mean everyone, has been saying ‘are you sure you want to go [back to work]?’ Does anyone have coping strategies for those well meaning colleagues and bosses who think you need to be wrapped up in cotton wool?” Several people have taken the opportunity to confide their deepest fear: (Marc): “Why me? Why now? Can I get back to work normally? Every twinge you feel, you think is the big one or another attack that will get you this time.” (Anne): “I decided to spend last night in A&E [accident and emergency] after a nice little ambulance ride. It turned out to be nothing more than stress and indigestion but it scared the crap out of me. I have taken it so easy today and intend to rest up from now on in.” Some of the posts are both celebratory and inspirational (although the one cited below required a rider to the effect that any change in activity should be checked with a GP or specialist): (Joggy) I mentioned on an earlier post that I was going to run the 4km in the City to Surf and I actually did it. This is from someone who has probably run no more than 100 metres in one go in her life and guess what, I quite like it now […] I know that I am way fitter now than I have ever been and in a nutshell it’s great. Others see support as a two-way street: (Drew) “If you no longer fell [sic] YOU need the support, keep in mind others may benefit from YOUR support.” Discussion Tomkins’s Affect theory suggests that humans are subject to two positive affects: interest/excitement; enjoyment/joy, and one neutral affect: surprise/startle, along with six negative affects. All these affects are decoded/interpreted from facial expressions and require face-to-face interactions to be fully perceived. When we look at what affective prompts may be inciting people to log into HeartNET and communicate online, however, it becomes hard to second guess the affective motivation. Interest/excitement may be overstating the emotional impulse while enjoyment/joy may be an extreme way to describe the pleasure of recognition and identification with others in a similar situation. Arguably, HeartNET offers an opportunity to minimise negative affect, in particular “distress/anguish; fear/terror; anger/rage; shame/humiliation” – all of which may be present in some people’s experiences of heart disease. A strategy for reducing negative affect may be as valuable as the promise of increasing the experience of positive affect. As for the rational or emotional impact, it seems clear from the first stages of the research that rationally people were willing to take part in the trial and agreed to participate, but a large majority then failed to either log in or post any contribution. The site came to emotional life only when it was less obviously a “research project” (in the sense that all participants still had to log in via an ethics disclosure and informed consent screen) in that people could join when and if they were motivated to do so, and were invited to participate by those who were already online. Since the Website was revamped and relaunched on 2 August 2005 a further 124 people have joined. It appears that HeartNET is now both an affective and effective success. References “Affective Therapy.” Affective Therapy Website: Tomkins and Affect. 9 Oct. 2005 http://www.affectivetherapy.co.uk/Tomkins_Affect.htm>. “Google Advanced Search.” Google. 1 Nov. 2005 http://www.google.com.au/advanced_search>. Lin, Nan. Conceptualizing Social Support: Social Support, Life Events, and Depression. Ed. Nan Lin, Alfred Dean, & Walter Ensel. Orlando: Florida, Academic Press, 1986. Madara, Edward. “The Mutual-Aid Self-Help Online Revolution”. Social Policy 27 (1997): 20. Tomkins, Silvan S. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness (Volume 1): The Positive Affects. New York: Springer, 1962. ———. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness (Volume 2): The Negative Affects. New York: Springer, 1963. ———. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness (Volume 3): The Negative Affects: Anger and Fear. New York: Springer, 1991. ———. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness (Volume 4): Cognition: Duplication and Transformation of Information. New York: Springer, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bonniface, Leesa, Lelia Green, and Maurice Swanson. "Affect and an Effective Online Therapeutic Community." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/05-bonnifacegreenswanson.php>. APA Style Bonniface, L., L. Green, and M. Swanson. (Dec. 2005) "Affect and an Effective Online Therapeutic Community," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/05-bonnifacegreenswanson.php>.

We (I, Robert Lawrence and, in a rare display of unity, all my online avatars and agents)hereby render and proclaim thisMANIFESTO OF PIECES AND BITS IN SERVICE OF CONTRADICTIONAL AESTHETICSWe start with the simple premise that art has the job of telling us who we are, and that through the modern age doing this job while KEEPING UP with accelerating cultural change has necessitated the invention of something we might call the avant-garde. Along the way there has been an on-again-off-again affair between said avant-garde and technology. We are now in a new phase of the new and the technology under consideration is the Internet.The recent hyperventilating about the term postInternet reflects the artworld’s overdue recognition of the effect of the Internet on the culture at large, and on art as a cultural practice, a market, and a historical process.I propose that we cannot fully understand what the Internet is doing to us through a consideration of what happens on the screen, nor by considering what happens in the physical space we occupy either before or behind the screen. Rather we must critically and creatively fathom the flow of cultural practice between and across these realms. This requires Hybrid art combining both physical and Internet forms.I do not mean to imply that single discipline-based art cannot communicate complexity, but I believe that Internet culture introduces complexities that can only be approached through hybrid practices. And this is especially critical for an art that, in doing the job of “telling us who we are”, wants to address the contradictory ways we now form and promote, or conceal and revise, our multiple identities through online social media profiles inconsistent with our fleshly selves.We need a different way of talking about identity. A history of identity:In the ancient world, individual identity as we understand it did not exist.The renaissance invented the individual.Modernism prioritized and alienated him (sic).Post-Modernism fragmented him/her.The Internet hyper-circulates and amplifies all these modalities, exploding the possibilities of identity.While reducing us to demographic market targets, the Web facilitates mass indulgence in perversely individual interests. The now common act of creating an “online profile” is a regular reiteration of the simple fact that identity is an open-ended hypothesis. We can now live double, or extravagantly multiple, virtual lives. The “me meme” is a ceaseless morph. This is a profound change in how identity was understood just a decade ago. Other historical transformations of identity happened over centuries. This latest and most radical change has occurred in the click of a mouse. Selfhood is now imbued with new complexity, fluidity and amplified contradictions.To fully understand what is actually happening to us, we need an art that engages the variant contracts of the physical and the virtual. We need a Hybrid art that addresses variant temporal and spatial modes of the physical and virtual. We need an art that offers articulations through the ubiquitous web in concert with the distinct perspectives that a physical gallery experience uniquely offers: engagement and removal, reflection and transference. Art that tells us who we are today calls for an aesthetics of contradiction. — Ro Lawrence (and all avatars) 2011, revised 2013, 2015, 2018. The manifesto above grew from an artistic practice beginning in 1998 as I started producing a website for every project that I made in traditional media. The Internet work does not just document or promote the project, nor is it “Netart” in the common sense of creative work restricted to a browser window. All of my efforts with the Internet are directly linked to my projects in traditional media and the web components offer parallel aesthetic voices that augment or overtly contradict the reading suggested by the traditional visual components of each project.This hybrid work grew out of a previous decade of transmedia work in video installation and sculpture, where I would create physical contexts for silent video as a way to remove the video image from the seamless flow of broadcast culture. A video image can signify very differently in a physical context that separates it from the flow of mass media and rather reconnects it to lived physical culture. A significant part of the aesthetic pleasure of this kind of work comes from nuances of dissonance arising from contradictory ways viewers had learned to read the object world and the ways we were then still learning to read the electronic image world. This video installation work was about “relocating” the electronic image, but I was also “locating” the electronic image in another sense, within the boundaries of geographic and cultural location. Linking all my projects to specific geographic locations set up contrasts with the spatial ubiquity of electronic media. In 1998 I amplified this contrast with my addition of extensive Internet components with each installation I made.The Way Things Grow (1998) began as an installation of sculptures combining video with segments of birch trees. Each piece in the gallery was linked to a specific geographic location within driving distance of the gallery exhibiting the work. In the years just before this piece I had moved from a practice of text-augmented video installations to the point where I had reduced the text to small printed handouts that featured absurd Scripts for Performance. These text handouts that viewers could take with them suggested that the work was to be completed by the viewer later outside the gallery. This to-be-continued dynamic was the genesis of a serial form in work going forward from then on. Thematic and narrative elements in the work were serialized via possible actions viewers would perform after leaving the gallery. In the installation for The Way Things Grow, there was no text in the gallery at all to suggest interpretations of this series of video sculptures. Even the titles offered no direct textual help. Rather than telling the viewers something about the work before them in the gallery, the title of each piece led the viewer away from the gallery toward serial actions in the specific geographic locations the works referred to. Each piece was titled with an Internet address.Figure 1: Lawrence, Robert, The Way Things Grow, video Installation with web components at http://www.h-e-r-e.com/grow.html, 1998.When people went to the web site for each piece they found only a black page referencing a physical horizon with a long line of text that they could scroll to right for meters. Unlike the determinedly embodied work in the gallery, the web components were disembodied texts floating in a black void, but texts about very specific physical locations.Figure 2: Lawrence, Robert, The Way Things Grow, partial view of webpage at http://www.h-e-r-e.com/growth_variant4.html, 1998.The texts began with the exact longitude and latitude of a geographical site in some way related to birch trees. ... A particularly old or large tree... a factory that turned birch trees into popsicle sticks and medical tongue depressors... etc. The website texts included directions to the site, and absurd scripts for performance. In this way the Internet component transformed the suite of sculptures in the gallery to a series of virtual, and possibly actual, events beyond the gallery. These potential narratives that viewers were invited into comprised an open-ended serial structure. The gallery work was formal, minimal, essentialist. On the web it was social, locative, deconstructive. In both locations, it was located. Here follows an excerpt from the website. GROWTH VARIANT #25: North 44:57:58 by West 93:15:56. On the south side of the Hennepin County Government Center is a park with 9 birch trees. These are urban birches, and they display random scratchings, as well as proclamations of affection expressed with pairs of initials and a “+” –both with and without encircling heart symbols. RECOMMENDED PERFORMANCE: Visit these urban birches once each month. Photograph all changes in their bark made by humans. After 20 years compile a document entitled, "Human Mark Making on Urban Birches, a Visual Study of Specific Universalities". Bring it into the Hennepin County Government Center and ask that it be placed in the archives.An Acre of Art (2000) was a collaborative project with sculptor Mark Knierim. Like The Way Things Grow, this new work, commissioned by the Minneapolis Art Institute, played out in the gallery, in a specific geographic location, and online. In the Art Institute was a gallery installation combining sculptures with absurd combinations of physical rural culture fitting contradictorily into an urban "high art" context. One of the pieces, entitled Landscape (2000), was an 18’ chicken coop faced with a gold picture frame. Inside were two bard rock hens and an iMac. The computer was programmed to stream to the Internet live video from the coop, the world’s first video chicken cam. As a work unfolding across a long stretch of time, the web cam video was a serial narrative without determined division into episodes. The gallery works also referenced a specific acre of agricultural land an hour from the Institute. Here we planted a row of dwarf corn at a diagonal to the mid-western American rural geometric grid of farmland. Visitors to the rural site could sit on “rural art furniture,” contemplate the corn growing, and occasionally witness absurd performances. The third stream of the piece was an extensive website, which playfully theorized the rural/urban/art trialectic. Each of the three locations of the work was exploited to provide a richer transmedia interpretation of the project’s themes than any one venue or medium could. Location Sequence is a serial installation begun in 1999. Each installation has completely different physical elements. The only consistent physical element is 72 segments of a 72” collapsible carpenter's ruler evenly spaced to wrap around the gallery walls. Each of the 72 segments of the ruler displays an Internet web address. Reversing the notion of the Internet as a place of rapid change compared to a more enduring physical world, in this case the Internet components do not change with each new episode of the work, while the physical components transform with each new installation. Thematically, all aspects of the work deal with various shades of meaning of the term "location." Beginning/Middle/End is a 30-year conceptual serial begun in 2002, presenting a series of site-specific actions, objects, or interventions combined with corresponding web pages that collectively negotiate concepts related to time, location, and narrative. Realizing a 30-year project via the web in this manner is a self-conscious contradiction of the culture of the instantaneous that the Internet manifests and propagates.The installation documented here was completed for a one-night event in 2002 with Szilage Gallery in St Petersburg, Florida. Bricks moulded with the URLs for three web sites were placed in a historic brick road with the intention that they would remain there through a historical time frame. The URLs were also projected in light on a creek parallel to the brick road and seen only for several hours. The corresponding web site components speculate on temporal/narrative structures crossing with geographic features, natural and manufactured.Figure 3: Lawrence, Robert, Beginning/Middle/End, site-specific installation with website in conjunction with 30-year series, http://www.h-e-r-e.com/beginning.html, 2002-32.The most recent instalment was done as part of Conflux Festival in 2014 in collaboration with painter Ld Lawrence. White shapes appeared in various public spaces in downtown Manhattan. Upon closer inspection people realized that they were not painted tags or stickers, but magnetic sheets that could be moved or removed. An optical scan tag hidden on the back of each shape directed to a website which encouraged people to move the objects to other locations and send a geo-located photo to the web site to trace the shape's motion through the world. The work online could trace the serial narrative of the physical installation components following the installation during Conflux Festival. Figure 4: Lawrence, Robert w/Lawrence, Ld, Gravity Ace on the Move, site-specific installation with geo-tracking website at http://www.h-e-r-e.com/gravityace/. Completed for Conflux Festival NYC, 2014, as part of Beginning/Middle/End.Dad's Boots (2003) was a multi-sited sculpture/performance. Three different physical manifestations of the work were installed at the same time in three locations: Shirakawa-go Art Festival in Japan; the Phipps Art Center in Hudson, Wisconsin; and at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida. Physical components of the work included silent video projection, digital photography, computer key caps, and my father's boots. Each of these three different installations referred back to one web site. Because all these shows were up at the same time, the work was a distributed synchronous serial. In each installation space the title of the work was displayed as an Internet address. At the website was a series of popup texts suggesting performances focused, however absurdly, on reassessing paternal relationships.Figure 5: Lawrence, Robert, Dad’s Boots, simultaneous gallery installation in Florida, Wisconsin and Japan, with website, 2003. Coincidently, beginning the same time as my transmedia physical/Internet art practice, since 1998 I have had a secret other-life as a tango dancer. I came to this practice drawn by the music and the attraction of an after-dark subculture that ran by different rules than the rest of life. While my life as a tanguero was most certainly an escape strategy, I quickly began to see that although tango was different from the rest of the world, it was indeed a part of this world. It had a place and a time and a history. Further, it was a fascinating history about the interplays of power, class, wealth, race, and desire. Figure 6: Lawrence, Robert, Tango Intervention, site-specific dance interventions with extensive web components, 2007-12.As Marta Savigliano points out in Tango and the Political Economy of Passion, “Tango is a practice already ready for struggle. It knows about taking sides, positions, risks. It has the experience of domination/resistance from within. …Tango is a language of decolonization. So pick and choose. Improvise... let your feet do the thinking. Be comfortable in your restlessness. Tango” (17). The realization that tango, my sensual escape from critical thought, was actually political came just about the time I was beginning to understand the essential dynamic of contradiction between the physical and Internet streams of my work. Tango Intervention began in 2007. I have now, as of 2018, done tango interventions in over 40 cities. Overall, the project can be seen as a serial performance of contradictions. In each case the physical dance interventions are manifestations of sensual fantasy in public space, and the Internet components recontextualize the public actions as site-specific performances with a political edge, revealing a hidden history or current social situation related to the political economy of tango. These themes are further developed in a series of related digital prints and videos shown here in various formats and contexts.In Tango Panopticon (2009), a “spin off” from the Tango Intervention series, the hidden social issue was the growing video surveillance of public space. The first Tango Panopticon production was Mayday 2009 with people dancing tango under public video surveillance in 15 cities. Mayday 2010 was Tango Panopticon 2.0, with tangointervention.org streaming live cell phone video from 16 simultaneous dance interventions on 4 continents. The public encountered the interventions as a sensual reclaiming of public space. Contradictorily, on the web Tango Panopticon 2.0 became a distributed worldwide action against the growing spectre of video surveillance and the increasing control of public commons. Each intervention team was automatically located on an online map when they started streaming video. Visitors to the website could choose an action from the list of cities or click on the map pins to choose which live video to load into the grid of 6 streaming signals. Visitors to the physical intervention sites could download our free open source software and stream their own videos to tangointervention.org.Figure 7: Lawrence, Robert, Tango Panopticon 2.0, worldwide synchronous dance intervention with live streaming video and extensive web components, 2010.Tango Panopticon also has a life as a serial installation, initially installed as part of the annual conference of “Digital Resources for Humanities and the Arts” at Brunel University, London. All shots in the grid of videos are swish pans from close-ups of surveillance cameras to tango interveners dancing under their gaze. Each ongoing installation in the series physically adapts to the site, and with each installation more lines of video frames are added until the images become too small to read.Figure 8: Lawrence, Robert, Tango Panopticon 2.0 (For Osvaldo), video installation based on worldwide dance intervention series with live streaming video, 2011.My new work Equivalence (in development) is quite didactic in its contradictions between the online and gallery components. A series of square prints of clouds in a gallery are titled with web addresses that open with other cloud images and then fade into randomly loading excerpts from the CIA torture manual used at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center.Figure 9: Lawrence, Robert, Eauivalence, digital prints, excerpts from CIA Guantanamo Detention Center torture manual, work-in-progress.The gallery images recall Stieglitz’s Equivalents photographs from the early 20th century. Made in the 1920s to 30s, the Equivalents comprise a pivotal change in photographic history, from the early pictorial movement in which photography tried to imitate painting, and a new artistic approach that embraced features distinct to the photographic medium. Stieglitz’s Equivalents merged photographic realism with abstraction and symbolist undertones of transcendent spirituality. Many of the 20th century masters of photography, from Ansel Adams to Minor White, acknowledged the profound influence these photographs had on them. Several images from the Equivalents series were the first photographic art to be acquired by a major art museum in the US, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.My series Equivalence serves as the latest episode in a serial art history narrative. Since the “Pictures Generation” movement in the 1970s, photography has cannibalized its history, but perhaps no photographic body of work has been as quoted as Stieglitz’s Equivalents. A partial list includes: John Baldessari’s series Blowing Cigar Smoke to Match Clouds That Are the Same(1973), William Eggleston’s series Wedgwood Blue (1979), John Pfahl’s smoke stack series (1982-89), George Legrady’s Equivalents II(1993), Vik Muniz’sEquivalents(1997), Lisa Oppenheim (2012), and most recently, Berndnaut Smilde’s Nimbus Series, begun in 2012. Over the course of more than four decades each of these series has presented a unique vision, but all rest on Stieglitz’s shoulders. From that position they make choices about how to operate relative the original Equivalents, ranging from Baldessari and Muniz’s phenomenological playfulness to Eggleston and Smilde’s neo-essentialist approach.My series Equivalence follows along in this serial modernist image franchise. What distinguishes it is that it does not take a single position relative to other Equivalents tribute works. Rather, it exploits its gallery/Internet transmediality to simultaneously assume two contradictory positions. The dissonance of this positioning is one of my main points with the work, and it is in some ways resonant with the contradictions concerning photographic abstraction and representation that Stieglitz engaged in the original Equivalents series almost a century ago.While hanging on the walls of a gallery, Equivalence suggests the same metaphysical intentions as Stieglitz’s Equivalents. Simultaneously, in its manifestation on the Internet, my Equivalence series transcends its implied transcendence and claims a very specific time and place –a small brutal encampment on the island of Cuba where the United States abandoned any remaining claim to moral authority. In this illegal prison, forgotten lives drag on invisibly, outside of time, like untold serial narratives without resolution and without justice.Partially to balance the political insistence of Equivalence, I am also working on another series that operates with very different modalities. Following up on the live streaming technology that I developed for my Tango Panopticon public intervention series, I have started Horizon (In Development).Figure 10: Lawrence, Robert, Horizon, worldwide synchronous horizon interventions with live streaming video to Internet, work-in-progress.In Horizon I again use live cell phone video, this time streamed to an infinitely wide web page from live actions around the world done in direct engagement with the horizon line. The performances will begin and automatically come online live at noon in their respective time zone, each added to the growing horizontal line of moving images. As the actions complete, the streamed footage will begin endlessly looping. The project will also stream live during the event to galleries, and then HD footage from the events will be edited and incorporated into video installations. Leading up to this major event day, I will have a series of smaller instalments of the piece, with either live or recorded video. The first of these preliminary versions was completed during the Live Performers Workshop in Rome. Horizon continues to develop, leading to the worldwide synchronous event in 2020.Certainly, artists have always worked in series. However, exploiting the unique temporal dimensions of the Internet, a series of works can develop episodically as a serial work. If that work unfolds with contradictory thematics in its embodied and online forms, it reaches further toward an understanding of the complexities of postInternet culture and identity. ReferencesSaviligliano, Marta. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore. The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. References Brett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008). Citation reference for this article MLA Style Meikle, Graham, Jason A. Wilson, and Barry Saunders. "Vote / Citizen." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Meikle, G., J. Wilson, and B. Saunders. (Apr. 2008) "Vote / Citizen," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore.The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. ReferencesBrett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008).

1. Introduction: How the word 'chat' can be demeaning I think the editors mean the word 'chat' to be something of a tease. They remind us that to call something 'chat' might be to strip it of anything more serious or substantial it might be doing and, by extension, to weaken pretty well all talk. It joins 'mere talk', 'rhetoric', 'chatter' and of course 'gossip', with the pungent flavouring of sexism as an added extra. It seems that chat is limp, directionless, passive. Whoever gets to call something 'chat' has scored a win in a battle. Let's just stay with this image for a moment. Suppose it is a rhetorical victory. Scored for which side? In a battle against who or what? Well, for a commonsense view of the world that rates objects over practices, things over their descriptions, and facts over the discovery of facts. And that commonsense view, of course, is the high street version of tangled scholars' web of philosophies -- realism, materialism and essentialism. But breathe easy, because I'm not going to get us stuck in that web. All I want to do is point out -- as has long been pointed out before, especially by feminists taking a cool look at 'female language' - that some uses of the word 'chat' betray a very old-fashioned view of language. To call this edition of M/C 'Chat' is to examine that attitude. The editors want to rate practices over objects, descriptions over what they describe, and the act of discovery over what is discovered. Or at least, even if one doesn't all want to go that far, to redress the balance a little in each case. The attitude the editors want to correct is a rather complacent one. It takes people's exchange of talk as just that; as a means of transmitting what's in one person's head into the head of the other person, more or less. Inefficient, noisy and unreliable, but fixable by technology. This is, of course the 'conduit' metaphor so devastatingly unmasked by Reddy in 1979. But it would be good to see some actual examples of real people really using the word; all this has been rather hypothetical so far. In fact, what we shall find is a bit of a paradox. It turns out, if I can prefigure the action, that when people use the word 'chat' to decribe some stretch of talk, what they want to do (at least in the data I have) is not to sneer at it -- quite the contrary. But it is nevertheless highly rhetorical. It does a job. The speaker tends to use it to promote a description of a warm, informal and above all blameless event, just when there might be reason to believe that in fact something rather different would be more accurate. 2. How to analyse talk as consequential? Let me pause for a moment. Soon I shall be doing a quick survey of some examples of actual live usage of the word. I should say, in parenthesis, that M/C offered me the wonderful opportunity of actually having a link to an audio sample of these extracts, and had the data come from public sources (say from talk radio or a political speech) then I would have jumped at the chance. That way you would have been able yourself to catch the flavour of the talk undiluted by transcription conventions and the overwhelming blandness of print. But all the extracts I shall use in the article are from private conversations, the participants in which didn't give permission for their voices to be broadcast, so I'm afraid that opportunity must be passed up. But given I have transcripts, what now? How to think about language-in-use? Obviously, I have to put my money where my mouth is and treat them not like 'chat' in that demeaning, inconsequential caricature I mentioned at the beginning (and against which this whole issue of M/C is dedicated). What are the broad alternatives available? There are, loosely speaking, two sorts of things one could do, familiar to all students of language. A couple of images will be helpful, if a bit crude. The first is the pearl necklace. Here, the interesting things about the talk are its content (pearls or ivory pieces?) and its setting (one string? two?). Less fancifully, the interest is in asking: what words, what speakers, what occasion? You can trace that from William Labov and his street-level sociolinguistics (1972), or further back if you want to. What you get is a thorough rejection of the words + settings = chat. You discover, by empirical comparison of what words in what settings, such thorough non-'chat' states of affairs as social location, social discourses and social power. If the pearl necklace doesn't appeal -- it seems a bit static perhaps -- then how about the origami bird? In its prior life as undistinguished flat sheet of paper it fails to command much attention. It's the transformation that fascinates. You have to fold it up to produce it, and you have to fold it up in a certain way if you don't want it to produce an aeroplane or a hat or just a disaster. The interesting things, of course, are the details (which side do you fold first? where do you tuck?) and how that produces the beautiful end result. Or, less fancifully, the sequential structure of talk in interaction, how one part supports and constrains the next and how a stretch of it achieves social goals (beautiful or otherwise). Now for the rest of the paper I'm going to try a bit of origami, or rather, some origami-in-reverse. I'm going to try and get across the spirit of Conversation Analysis and, without spraying around too many technical terms (indeed, any, if I can help it) I'm going to take a stretch of talk and see how it folds and tucks together to make it what it is. Doing that will, I hope, show up things about it that might pass unnoticed otherwise). Readers whose fancy is tickled for this sort of thing might well want to have a look at the references at the end of the article to take it all further. 3. Example 1. "about two years ago I came round an':: (..) spent some time chattin' didn't we" Let's make a start with this case. Here we have an encounter between a psychologist and a person he is about to interview. The interview proper hasn't actually started yet, and we can read the lines below as the interviewer 'working up to' the start of the interview proper. Part of it is to remind MA that the psychologist had seen him before. Notice how the psychologist uses the word 'chatting' to describe that earlier encounter. In line 11, MR describes his previous encounter as involving "chattin'. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. I know I shouldn't be calling in evidence which the reader can't get hold of, but Mark Rapley, the psychologist involved (and with whom I worked on the analysis; see Rapley and Antaki) pointed to that line and said to me that ('in fact') his previous dealings with MA, far from being 'chatting', had been a formal administration of a questionnaire, with all the paraphernalia of paper and pencil, and strict question and answer rights and obligations, all going down on the record. "Chattin'"? Calling it "chattin'" obliterates all that in favour of something altogether more homely and friendly. Look at what team of players it's sent out onto the field with: he "came round" (rather, than, say, 'paid an official visit') and "spent some time" (rather than 'completed my business'. They did it together -- hence the "didn't we?" The psychologist was "jus' (..) watchin' what was going on" -- not intervening, merely casually watching the world go by; note also the dropped g's. Now he's back to "see how you were gettin' on" (rather than 'administer a standardised assessment questionnaire'"). What an assembly. I'm trying to leave off any guess at what the interviewer's intentions or motives are -- we just can't know such things. But we can certainly have something to say about the effects his words give off. The origami structure that emerges from the folding is one of the 'chat' having been an interaction off the record, personal and friendly; all hearably at odds with the business the interviewer is officially prosecuting. 4. Example 2: "what Tim does (.) which is come and chat" Here is a very similar case, this time in a committee meeting: Again, I'll briefly gloss the scene (based on the previous talk, and visible in such terms as 'matters arising', the thanks expressed by one speaker to another, and the "we turn to" topic change in line 19/20). A committee meeting is in session, and AC is touting for new names to replace a member who is leaving. Committee membership is, by definition, something that is carefully regulated in standing orders and by convention, and is quite capable of being described in the most off-putting bureaucratic language (as it might be, say, were an errant member being disciplined for some infraction or other, and the thing became legalistic). Here it isn't. How does AC fold it up? AC in lines 1 to 9 is working up a request for other to nominate candidates to replace Tim Brown (all names are of course pseudonyms). We leave aside consideration of how he folds his talk so as to make the request as he does (rather than, say, deliver it as a petulant blast against his colleagues for not having provided him with any names so far). Our interest is in how the folds involve the description 'chat'. Like the psychologist interviewer in extract [1], AC bundles the 'chat' word into a description of the whole scene -- that the postgraduate representative will "come and chat," and that the interviewer "came round an':: (..)spent some time chattin'". To bundle up the description with the act of arrival is an elegantly efficient way of implying that this is the person's interest and motive in the interaction -- what they're there for. This way any candidate member can be reassured that the thing is much less onerous, official and formal than it would have sounded had AC used the bureaucratic description buried away in the Committee statutes. 'Chat', in this fold of the talk, works to eliminate the consequentiality and offputtingness of the event -- even though, of course, when the new member is inducted onto the Committee, he or she will be subject to all the dread rules and regulations that lurk in the other, hidden bureaucratic description. 5. Example 3: "we sat and chatted til about eleven" Here is another case, where, probably because the setting is not as institutional as in the first two, working out what 'chat' is doing will take us a bit more work. First the gloss. Gordon is on the phone to Danielle and talking about what he was doing the other night - we could dwell a little on his description of his guitar performance ('it went down really well') but we'll skip straight to where "chatted" appears. Unlike the previous two cases, it isn't bundled up with arrival at the scene ("come and chat" and "I came round an':: (..)spent some time chattin'"), but it does still get bundled with something -- sitting -- which parcels it up nicely as a combination-verb, something done while doing something else. Gordon and the others had no plans here; the food and wine had been consumed, then "we sat (0.3) an:' chatted (0.4) til: about eleven". Now what does such a description do for his then being struck by the thought that he'd go home and 'just phone her' (".hh then I thought (0.3) I'll come back (0.3) an' I'll jus' jus' phone you t'say that uh I'd like t'see you")? It's a magnificent play of accountability -- it holds off a collection of implications which might damage the tender sentiment presumably involved in wanting to tell someone you'd like to see them. Sitting and chatting is (notwithstanding the wine) not being drunk; it's with other people, so it's not sad-sack lonely rumination; still less is it insistent, stalking, recriminative or even violent obsession. Thinking of Danielle after (merely) being with others sitting and chatting till eleven disarms all of those possibilities; as the discursive psychologists have it (Edwards and Potter 1992) , this is a piece of 'stake management'. Gordon is inoculating himself against being seen to have the wrong sort of motivations. 'Chat' here is used as a part of a positive rhetorical strategy to have sentiments, but of the right sort. 6. Example 4: "I said to him, you know, come down 'n have a chat with me" One last example to see us out. This time we are in a marital counselling session, and the husband's ('Jeff') exams have been part of the topic of conversation, which I will gloss as being about the attention each partner pays to the other. 'Mary' now speaks. Once again the speaker is exploiting the pleasantly unspecific glow that 'chat' can have. Mary wanted Jeff to come down from 'upstairs' and 'have a chat' with her. Against this she puts words in his mouth: "I've gotta start my revising," and then her own commentary -- it was the same "every ni:ght, (.) for o:hh ye:ars.", regular as clockwork and at decidedly antisocial hours. She "never had anyone to ta:lk to" as a consequence. So the hearer is faced with Jeff's choice -- to come down from upstairs (remote, cold) and have a chat with Mary; or pursue his mechanical, laborious, self-centred and inconsiderate regime. There is, in her description, no contest; hence Jeff comes out looking something of a cold fish. Here is a lovely example of 'chat' once again being a good thing, loading the dice in the speaker's favour. 7. Concluding comments I started out saying that the word 'chat' was something of an insult. That certainly might apply when the word is used (or might be used, or is allegedly used) in a discussion about human action, and someone who wants to push the 'real', the 'material' and the 'consequential' might use 'chat' to dismiss an opponent who wants words to be responsible for some rather substantial things: reality, materiality and consequentiality. But there's a nice paradox. When you do take words seriously as doing things, and you look for what 'chat' does in people's actual usage, you find that it isn't an insult. Far from it. In the four cases we looked at the speaker was using 'chat' as a basically pleasant, socially positive and blameless description. Of course, they were doing so for rhetorical purposes, as words always are. But nevertheless there's a paradox there. In the abstract, nasty; in actuality, nice. The one thing that's constant is the fact that, in our analyses, both the hypothetical insulters and our actual glossers are using the word. In the mouths of both parties 'chat' is an interested description, as the discursive psychologists have it, following the tradition established by Garfinkel and, especially, Harvey Sacks (see, for example, the compendious Lectures on Conversation). It is always heard as a contrast (implicit or not) with something else, and does its work that way. Like it or not, 'chat' is no polite cipher. If you look at how it's folded and manipulated into the interaction, you see how it will smooth a potentially difficult interview, naturalise a possibly unwelcome encounter or set up a loaded distinction againt something mechanical and self-interested. All human life is here. If anyone needed persuading that 'chat' isn't chat, then the examples we've looked at here might have gone some way to doing so. References Atkinson, J. M., and J. Heritage, eds. Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Edwards, D., and J. Potter. Discursive Psychology. London: Sage, 1992. Labov, W. Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1972. Rapley, M., and C. Antaki. "A Conversation Analysis of the 'Acquiescence' of People with Learning Disabilities." Journal of Community and Applied Psychology 6 (1996): 371-91. Reddy, M. J. "The Conduit Metaphor - A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language." Metaphor and Thought. Ed. A. Ortony. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1979. Sacks, H. Lectures on Conversation. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Notation The notation follows that of Gail Jefferson described in Atkinson and Heritage (ix - xvi), with the following deviations: (..) and (...) are untimed pauses of about .4 and .8 of a second approximately. The author would like to thank Liz Holt and Derek Edwards for permission to use transcript extracts 3 and 4, whose details are as follows -- Extract 3: Holt: 1988 Undated: Side I: Call 4 Extract 4: DE-JF/C1/S1 @ 12 June, 1993 Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Antaki. "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php>. Chicago style: Charles Antaki, "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Antaki. (2000) Two rhetorical uses of the description 'chat'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionNew digital technologies hold promise for equalising access to information and communication for the Deaf community. SMS technology, for example, has helped to equalise deaf peoples’ access to information and made it easier to communicate with both deaf and hearing people (Tane Akamatsu et al.; Power and Power; Power, Power, and Horstmanshof; Valentine and Skelton, "Changing", "Umbilical"; Harper). A wealth of anecdotal evidence and some recent academic work suggests that new media technology is also reshaping deaf peoples’ sense of local and global community (Breivik "Deaf"; Breivik, Deaf; Brueggeman). One focus of research on new media technologies has been on technologies used for point to point communication, including communication (and interpretation) via video (Tane Akamatsu et al.; Power and Power; Power, Power, and Horstmanshof). Another has been the use of multimedia technologies in formal educational setting for pedagogical purposes, particularly English language literacy (e.g. Marshall Gentry et al.; Tane Akamatsu et al.; Vogel et al.). An emphasis on the role of multimedia in deaf education is understandable, considering the on-going highly politicised contest over whether to educate young deaf people in a bilingual environment using a signed language (Swanwick & Gregory). However, the increasing significance of social and participatory media in the leisure time of Westerners suggests that such uses of Web 2.0 are also worth exploring. There have begun to be some academic accounts of the enthusiastic adoption of vlogging by sign language users (e.g. Leigh; Cavander and Ladner) and this paper seeks to add to this important work. Web 2.0 has been defined by its ability to, in Denise Woods’ word, “harness collective intelligence” (19.2) by providing opportunities for users to make, adapt, “mash up” and share text, photos and video. As well as its well-documented participatory possibilities (Bruns), its re-emphasis on visual (as opposed to textual) communication is of particular interest for Deaf communities. It has been suggested that deaf people are a ‘visual variety of the human race’ (Bahan), and the visually rich presents new opportunities for visually rich forms of communication, most importantly via signed languages. The central importance of signed languages for Deaf identity suggests that the visual aspects of interactive multimedia might offer possibilities of maintenance, enhancement and shifts in those identities (Hyde, Power and Lloyd). At the same time, the visual aspects of the Web 2.0 are often audio-visual, such that the increasingly rich resources of the net offer potential barriers as well as routes to inclusion and community (see Woods; Ellis; Cavander and Ladner). In particular, lack of captioning or use of Auslan in video resources emerges as a key limit to the accessibility of the visual Web to deaf users (Cahill and Hollier). In this paper we ask to what extent contemporary digital media might create moments of permeability in what Krentz has called “the hearing line, that invisible boundary separating deaf and hearing people”( 2)”. To provide tentative answers to these questions, this paper will explore the use of participatory digital media by a group of young Deaf people taking part in a small-scale digital moviemaking project in Sydney in 2009. The ProjectAs a starting point, the interdisciplinary research team conducted a video-making course for young deaf sign language users within the Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University. The research team was comprised of one deaf and four hearing researchers, with expertise in media and cultural studies, information technology, sign language linguistics/ deaf studies, and signed language interpreting. The course was advertised through the newsletter of partner organization the NSW Deaf Society, via a Sydney bilingual deaf school and through the dense electronic networks of Australian deaf people. The course attracted fourteen participants from NSW, Western Australia and Queensland ranging in age from 10 to 18. Twelve of the participants were male, and two female. While there was no aspiration to gather a representative group of young people, it is worth noting there was some diversity within the group: for example, one participant was a wheelchair user while another had in recent years moved to Sydney from Africa and had learned Auslan relatively recently. Students were taught a variety of storytelling techniques and video-making skills, and set loose in groups to devise, shoot and edit a number of short films. The results were shared amongst the class, posted on a private YouTube channel and made into a DVD which was distributed to participants.The classes were largely taught in Auslan by a deaf teacher, although two sessions were taught by (non-deaf) members of Macquarie faculty, including an AFI award winning director. Those sessions were interpreted into Auslan by a sign language interpreter. Participants were then allowed free creative time to shoot video in locations of their choice on campus, or to edit their footage in the computer lab. Formal teaching sessions lasted half of each day – in the afternoons, participants were free to use the facilities or participate in a range of structured activities. Participants were also interviewed in groups, and individually, and their participation in the project was observed by researchers. Our research interest was in what deaf young people would choose to do with Web 2.0 technologies, and most particularly the visually rich elements of participatory and social media, in a relatively unstructured environment. Importantly, our focus was not on evaluating the effectiveness of multimedia for teaching deaf young people, or the level of literacy deployed by deaf young people in using the applications. Rather we were interested to discover the kinds of stories participants chose to tell, the ways they used Web 2.0 applications and the modalities of communication they chose to use. Given that Auslan was the language of instruction of the course, would participants draw on the tradition of deaf jokes and storytelling and narrate stories to camera in Auslan? Would they use the format of the “mash-up”, drawing on found footage or photographs? Would they make more filmic movies using Auslan dialogue? How would they use captions and text in their movies: as subtitles for Auslan dialogue? As an alternative to signing? Or not at all? Our observations from the project point to the great significance of the visual dimensions of Web 2.0 for the deaf young people who participated in the project. Initially, this was evident in the kind of movies students chose to make. Only one group – three young people in their late teens which included both of the young women in the class - chose to make a dialogue heavy movie, a spoof of Charlie’s Angels, entitled Deaf Angels. This movie included long scenes of the Angels using Auslan to chat together, receiving instruction from “Charlie” in sign language via videophone and recruiting “extras”, again using Auslan, to sign a petition for Auslan to be made an official Australian language. In follow up interviews, one of the students involved in making this film commented “my clip is about making a political statement, while the other [students in the class] made theirs just for fun”. The next group of (three) films, all with the involvement of the youngest class member, included signed storytelling of a sort readily recognisable from signed videos on-line: direct address to camera, with the teller narrating but also taking on the roles of characters and presenting their dialogue directly via the sign language convention of “role shift” - also referred to as constructed action and constructed dialogue (Metzger). One of these movies was an interesting hybrid. The first half of the four minute film had two young actors staging a hold-up at a vending machine, with a subsequent chase and fight scene. Like most of the films made by participants in the class, it included only one line of signed dialogue, with the rest of the narrative told visually through action. However, at the end of the action sequence, with the victim safely dead, the narrative was then retold by one of the performers within a signed story, using conventions typically observed in signed storytelling - such as role shift, characterisation and spatial mapping (Mather & Winston; Rayman; Wilson).The remaining films similarly drew on action and horror genres with copious use of chase and fight scenes and melodramatic and sometimes quite beautiful climactic death tableaux. The movies included a story about revenging the death of a brother; a story about escaping from jail; a short story about a hippo eating a vet; a similar short comprised of stills showing a sequence of executions in the computer lab; and a ghost story. Notably, most of these movies contained very little dialogue – with only one or two lines of signed dialogue in each four to five minute video (with the exception of the gun handshape used in context to represent the object liberally throughout most films). The kinds of movies made by this limited group of people on this one occasion are suggestive. While participants drew on a number of genres and communication strategies in their film making, the researchers were surprised at how few of the movies drew on traditions of signed storytelling or jokes– particularly since the course was targeted at deaf sign language users and promoted as presented in Auslan. Consequently, our group of students were largely drawn from the small number of deaf schools in which Auslan is the main language of instruction – an exceptional circumstance in an Australian setting in which most deaf young people attend mainstream schools (Byrnes et al.; Power and Hyde). Looking across the Hearing LineWe can make sense of the creative choices made by the participants in the course in a number of ways. Although methods of captioning were briefly introduced during the course, iMovie (the package which participants were using) has limited captioning functionality. Indeed, one student, who was involved in making the only clip to include captioning which contextualised the narrative, commented in follow-up interviews that he would have liked more information about captioning. It’s also possible that the compressed nature of the course prevented participants from undertaking the time-consuming task of scripting and entering captions. As well as being the most fun approach to the projects, the use of visual story telling was probably the easiest. This was perhaps exacerbated by the lack of emphasis on scriptwriting (outside of structural elements and broad narrative sweeps) in the course. Greater emphasis on that aspect of film-making would have given participants a stronger foundational literacy for caption-based projectsDespite these qualifications, both the movies made by students and our observations suggest the significance of a shared visual culture in the use of the Web by these particular young people. During an afternoon when many of the students were away swimming, one student stayed in the lab to use the computers. Rather than working on a video project, he spent time trawling through YouTube for clips purporting to show ghost sightings and other paranormal phenomena. He drew these clips to the attention of one of the research team who was present in the lab, prompting a discussion about the believability of the ghosts and supernatural apparitions in the clips. While some of the clips included (uncaptioned) off-screen dialogue and commentary, this didn’t seem to be a barrier to this student’s enjoyment. Like many other sub-genres of YouTube clips – pranks, pratfalls, cute or alarmingly dangerous incidents involving children and animals – these supernatural videos as a genre rely very little on commentary or dialogue for their meaning – just as with the action films that other students drew on so heavily in their movie making. In an E-Tech paper entitled "The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism", Ethan Zuckerman suggests that “web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers and web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats”. This comment points out both the Web 2.0’s vast repository of entertaining material in the ‘funny video’genre which is visually based, dialogue free, entertaining material accessible to a wide range of people, including deaf sign language users. In the realm of leisure, at least, the visually rich resources of Web 2.0’s ubiquitous images and video materials may be creating a shared culture in which the line between hearing and deaf people’s entertainment activities is less clear than it may have been in the past. The ironic tone of Zuckerman’s observation, however, alerts us to the limits of a reliance on language-free materials as a route to accessibility. The kinds of videos that the participants in the course chose to make speaks to the limitations as well as resources offered by the visual Web. There is still a limited range of captioned material on You Tube. In interviews, both young people and their teachers emphasised the central importance of access to captioned video on-line, with the young people we interviewed strongly favouring captioned video over the inclusion on-screen of simultaneous signed interpretations of text. One participant who was a regular user of a range of on-line social networking commented that if she really liked the look of a particular movie which was uncaptioned, she would sometimes contact its maker and ask them to add captions to it. Interestingly, two student participants emphasised in interviews that signed video should also include captions so hearing people could have access to signed narratives. These students seemed to be drawing on ideas about “reverse discrimination”, but their concern reflected the approach of many of the student movies - using shared visual conventions that made their movies available to the widest possible audience. All the students were anxious that hearing people could understand their work, perhaps a consequence of the course’s location in the University as an overwhelmingly hearing environment. In this emphasis on captioning rather than sign as a route to making media accessible, we may be seeing a consequence of the emphasis Krentz describes as ubiquitous in deaf education “the desire to make the differences between deaf and hearing people recede” (16). Krentz suggests that his concept of the ‘hearing line’ “must be perpetually retested and re-examined. It reveals complex and shifting relationships between physical difference, cultural fabrication and identity” (7). The students’ movies and attitudes emphasised the reality of that complexity. Our research project explored how some young Deaf people attempted to create stories capable of crossing categories of deafness and ‘hearing-ness’… unstable (like other identity categories) while others constructed narratives that affirmed Deaf Culture or drew on the Deaf storytelling traditions. This is of particular interest in the Web 2.0 environment, given that its technologies are often lauded as having the politics of participation. The example of the Deaf Community asks reasonable questions about the validity of those claims, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there is still less than appropriate access and that some users are more equal than others.How do young people handle the continuing lack of material available to the on the Web? The answer repeatedly offered by our young male interviewees was ‘I can’t be bothered’. As distinct from “I can’t understand” or “I won’t go there” this answer, represented a disengagement from demands to identify your literacy levels, reveal your preferred means of communication; to rehearse arguments about questions of access or expose attempts to struggle to make sense of texts that fail to employ readily accessible means of communicating. Neither an admission of failure or a demand for change, CAN’T-BE-BOTHERED in this context offers a cool way out of an accessibility impasse. This easily-dismissed comment in interviews was confirmed in a whole-group discussions, when students came to a consensus that if when searching for video resources on the Net they found video that included neither signing nor captions, they would move on to find other more accessible resources. Even here, though, the ground continues to shift. YouTube recently announced that it was making its auto-captioning feature open to everybody - a machine generated system that whilst not perfect does attempt to make all YouTube videos accessible to deaf people. (Bertolucci).The importance of captioning of non-signed video is thrown into further significance by our observation from the course of the use of YouTube as a search engine by the participants. Many of the students when asked to research information on the Web bypassed text-based search engines and used the more visual results presented on YouTube directly. In research on deaf adolescents’ search strategies on the Internet, Smith points to the promise of graphical interfaces for deaf young people as a strategy for overcoming the English literacy difficulties experienced by many deaf young people (527). In the years since Smith’s research was undertaken, the graphical and audiovisual resources available on the Web have exploded and users are increasingly turning to these resources in their searches, providing new possibilities for Deaf users (see for instance Schonfeld; Fajardo et al.). Preliminary ConclusionsA number of recent writers have pointed out the ways that the internet has made everyday communication with government services, businesses, workmates and friends immeasurably easier for deaf people (Power, Power and Horstmanshof; Keating and Mirus; Valentine and Skelton, "Changing", "Umbilical"). The ready availability of information in a textual and graphical form on the Web, and ready access to direct contact with others on the move via SMS, has worked against what has been described as deaf peoples’ “information deprivation”, while everyday tasks – booking tickets, for example – are no longer a struggle to communicate face-to-face with hearing people (Valentine and Skelton, "Changing"; Bakken 169-70).The impacts of new technologies should not be seen in simple terms, however. Valentine and Skelton summarise: “the Internet is not producing either just positive or just negative outcomes for D/deaf people but rather is generating a complex set of paradoxical effects for different users” (Valentine and Skelton, "Umbilical" 12). They note, for example, that the ability, via text-based on-line social media to interact with other people on-line regardless of geographic location, hearing status or facility with sign language has been highly valued by some of their deaf respondents. They comment, however, that the fact that many deaf people, using the Internet, can “pass” minimises the need for hearing people in a phonocentric society to be aware of the diversity of ways communication can take place. They note, for example, that “few mainstream Websites demonstrate awareness of D/deaf peoples’ information and communication needs/preferences (eg. by incorporating sign language video clips)” ("Changing" 11). As such, many deaf people have an enhanced ability to interact with a range of others, but in a mode favoured by the dominant culture, a culture which is thus unchallenged by exposure to alternative strategies of communication. Our research, preliminary as it is, suggests a somewhat different take on these complex questions. The visually driven, image-rich approach taken to movie making, Web-searching and information sharing by our participants suggests the emergence of a certain kind of on-line culture which seems likely to be shared by deaf and hearing young people. However where Valentine and Skelton suggest deaf people, in order to participate on-line, are obliged to do so, on the terms of the hearing majority, the increasingly visual nature of Web 2.0 suggests that the terrain may be shifting – even if there is still some way to go.AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Natalie Kull and Meg Stewart for their research assistance on this project, and participants in the course and members of the project’s steering group for their generosity with their time and ideas.ReferencesBahan, B. "Upon the Formation of a Visual Variety of the Human Race. In H-Dirksen L. Baumann (ed.), Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Bakken, F. “SMS Use among Deaf Teens and Young Adults in Norway.” In R. Harper, L. Palen, and A. Taylor (eds.), The Inside Text: Social, Cultural and Design Perspectives on SMS. Netherlands: Springe, 2005. 161-74. Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web. London: Orion Business, 1999.Bertolucci, Jeff. “YouTube Offers Auto-Captioning to All Users.” PC World 5 Mar. 2010. 5 Mar. 2010 < http://www.macworld.com/article/146879/2010/03/YouTube_captions.html >.Breivik, Jan Kare. Deaf Identities in the Making: Local Lives, Transnational Connections. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2005.———. “Deaf Identities: Visible Culture, Hidden Dilemmas and Scattered Belonging.” In H.G. Sicakkan and Y.G. Lithman (eds.), What Happens When a Society Is Diverse: Exploring Multidimensional Identities. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. 75-104.Brueggemann, B.J. (ed.). Literacy and Deaf People’s Cultural and Contextual Perspectives. Washington, DC: Gaudellet University Press, 2004. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.Byrnes, Linda, Jeff Sigafoos, Field Rickards, and P. Margaret Brown. “Inclusion of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Government Schools in New South Wales, Australia: Development and Implementation of a Policy.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7.3 (2002): 244-257.Cahill, Martin, and Scott Hollier. Social Media Accessibility Review 1.0. Media Access Australia, 2009. Cavender, Anna, and Richard Ladner. “Hearing Impairments.” In S. Harper and Y. Yesilada (eds.), Web Accessibility. London: Springer, 2008.Ellis, Katie. “A Purposeful Rebuilding: YouTube, Representation, Accessibility and the Socio-Political Space of Disability." Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.2 (2010): 1.1-21.12.Fajardo, Inmaculada, Elena Parra, and Jose J. Canas. “Do Sign Language Videos Improve Web Navigation for Deaf Signer Users?” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 15.3 (2009): 242-262.Harper, Phil. “Networking the Deaf Nation.” Australian Journal of Communication 30.3 (2003): 153-166.Hyde, M., D. Power, and K. Lloyd. "W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Comments on Trevor Johnston’s Population, Genetics and the Future of Australian Sign Language." Sign Language Studies 6.2 (2006): 190-201. Keating, Elizabeth, and Gene Mirus. “American Sign Language in Virtual Space: Interactions between Deaf Users of Computer-Mediated Video.” Language in Society 32.5 (Nov. 2003): 693-714.Krentz, Christopher. Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.Leigh, Irene. A Lens on Deaf Identities. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2009.Marshall Gentry, M., K.M. Chinn, and R.D. Moulton. “Effectiveness of Multimedia Reading Materials When Used with Children Who Are Deaf.” American Annals of the Deaf 5 (2004): 394-403.Mather, S., and E. Winston. "Spatial Mapping and Involvement in ASL Storytelling." In C. Lucas (ed.), Pinky Extension and Eye Gaze: Language Use in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1998. 170-82.Metzger, M. "Constructed Action and Constructed Dialogue in American Sign Language." In C. Lucas (ed.), Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1995. 255-71.Power, Des, and G. Leigh. "Principles and Practices of Literacy Development for Deaf Learners: A Historical Overview." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5.1 (2000): 3-8.Power, Des, and Merv Hyde. “The Characteristics and Extent of Participation of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Regular Classes in Australian Schools.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7.4 (2002): 302-311.Power, M., and D. Power “Everyone Here Speaks TXT: Deaf People Using SMS in Australia and the Rest of the World.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 9.3 (2004). Power, M., D. Power, and L. Horstmanshof. “Deaf People Communicating via SMS, TTY, Relay Service, Fax, and Computers in Australia.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 12.1 (2007): 80-92. Rayman, J. "Storytelling in the Visual Mode: A Comparison of ASL and English." In E. Wilson (ed.), Storytelling & Conversation: Discourse in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002. 59-82.Schonfeld, Eric. "ComScore: YouTube Now 25 Percent of All Google Searches." Tech Crunch 18 Dec. 2008. 14 May 2009 < http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/18/comscore-YouTube-now-25-percent-of-all-google-searches/?rss >.Smith, Chad. “Where Is It? How Deaf Adolescents Complete Fact-Based Internet Search Tasks." American Annals of the Deaf 151.5 (2005-6).Swanwick, R., and S. Gregory (eds.). Sign Bilingual Education: Policy and Practice. Coleford: Douglas McLean Publishing, 2007.Tane Akamatsu, C., C. Mayer, and C. Farrelly. “An Investigation of Two-Way Text Messaging Use with Deaf Students at the Secondary Level.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 11.1 (2006): 120-131.Valentine, Gill, and Tracy Skelton. “Changing Spaces: The Role of the Internet in Shaping Deaf Geographies.” Social and Cultural Geography 9.5 (2008): 469-85.———. “‘An Umbilical Cord to the World’: The Role of the Internet in D/deaf People’s Information and Communication Practices." Information, Communication and Society 12.1 (2009): 44-65.Vogel, Jennifer, Clint Bowers, Cricket Meehan, Raegan Hoeft, and Kristy Bradley. “Virtual Reality for Life Skills Education: Program Evaluation.” Deafness and Education International 61 (2004): 39-47.Wilson, J. "The Tobacco Story: Narrative Structure in an ASL Story." In C. Lucas (ed.), Multicultural Aspects of Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1996. 152-80.Winston (ed.). Storytelling and Conversation: Discourse in Deaf Communities. Washington, D.C: Gallaudet University Press. 59-82.Woods, Denise. “Communicating in Virtual Worlds through an Accessible Web 2.0 Solution." Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.2 (2010): 19.1-19.16YouTube Most Viewed. Online video. YouTube 2009. 23 May 2009 < http://www.YouTube.com/browse?s=mp&t=a >.

It seems nowadays that any aspect of collecting and displaying tangible or intangible material culture is labeled as curating: shopkeepers curate their wares; DJs curate their musical selections; magazine editors curate media stories; and hipsters curate their coffee tables. Given the increasing ubiquity and complexity of 21st-century notions of curatorship, the current issue of MC Journal, ‘curate’, provides an excellent opportunity to consider some of the changes that have occurred in professional practice since the emergence of the ‘digital turn’. There is no doubt that the internet and interactive media have transformed the way we live our daily lives—and for many cultural commentators it only makes sense that they should also transform our cultural experiences. In this paper, I want to examine the issue of curatorial practice in the postdigital age, looking some of the ways that curating has changed over the last twenty years—and some of the ways it has not. The term postdigital comes from the work of Ross Parry, and is used to references the ‘tipping point’ where the use of digital technologies became normative practice in museums (24). Overall, I contend that although new technologies have substantially facilitated the way that curators do their jobs, core business and values have not changed as the result of the digital turn. While, major paradigm shifts have occurred in the field of professional curatorship over the last twenty years, these shifts have been issue-driven rather than a result of new technologies. Everyone’s a Curator In a 2009 article in the New York Times, journalist Alex Williams commented on the growing trend in American consumer culture of labeling oneself a curator. “The word ‘curate’,’’ he observed, “has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting” (1). Williams dated the origins of the popular adoption of the term ‘curating’ to a decade earlier; noting the strong association between the uptake and the rise of the internet (2). This association is not surprising. The development of increasingly interactive software such as Web 2.0 has led to a rapid rise in new technologies aimed at connecting people and information in ways that were previously unimaginable. In particular the internet has become a space in which people can collect, store and most importantly share vast quantities of information. This information is often about objects. According to sociologist Jyri Engeström, the most successful social network sites on the internet (such as Pinterest, Flickr, Houzz etc), use discrete objects, rather than educational content or interpersonal relationships, as the basis for social interaction. So objects become the node for inter-personal communication. In these and other sites, internet users can find, collate and display multiple images of objects on the same page, which can in turn be connected at the press of a button to other related sources of information in the form of text, commentary or more images. These sites are often seen as the opportunity to virtually curate mini-exhibitions, as well as to create mood boards or sites of virtual consumption. The idea of curating as selective aesthetic editing is also popular in online markets places such as Etsy where numerous sellers offer ‘curated’ selections from home wares, to prints, to (my personal favorite) a curated selection of cat toys. In all of these exercises there is an emphasis on the idea of connoisseurship. As part of his article on the new breed of ‘curators’, for example, Alex Williams interviewed Tom Kalendrain, the Fashion Director of a leading American department store, which had engaged in a collaboration with Scott Schuman of the fashion blog, the Sartorialist. According to Kalendrain the store had asked Schuman to ‘curate’ a collection of clothes for them to sell. He justified calling Schuman a curator by explaining: “It was precisely his eye that made the store want to work with him; it was about the right shade of blue, about the cut, about the width of a lapel” (cited in Williams 2). The interview reveals much about current popular notions of what it means to be a curator. The central emphasis of Kalendrain’s distinction was on connoisseurship: exerting a privileged authoritative voice based on intimate knowledge of the subject matter and the ability to discern the very best examples from a plethora of choices. Ironically, in terms of contemporary museum practice, this is a model of curating that museums have consciously been trying to move away from for at least the last three decades. We are now witnessing an interesting disconnect in which the extra-museum community (represented in particular by a postdigital generation of cultural bloggers, commentators and entrepreneurs) are re-vivifying an archaic model of curating, based on object-centric connoisseurship, just at the point where professional curators had thought they had successfully moved on. From Being about Something to Being for Somebody The rejection of the object-expert model of curating has been so persuasive that it has transformed the way museums conduct core business across all sectors of the institution. Over the last thirty to forty years museums have witnessed a major pedagogical shift in how curators approach their work and how museums conceptualise their core values. These paradigmatic and pedagogical shifts were best characterised by the museologist Stephen Weil in his seminal article “From being about something to being for somebody.” Weil, writing in the late 1990s, noted that museums had turned away from traditional models in which individual curators (by way of scholarship and connoisseurship) dictated how the rest of the world (the audience) apprehended and understood significant objects of art, science and history—towards an audience centered approach where curators worked collaboratively with a variety of interested communities to create a pluralist forum for social change. In museum parlance these changes are referred to under the general rubric of the ‘new museology’: a paradigm shift, which had its origins in the 1970s; its gestation in the 1980s; and began to substantially manifest by the 1990s. Although no longer ‘new’, these shifts continue to influence museum practices in the 2000s. In her article, “Curatorship as Social Practice’” museologist Christina Kreps outlined some of the developments over recent decades that have challenged the object-centric model. According to Kreps, the ‘new museology’ was a paradigm shift that emerged from a widespread dissatisfaction with conventional interpretations of the museum and its functions and sought to re-orient itself away from strongly method and technique driven object-focused approaches. “The ‘new museum’ was to be people-centered, action-oriented, and devoted to social change and development” (315). An integral contributor to the developing new museology was the subjection of the western museum in the 1980s and ‘90s to representational critique from academics and activists. Such a critique entailed, in the words of Sharon Macdonald, questioning and drawing attention to “how meanings come to be inscribed and by whom, and how some come to be regarded as ‘right’ or taken as given” (3). Macdonald notes that postcolonial and feminist academics were especially engaged in this critique and the growing “identity politics” of the era. A growing engagement with the concept that museological /curatorial work is what Kreps (2003b) calls a ‘social process’, a recognition that; “people’s relationships to objects are primarily social and cultural ones” (154). This shift has particularly impacted on the practice of museum curatorship. By way of illustration we can compare two scholarly definitions of what constitutes a curator; one written in 1984 and one from 2001. The Manual of Curatorship, written in 1994 by Gary Edson and David Dean define a curator as: “a staff member or consultant who is as specialist in a particular field on study and who provides information, does research and oversees the maintenance, use, and enhancement of collections” (290). Cash Cash writing in 2001 defines curatorship instead as “a social practice predicated on the principle of a fixed relation between material objects and the human environment” (140). The shift has been towards increased self-reflexivity and a focus on greater plurality–acknowledging the needs of their diverse audiences and community stakeholders. As part of this internal reflection the role of curator has shifted from sole authority to cultural mediator—from connoisseur to community facilitator as a conduit for greater community-based conversation and audience engagement resulting in new interpretations of what museums are, and what their purpose is. This shift—away from objects and towards audiences—has been so great that it has led some scholars to question the need for museums to have standing collections at all. Do Museums Need Objects? In his provocatively titled work Do Museums Still Need Objects? Historian Steven Conn observes that many contemporary museums are turning away from the authority of the object and towards mass entertainment (1). Conn notes that there has been an increasing retreat from object-based research in the fields of art; science and ethnography; that less object-based research seems to be occurring in museums and fewer objects are being put on display (2). The success of science centers with no standing collections, the reduction in the number of objects put on display in modern museums (23); the increasing phalanx of ‘starchitect’ designed museums where the building is more important than the objects in it (11), and the increase of virtual museums and collections online, all seems to indicate that conventional museum objects have had their day (1-2). Or have they? At the same time that all of the above is occurring, ongoing research suggests that in the digital age, more than ever, people are seeking the authenticity of the real. For example, a 2008 survey of 5,000 visitors to living history sites in the USA, found that those surveyed expressed a strong desire to commune with historically authentic objects: respondents felt that their lives had become so crazy, so complicated, so unreal that they were seeking something real and authentic in their lives by visiting these museums. (Wilkening and Donnis 1) A subsequent research survey aimed specifically at young audiences (in their early twenties) reported that: seeing stuff online only made them want to see the real objects in person even more, [and that] they felt that museums were inherently authentic, largely because they have authentic objects that are unique and wonderful. (Wilkening 2) Adding to the question ‘do museums need objects?’, Rainey Tisdale argues that in the current digital age we need real museum objects more than ever. “Many museum professionals,” she reports “have come to believe that the increase in digital versions of objects actually enhances the value of in-person encounters with tangible, real things” (20). Museums still need objects. Indeed, in any kind of corporate planning, one of the first thing business managers look for in a company is what is unique about it. What can it provide that the competition can’t? Despite the popularity of all sorts of info-tainments, the one thing that museums have (and other institutions don’t) is significant collections. Collections are a museum’s niche resource – in business speak they are the asset that gives them the advantage over their competitors. Despite the increasing importance of technology in delivering information, including collections online, there is still overwhelming evidence to suggest that we should not be too quick to dismiss the traditional preserve of museums – the numinous object. And in fact, this is precisely the final argument that Steven Conn reaches in his above-mentioned publication. Curating in the Postdigital Age While it is reassuring (but not particularly surprising) that generations Y and Z can still differentiate between virtual and real objects, this doesn’t mean that museum curators can bury their heads in the collection room hoping that the digital age will simply go away. The reality is that while digitally savvy audiences continue to feel the need to see and commune with authentic materially-present objects, the ways in which they access information about these objects (prior to, during, and after a museum visit) has changed substantially due to technological advances. In turn, the ways in which curators research and present these objects – and stories about them – has also changed. So what are some of the changes that have occurred in museum operations and visitor behavior due to technological advances over the last twenty years? The most obvious technological advances over the last twenty years have actually been in data management. Since the 1990s a number of specialist data management systems have been developed for use in the museum sector. In theory at least, a curator can now access the entire collections of an institution without leaving their desk. Moreover, the same database that tells the curator how many objects the institution holds from the Torres Strait Islands, can also tell her what they look like (through high quality images); which objects were exhibited in past exhibitions; what their prior labels were; what in-house research has been conducted on them; what the conservation requirements are; where they are stored; and who to contact for copyright clearance for display—to name just a few functions. In addition a curator can get on the internet to search the online collection databases from other museums to find what objects they have from the Torres Strait Islands. Thus, while our curator is at this point conducting the same type of exhibition research that she would have done twenty years ago, the ease in which she can access information is substantially greater. The major difference of course is that today, rather than in the past, the curator would be collaborating with members of the original source community to undertake this project. Despite the rise of the internet, this type of liaison still usually occurs face to face. The development of accessible digital databases through the Internet and capacity to download images and information at a rapid rate has also changed the way non-museum staff can access collections. Audiences can now visit museum websites through which they can easily access information about current and past exhibitions, public programs, and online collections. In many cases visitors can also contribute to general discussion forums and collections provenance data through various means such as ‘tagging’; commenting on blogs; message boards; and virtual ‘talk back’ walls. Again, however, this represents a change in how visitors access museums but not a fundamental shift in what they can access. In the past, museum visitors were still encouraged to access and comment upon the collections; it’s just that doing so took a lot more time and effort. The rise of interactivity and the internet—in particular through Web 2.0—has led many commentators to call for a radical change in the ways museums operate. Museum analyst Lynda Kelly (2009) has commented on the issue that: the demands of the ‘information age’ have raised new questions for museums. It has been argued that museums need to move from being suppliers of information to providing usable knowledge and tools for visitors to explore their own ideas and reach their own conclusions because of increasing access to technologies, such as the internet. Gordon Freedman for example argues that internet technologies such as computers, the World Wide Web, mobile phones and email “… have put the power of communication, information gathering, and analysis in the hands of the individuals of the world” (299). Freedman argued that museums need to “evolve into a new kind of beast” (300) in order to keep up with the changes opening up to the possibility of audiences becoming mediators of information and knowledge. Although we often hear about the possibilities of new technologies in opening up the possibilities of multiple authors for exhibitions, I have yet to hear of an example of this successfully taking place. This doesn’t mean, however, that it will never happen. At present most museums seem to be merely dipping their toes in the waters. A recent example from the Art Gallery of South Australia illustrates this point. In 2013, the Gallery mounted an exhibition that was, in theory at least, curated by the public. Labeled as “the ultimate people’s choice exhibition” the project was hosted in conjunction with ABC Radio Adelaide. The public was encouraged to go online to the gallery website and select from a range of artworks in different categories by voting for their favorites. The ‘winning’ works were to form the basis of the exhibition. While the media spin on the exhibition gave the illusion of a mass curated show, in reality very little actual control was given over to the audience-curators. The public was presented a range of artworks, which had already been pre-selected from the standing collections; the themes for the exhibition had also already been determined as they informed the 120 artworks that were offered up for voting. Thus, in the end the pre-selection of objects and themes, as well as the timing and execution of the exhibition remained entirely in the hand of the professional curators. Another recent innovation did not attempt to harness public authorship, but rather enhanced individual visitor connections to museum collections by harnessing new GPS technologies. The Streetmuseum was a free app program created by the Museum of London to bring geotagged historical street views to hand held or portable mobile devices. The program allowed user to undertake a self-guided tour of London. After programing in their route, users could then point their device at various significant sites along the way. Looking through their viewfinder they would see a 3D historic photograph overlayed on the live site – allowing user not only to see what the area looked like in the past but also to capture an image of the overlay. While many of the available tagging apps simply allow for the opportunity of adding more white noise, allowing viewers to add commentary, pics, links to a particular geo tagged site but with no particular focus, the Streetmuseum had a well-defined purpose to encourage their audience to get out and explore London; to share their archival photograph collection with a broader audience; and to teach people more about London’s unique history. A Second Golden Age? A few years ago the Steven Conn suggested that museums are experiencing an international ‘golden age’ with more museums being built and visited and talked about than ever before (1). In the United States, where Conn is based, there are more than 17,500 accredited museums, and more than two million people visit some sort of museum per day, averaging around 865 million museum visits per year (2). However, at the same time that museums are proliferating, the traditional areas of academic research and theory that feed into museums such as history, cultural studies, anthropology and art history are experiencing a period of intense self reflexivity. Conn writes: At the turn of the twenty-first century, more people are going to more museums than at any time in the past, and simultaneously more scholars, critics, and others are writing and talking about museums. The two phenomena are most certainly related but it does not seem to be a happy relationship. Even as museums enjoy more and more success…many who write about them express varying degrees of foreboding. (1) There is no doubt that the internet and increasingly interactive media has transformed the way we live our daily lives—it only makes sense that it should also transform our cultural experiences. At the same time Museums need to learn to ride the wave without getting dumped into it. The best new media acts as a bridge—connecting people to places and ideas—allowing them to learn more about museum objects and historical spaces, value-adding to museum visits rather than replacing them altogether. As museologust Elaine Gurian, has recently concluded, the core business of museums seems unchanged thus far by the adoption of internet based technology: “the museum field generally, its curators, and those academic departments focused on training curators remain at the core philosophically unchanged despite their new websites and shiny new technological reference centres” (97). Virtual life has not replaced real life and online collections and exhibitions have not replaced real life visitations. Visitors want access to credible information about museum objects and museum exhibitions, they are not looking for Wiki-Museums. Or if they are are, they are looking to the Internet community to provide that service rather than the employees of state and federally funded museums. Both provide legitimate services, but they don’t necessarily need to provide the same service. In the same vein, extra-museum ‘curating’ of object and ideas through social media sites such as Pinterest, Flikr, Instagram and Tumblr provide a valuable source of inspiration and a highly enjoyable form of virtual consumption. But the popular uptake of the term ‘curating’ remains as easily separable from professional practice as the prior uptake of the terms ‘doctor’ and ‘architect’. An individual who doctors an image, or is the architect of their destiny, is still not going to operate on a patient nor construct a building. While major ontological shifts have occurred within museum curatorship over the last thirty years, these changes have resulted from wider social shifts, not directly from technology. This is not to say that technology will not change the museum’s ‘way of being’ in my professional lifetime—it’s just to say it hasn’t happened yet. References Cash Cash, Phillip. “Medicine Bundles: An Indigenous Approach.” Ed. T. Bray. The Future of the Past: Archaeologists, Native Americans and Repatriation. New York and London: Garland Publishing (2001): 139-145. Conn, Steven. Do Museums Still Need Objects? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Edson, Gary, and David Dean. The Handbook for Museums. New York and London: Routledge, 1994. Engeström, Jyri. “Why Some Social Network Services Work and Others Don’t — Or: The Case for Object-Centered Sociality.” Zengestrom Apr. 2005. 17 June 2015 ‹http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why-some-social-network-services-work-and-others-dont-or-the-case-for-object-centered-sociality.html›. Freedman, Gordon. “The Changing Nature of Museums”. Curator 43.4 (2000): 295-306. Gurian, Elaine Heumann. “Curator: From Soloist to Impresario.” Eds. Fiona Cameron and Lynda Kelly. Hot Topics, Public Culture, Museums. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 95-111. Kelly, Lynda. “Museum Authority.” Blog 12 Nov. 2009. 25 June 2015 ‹http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/museullaneous/museum-authority›. Kreps, Christina. “Curatorship as Social Practice.” Curator: The Museum Journal 46.3 (2003): 311-323. ———, Christina. Liberating Culture: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation, and Heritage Preservation. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Macdonald, Sharon. “Expanding Museum Studies: An Introduction.” Ed. Sharon MacDonald. A Companion to Museum Studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011. Parry, Ross. “The End of the Beginning: Normativity in the Postdigital Museum.” Museum Worlds: Advances in Research 1 (2013): 24-39. Tisdale, Rainey. “Do History Museums Still Need Objects?” History News (2011): 19-24. 18 June 2015 ‹http://aaslhcommunity.org/historynews/files/2011/08/RaineySmr11Links.pdf›. Suchy, Serene. Leading with Passion: Change Management in the Twenty-First Century Museum. Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2004. Weil, Stephen E. “From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum.” Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 128.3 (1999): 229–258. Wilkening, Susie. “Community Engagement and Objects—Mutually Exclusive?” Museum Audience Insight 27 July 2009. 14 June 2015 ‹http://reachadvisors.typepad.com/museum_audience_insight/2009/07/community-engagement-and-objects-mutually-exclusive.html›. ———, and Erica Donnis. “Authenticity? It Means Everything.” History News (2008) 63:4. Williams, Alex. “On the Tip of Creative Tongues.” New York Times 4 Oct. 2009. 4 June 2015 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/fashion/04curate.html›.

The Arab world witnessed an influx of satellite channels during the 1990s and in the early years of the first decade of the new century. Many analysts in the Arab world applauded this influx as a potential tool for political change in the Arab countries. Two stations were at the heart of the new optimism: Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the two most prominent 24-hour news channels in the region. Al-Jazeera proved to be more controversial because in its early years of broadcasting it managed to break taboos in the Arab media by tackling issues of human rights and hosting Arab dissidents. Also, its coverage of international conflicts (primarily Afghanistan and Iraq) has marked it as a counter-hegemonic news outlet. For the first time, the flow of news went from South to North. Some scholars who study Arab satellite media, and Al-Jazeera specifically, have gone so far as to suggest that it has created a new Arab public sphere (Lynch, Miladi). However, the political developments in the Arab world, mainly the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and what is now happening in Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen, have raised questions as to how credible these suggestions are. And are we going to claim the same powers for social media in the Arab world? This article takes the form of a personal reflection on how successful (or not) Arab satellite channels are proving to be as a tool for political change and reform in the Arab world. Are these channels editorially free from Arab governments’ political and economic interests? And could new media (notably social networking sites) achieve what satellite channels have been unable to over the last two decades? 1996 saw the launch of Al-Jazeera, the first 24-hour news channel in the Arab world. However, it didn’t have much of an impact on the media scene in the region until 1998 and gained its controversial reputation through its coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (see Zayani; Miles; Allan and Zelizer; El-Nawawy and Iskandar). In the Arab world, it gained popularity with its compelling talk shows and open discussions of human rights and democracy (Alterman). But its dominance didn’t last long. In 2003, Al Walid Al Ibrahim, son-in-law of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (1921-2005) established Al Arabiya, the second 24-hour news channel in the Arab world, just before the start of the Iraq war. Many scholars and analysts saw in this a direct response to the popularity that Al-Jazeera was achieving with the Arab audiences. Al Arabiya, however, didn’t achieve the level of popularity that Al-Jazeera enjoyed throughout its years of broadcasting (Shapiro). Al Arabiya and Al-Jazeera Arabic subsequently became rivals representing political and national interests and not just news competitors. Indeed, one of Wikileaks’ latest revelations states that Al-Jazeera changed its coverage to suit Qatari foreign policy. The US ambassador to Qatar, Joseph LeBaron, was reported as saying: The Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, had joked in an interview that Al-Jazeera had caused the Gulf State such headaches that it might be better to sell it. But the ambassador remarked: “Such statements must not be taken at face value.” He went on: “Al-Jazeera’s ability to influence public opinion throughout the region is a substantial source of leverage for Qatar, one which it is unlikely to relinquish. Moreover, the network can also be used as a chip to improve relations. For example, Al-Jazeera’s more favourable coverage of Saudi Arabia's royal family has facilitated Qatari–Saudi reconciliation over the past year.” (Booth). The unspoken political rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar on Lebanese domestic disputes, over Iran, and over the Palestinian internal conflict was played out in the two channels. This brings us to my central question: can Arab satellite channels, and specifically Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al Arabiya, be regarded as tools for democratic political change? In the recent revolution in Tunisia (spring 2011), satellite channels had to catch up with what social media were reporting: and Al-Jazeera more so than Al Arabiya because of previous encounters between Al-Jazeera and Zein Al Abidine bin Ali’s regime (Greenslade, The Guardian). Bin Ali controlled the country’s media and access to satellite media to suit his interests. Al-Jazeera was banned from Tunisia on several occasions and had their offices closed down. Bin Ali allowed private TV stations to operate but under indirect state control when it came to politics and what Ben Ali’s regime viewed as national and security interests. Should we therefore give social networking credit for facilitating the revolution in Tunisia? Yes, we should. We should give it credit for operating as a mobilising tool. The people were ready, the political moment came, and the people used it. Four out of ten Tunisians are connected to the Internet; almost 20 per cent of the Tunisian population are on Facebook (Mourtada and Salem). We are talking about a newly media-literate population who have access to the new technology and know how to use it. On this point, it is important to note that eight out of ten Facebook users in Tunisia are under the age of 30 (Mourtada and Salem). Public defiance and displays of popular anger were sustained by new media outlets (Miladi). Facebook pages have become sites of networking and spaces for exchanging and disseminating news about the protests (Miladi). Pages such as “The people of Tunisia are burning themselves, Mr President” had around 15,000 members. “Wall-posts” specifying the date and place of upcoming protest became very familiar on social media websites. They even managed to survive government attempts to disable and block these sites. Tunisian and non-Tunisians alike became involved in spreading the message through these sites and Arab transnationalism and support for the revolution came to a head. Many adjacent countries had Facebook pages showing support for the Tunisian revolution. And one of the most prominent of these pages was “Egyptians supporting the Tunisian revolution.” There can be little doubt, therefore, that the success of the Tunisian revolution encouraged the youth of Egypt (estimated at 80 per cent of its Facebook users) to rise up and persist in their call for change and political reform. Little did Wael Ghonim and his friends on the “Kolinah Khaled Said” (“We are all Khaled Said”) Facebook page know where their call for demonstrations on the 25 January 2011 would lead. In the wake of the Tunisian victory, the “We are all Khaled Said” page (Said was a young man who died under torture by Egyptian police) garnered 100,000 hits and most of these virtual supporters then took to the streets on 25 January which was where the Egyptian revolution started. Egyptians were the first Arab youth to have used the Internet as a political platform and tool to mobilise people for change. Egypt has the largest and most active blogosphere in the Arab world. The Egyptian bloggers were the first to reveal corruption and initiated calls for change as early as 2007 (Saleh). A few victories were achieved, such as the firing and sentencing of two police officers condemned for torturing Imad Al Kabeer in 2007 (BBC Arabic). However, these early Egyptian bloggers faced significant jail sentences and prosecution (BBC News). Several movements were orchestrated via Facebook, including the 6 April uprising of 2007, but at this time such resistance invariably ended in persecution and even more oppression. The 25 January revolution therefore took the regime by surprise. In response, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his entourage (who controlled the state media and privately owned TV stations such as Dream TV) started making declarations that “Egypt is not Tunisia,” but the youth of Egypt were determined to prove them wrong. Significantly, Mubarak’s first reaction was to block Twitter, then Facebook, as well as disrupting mobile phone text-messaging and Blackberry-messaging services. Then, on Thursday 27 January, the regime attempted to shut down the Internet as a whole. Al-Jazeera Arabic quickly picked up on the events in Egypt and began live coverage from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which resulted in Mubarak’s block of Al-Jazeera’s transmission in Egypt and the withdrawal of its operational licences. One joke exchanged with Tunisian activists on Facebook was that Egyptians, too, had “Ammar 404” (the nickname of the government censor in Tunisia). It was not long, however, before Arab activists from across the regions started exchanging codes and software that allowed Egyptians to access the Internet, despite the government blockades. Egyptian computer science students also worked on ways to access the Worldwide Web and overcome the government’s blockade (Shouier) and Google launched a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialling a phone number and leaving a voice message (Oreskovic, Reuters). Facebook group pages like Akher Khabar’s “Latest News” and Rased’s “RNN” were then used by the Egyptian diaspora to share all the information they could get from friends and family back home, bypassing more traditional modes of communication. This transnational support group was crucial in communicating their fellow citizens’ messages to the rest of the world; through them, news made its way onto Facebook and then through to the other Arab nations and beyond. My own personal observation of these pages during the period 25 January to 12 February revealed that the usage of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter changed markedly, shifting from being merely social in nature to becoming rapidly and primarily political, not only among Arab users in the Arab world, as Mourtada and Salem argue, but also throughout the Arabian diaspora. In the case of Libya’s revolution, also, social media may be seen to be a mobilising tool in the hands of both Libyans at home and across the Libyan diaspora. Libya has around 4 per cent of its population on Facebook (Mourtada and Salem), and with Gaddafi’s regime cracking down on the Internet, the Libyan diaspora has often been the source of information for what is happening inside the country. Factual information, images, and videos were circulated via the February 17th website (in Arabic and in English) to appeal to Arab and international audiences for help. Facebook and Twitter were where the hash tag “#Feb17th” was created. Omar Amer, head of the UK’s Libyan youth movement based in Manchester, told Channel 4: “I can call Benghazi or Tripoli and obtain accurate information from the people on the ground, then report it straight onto Twitter” (Channel 4 News). Websites inspired by #Feb17th were spread online and Facebook pages dedicated to news about the Libyan uprisings quickly had thousands of supporters (Channel 4 News). Social media networks have thus created an international show of solidarity for the pro-democracy protestors in Libya, and Amer was able to report that they have received overwhelming support from all around the globe. I think that it must therefore be concluded that the role Arab satellite channels were playing a few years ago has now been transferred to social media websites which, in turn, have changed from being merely social/cultural to political platforms. Moreover, the nature of the medium has meant that the diasporas of the nations concerned have been instrumental to the success of the uprisings back home. However, it would be wrong to suggest that broadcast media have been totally redundant in the revolutionary process. Throughout the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, Al-Jazeera became a disseminating tool for user-generated content. A call for Arab citizens to send their footage of unfolding events to the Al-Jazeera website for it to re-broadcast on its TV screens was a key factor in the dissemination of what was happening. The role Al-Jazeera played in supporting the Egyptian revolution especially (which caused some Arab analysts to give it the name “channel of revolutions”), was quickly followed by criticism for their lack of coverage of the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain. The killing of peaceful protestors in Bahrain did not get airtime the way that the killing of Egyptian pro-democracy protestors had. Tweets, Facebook posts and comments came pouring in, questioning the lack of coverage from Bahrain. Al Arabiya followed Al-Jazeera’s lead. Bahrain was put last on the running order of the coverage of the “Arab revolutions.” Newspaper articles across the Arab world were questioning the absence of “the opinion and other opinion” (Al-Jazeera’s Arabic motto) when it came to Bahrain (see Al Akhbar). Al Jazeera’s editor-in-chief, Hassan El Shoubaki, told Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar that they were not deliberately absent but had logistical problems with the coverage since Al-Jazeera is banned in Bahrain (Hadad). However, it can be argued that Al-Jazeera was also banned in Egypt and Tunisia and that didn’t stop the channel from reporting or remodelling its screen to host and “rebroadcast” an activist-generated content. This brings us back to the Wikileaks’ revelation mentioned earlier. Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the Bahraini protests is influenced by Qatari foreign policy and, in the case of Bahrain, is arguably abiding by Qatar’s commitment to Gulf Cooperation Council security treaties. (This is one of the occasions where Al Arabiya and Al-Jazeera appear to have shared the same editorial guidelines, influenced by Qatari and Saudi Arabian shared policy.) Nevertheless, the Bahraini protests continue to dominate the social networks sites and information has kept flowing from Bahrain and it will continue to do so because of these platforms. The same scenario is also unfolding in Syria, but this time Al-Jazeera Arabic is taking a cautious stance while Al Arabiya has given the protests full coverage. Once again, the politics are obvious: Qatar is a supporter of the Syrian regime, while Saudi Arabia has long been battling politically with Syria on issues related to Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran (this position might change with Syria seeking support on tackling its own domestic unrest from the Saudi regime). All this confirms that there are limits to what satellite channels in the Arab world can do to be part of a process for democratic political reform. The Arab media world is not free of the political and economic influence of its governments, its owners or the various political parties struggling for control. However, this is clearly not a phenomenon unique to the Arab world. Where, or when, has media reporting ever been totally “free”? So is this, then, the age of new media? Could the Internet be a free space for Arab citizens to express their opinion and fulfil their democratic aspirations in bringing about freedom of speech and political freedom generally? Is it able to form the new Arab public sphere? Recent events show that the potential is there. What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was effectively the seizure of power by the people as part of a collective will to overthrow dictators and autocratic regimes and to effect democratic change from within (i.e. not having it imposed by foreign powers). The political moment in Tunisia was right and the people receptive; the army refused to respond violently to the protests and members of bin Ali’s government rose up against him. The political and social scene in Egypt became receptive after the people felt empowered by events in Tunis. Will this transnational empowerment now spread to other Arab countries open to change notwithstanding the tribal and sectarian alliances that characterise their populations? Further, since new media have proven to be “dangerous tools” in the hands of the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt, will other Arab regimes clamp down on them or hijack them for their own interests as they did the satellite channels previously? Maybe, but new media technology is arguably ahead of the game and I am sure that those regimes stand to be taken by surprise by another wave of revolutions facilitated by a new online tool. So far, Arab leaders have been of one voice in blaming the media for the protests (uprisings) their countries are witnessing—from Tunisia to Syria via Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. As Khatib puts it: “It is as if the social, economic, and political problems the people are protesting against would disappear if only the media would stop talking about them.” Yet what is evident so far is that they won’t. The media, and social networks in particular, do not of themselves generate revolutions but they can facilitate them in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. References Allan, Stuart, and Barbie Zelizer. Reporting War: Journalism in War Time. London: Routledge, 2004. Alterman, John. New Media New Politics? From Satellite Television to the Internet in the Arab World. Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998. BBC News. “Egypt Blogger Jailed for ‘Insult,’” 22 Feb. 2007. 1 Mar. 2011 ‹http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/6385849.stm›. BBC Arabic. “Three Years Jail Sentence for Two Police Officers in Egypt in a Torture Case.” 5 Nov. 2007. 26 Mar. 2011 ‹http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/middle_east_news/newsid_7079000/7079123.stm›. Booth, Robert. “WikiLeaks Cables Claim Al-Jazeera Changed Coverage to Suit Qatari Foreign Policy.” The Guardian 6 Dec. 2010. 22 Feb. 2011 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-al-jazeera-qatari-foreign-policy›. Channel 4 News. “Arab Revolt: Social Media and People’s Revolution.” 25 Feb. 2011. 3 Mar. 2011 ‹http://www.channel4.com/news/arab-revolt-social-media-and-the-peoples-revolution›. El-Nawawy, Mohammed, and Adel Iskandar. Al Jazeera. USA: Westview, 2002. Greenslade, Roy. “Tunisia Breaks Ties with Qatar over Al-Jazeera.” The Guardian 26 Oct. 2006. 23 Mar. 2011 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2006/oct/26/tunisiabreakstieswithqatar›. Hadad, Layal. “Al thowra al Arabiya tawqafet Eindah masharef al khaleegj” (The Arab Revolution Stopped at the Doorsteps of the Gulf). Al Akhbar 19 Feb. 2011. 20 Feb. 2011 ‹http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/4614›. Khatib, Lina. “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Your People.” Jadaliyya 26 Mar. 2011. 27 Mar. 2011 ‹http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1014/how-to-lose-friends-and-alienate-your-people›. Lynch, Marc. Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. Miladi, Noureddine. “Tunisia A Media Led Revolution?” Al Jazeera 17 Jan. 2011. 2 Mar. 2011 ‹http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/2011116142317498666.html#›. Miles, Hugh. Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World. London: Abacus, 2005. Mourtada, Rasha, and Fadi Salem. “Arab Social Media Report, Facebook Usage: Factors and Analysis.” Dubai School of Government 1.1 (Jan. 2011). Oreskovic, Alexei. “Google Inc Launched a Special Service...” Reuters 1 Feb. 2011. 28 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/01/us-egypt-protest-google-idUSTRE71005F20110201›. Saleh, Heba. “Egypt Bloggers Fear State Curbs.” BBC News 22 Feb. 2007. 28 Jan. 2011 ‹http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/6386613.stm›. Shapiro, Samantha. “The War inside the Arab Newsroom.” The New York Times 2 Jan. 2005. Shouier, Mohammed. “Al Tahrir Qanat al Naser … Nawara Najemm” (Liberation, Victory Channel… and Nawara Najem). Al Akhbar 17 Feb. 2011. Zayani, Mohammed. The Al-Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on Arab Media. London: Pluto, 2005.

The first time I read Hélène Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa I swooned. I wanted to write the whole thing out, large, and black, and pin it across an entire wall. I was 32 and vulnerable around polemic texts (I was always copying out quotes and sticking them to my walls, trying to hold onto meaning, unable to let the writing I read slip out and away). You must "write your self, your body must be heard" (Cixous 880), I read, as if for the hundredth time, even though it was the first. Those decades old words had an echoing, a resonance to them, as if each person who had read them had left their own mnemonic mark there, so that by the time they reached me, they struck, immediately, at my core (not the heart or the spine, or even the gut, but somewhere stickier; some pulsing place in amongst my organs, somewhere not touched, a space forgotten). The body that read The Laugh was so big its knees had trouble lifting it from chairs (“more body, hence more writing”, Cixous 886), and was soon to have its gallbladder taken. Its polycystic ovaries dreamed, lumpily and without much hope, of zygotes. The body that read The Laugh was a wobbling thing, sheathed in fat (as if this could protect it), with a yearning for sveltness, for muscle, for strength. Cixous sang through its cells, and called it to itself. The body that read The Laugh wrote itself back. It spoke about dungeons, and walls that had collected teenaged fists, and needles that turned it somnambulant and concave and warm until it was not. It wrote trauma in short and staggering sentences (out, get it out) as if narrative could save it from a fat-laden and static decline. Text leaked from tissue and bone, out through fingers and onto the page, and in increments so small I did not notice them, the body took its place. I was, all-of-a-sudden, more than my head. And then the body that read The Laugh performed the ultimate coup, and conceived.The body wrote then about its own birth, and the birth of its mother, and when its own children were born, of course, of course, about them. “Oral drive, anal drive, vocal drive–all these drives are our strengths, and among them is the gestation drive–all just like the desire to write: a desire to live self from within, a desire for the swollen belly, for language, for blood” (Cixous 891). The fat was gone, and in its place this other tissue, that later would be he. What I know now is that the body gets what the body wants. What I know now is that the body will tell its story, because if you “censor the body [… then] you censor breath and speech at the same time” (Cixous 880).I am trying to find a beginning. Because where is the place where I start? I was never a twinkle in my mother’s eye. It was the seventies. She was 22 and then 23–there was nothing planned about me. Her eyes a flinty green, hair long and straight. When I think of her then I remember this photo: black and white on the thick photo paper that is hard to get now. No shiny oblong spat from a machine, this paper was pulled in and out of three chemical trays and hung, dripping, in a dark red room to show me a woman in a long white t-shirt and nothing else. She stares straight out at me. On the shirt is a women’s symbol with a fist in the middle of it. Do you know the one? It might have been purple (the symbol I mean). When I think of her then I see her David Bowie teeth, the ones she hated, and a packet of Drum tobacco with Tally-Hos tucked inside, and some of the scars on her forearms, but not all of them, not yet. I can imagine her pregnant with me, the slow gait, that fleshy weight dragging at her spine and pelvis. She told me the story of my birth every year on my birthday. She remembers what day of the week the contractions started. The story is told with a kind of glory in the detail, with a relishing of small facts. I do the same with my children now. I was delivered by forceps. The dent in my skull, up above my right ear, was a party trick when I was a teenager, and an annoyance when I wanted to shave my head down to the bone at 18. Just before Jem was born, I discovered a second dent behind my left ear. My skull holds the footprint of those silver clamps. My bones say here, and here, this is where I was pulled from you. I have seen babies being born this way. They don’t slide out all sealish and purple and slippy. They are pulled. The person holding the forcep handles uses their whole body weight to yank that baby out. It makes me squirm, all that pulling, those tiny neck bones concertinaing out, the silver scoops sinking into the skull and leaving prints, like a warm spoon in dough. The urgency of separation, of the need to make two things from one. After Jem was born he lay on my chest for hours. As the placenta was birthed he weed on me. I felt the warm trickle down my side and was glad. There was nothing so right as my naked body making a bed for his. I lay in a pool of wet (blood and lichor and Jem’s little wee) and the midwives pushed towels under me so I wouldn’t get cold. He sucked. White waffle weave blankets over both of us. That bloody nest. I lay in it and rested my free hand on his vernix covered back; the softest thing I had ever touched. We basked in the warm wet. We basked. How do I sew theory into this writing? Julia Kristeva especially, whose Stabat Mater describes those early moments of holding the one who was inside and then out so perfectly that I am left silent. The smell of milk, dew-drenched greenery, sour and clear, a memory of wind, of air, of seaweed (as if a body lived without waste): it glides under my skin, not stopping at the mouth or nose but caressing my veins, and stripping the skin from the bones fills me like a balloon full of ozone and I plant my feet firmly on the ground in order to carry him, safe, stable, unuprootable, while he dances in my neck, floats with my hair, looks right and left for a soft shoulder, “slips on the breast, swingles, silver vivid blossom of my belly” and finally flies up from my navel in his dream, borne by my hands. My son (Kristeva, Stabat Mater 141). Is theory more important than this? The smell of milk (dried, it is soursweet and will draw any baby to you, nuzzling and mewling), which resides alongside the Virgin Mother and the semiotics of milk and tears. The language of fluid. While the rest of this writing, the stories not of mothers and babies, but one mother and one baby, came out smooth and fast, as soon as I see or hear or write that word, theory, I slow. I am concerned with the placement of things. I do not have the sense of being free. But if there’s anything that should come from this vain attempt to answer Cixous, to “write your self. Your body must be heard” (880), it should be that freedom and theory, boundary-lessness, is where I reside. If anything should come from this, it is the knowing that theory is the most creative pursuit, and that creativity will always speak to theory. There are fewer divisions than any of us realise, and the leakiness of bodies, of this body, will get me there. The smell of this page is of lichor; a clean but heady smell, thick with old cells and a foetus’s breath. The smell of this page is of blood and saliva and milk mixed (the colour like rotten strawberries or the soaked pad at the bottom of your tray of supermarket mince). It is a smell that you will secretly savour, breathe deeply, and then long for lemon zest or the sharpness of coffee beans to send away that angelic fug. That milk and tears have a language of their own is undeniable. Kristeva says they are “metaphors of non-language, of a ‘semiotic’ that does not coincide with linguistic communication” (Stabat Mater 143) but what I know is that these fluids were the first language for my children. Were they the first language for me? Because “it must be true: babies drink language along with the breastmilk: Curling up over their tongues while they take siestas–Mots au lait, verbae cum lacta, palabros con leche” (Wasserman quoted in Giles 223). The enduring picture I have of myself as an infant is of a baby who didn’t cry, but my mother will tell you a different story, in the way that all of us do. She will tell you I didn’t smile until I was five months old (Soli and Jem were both beaming at three months). Born six weeks premature, my muscles took longer to find their place, to assemble themselves under my skin. She will tell you I screamed in the night, because all babies do. Is this non-language? Jem was unintelligible much of the time. I felt as if I was holding a puzzle. Three o’clock in the morning, having tried breastfeeds, a bath with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, bouncing him in a baby sling on the fitball (wedged into a corner so that if I nodded off I would hopefully swoon backwards, and the wall would wake me), walking him around and around while rocking and singing, then breastfeeding again, and still he did not sleep, and still he cried and clawed at my cheeks and shoulders and wrists and writhed; I could not guess at what it was he needed. I had never been less concerned with the self that was me. I was all breasts and milk and a craving for barbecued chicken and watermelon at three in the morning because he was drinking every ounce of energy I had. I was arms and a voice. I was food. And then I learnt other things; about let downs and waking up in pools of the stuff. Wet. Everywhere. “Lactating bodies tend towards anarchy” (Bartlett 163). Any body will tend towards anarchy – there is so much to keep in – but there are only so many openings a person can keep track of, and breastfeeding meant a kind of levelling up, meant I was as far from clean and proper as I possibly could be (Kristeva, Powers of Horror 72).In the nights I was not alone. Caren could not breastfeed him, but could do everything else, and never said I have to work tomorrow, because she knew I was working too. During waking hours I watched him constantly for those mystical tired signs, which often were hungry signs, which quickly became overtired signs. There was no figuring it out. But Soli, with Soli, I knew. The language of babies had been sung into my bones. There is a grammar in crying, a calling out and telling, a way of knowing that is older than I’ll ever be. Those tiny bodies are brimming with semiotics. Knees pulled up is belly ache, arching is tired, a look to the side I-want-that-take-me-there-not-there. There. Curling in, the whole of him, is don’t-look-at-me-now-hands-away. Now he is one he uses his hands to tell me what he wants. Sign language because I sign and so, then, does he, but also an emphatic placing of my hands on his body or toys, utensils, swings, things. In the early hours of a Wednesday morning I tried to stroke his head, to close his wide-open eyes with my fingertips. He grabbed my hand and moved it to his chest before I could alight on the bridge of his nose. And yesterday he raised his arm into the air, then got my hand and placed it into his raised hand, then stood, and led me down to the laundry to play with the dustpan and broom. His body, literally, speaks.This is the language of mothers and babies. It is laid down in the darkest part of the night. Laid down like memory, like dreams, stitched into tiredness and circled with dread adrenalin and fear. It will never stop. That baby will cry and I will stare owl-eyed into the dark and bend my cracking knees (don’t shake the baby it will only make it worse don’t shake don’t). These babies will grow into children and then adults who will never remember those screaming nights, cots like cages, a stuffed toy pushed on them as if it could replace the warmth of skin and breath (please, please, little bear, replace the warmth of skin and breath). I will never remember it, but she will. They will never remember it, but we will. Kristeva says too that mothers are in a “catastrophe of identity which plunges the proper Name into that ‘unnameable’ that somehow involves our imaginary representations of femininity, non-language, or the body” (Stabat Mater 134). A catastrophe of identity. The me and the not-me. In the night, with a wrapped baby and aching biceps, the I-was batting quietly at the I-am. The I-am is all body. Arms to hold and bathe and change him, milk to feed him, a voice to sing and soothe him. The I-was is a different beast, made of words and books, uninterrupted conversation and the kind of self-obsession and autonomy I didn’t know existed until it was gone. Old friends stopped asking me about my day. They asked Caren, who had been at work, but not me. It did not matter that she was a woman; in this, for most people we spoke to, she was the public and I was the private, her work mattered and mine did not. Later she would commiserate and I would fume, but while it was happening, it was near impossible to contest. A catastrophe of identity. In a day I had fed and walked and cried and sung and fed and rocked and pointed and read books with no words and rolled inane balls across the lounge room floor and washed and sung and fed. I had circled in and around while the sun traced its arc. I had waited with impatience for adult company. I had loved harder than I ever had before. I had metamorphosed and nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. A catastrophe of identity it was, but the noise and visibility that the word catastrophe invokes was entirely absent. And where was the language to describe this peeling inside out? I was burnished bright by those sleepless nights, by the requirement of the I-am. And in those nights I learned what my mother already knew. That having children is a form of grief. That we lose. But that we gain. At 23, what’s lost is possibility. She must have seen her writer’s life drilling down to nothing. She knew that Sylvia Plath had placed her head, so carefully on its pillow, in that gas filled place. No pungent metaphor, just a poet, a mother, who could not continue. I had my babies at 34 and 36. I knew some of what I would lose, but had more than I needed. My mother had started out with not enough, and so was left concave and edged with desperation as she made her way through inner-city Sydney’s grime, her children singing from behind her wait for me, wait for me, Mama please wait for me, I’m going just as fast as I can.Nothing could be more ‘normal’ than that a maternal image should establish itself on the site of that tempered anguish known as love. No one is spared. Except perhaps the saint or the mystic, or the writer who, by force of language, can still manage nothing more than to demolish the fiction of the mother-as-love’s-mainstay and to identify with love as it really is: a fire of tongues, an escape from representation (Kristeva, Stabat Mater 145).We transformed, she and I. She hoped to make herself new with children. A writer born of writers, the growing and birthing of our tiny bodies forced her to place pen to paper, to fight to write. She carved a place for herself with words but it kept collapsing in on her. My father’s bi-polar rages, his scrubbing evil spirits from the soles of her shoes in the middle of the night, wore her down, and soon she inhabited that maternal image anyway, in spite of all her attempts to side step it. The mad mother, the single mother, the sad mother. And yes I remember those mothers. But I also remember her holding me so hard sometimes I couldn’t breathe properly, and that some nights when I couldn’t sleep she had warm eyes and made chamomile tea, and that she called me angel. A fire of tongues, but even she, with her words, couldn’t escape from representation. I am a writer born of writers born of writers (triply blessed or cursed with text). In my scramble to not be mad or bad or sad, I still could not escape the maternal image. More days than I can count I lay under my babies wishing I could be somewhere, anywhere else, but they needed to sleep or feed or be. With me. Held captive by the need to be a good mother, to be the best mother, no saint or mystic presenting itself, all I could do was write. Whole poems sprang unbidden and complete from my pen. My love for my children, that fire of tongues, was demolishing me, and the only way through was to inhabit this vessel of text, to imbibe the language of bodies and tears and night, and make from it my boat.Those children wrote my body in the night. They taught me about desire, that unbounded scribbling thing that will not be bound by subjectivity, by me. They taught me that “the body is literally written on, inscribed, by desire and signification” (Grosz 60), and every morning I woke with ashen bones and poetry aching out through my pores, with my body writing me.This Mother ThingI maintain that I do not have to leavethe house at nightall leathery and eyelinered,all booted up and raw.I maintain that I do not miss thosesmoky rooms (wait that’s not allowed any more)where we strut and, without looking,compare tattoos.Because two years ago I had you.You with your blonde hair shining, your eyes like a creek after rain, that veinthat’s so blue on the side of your small nosethat people think you’ve been bruised.Because two years ago you cameout of me and landed here and grew. There is no going out. We (she and me) washand cook and wash and clean and love.This mother thing is the making of me but I missthose pulsing rooms,the feel of all of you pressing in onall of me.This mother thing is the making of me. And in text, in poetry, I find my home. “You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing” (Cixous 885). The mother-body writes herself, and is made new. The mother-body writes her own mother, and knows she was always-already here. The mother-body births, and breastfeeds, and turns to me in the aching night and says this: the Medusa? The Medusa is me.ReferencesBartlett, Alison. Breastwork: Rethinking Breastfeeding. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.Cixous, Hélène, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen (Trans.). "The Laugh of the Medusa." Signs 1.4 (1976): 875-93. Giles, Fiona. Fresh Milk. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994.Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez (Trans.) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.Kristeva, Julia, and Arthur Goldhammer (Trans.). "Stabat Mater." Poetics Today 6.1-2 (1985): 133-52.

Al Gore brought climate change into … our living rooms. … The 2008 oil price hikes [and the global financial crisis] awakened the world to potential economic hardship in a rapidly urbanising world where the petrol-driven automobile is still king. (Mouritz 47) Six hundred million cars (Urry, “Climate Change” 265) traverse the world’s roads, or sit idly in garages and clogging city streets. The West’s economic progress has been built in part around the success of the automotive industry, where the private car rules the spaces and rhythms of daily life. The problem of “automobile dependence” (Newman and Kenworthy) is often cited as one of the biggest challenges facing countries attempting to combat anthropogenic climate change. Sociologist John Urry has claimed that automobility is an “entire culture” that has re-defined movement in the contemporary world (Urry Mobilities 133). As such, it is the single most significant environmental challenge “because of the intensity of resource use, the production of pollutants and the dominant culture which sustains the major discourses of what constitutes the good life” (Urry Sociology 57-8). Climate change has forced a re-thinking of not only how we produce and dispose of cars, but also how we use them. What might a society not dominated by the private, petrol-driven car look like? Some of the pre-eminent writers on climate change futures, such as Gwynne Dyer, James Lovelock and John Urry, discuss one possibility that might emerge when oil becomes scarce: societies will descend into civil chaos, “a Hobbesian war of all against all” where “regional warlordism” and the most brutish, barbaric aspects of human nature come to the fore (Urry, “Climate Change” 261). Discussing a post-car society, John Urry also proffers another scenario in his “sociologies of the future:” an Orwellian “digital panopticon” in which other modes of transport, far more suited to a networked society, might emerge on a large scale and, in the long run, “might tip the system” into post-car one before it is too late (Urry, “Climate Change” 261). Amongst the many options he discusses is car sharing. Since its introduction in Germany more than 30 years ago, most of the critical literature has been devoted to the planning, environmental and business innovation aspects of car sharing; however very little has been written on its cultural dimensions. This paper analyses this small but developing trend in many Western countries, but more specifically its emergence in Sydney. The convergence of climate change discourse with that of the global financial crisis has resulted in a focus in the mainstream media, over the last few months, on technologies and practices that might save us money and also help the environment. For instance, a Channel 10 News story in May 2009 focused on the boom in car sharing in Sydney (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=EPTT8vYVXro). Car sharing is an adaptive technology that doesn’t do away with the car altogether, but rather transforms the ways in which cars are used, thought about and promoted. I argue that car sharing provides a challenge to the dominant consumerist model of the privately owned car that has sustained capitalist structures for at least the last 50 years. In addition, through looking at some marketing and promotion tactics of car sharing in Australia, I examine some emerging car sharing subjectivities that both extend and subvert the long-established discourses of the automobile’s flexibility and autonomy to tempt monogamous car buyers into becoming philandering car sharers. Much literature has emerged over the last decade devoted to the ubiquitous phenomenon of automobility. “The car is the literal ‘iron cage’ of modernity, motorised, moving and domestic,” claims Urry (“Connections” 28). Over the course of twentieth century, automobility became “the dominant form of daily movement over much of the planet (dominating even those who do not move by cars)” (Paterson 132). Underpinning Urry’s prolific production of literature is his concept of automobility. This he defines as a complex system of “intersecting assemblages” that is not only about driving cars but the nexus between “production, consumption, machinic complexes, mobility, culture and environmental resource use” (Urry, “Connections” 28). In addition, Matthew Paterson, in his Automobile Politics, asserts that “automobility” should be viewed as everything that makes driving around in a car possible: highways, parking structures and traffic rules (87). While the private car seems an inevitable outcome of a capitalistic, individualistic modern society, much work has gone into the process of naturalising a dominant notion of automobility on drivers’ horizons. Through art, literature, popular music and brand advertising, the car has long been associated with seductive forms of identity, and societies have been built around a hegemonic culture of car ownership and driving as the pre-eminent, modern mode of self-expression. And more than 50 years of a popular Hollywood film genre—road movies—has been devoted to glorifying the car as total freedom, or in its more nihilistic version, “freedom on the road to nowhere” (Corrigan). As Paterson claims, “autonomous mobility of car driving is socially produced … by a range of interventions that have made it possible” (18). One of the main reasons automobility has been so successful, he claims, is through its ability to reproduce capitalist society. It provided a commodity around which a whole set of symbols, images and discourses could be constructed which served to effectively legitimise capitalist society. (30) Once the process is locked-in, it then becomes difficult to reverse as billions of agents have adapted to it and built their lives around “automobility’s strange mixture of co-ercion and flexibility” (Urry, “Climate Change” 266). The Decline of the Car Globally, the greatest recent rupture in the automobile’s meta-narrative of success came about in October 2008 when three CEOs from the major US car firms (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) begged the United States Senate for emergency loan funds to avoid going bankrupt. To put the economic significance of this into context, Emma Rothschild notes “when the listing of the ‘Fortune 500’ began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation, and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007” (Rothschilds, “Can we transform”). Curiously, instead of focusing on the death of the car (industry), as we know it, that this scenario might inevitably herald, much of the media attention focused on the hypocrisy and environmental hubris of the fact that all the CEOs had flown in private luxury jets to Washington. “Couldn’t they have at least jet-pooled?” complained one Democrat Senator (Wutkowski). In their next visit to Washington, most of them drove up in experimental vehicles still in pre-production, including plug-in hybrids. Up until that point no other manufacturing industry had been bailed out in the current financial crisis. Of course it’s not the first time the automobile industries have been given government assistance. The Australian automotive industry has received on-going government subsidies since the 1980s. Most recently, PM Kevin Rudd granted a 6.2 billion dollar ‘green car’ package to Australian automotive manufacturers. His justification to the growing chorus of doubts about the economic legitimacy of such a move was: “Some might say it's not worth trying to have a car industry, that is not my view, it is not the view of the Australian government and it never will be the view of any government which I lead” (The Australian). Amongst the many reasons for the government support of these industries must include the extraordinary interweaving of discourses of nationhood and progress with the success of the car industry. As the last few months reveal, evidently the mantra still prevails of “what’s good for the country is good for GM and vice versa”, as the former CEO of General Motors, Charles “Engine” Wilson, argued back in 1952 (Hirsch). In post-industrial societies like Australia it’s not only the economic aspects of the automotive industries that are criticised. Cars seem to be slowly losing their grip on identity-formation that they managed to maintain throughout “the century of the car” (Gilroy). They are no longer unproblematically associated with progress, freedom, youthfulness and absolute autonomy. The decline and eventual death of the automobile as we know it will be long, arduous and drawn-out. But there are some signs of a post-automobile society emerging, perhaps where cars will still be used but they will not dominate our society, urban space and culture in quite the same way that they have over the last 50 years. Urry discusses six transformations that might ‘tip’ the hegemonic system of automobility into a post-car one. He mentions new fuel systems, new materials for car construction, the de-privatisation of cars, development of communications technologies and integration of networked public transport through smart card technology and systems (Urry, Mobilities 281-284). As Paterson and others have argued, computers and mobile phones have somehow become “more genuine symbols of mobility and in turn progress” than the car (157). As a result, much automobile advertising now intertwines communications technologies with brand to valorise mobility. Car sharing goes some way in not only de-privatising cars but also using smart card technology and networked systems enabling an association with mobility futures. In Automobile Politics Paterson asks, “Is the car fundamentally unsustainable? Can it be greened? Has the car been so naturalised on our mobile horizons that we can’t imagine a society without it?” (27). From a sustainability perspective, one of the biggest problems with cars is still the amount of space devoted to them; highways, garages, car parks. About one-quarter of the land in London and nearly one-half of that in Los Angeles is devoted to car-only environments (Urry, “Connections” 29). In Sydney, it is more like a quarter. We have to reduce the numbers of cars on our roads to make our societies livable (Newman and Kenworthy). Car sharing provokes a re-thinking of urban space. If one quarter of Sydney’s population car shared and we converted this space into green use or local market gardens, then we’d have a radically transformed city. Car sharing, not to be confused with ‘ride sharing’ or ‘car pooling,’ involves a number of people using cars that are parked centrally in dedicated car bays around the inner city. After becoming a member (much like a 6 or 12 monthly gym membership), the cars can be booked (and extended) by the hour via the web or phone. They can then be accessed via a smart card. In Sydney there are 3 car sharing organisations operating: Flexicar (http://www.flexicar.com.au/), CharterDrive (http://www.charterdrive.com.au/) and GoGet (http://www.goget.com.au/).[1] The largest of these, GoGet, has been operating for 6 years and has over 5000 members and 200 cars located predominantly in the inner city suburbs. Anecdotally, GoGet claims its membership is primarily drawn from professionals living in the inner-urban ring. Their motivation for joining is, firstly, the convenience that car sharing provides in a congested, public transport-challenged city like Sydney; secondly, the financial savings derived; and thirdly, members consider the environmental and social benefits axiomatic. [2] The promotion tactics of car sharing seems to reflect this by barely mentioning the environment but focusing on those aspects which link car sharing to futuristic and flexible subjectivities which I outline in the next section. Unlike traditional car rental, the vehicles in car sharing are scattered through local streets in a network allowing local residents and businesses access to the vehicles mostly on foot. One car share vehicle is used by 22-24 members and gets about seven cars off the street (Mehlman 22). With lots of different makes and models of vehicles in each of their fleets, Flexicar’s website claims, “around the corner, around the clock” “Flexicar offers you the freedom of driving your own car without the costs and hassles of owning one,” while GoGet asserts, “like owning a car only better.” Due to the initial lack of interest from government, all the car sharing organisations in Australia are privately owned. This is very different to the situation in Europe where governments grant considerable financial assistance and have often integrated car sharing into pre-existing public transport networks. Urry discusses the spread of car sharing across the Western world: Six hundred plus cities across Europe have developed car-sharing schemes involving 50,000 people (Cervero, 2001). Prototype examples are found such as Liselec in La Rochelle, and in northern California, Berlin and Japan (Motavalli, 2000: 233). In Deptford there is an on-site car pooling service organized by Avis attached to a new housing development, while in Jersey electric hire cars have been introduced by Toyota. (Urry, “Connections” 34) ‘Collaborative Consumption’ and Flexible, Philandering Subjectivities Car sharing shifts the dominant conception of a car from being a ‘commodity’, which people purchase and subsequently identify with, to a ‘service’ or network of vehicles that are collectively used. It does this through breaking down the one car = one person (or one family) ratio with one car instead servicing 20 or more people. One of Paterson’s biggest criticisms concerns car driving as “a form of social exclusion” (44). Car sharing goes some way in subverting the model of hyper-individualism that supports both hegemonic automobility and capitalist structures, whereby the private motorcar produces a “separation of individuals from one another driving in their own private universes with no account for anyone else” (Paterson 90). As a car sharer, the driver has to acknowledge that this is not their private domain, and the car no longer becomes an extension of their living room or bedroom, as is noted in much literature around car cultures (Morris, Sheller, Simpson). There are a community of people using the car, so the driver needs to be attentive to things like keeping the car clean and bringing it back on time so another person can use it. So while car sharing may change the affective relationship and self-identification with the vehicle itself, it doesn’t necessarily change the phenomenological dimensions of car driving, such as the nostalgic pleasure of driving on the open road, or perhaps more realistically in Sydney, the frustration of being caught in a traffic jam. However, the fact the driver doesn’t own the vehicle does alter their relationship to the space and the commodity in a literal as well as a figurative way. Like car ownership, evidently car sharing also produces its own set of limitations on freedom and convenience. That mobility and car ownership equals freedom—the ‘freedom to drive’—is one imaginary which car firms were able to successfully manipulate and perpetuate throughout the twentieth century. However, car sharing also attaches itself to the same discourses of freedom and pervasive individualism and then thwarts them. For instance, GoGet in Sydney have run numerous marketing campaigns that attempt to contest several ‘self-evident truths’ about automobility. One is flexibility. Flexibility (and associated convenience) was one thing that ownership of a car in the late twentieth century was firmly able to affiliate itself with. However, car ownership is now more often associated with being expensive, a hassle and a long-term commitment, through things like buying, licensing, service and maintenance, cleaning, fuelling, parking permits, etc. Cars have also long been linked with sexuality. When in the 1970s financial challenges to the car were coming as a result of the oil shocks, Chair of General Motors, James Roche stated that, “America’s romance with the car is not over. Instead it has blossomed into a marriage” (Rothschilds, Paradise Lost). In one marketing campaign GoGet asked, ‘Why buy a car when all you need is a one night stand?’, implying that owning a car is much like a monogamous relationship that engenders particular commitments and responsibilities, whereas car sharing can just be a ‘flirtation’ or a ‘one night stand’ and you don’t have to come back if you find it a hassle. Car sharing produces a philandering subjectivity that gives individuals the freedom to have lots of different types of cars, and therefore relationships with each of them: I can be a Mini Cooper driver one day and a Falcon driver the next. This disrupts the whole kind of identification with one type of car that ownership encourages. It also breaks down a stalwart of capitalism—brand loyalty to a particular make of car with models changing throughout a person’s lifetime. Car sharing engenders far more fluid types of subjectivities as opposed to those rigid identities associated with ownership of one car. Car sharing can also be regarded as part of an emerging phenomenon of what Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers have called “collaborative consumption”—when a community gets together “through organized sharing, swapping, bartering, trading, gifting and renting to get the same pleasures of ownership with reduced personal cost and burden, and lower environmental impact” (www.collaborativeconsumption.com). As Urry has stated, these developments indicate a gradual transformation in current economic structures from ownership to access, as shown more generally by many services offered and accessed via the web (Urry Mobilities 283). Rogers and Botsman maintain that this has come about through the “convergence of online social networks increasing cost consciousness and environmental necessity." In the future we could predict an increasing shift to payment to ‘access’ for mobility services, rather than the outright private ownerships of vehicles (Urry, “Connections”). Networked-Subjectivities or a ‘Digital Panopticon’? Cars, no longer able on their own to signify progress in either technical or social terms, attain their symbolic value through their connection to other, now more prevalently ‘progressive’ technologies. (Paterson 155) The term ‘digital panopticon’ has often been used to describe a dystopian world of virtual surveillance through such things as web-enabled social networking sites where much information is public, or alternatively, for example, the traffic surveillance system in London whereby the public can be constantly scrutinised through the centrally monitored cameras that track people’s/vehicle’s movements on city streets. In his “sociologies of the future,” Urry maintains that one thing which might save us from descending into post-car civil chaos is a system governed by a “digital panopticon” mobility system. This would be governed by a nexus system “that orders, regulates, tracks and relatively soon would ‘drive’ each vehicle and monitor each driver/passenger” (Urry, “Connections” 33). The transformation of mobile technologies over the last decade has made car sharing, as a viable business model, possible. Through car sharing’s exploitation of an online booking system, and cars that can be tracked, monitored and traced, the seeds of a mobile “networked-subjectivity” are emerging. But it’s not just the technology people are embracing; a cultural shift is occurring in the way that people understand mobility, their own subjectivity, and more importantly, the role of cars. NETT Magazine did a feature on car sharing, and advertised it on their front cover as “GoGet’s web and mobile challenge to car owners” (May 2009). Car sharing seems to be able to tap into more contemporary understandings of what mobility and flexibility might mean in the twenty-first century. In their marketing and promotion tactics, car sharing organisations often discursively exploit science fiction terminology and generate a subjectivity much more dependent on networks and accessibility (158). In the suburbs people park their cars in garages. In car sharing, the vehicles are parked not in car bays or car parks, but in publically accessible ‘pods’, which promotes a futuristic, sci-fi experience. Even the phenomenological dimensions of swiping a smart card over the front of the windscreen to open the car engender a transformation in access to the car, instead of through a key. This is service-technology of the future while those stuck in car ownership are from the old economy and the “century of the car” (Gilroy). The connections between car sharing and the mobile phone and other communications technologies are part of the notion of a networked, accessible vehicle. However, the more problematic side to this is the car under surveillance. Nic Lowe, of his car sharing organisation GoGet says, “Because you’re tagged on and we know it’s you, you are able to drive the car… every event you do is logged, so we know what time you turned the key, what time you turned it off and we know how far you drove … if a car is lost we can sound the horn to disable it remotely to prevent theft. We can track how fast you were going and even how fast you accelerated … track the kilometres for billing purposes and even find out when people are using the car when they shouldn’t be” (Mehlman 27). The possibility with the GPS technology installed in the car is being able to monitor speeds at which people drive, thereby fining then every minute spent going over the speed limit. While this conjures up the notion of the car under surveillance, it is also a much less bleaker scenario than “a Hobbesian war of all against all”. Conclusion: “Hundreds of Cars, No Garage” The prospect of climate change is provoking innovation at a whole range of levels, as well as providing a re-thinking of how we use taken-for-granted technologies. Sometime this century the one tonne, privately owned, petrol-driven car will become an artefact, much like Sydney trams did last century. At this point in time, car sharing can be regarded as an emerging transitional technology to a post-car society that provides a challenge to hegemonic automobile culture. It is evidently not a radical departure from the car’s vast machinic complex and still remains a part of what Urry calls the “system of automobility”. From a pro-car perspective, its networked surveillance places constraints on the free agency of the car, while for those of the deep green variety it is, no doubt, a compromise. Nevertheless, it provides a starting point for re-thinking the foundations of the privately-owned car. While Urry makes an important point in relation to a society moving from ownership to access, he doesn’t take into account the cultural shifts occurring that are enabling car sharing to be attractive to prospective members: the notion of networked subjectivities, the discursive constructs used to establish car sharing as a thing of the future with pods and smart cards instead of garages and keys. If car sharing became mainstream it could have radical environmental impacts on things like urban space and pollution, as well as the dominant culture of “automobile dependence” (Newman and Kenworthy), as Australia attempts to move to a low carbon economy. Notes [1] My partner Bruce Jeffreys, together with Nic Lowe, founded Newtown Car Share in 2002, which is now called GoGet. [2] Several layers down in the ‘About Us’ link on GoGet’s website is the following information about the environmental benefits of car sharing: “GoGet's aim is to provide a reliable, convenient and affordable transport service that: allows people to live car-free, decreases car usage, improves local air quality, removes private cars from local streets, increases patronage for public transport, allows people to lead more active lives” (http://www.goget.com.au/about-us.html). References The Australian. “Kevin Rudd Throws $6.2bn Lifeline to Car Industry.” 10 Nov. 2008. < http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/ 0,28124,24628026-5018011,00.html >.Corrigan, Tim. “Genre, Gender, and Hysteria: The Road Movie in Outer Space.” A Cinema Without Walls: Movies, Culture after Vietnam. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Dwyer, Gwynne. Climate Wars. North Carlton: Scribe, 2008. Featherstone, Mike. “Automobilities: An Introduction.” Theory, Culture and Society 21.4-5 (2004): 1-24. Gilroy, Paul. “Driving while Black.” Car Cultures. Ed. Daniel Miller. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Hirsch, Michael. “Barack the Saviour.” Newsweek 13 Nov. 2008. < http://www.newsweek.com/id/168867 >. Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. Penguin, 2007. Lovelock, James. The Vanishing Face of Gaia. Penguin, 2009. Mehlman, Josh. “Community Driven Success.” NETT Magazine (May 2009): 22-28. Morris, Meaghan. “Fate and the Family Sedan.” East West Film Journal 4.1 (1989): 113-134. Mouritz, Mike. “City Views.” Fast Thinking Winter 2009: 47-50. Newman, P. and J. Kenworthy. Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence. Washington DC: Island Press, 1999. Paterson, Matthew. Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Rothschilds, Emma. Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age. New York: Radom House, 1973. Rothschilds, Emma. “Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?” New York Review of Books 56.3 (2009). < http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22333 >. Sheller, Mimi. “Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (2004): 221–42. Simpson, Catherine. “Volatile Vehicles: When Women Take the Wheel.” Womenvision. Ed. Lisa French. Melbourne: Damned Publishing, 2003. 197-210. Urry, John. Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2000. Urry, John. “Connections.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22 (2004): 27-37. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge, and Maiden, MA: Polity Press, 2008. Urry, John. “Climate Change, Travel and Complex Futures.” British Journal of Sociology 59. 2 (2008): 261-279. Watts, Laura, and John Urry. “Moving Methods, Travelling Times.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008): 860-874. Wutkowski, Karey. “Auto Execs' Private Flights to Washington Draw Ire.” Reuters News Agency 19 Nov. 2008. < http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AI8C520081119 >.

In early February 2001, the greater Ipswich region was dotted with advertising posters for New Idea featuring a full picture of Pauline Hanson, dressed in lily white. The determined look of a much put-upon woman ready to do battle for home and hearth is worn into her slightly smiling face. The heading reads "PAULINE’S BACK – ‘I’ll NEVER say sorry’". Central in the conceptualisation of this issue of M/C was consideration of what a change of Prime Minister might mean for prospects of an apology to the Stolen Generations, given that the current leader is never likely to give one. In New Idea, Hanson makes it clear that she will not apologise, and yet she is unclear in her own inimitable way: "I will never say sorry to the Aborigines. ¼ Why should I say sorry? I don’t think John Howard should say sorry either. Once he does, the Government will be liable to pay out huge compensation to the Aborigines. That’s what they’re after – money!" (Lloyd 14). Here Hanson is clearly missing the point of the whole ‘Bringing Them Home’ Inquiry and yet, in the midst of all her aggression, she suddenly makes a valid point: "[t]hey want an admission that we did wrong by them and continue to do so. ¼ We should accept and acknowledge what has happened and make sure it never happens again" (Lloyd 14). This is punctuated by the declaration that members of the Stolen Generations should somehow simply stop ‘dwelling on it’ – it is this different attitude that is needed to effect ‘change’, and by ‘change’ Hanson does not necessarily mean any improvements for Indigenous peoples. The article goes on to link the apology with ‘handouts’, which should cease, and the problem of ‘divisions’ within the country as a result of Native Title and land rights. Clearly New Idea has chosen to market this story by choosing a headline which uses the topical issue of an apology to the Stolen Generations, and created a new focus of anger for Hanson’s supporters in the process: an article intended to promote Hanson’s attempts at political survival becomes an onslaught against the acknowledgment of history’s mistakes. As the rise of Pauline Hanson has illustrated, such a message holds considerable weight in public sentiments, even among people who do not directly embrace such ideas. Hanson came close to expressing personal sorrow towards Indigenous people in the initial letter which brought her celebrity in 1996: "I would be the first to admit that, not that many years ago, the Aborigines were treated wrongly but in trying to correct this they have gone too far. I don’t feel responsible for the treatment of Aboriginal people in the past because I had no say, but my concern is for now and the future" (14). Howard has done better, offering a far less conditional personal apology on occasion and acknowledging, after a period of equivocation when he first became Prime Minister, the disadvantage faced by Indigenous people. However, he is still unwilling to offer an official apology as leader of the nation ("Transcript of the Prime Minister"). Apology may certainly involve fear of compensation, as Hanson argues, and we must acknowledge the difficulty of making an apology that is meaningful. The act of saying sorry does not absolve all blame and those supporting a genuine form of reconciliation must recognise, and continually combat, the enduring dynamics of racialisation and denial. The best example of a formal apology to the Stolen Generations would include profound sorrow for what my forebears and I, and those from whom I have so richly benefited, have done and are doing to Indigenous people. However, I am unwilling to accept that an apology could be as politically or practically significant in itself as current movements seems to suggest. At most, it is only an opening into a process that might lead to a better way for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to deal with each other, but would seem very unlikely to change relations between Indigenous peoples and the Australian state. Years of hearing about Reconciliation and calls for governments to make amends with Indigenous peoples for the great crimes of Australian history have left me frustrated and despondent. This is partly because the current Federal Government does not seem driven to constructive action, and partly because reconciliation would seem to entail something more tangible than ‘performances’ of redemption and sorrow. When moves for a public forum for apology to the Stolen Generations were first made I struggled with the usefulness of the idea. It may be a good first step to acknowledge that horrible wrongs have been done, to express sorrow that such things have happened – and it is certainly better than (the still very common) outright or partial denial. Social justice, however, does not come from the confessional, and concepts such as an apology and Reconciliation can have diametrically opposed meanings in practice for different people. What has it meant for the Prime Minister of Australia to express personal sorrow? What have the formal apologies of other political leaders in Australia actually meant? Apologies of this nature are not to be made at all lightly. I am of the opinion that an apology to the Stolen Generations needs to take into account a web of interrelated events and political aspirations linked to the invasion of this continent. I take the apologies of State political leaders and the Federal Opposition with reservation. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, in announcing the Federal Government’s acceptance of the Native Title decision, made magnanimous admissions of guilt on behalf of the Australian state, including special mention of the Stolen Generations. Yet within the same speech he initiated the major acquisition of Aboriginal lands with the Native Title Act. In the first instance, this did little more than guarantee the title interests of non-Indigenous invaders and their descendants. It seems that nothing is returned or acknowledged to Aboriginal people without something more significant being taken. The symbolic politics of being seen to be righting the historical wrongs has to go much further if this ritual is not to be repeated. The persistence of colonialist practices in Australian government structures and policies that pertain to Indigenous Australians is an issue yet to be addressed. In this environment, apologies are accompanied by repetitions of those same or related abuses. In early 1994, Aunty Maureen Watson of the Brisbane Council of Elders spoke of the situation of the German people and government who, having apologised for the Holocaust, made guarantees that it would never happen again. She made the point that this has never happened in Australia, and with increasing political conservatism, it seems unlikely that laws against the denial of historical atrocities would be considered in this country. In relation to the realities of past government policies towards Indigenous peoples and the Stolen Generations, it is clear that many people are outraged and welcome the chance to say so. If people took the implications of apology seriously, they would realise that merely saying sorry is not enough. Even while the act of apologising raises the issue of compensation, this politically significant step is a necessary one. The possibility of an apology has introduced the opportunity for Australians to think about the tragedies of our nation’s past and our inherited responsibility for these events, and for the benefits we have gained as a result. It has also provided an opportunity for individuals involved in the removals to think carefully about their involvement and to make amends for their individual actions. It cannot be, however, a substitute for the great recompense that is due Indigenous peoples, and merely serves as a starting point. References Hanson, Pauline. "Equal Justice for All". Queensland Times 6 Jan (1996): 14. Lloyd, Rachel. "I’ll Never Say Sorry: Pauline’s Back!" New Idea 10 Feb (2001): 14 Transcript of the Prime Minister, The Hon John Howard MP, Interview". BBC Television, Central London. 20 June 1997.

It's not only recently that computer technology and electronic networking have been surrounded with a vast amount of hyperbole -- sweeping statements of glorious futures awaiting us if we continue on the present course of technological development, with predictions from the 'paperless office' to the vision of permanently uploading one's consciousness to the global matrix, leaving the body behind. At the same time, we have seen dire warnings of a dumbing-down of society through a narrowing of human inventiveness by needlessly accepting the rules of computer logic, and through an overdependency on machines in everyday life -- indeed, the 'Y2K bug' has become something of a wet dream for neo-Luddites: the bigger the crash, the better their chances to do away with computers altogether. It doesn't take much to see that much of these predictions, hopes and dreams are centred around a dichotomy of flesh and mind: from Neuromancer to The Matrix, entering the network appears synonymous with leaving the flesh; increasingly, the growing planetwide network with its brain-like connections of nodes and centres is seen as a global mind, with the bodies of its users merely useless appendages that will be removed once we figure out how to sever mind and body and fully live online. Whether they love or abhor the idea of life in cyberspace -- most commentators' descriptions of the electronic future are to some extent fuelled by this radical and powerful imagery. Reality can't be made to fit into this dichotomy quite as easily, however. The flesh is remarkably resistant to all attempts to overcome it: we might temporarily ignore our bodies as we travel through cyberspace, but the growing rates of carpal tunnel syndrome and back pain amongst computer users are a clear sign that mind and body remain firmly connected, much to the delight of the designers of orthopaedic keyboards and office furniture. And speaking of the office: if anything, paper consumption rates have gone up rather than down, thanks to better and faster personal printers which make printing out yet another revision of the document we're currently working on a breeze (of ozone). The paperless office, once thought to be just around the corner, has receded into the distance. That's not to say that the neo-Luddites got it right on all counts, however. Their main argument against predictions of the 'death of the book' at the hands of hand-held reading screens has long been that no electronic gadget could ever replace the book in its robust versatility. They say that you don't take a laptop computer to read in bed, or while you're taking a bath, for example, and that at any rate a computer disk or an anonymous file on a hard drive just hasn't got the same aura as a rare hardcover edition of the same text. This confuses some very different types and uses of books -- you wouldn't read the rare hardcover in bed (it's too heavy to hold up for long) or, heaven forbid, in the bathtub. If we're talking about a cheap paperback instead, however, reading it in the bath probably isn't a good idea, either: steam and moisture from the water will make its cheap glue runny and its pages soggy, and you'll end up with a lump of papiermaché. And in any case, most people I know shower. This takes us to another way in which the flesh/mind distinction has been framed: descriptions according to which the flesh -- representing here the material world as such -- alone is 'solid', and the mind -- particularly in its cyberspatial/technological form -- is 'ephemeral'. We cling to solid, material artefacts (printed documents, letters, books) to fundament our thoughts, rather than their electronic counterparts (files, emails, Web pages), because the former appear to have a stronger 'presence', and this, too, is a reason the 'paperless office' remains theory. We take what we see on the Net with more than just a grain of salt, while we are far less critical of what we see in newspapers, print journals and books, just because they have a greater materiality. By this mindset, nothing published electronically, available on the World Wide Web, can ever be a classic in the way that the great books of literature we find in the libraries are classics. If you look at the less popular aisles of your library, however, you'll see a different reality emerge: here the off-mainstream works vie for the attention of occasional visitors; with budget restrictions often allowing only the purchase of paperback editions, these books will remain here until they're too worn or decayed to be loaned, or until the latest literary fad demands more storage room -- then they'll be shipped off to the warehouse or sold to whoever takes pity on them. In reality, then, for the majority of printed works (other than those instantly canonised and continually reprinted) the ephemerality of their medium is as much of a threat as it is for works published exclusively online, or perhaps even more so: the last copy of a text, available on the Web, will still be available for a potentially global audience, while the last paperback of an obscure novel, stacked away in the municipal library of a rural town, is practically lost to the world. The same is true for other forms of communication, too: trying to find a letter you received from a friend a few years back is likely to result in searching through multiple shoeboxes full of correspondence, if you bothered to keep it at all; at the same time, like many users you may never have bothered to set expiry limits for the inbox of your email programme, and still have a perfect record of every email communication you've had since you first got online. In the case of public discussion fora such as newsgroups, this may even be cause for concern: the worrysome implications of Internet archival services such as Deja News are only beginning to enter the public consciousness (Bruns, "Archiving the Ephemeral"). Websites, too, may change a lot, but for every link that's suddenly vanished it's also possible to show pages which haven't been updated in years but are still online since nobody ever bothered to delete them. With the ongoing explosion in storage space available, this trend is likely to continue: as the space on hard drives and Webservers gets increasingly difficult to exhaust, fewer people will go through the trouble of cleaning up their storage space regularly. In effect, then, the supposedly ephemeral world of cyberspace is becoming more and more anephemeral. So, how solid is the flesh, and how volatile is the mind? To ask the question this way would only mean continuing a binary division that doesn't appear to exist in reality. As we have seen, the supposedly ephemeral, bodiless existence of cyberspace is showing signs of solidification, while on the other hand the solidity of what we refer to as 'the real world' (in contrast to 'the virtual') is always only a temporal appearance: all flesh is mortal, as it were. In the end, though, perhaps the lesson is that despite all the popular fiction claiming the opposite, flesh and mind are much less divisible than they seem. We don't just leave the body behind as we enter cyberspace, and 'real life' isn't somehow automatically more 'real' than 'virtual' experience. This is evident in other fields of cyberdevelopment, too: after all, the main point of virtual reality gadgetry is to replicate physical experience -- we might want to mould the flesh into new forms, but we're hardly trying to get rid of it. References Axel Bruns. "Archiving the Ephemeral: Deja News and the Ethics of Perfect Memory." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.2 (1998). 1 May 1999 <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/deja.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "How Solid Is the Flesh?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.3 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/solid.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "How Solid Is the Flesh?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 3 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/solid.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Author. (1999) How solid is the flesh? M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(3). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/solid.php> ([your date of access]).

In "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!", Paul Virilio claims that telecommunications are ushering in the "invention of a perspective of real time" which results in "some kind of choking of the senses, a loss of control over reason". As users of this new technology, as the receptors of the stream of computer-mediated information, we need to figure out the terms and conditions of our acceptance of cyberspace as a space and realtime as a form of time, to understand the implications of this new mode of communication, for "no information exists without dis-information". In "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!", Paul Virilio claims that telecommunications are ushering in the "invention of a perspective of real time" which results in "some kind of choking of the senses, a loss of control over reason". As users of this new technology, as the receptors of the stream of computer-mediated information, we need to figure out the terms and conditions of our acceptance of cyberspace as a space and realtime as a form of time, to understand the implications of this new mode of communication, for "no information exists without dis-information". Even Virilio proclaims apocalyptically that "our history will happen in universal time, itself the outcome of instantaneity -- and there only". In fact, time also governs narrative choices: their availability, viability, desirability, relevance. Despite the hype surrounding the instantaneity of virtual travel, narrative in cyberspace is inherently subordinate to connection speed and loadtime. This is why the "loading screen" has become the standard welcome on Shockwave-heavy sites, developing into a kind of mini-genre of low-bandwidth animation. The possiblity of using temporality as a narrative catalyst has been exploited in cinema, as in classic Hollywood dissolves and fades. Metaphors of the passing of time are a familiar cliche: the pages of a daily calendar fluttering away, the changing of the seasons. Stanley Kubrick's bold cut from a spinning bone to a space station in orbit in 2001: A Space Odyssey is an extreme and unusual example of this sort of metaphor. These all function as temporal ellipses. The passage of time can also function as plot, as in Warhol's Blow Job and Richard Linklater's Slacker, both of which are ostensibly about merely the passage of time. Slacker lacks a traditional narrative and instead progresses through a series of vignettes, each one following seemingly random characters through seemingly random events (an idea developed further by the recent Magnolia). The change from one vignette to the next is motivated simply by the camera's movement from one character or event to another. The camera is like a nosy passerby, a voyeur, showing noncommittal interest in one thing, then another, and the viewer must give up interest in each vignette without the satisfaction of narrative closure. As the filmmaker tells the cabdriver in the beginning, each turn of events, each decision made, results in all possibilities going on to live out their potential realities. We, the viewers, in turn, follow the camera's gaze with the frustrating knowledge that other, unresolved realities are continuing without that gaze. The recent Timecode uses the same hypertext-type approach with four simultaneous screens, each a single shot capturing one part of an interlocked world. These are all extreme, overt examples of Deleuze's time-image. Online, similar moves have been made in Mark Napier's Shredder and Maciej Wisniewski's Netomat interfaces. Both function as alternatives to conventional browsing, Netomat even labelled an "anti-browser" that engages "an Internet that is an intelligent application and not simply a large database of static files". The above-mentioned devices for manipulating the perception and understanding of time as represented in film (fade, dissolve, et al.) exploited an inherently filmic problem: simply put, that there is a serious discrepancy between time as it happens and its perception, much like the time it takes to enjoy a Website's multimedia content and the length of its download. In the case of the fade, for instance, an inherent problem of the medium has been internalised in a non-transparent way and used overtly to further the narrative meaning. Likewise, the "loading screen" offers a morsel of content typically focussed on its function ("loading... 5 seconds to go..."). The existence of these filmic conventions makes us aware of when they are broken, as in the "realtime" films Nick of Time, Blow Job, and Timecode, and also in instances of extended time, as in the classic shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho. Think, too, of the last time you had to wait before you saw any of a Website's content. Just as filmic time is typically compressed for the sake of appearing real, navigational movement on the Web is in fact constrained while seeming free, and delayed while seeming instantaneous. The promise of instant access has instead been fulfilled by erratic connection speeds and server problems. Because Web time ostensibly passes almost in an instant (this is, after all, the industry in which a product might become passé while still at the beta phase), information ages just as quickly: "404 File not found" is a familiar sight, telling us that the link we followed may have been coded, not last year, but maybe even last week, or yesterday. Information loses relevance, even disappears, often in no time at all. These problems have been exploited by JODI, whose experimental online work foregrounds the nuts and bolts (and kinks) of the Web, instead of hiding it beneath a clean "other" design. The desirability of information over time is also the focus of Rhizome's Starry Night interface which, utilizing Java, shifts over time to emphasise popular links, eventually eradicating unpopular ones. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin writes that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (220). But what of the Web art project, whose existence on a server somewhere does not need to be known for the work to be understood, whose duplication yields a copy that is indistinguishable from the original? What of the work that is both static and temporal, which is inherently mediated through time, including time (as in server and connection speed) which cannot be completely accounted for by the author? He goes on to say that technical reproduction "enables the original to meet the beholder halfway" (220), but what is the Website's point of departure? Its creator's computer? The server on which it lives? The end user's computer? How can we map the path from the "original" to its "reproduction" when the two are indistinguishable, when, in fact, there is no confirmable original? As if in response to Benjamin, Paul Virilio writes in "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" that "the specific negative aspect of these information superhighways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world". Virilio is concerned with the problem of orientation, that is, of the lack of geographical, historical, and temporal specificity and point of reference when experiencing a Web-based narrative. Compare that to Deleuze's claim that, in the time-image, "the brain has lost its Euclidean co-ordinates, and now emits other signs" (278), a notion similar to the "loading screen", a bit of content which exists merely to inform that content is forthcoming. Virilio sees this as a crucial problem facing us today and adds that "there is talk of substituting the term 'global' by 'glocal,' a concatenation of the words local and global". The Internet yields both seeming temporal instantaneity and spatial compression. We can be everywhere all at once, all the time; but what of the inevitable slippage of time involved? The World Wide Web has created a life of dead moments, of moments spent waiting for the instantaneous to happen. References Baudrillard, Jean. "Radical Thought." Trans. Francois Debrix in CTheory. Collection Morsure. Eds. Sens and Tonka. Paris: 1994. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Shocken Books, 1968. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press, 1992. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. Napier, Mark. Shredder. 27 June 2000 <http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/>. Rhizome. 27. June 2000 <http://www.rhizome.org/>. Virilio, Paul. "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" Le Monde Diplomatique Aug. 1995. Trans. Patrice Riemens in CTheory. Wisniewski, Maciej. Netomat. 27 June 2000 <http://www.netomat.net/>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Maya Drozdz. "Waiting for Instantaneity." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php>. Chicago style: Maya Drozdz, "Waiting for Instantaneity," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Maya Drozdz. (2000) Waiting for instantaneity. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php> ([your date of access]).

Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash ABSTRACT The current incarceration facilities for the growing number of women are depriving expecting mothers of adequate care crucial for the child’s mental and physical development. Programs need to be established to counteract this. INTRODUCTION Currently, Diana Sanchez was eight months pregnant when she was arrested for identity theft and put in a prison cell in Denver. At five a.m., two weeks after being incarcerated, she announced to a deputy outside her cell that she was going into labor. Footage from a camera in her cell shows her pacing anxiously or writhing in her bed for the five hours preceding the arrival of her son. She banged on the door and begged for help. All she received was an absorbent pad. She gave birth alone in her prison cell on July 31, 2015, around 10:45 am. At 11:00 am, a prison nurse walked in to cut the umbilical cord and take Sanchez’s newborn baby without offering postnatal care. Sanchez was later sent to a hospital, and her baby was separated from her until she was put on probation. In 2018, on behalf of her three-year-old son, Sanchez sued Denver Health and Denver Sheriff Department and won a $480,000 settlement.[1] Though many more men are incarcerated than women, the rate of growth of female incarceration has exceeded that of male incarceration for decades. One study estimated that 231,000 women are currently incarcerated in the US,[2] 80 percent of whom are mothers, and 150,000 pregnant.[3] Another recent study of 1,396 incarcerated pregnant women found that 92 percent had live births, 6.5 percent had stillbirths or miscarriages, and 4 percent terminated the pregnancy. The authors found that there is no system of reporting pregnancy outcomes in US prisons. There is a noteworthy ethical lapse in mental, emotional, and medical care that threatens the well-being of pregnant women in prison. According to Carolyn Sufrin, “Pregnant incarcerated people are one of the most marginalized and forgotten groups in our country… and women who don't get counted don't count.” [4] Poor documentation, visibility, and transparency contribute to the systemic abuse of incarcerated women. Studies document women giving birth alone in cells and shackles in solitary confinement. Their complaints regarding contractions, bleeding, and other pains of labor are often ignored.[5] l. Prenatal Care in American Prisons Diana Sanchez was not offered any prenatal care after she was incarcerated. And neither she nor her son received appropriate postnatal care.[6] Sanchez was on medication for opioid withdrawal while pregnant, which could have been detrimental to her baby’s health.[7] There is an unacceptable absence of pre- and postnatal care in most US prisons. A lack of regulation makes the availability of perinatal care unpredictable and unreliable. Several studies confirmed that there is not a standard for prenatal care for women incarcerated during pregnancy. [8] Knowledge of the appropriate mental and physical care pregnant women require, addiction support, and support for maternal-infant bonding all exists outside the prison system and ought to be used as a benchmark. At the very least, pregnant women, birthing women, and new mothers should not be placed in solitary confinement or shackled.[9] In the prenatal arena, depriving an individual of adequate healthcare is not appropriate and could be cruel and unusual. Only 18 percent of funding in prisons goes to health care for the prisoners. That is roughly $5.7 thousand per prisoner, according to an NIH study done in 2015.[10] There should be an adequate amount of funding for the health needs of incarcerated pregnant women. By depriving pregnant women of healthcare, the prisons are depriving the fetus of adequate care. ll. Respect for Autonomy During Incarceration Women maintain healthcare autonomy even when incarcerated. The purpose of a prison sentence is retribution for crimes and rehabilitation to prevent reoffending.[11] The separation of a mother and newborn causes significant developmental and psychological harm to the child and the parent. Parent-child separation does not serve the purpose of retribution or rehabilitation and is authorized only due to prisons’ limited space and resources that make it difficult to accommodate children, as well as a state interest in children’s best interests or the custody rights of the other parent. When it is possible to keep a family together, prisons should make every effort to do so for the health of the mother-child relationship. Incarcerated people may become a burden to family or society due to prison medical neglect. For example, diabetes and hypertension, which can occur during pregnancy, can worsen without treatment. The inability to access the care they would otherwise want and need endangers women and poses a burden to the healthcare system after incarceration, Depersonalizing individuals convicted of crimes must be placed in the context of historical eugenics practices. State-sanctioned sterilization and efforts to prevent women from reproducing were widespread during the early 20th century.[12] Cases of coerced and nonconsensual sterilization of incarcerated women and men evidence the history of eugenics.[13]Abortions are offered to some incarcerated women.[14] However, many incarcerated women are denied the right to see healthcare providers to thoroughly discuss abortion or other options.[15] Although the abortions are consensual, the quality of consent is questionable. lll. Prison Nursery Programs, “I need something to live for…” Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP), a max security female prison, has a program called Wee Ones that enables women convicted of nonviolent crimes to spend 30 months bonding with their newborn child. It is one of eight programs in the country that allows pregnant mothers to spend the last few months of their sentence with their children. It is a voluntary program that allows pregnant offenders a private room in a housing unit. It offers parent education, resources that are accessible after release, and career education. The program application process and the rules to which women must adhere to remain in the program are stringent. The programs generally have a zero-tolerance policy. Even simply sleeping in the same bed as the child or arguing with other mothers can result in termination from the program. Kara, a pregnant woman incarcerated for drug possession, had a history of abuse in her family and tended to act out in anger against her peers in the program. She was learning how to have healthy reactions to anger when handling her child, but her temper ultimately led to her removal from the program. Her son was placed in foster care, and Kara returned to the regular cells. In an interview before her transfer, she told the camera that Charlie gave her a purpose. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Charlie was my way of life here [...] I need something to live for [,] and I screwed up.”[16] Pregnancy in prison can be a way to improve quality of life for some women. Studies demonstrate that nursery programs improve mental health of the incarcerated women.[17] The secure attachment of the infant to its primary caregiver promotes healthy development in the child and a bonded relationship with the mother.[18] The close bond between mother and child in prisons has been shown to decrease recidivism and to reduce the burden on the foster care system.[19] Women who do not qualify for these programs, or are incarcerated in prisons without them, are separated from their newborn babies and their other children. The disconnect can lead to the child rejecting the incarcerated mother once she is released.[20] Programs like Wee Ones honor women’s autonomy while they are incarcerated. During interviews, the women expressed that although raising a child in that environment is difficult, it was better than not being with their children. While rocking a baby in her lap, one inmate expressed her frustrations with Wee Ones but then paused to express gratitude and said, “After all, it’s prison. And prison ain’t supposed to be nice.”[21] The ethical issue of autonomy reflects a more difficult dilemma in the prison landscape. lV. Counter Arguments: Do the Nursery Programs Work for the Children and the Women Typically, newborns are taken from their incarcerated mothers within two to three days of birth and sent to live with a relative or placed in foster care. Many women are never reunited with their babies. There is much debate over whether the programs are beneficial to the children. One ethical issue is whether children, as innocents, are being punished either by being in the prison system or by being separated from their mothers. Skeptics, like James Dwyer, have argued against keeping innocent babies in the custody of incarcerated mothers asserting that there is little evidence demonstrating that the programs rehabilitate the women.[22] Dwyer commented on the “reckless” hopefulness the programs provide: "It might, in fact, be the babies distract them from rehabilitation they should be doing instead. […] They're so focused on childcare and have this euphoria — they think they'll be just fine when they get out of prison and they're not. We just don't know."[23] One study showed that 58 percent of incarcerated women are arrested again after release, 38 percent are reconvicted, and 30 percent return to prison within three years.[24] Dwyer uses this data to argue that the programs are not worthwhile. However, the data is not limited to the special population that had the prison nursery experience. The data applies to all incarcerated women limiting its applicability. More importantly, there is compelling evidence to support prison nursery programs.[25] The programs do decrease recidivism[26] and prison misconduct,[27] and they allow women to create stronger bonds with their children.[28] Bev Little argues that allowing mothers to bond with their babies only delays the inevitable separation and will cause trauma and have other ill effects on the baby. [29] But others feel that stronger maternal-fetal attachment is best for both parties. There is evidence that the bond, once formed, is long-lasting. Later in life, there is less drug addiction among children who stayed in the nursery rather than being separated from their mothers.[30] Another counterargument is that the policies in prison nurseries are not as useful for motherhood outside of the facility; thus, an issue with recidivism occurs because the women are less prepared for motherhood upon release from prison. Prison nursery programs establish methods and procedures for successful motherhood that are unique to operation within correctional environments. Yet, fortunately, parenting classes offered by prisons and jails emphasize sacrifice, self-restraint, and dedicated attention to the baby. These classes aptly apply to motherhood outside of prison.[31] One incarcerated mother experiencing addiction, Kima, was described as ambivalent toward her pregnancy. “It’s something about knowing but not knowing that makes me not accountable or makes me think I’m not accountable,” Kima shared.[32] After the nurse confirmed her pregnancy, she acknowledged fear and knew she would be held accountable to the baby. The occurrence of pregnancy ambivalence is common.[33] A study of a population of prisoners from Rhode Island found that 41 percent of the women expressed ambivalent attitudes about pregnancy. 70 of the women from a population in San Francisco expressed ambivalent or negative attitudes towards pregnancy.[34] But the ambivalence of some women toward pregnancy is not a reason to prevent women who feel differently from reaping the full benefits of programs that support them during pregnancy. Another counterargument is that prison is becoming a comfort that women might seek if they are homeless or housing insecure. For example, Evelyn was released from a San Francisco jail after being arrested for using cocaine. She was 26 weeks pregnant and had a four-year-old son in the custody of her aunt. Following her release, she was homeless and using drugs in the streets. She felt that her only hope of keeping her baby safe was to go back to jail. Like Kima, she had been in and out of jail from a young age. She grew accustomed to and dependent on the care provided there. While incarceration can provide a home and a nursery, there is no ethical reason to argue for making prison less comfortable by separating babies and children from incarcerated women. Instead, these facts suggest we are not doing enough for women outside prisons either. CONCLUSION Many experts stress the dearth of research and information on these women and their babies. There is no empirical data to show how big the problem is, but there is evidence that programs providing nursery care for the children of incarcerated women have many benefits. Because the research is not largescale enough, many pregnant women in the prison system are ignored. Many women give birth in unacceptable conditions, and their children are taken from them the moment the umbilical cord is cut. While the US incarcerates too many women, a movement to expand prison nurseries could help new mothers bond with their children. Strong educational programs could aid in lowering the rates of recidivism by providing therapeutic resources for mothers.[35] There is a growing problem of mass incarceration in the US as many women are placed in correctional facilities. Most of these women are convicted of possession or use of illegal substances.[36] Many women come from disadvantaged backgrounds, poverty, and have experienced addiction. Depriving an expectant mother of adequate care is cruel and irresponsible both to the mother and her innocent child. The criminal justice system is harming children both mentally and physically. Reform of the system is needed to provide the basic care those children need. Programs like IWP’s Wee Ones are necessary for physical, psychological, and social development. A program that offers a place for mothers to raise their babies in the community of other mothers would incentivize and facilitate healthy parental habits. Further programs for mothers who are released from prison would give them valuable resources to keep them from returning and encourage healthy relationships between the mother and the baby. - [1] Li, D. K. Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance. Denver: NBC News, 2019. [2] Kajstura, Aleks. “Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Prison Policy Initiative, 29 Oct. 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019women.html. (“Including those in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities.”) [3] Swavola, E, K Riley and R Subramanian. "Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform." Vera Institute of Justice August 2016. [4] Sufrin, C. Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do and Don't Know About Pregnancy and Incarceration Allison Chang. 21 March 2019. Transcript. [5] Sufrin, C., 2019. (Suffrin expressed that she had seen such practices firsthand working as an OB/GYN for incarcerated women.) [6] Padilla, M. “Woman Gave Birth in Denver Jail Cell Alone, Lawsuit Says,” New York Times, Sep. 1, 2019. [7] Li, D. “Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance,” NBC U.S. News, Apr. 29. 2019. [8] Knittel, A. and C. Sufrin. "Maternal Health Equity and Justice for Pregnant Women Who Experience Incarceration." JAMA Network Open 3.8 (2020). A study in Ontario, Canada, coincided with a study done in Australia. [9] Sufrin, C., et al. "Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017." p. 803-804. [10] Sridhar, S., R. Cornish and S. Fazel. "The Costs of Healthcare in Prison and Custody: Systematic Review of Current Estimates and Proposed Guidelines for Future Reporting." Frontiers in Psychiatry 9.716 (2018). [11] Kifer, M., Hemmens, C., Stohr, M. K. “The Goals of Corrections: Perspectives from the Line” Criminal Justice Review. 1 May 2003 [12] Perry, D. M. "Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated." The Marshall Project: Sterilization of Women in Prison 26 July 2017. [13] Rachel Roth & Sara L. Ainsworth, If They Hand You a Paper, You Sign It: A Call to End the Sterilization of Women in Prison, 26 Hastings WOMEN's L.J. 7 (2015); See Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) (procreation considered a fundamental right; fact pattern of male sterilization in prison based on type of crime.) [14] Sufrin, C., M. D. Creinin, J. C. Chang. “Incarcerated Women and Abortion Provision: A Survey of Correctional Health Providers.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. p. 6-11. 23 March 2009. [15] Kasdan, D. “Abortion Access for Incarcerated Women: Are Correctional Health Practices in Conflict with Constitutional Standards?” Guttmacher Institute. 26 March 2009. [16] Born Behind Bars. Season 1, Episode 5, “They Can Take Your Baby Away,” produced by Luke Ellis, Francis Gasparini, & Jen Wise, aired on 15 Nov. 2017 A&E Networks [17] Bick, J., & Dozier, M. (2008). Helping Foster Parents Change: The Role of Parental State of Mind. In H. Steele & M. Steele (Eds.), Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview (pp. 452–470). New York: Guilford Press. [18]Sroufe, L. A., B. Egeland, E. A. Carlson, W. A. Collins. (2005). The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Press. [19] Goshin, L. S., & Byrne, M. W. “Converging Streams of Opportunity for Prison Nursery Programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 15 Apr 2009. [20] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. Another IWP pregnant woman is Taylor. At the time of the show, she was pregnant and expecting twins. In interviews throughout the episode, she expressed how her pregnancies in prison had put her in a better mood and felt beneficial to her. She had tried to sign up for the nursery program for her previous pregnancy, but her sentence was too long to get it. Her child was sent to live with a caregiver, and when Taylor was on probation, Taylor’s daughter didn’t want to be around Taylor. Taylor was so distraught that she messed up and went back, this time, pregnant with twins. After she was reincarcerated, she was able to be accepted into Wee Ones. She expressed to the camera man that the program might help her feel more like a mother so that when she gets out, she will have someone to care for. Taylor, Kara, and many other women depend on their children or their pregnancy for a purpose while behind bars. They relied on their babies to be a boon for them. [21] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. [22] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [23] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [24] Owen, B. & Crow, J. “Recidivism among Female Prisoners: Secondary Analysis of the 1994 BJS Recidivism Data Set” Department of Criminology California State University (2006) p. 28 [25] Prison Nursery Programs: Literature Review and Fact Sheet for CT. Diamond Research Consulting, 2012, www.cga.ct.gov/2013/JUDdata/tmy/2013HB-06642-R000401-Sarah Diamond - Director, Diamond Research Consulting-TMY.PDF. [26] New York Department of Correction Services (NYDOCS). (1993). Profile of Participants: The Bedford and Taconic Nursery Program in 1992. Albany, NY. Department of Correction Services.Rowland, M., & Watts, A. (2007). Washington State’s effort to the generational impact on crime. Corrections Today. Retrieved September 12, 2007, from http://www. aca.org/publications/pdf/Rowland_Watts_Aug07.pdf. [27] Carlson, J. R. (2001). Prison nursery 2000: A five-year review of the prison nursery at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 33, 75–97. [28] Carlson, J.R. [29] Little, B. "What Happens When a Woman Gives Birth Behind Bars?" A+E Networks, 29 October 2019. <https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/what-happens-when-a-woman-gives-birth-in-jail-or-prison>. [30] Margolies, J. K., & Kraft-Stolar, T. When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother: The Collision of Child Welfare and the Incarceration of Women in New York State 1, 9 (Correctional Association of N.Y. Women in Prison Project 2006) [31] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. [32] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: p. 155. [33] Peart, M. S. & Knittel, A. K. “Contraception need and available services among incarcerated women in the United States: a systematic review.” Contraception and Reproductive Medicine. 17 March 2020 [34] LaRochelle, F., C. Castro, J. Goldenson, J. P. Tulsky, D.L. Cohan, P. D. Blumenthal, et al. “Contraceptive use and barriers to access among newly arrested women.” J Correct Health Care. (2012) p. 111–119. [35] Goshin, L., & Byrne, M. (2009). “Converging streams of opportunity for prison nursery programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 2009. p.271–295. [36] Elizabeth Swavola, Kristine Riley, Ram Subramanian. Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016.

After balaclava-clad Zapatistas seized control of a handful of southern Mexican towns on New Year’s Eve, 1993, and soon after became implicated in the first wide-scale use of the Internet in a warlike scenario, it was thought that the age of postmodern Internet warfare had arrived. However, while the centrality of the Internet to the movement’s relative success evokes romantic images of Zapatista rebels uploading communiqués onto the World Wide Web from remote mountain hideaways, these myths are dispelled when the impoverished living conditions of its indigenous Maya constituents are taken into account. Instead, the Zapatistas’ presence on the Internet is mediated by NGOs and other support groups who electronically publish hand-written Zapatista communiqués. While this paper demonstrates the political utility of information-age communication strategies for localised struggles for cultural autonomy, it is shown that, for the Zapatistas, these strategies work with, rather than against, traditional print culture. The Zapatistas, NGOs and the Internet Soon after the Zapatista uprising began, the New York Times, prompted by the movement’s rapid acquirement of an Internet presence, declared that the world’s first “postmodern revolutionary movement” had appeared in the unlikely location of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas (Burbach 116). Other analyses that investigate the significance of the Internet in the uprising define the EZLN as the world’s “first informational guerrilla movement” (Castells 79), and the “first social netwar” (Ronfeldt et al. 1). After such descriptions were assigned to the EZLN, an image of Zapatista rebels typing e-mails on laptops in remote mountain hideaways featured in many initial media reports. These ideas were still dominating much of the media a year after the uprising when the Mexican President ordered a raid on suspected EZLN hideouts in an attempt to capture the movement’s mestizo spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos. Media reports at the time claimed that in some of the raids “they found as many computer disks as bullets”. There were also claims that “if Marcos is equipped with a telephone modem and a cellular phone [he could] hook into the Internet [directly] even while on the run, as he is now” (Knudson 509). However, while the Internet contributed significantly to the advance of the EZLN struggle, this romanticised and mythologised imagery is far removed from the material impoverishment that led to the movement’s uprising and which still characterises the lives of its constituents. Indeed, the Marcos that I saw addressing a crowd in the Mexican city of Puebla during the EZLN’s 2001 March for Indigenous Dignity read his speech from an old-tattered notebook—the old-fashioned printed kind, not one from the Toshiba range. He stumbled over some sections, telling the crowd that it had been smudged by the rain earlier in the day. This may have been a move calculated to enhance the charismatic appeal of the pipe-smoking, poet-guerrilla, but it is also consistent with the impoverished circumstances from which the Zapatistas emanated and within which they continue to struggle. There is a glaring anomaly between descriptions of the Zapatistas as postmodern or as the initiators of informational guerrilla warfare, or netwar, and the movement’s location in the most remote regions of an impoverished state, which has Internet hubs in only two of its towns and “no telephone or electricity at all in most of the rural areas” (Froehling 291). Indeed, the Zapatistas’ relationship with the Internet is mediated via a support network that, most significantly, includes NGOs. For the Zapatista word to reach a national and international audience the movement had to firstly rely on hand-written documents and old-fashioned means of covert communication whereby messages were passed secretly from hand to hand, galloped inside a saddle satchel, hidden in a cyclist’s bag, slipped into a backpack, or perhaps thrust inside a sack of beans, then propped in the back of an open truck, crammed with indigenous villagers who make the hours-long journey to the closest market, or doctor, and our messenger to a contact person with Internet access. (Ponce de León xxiii) The journey of the EZLN’s communiqués from the remote Chiapan highlands to a world-wide audience via its Internet-connected support network has created what Cleaver calls a “Zapatista effect” (1998). This effect demonstrates that by establishing an international electronic web of support, particularly between marginalised groups and NGOs, dominant political, economic and social policies can be effectively opposed and alternatives articulated. The Zapatista uprising marks the first time that the electronic media have been used as a strategy in their own right, producing “an electronic fabric of opposition to much wider policies”, rather than simply facilitating the “traditional work of solidarity” (Cleaver 622). Cleaver claims that this “Zapatista effect” has the potential to permeate and inform social struggles throughout the world and reweave “the fabric of politics” by demonstrating the ability of grassroots movements to form national and international collectives to challenge the power of the nation-state (637). Investigation into the usefulness of new communication technologies in times of war and struggle has also been the focus of studies conducted for the US army, leading to the development of the concept of “netwar” (Ronfeldt et al. iii). Ronfeldt et al. contend that, as a result of what they claim is the increasing dependency of contemporary society on information, “more than ever before, conflicts are about ‘knowledge’—about who knows (or can be kept from knowing) what, when, where, and why” (7-8). The study concludes that the EZLN’s development of an NGO support network that could rapidly disseminate reports on human rights abuses, information about the intolerable living conditions endured by indigenous Chiapans, and the EZLN’s communiqués has been crucial to developing the movement’s support base. However, the movement’s establishment of an electronically wired NGO support network able to circulate information about the EZLN, its struggle and its aims relies on the movement’s ability to convey information to them, the “what, when, where, and why”, before it can appear on the Internet and in other media forms. It is not simply the publication and distribution of figures relating to disease, impoverishment and human rights violations that have contributed to people’s interest in, and support for, the Zapatistas. Rather, the intriguing content and style of their discourse, which is heavily indebted to the charismatic figure of Subcomandante Marcos, has also played a crucial role. The writings of Marcos are rich with poetic imagery, humour, symbols of Mayan mythology and references to Latin American and Spanish literary figures and styles, particularly magic realism. Zapatista Narratives Marcos’ innovative and engaging discursive style is particularly evident in the stories he tells of Don Durito, a beetle named Nebuchadnezzar who has assumed the nom de guerre of Durito, which literally means the little strong or hard one, a reference to his shell, fighting spirit and his status as a ladies’ man (Subcomandante Marcos 9). Don Durito has made the floor of the Southern Mexican Lacandón jungle his home, but in Marcos’s stories he often travels the world as a knight-errant, reminiscent of Cervantes’s delusional do-gooder Don Quijote. Durito also intermittently assumes the role of a detective and that of a political analyst, and it is in this guise that he first meets Marcos. This occurs when Marcos, unable to find tobacco to fill the pipe he is never seen without, notices a trail of the dried black leaves weaving away from his hammock. After following the trail for a few metres Marcos sees, behind a stone, a bespectacled beetle clenching a tiny pipe, sitting at a tiny desk studying, as we soon discover, neoliberalism “and its strategy of domination for Latin America” (Subcomandante Marcos 12). Marcos, unfazed by the discovery of a literate, smoking beetle is taken aback by his investigation of neoliberalism. Durito explains that his scholarly interest is quite pragmatic for it stems from a desire to know how long and how successful the Zapatista struggle will be so as to ascertain “how long us beetles are going to have to be careful that you [Marcos and the other members of the Zapatista army who are based in the jungle] aren’t going to squash us with your big boots” (Subcomandante Marcos 12). In these encounters with Durito the political analyst, Marcos is given lessons in politics and economics from an inhabitant of the jungle floor, from a beetle who recognises that the danger of being squashed by “big boots” in his small patch of land is intimately linked to the global issue of neoliberalism and its much bigger boots. Through these stories, Marcos highlights the detrimental impact that global economic policies have had on the Maya of Chiapas. The character of Durito also enables him to demonstrate the potential for small, seemingly insignificant individuals or groups to radically challenge these policies and articulate alternatives. Conclusion Such entertaining and lyrical prose enables the EZLN to present itself as a new style of social revolutionary movement, far removed from traditional Latin American revolutionary struggles. This has, arguably, broadened the movement’s international support network, a situation facilitated by the circulation and publication of these writings and communiqués on the Internet by the movement’s NGO support network. However, while the use of information-age technology to stimulate the creation of collective transnational support networks presents as a useful strategy for contemporary social struggles, it does not guarantee the procurement of significant political, economic and social change. Indeed, after more than a decade of struggle, the Zapatistas have not precipitated the radical reconstruction of the Mexican political system that they had hoped for. References Burbach, Roger. Globalization and Postmodern Politics: From Zapatistas to High-Tech Robber Barons. London: Pluto Press, 2001. Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume II: The Power of Identity. Malden, Ma.: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Cleaver, Harry M. Jr. “The Zapatista Effect: The Internet and the Rise of an Alternative Political Fabric.” Journal of International Affairs 51.2 (1998): 621-40. Froehling, Oliver. “The Cyberspace ‘War of Ink and Internet’ in Chiapas, Mexico.” The Geographical Review 87.2 (1997): 291-307. Knudson, Jerry W. “Rebellion in Chiapas: Insurrection by Internet and Public Relations.” Media, Culture and Society 20.3 (1998): 507-18. Ponce de León, Juana. “Editor’s Note: Travelling Back for Tomorrow.” Our Word Is Our Weapon. Ed. Juana Ponce de León. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001. xxiii-xxxi. Ronfeldt, David, et al. The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico. Santa Monica, California: RAND, 1998. Subcomandante Marcos. Don Durito de La Lacandona. San Cristóbal de Las Casas Chiapas: Centro de Información y Análisis de Chiapas, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Turner, Bethaney. "Information-Age Guerrillas: The Communication Strategies of the Zapatistas." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/01-turner.php>. APA Style Turner, B. (Jun. 2005) "Information-Age Guerrillas: The Communication Strategies of the Zapatistas," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/01-turner.php>.

The move from analog distribution to online digital delivery is common in the contemporary mediascape. Music is in the midst of an ipod driven paradigm shift (Levy), television and movie delivery is being reconfigured (Johnson), and newspaper and magazines are confronting the reality of the world wide web and what it means for business models and ideas of journalism (Beecher). In the midst of this change, the book publishing industry remains defiant. While embracing digital production technologies, the vast majority of book content is still delivered in material form, printed and shipped the old-fashioned way—despite the efforts of many technology companies over the last decade. Even the latest efforts from corporate giants such as Sony and Amazon (who appear to have solved many of the technical hurdles of electronic reading devices) have had little visible impact. The idea of electronic books, or e-books, remains the domain of geeky early adopters (“Have”). The reasons for this are manifold, but, arguably, a broader uptake of e-books has not occurred because cultural change is much more difficult than technological change and book readers have yet to be persuaded to change their cultural habits. Electronic reading devices have been around for as long as there have been computers with screens, but serious attempts to replicate the portability, readability, and convenience of a printed book have only been with us for a decade or so. The late 1990s saw the release of a number of e-book devices. In quick succession, the likes of the Rocket e-Book, the SoftBook and the Franklin eBookman all failed to catch on. Despite this lack of market penetration, software companies began to explore the possibilities—Microsoft’s Reader software competed with a similar product from Adobe, some publishers became content providers, and a niche market of consumers began reading e-books on personal digital assistants (PDAs). That niche was sufficient for e-reading communities and shopfronts to appear, with a reasonable range of titles becoming available for purchase to feed demand that was very much driven by early adopters. But the e-book market was and remains small. For most people, books are still regarded as printed paper objects, purchased from a bookstore, borrowed from a library, or bought online from companies like Amazon.com. More recently, the introduction of e-ink technologies (EPDs) (DeJean), which allow for screens with far more book-like resolution and contrast, has provided the impetus for a new generation of e-book devices. In combination with an expanded range of titles (and deals with major publishing houses to include current best-sellers), there has been renewed interest in the idea of e-books. Those who have used the current generation of e-ink devices are generally positive about the experience. Except for some sluggishness in “turning” pages, the screens appear crisp, clear and are not as tiring to read as older displays. There are a number of devices that have embraced the new screen technologies (mobileread) but most attention has been paid to three devices in particular—mainly because their manufacturers have tried to create an ecosystem that provides content for their reading devices in much the same way that Apple’s itunes store provides content for ipods. The Sony Portable Reader (Sonystyle) was the first electronic ink device to be produced by a mainstream consumers electronics company. Sony ties the Reader to its Connect store, which allows the purchase of book titles via a computer; titles are then downloaded to the Reader in the same way that an mp3 player is loaded with music. Sony’s most prominent competition in the marketplace is Amazon’s Kindle, which does not require users to have a computer. Instead, its key feature is a constant wireless connection to Amazon’s growing library of Kindle titles. This works in conjunction with US cellphone provider Sprint to allow the purchase of books via wireless downloads wherever the Sprint network exists. The system, which Amazon calls “whispernet,” is invisible to readers and the cost is incorporated into the price of books, so Kindle users never see a bill from Sprint (“Frequently”). Both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle are available only in limited markets; Kindle’s reliance on a cellphone network means that its adoption internationally is dependent on Amazon establishing a relationship with a cellphone provider in each country of release. And because both devices are linked to e-bookstores, territorial rights issues with book publishers (who trade publishing rights for particular global territories in a colonial-era mode of operation that seems to ignore the reality of global information mobility (Thompson 74–77)) contribute to the restricted availability of both the Sony and Amazon products. The other mainstream device is the iRex Iliad, which is not constrained to a particular online bookstore and thus is available internationally. Its bookstore ecosystems are local relationships—with Dymocks in Australia, Borders in the UK, and other booksellers across Europe (iRex). All three devices use EPDs and share similar specifications for the actual reading of e-books. Some might argue that the lack of a search function in the Sony and the ability to write on pages in the Iliad are quite substantive differences, but overall the devices are distinguished by their availability and the accessibility of book titles. Those who have used the devices extensively are generally positive about the experience. Amazon’s Customer Reviews are full of positive comments, and the sense from many commentators is that the systems are a viable replacement for old-fashioned printed books (Marr). Despite the good reviews—which suggest that the technology is actually now good enough to compete with printed books—the e-book devices have failed to catch on. Amazon has been hesitant to state actual sales figures, leaving it to so-called analysts to guess with the most optimistic suggesting that only 30 to 50,000 have sold since launch in late 2007 (Sridharan). By comparison, a mid-list book title (in the US) would expect to sell a similar number of copies. The sales data for the Sony Portable Reader (which has been on the market for nearly two years) and the iRex iliad are also elusive (Slocum), suggesting that they have not meaningfully changed the landscape. Tellingly, despite the new devices, the e-book industry is still tiny. Although it is growing, the latest American data show that the e-book market has wholesale revenues of around $10 million per quarter (or around $40 million per year), which is dwarfed by the $35 billion in revenues regularly earned annually in the US printed book industry ("Book"). It’s clear that despite the technological advances, e-books have yet to cross the chasm from early adopter to mainstream usage (see IPDF). The reason for this is complex; there are issues of marketing and distribution that need to be considered, as well as continuing arguments about screen technologies, appropriate publishing models, and digital rights management. It is beyond the scope of this article to do justice to those issues. Suffice to say, the book industry is affected by the same debates over content that plague other media industries (Vershbow). But, arguably, the key reason for the minimal market impact is straightforward—technological change is relatively easy, but cultural change is much more difficult. The current generation of e-book devices might be technically very close to being a viable replacement for print on paper (and the next generation of devices will no doubt be even better), but there are bigger cultural hurdles to be overcome. For most people, the social practice of reading books (du Gay et al 10) is inextricably tied with printed objects and a print culture that is not yet commonly associated with “technology” (perhaps because books, as machines for reading (Young 160), have become an invisible technology (Norman 246)). E. Annie Proulx’s dismissive suggestion that “nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever” (1994) is commonly echoed when book buyers consider the digital alternative. Those thoughts only scratch the surface of a deeply embedded cultural practice. The centuries since Gutenberg’s printing press and the vast social and cultural changes that followed positioned print culture as the dominant cultural mode until relatively recently (Eisenstein; Ong). The emerging electronic media forms of the twentieth century displaced that dominance with many arguing that the print age was moved aside by first radio and television and now computers and the Internet (McLuhan; Postman). Indeed, there is a subtext in that line of thought, one that situates electronic media forms (particularly screen-based ones) as the antithesis of print and book culture. Current e-book reading devices attempt to minimise the need for cultural change by trying to replicate a print culture within an e-print culture. For the most part, they are designed to appeal to book readers as a replacement for printed books. But it will take more than a perfect electronic facsimile of print on paper to persuade readers to disengage with a print culture that incorporates bookshops, bookclubs, writing in the margins, touching and smelling the pages and covers, admiring the typesetting, showing off their bookshelves, and visibly identifying with their collections. The frequently made technical arguments (about flashing screens and reading in the bath (Randolph)) do not address the broader apprehension about a cultural experience that many readers do not wish to leave behind. It is in that context that booklovers appear particularly resistant to any shift from print to a screen-based format. One only has to engage in a discussion about e-books (or lurk on an online forum where one is happening) to appreciate how deeply embedded print culture is (Hepworth)—book readers have a historical attachment to the printed object and it is this embedded cultural resistance that is the biggest barrier for e-books to overcome. Although e-book devices in no way resemble television, print culture is still deeply suspicious of any screen-based media and arguments are often made that the book as a physical object is critical because “different types of media function differently, and even if the content is similar the form matters quite a lot” (Weber). Of course, many in the newspaper industry would argue that long-standing cultural habits can change very rapidly and the migration of eyeballs from newsprint to the Internet is a cautionary tale (see Auckland). That specific format shift saw cultural change driven by increased convenience and a perception of decreased cost. For those already connected to the Internet, reading newspapers online represented zero marginal cost, and the range of online offerings dwarfed that of the local newsagency. The advantage of immediacy and multimedia elements, and the possibility of immediate feedback, appeared sufficient to drive many away from print towards online newspapers.For a similar shift in the e-book realm, there must be similar incentives for readers. At the moment, the only advantages on offer are weightlessness (which only appeals to frequent travellers) and convenience via constant access to a heavenly library of titles (Young 150). Amazon’s Kindle bookshop can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere there is a Sprint network coverage (Nelson). However, even this advantage is not so clear-cut—there is a meagre range of available electronic titles compared to printed offerings. For example, Amazon claims 130,000 titles are currently available for Kindle and Sony has 50,000 for its Reader, figures that are dwarfed by Amazon’s own printed book range. Importantly, there is little apparent cost advantage to e-books. The price of electronic reading devices is significant, amounting to a few hundred dollars to which must be added the cost of e-books. The actual cost of those titles is also not as attractive as it might be. In an age where much digital content often appears to be free, consumers demand a significant price advantage for purchasing online. Although some e-book titles are priced more affordably than their printed counterparts, the cost of many seems strangely high given the lack of a physical object to print and ship. For example, Amazon Kindle titles might be cheaper than the print version, but the actual difference (after discounting) is not an order of magnitude, but of degree. For example, Randy Pausch’s bestselling The Last Lecture is available for $12.07 as a paperback or $9.99 as a Kindle edition (“Last”). For casual readers, the numbers make no sense—when the price of the reading device is included, the actual cost is prohibitive for those who only buy a few titles a year. At the moment, e-books only make sense for heavy readers for whom the additional cost of the reading device will be amortised over a large number of books in a reasonably short time. (A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the break-even point for the Kindle was the purchase of 61 books (Arends).) Unfortunately for the e-book industry, not is only is that particular market relatively small, it is the one least likely to shift from the embedded habits of print culture. Arguably, should e-books eventually offer a significant cost benefit for consumers, uptake would be more dramatic. However, in his study of cellphone cultures, Gerard Goggin argues against purely fiscal motivations, suggesting that cultural change is driven by other factors—in his example, new ways of communicating, connecting, and engaging (205–211). The few market segments where electronic books have succeeded are informative. For example, the market for printed encyclopedias has essentially disappeared. Most have reinvented themselves as CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs and are sold for a fraction of the price. Although cost is undoubtedly a factor in their market success, added features such as multimedia, searchability, and immediacy via associated websites are compelling reasons driving the purchase of electronic encyclopedias over the printed versions. The contrast with the aforementioned e-book devices is apparent with encyclopedias moving away from their historical role in print culture. Electronic encyclopedias don’t try to replicate the older print forms. Rather they represent a dramatic shift of book content into an interactive audio-visual domain. They have experimented with new formats and reconfigured content for the new media forms—the publishers in question simply left print culture behind and embraced a newly emerging computer or multimedia culture. This step into another realm of social practices also happened in the academic realm, which is now deeply embedded in computer-based delivery of research and pedagogy. Not only are scholarly journals moving online (Thompson 320–325), but so too are scholarly books. For example, at the Macquarie University Library, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of electronic books in the collection. The library purchased 895 e-books in 2005 and 68,000 in 2007. During the same period, the number of printed books purchased remained relatively stable with about 16,000 bought annually (Macquarie University Library). The reasons for the dramatic increase in e-book purchases are manifold and not primarily driven by cost considerations. Not only does the library have limited space for physical storage, but Macquarie (like most other Universities) emphasises its e-learning environment. In that context, a single e-book allows multiple, geographically dispersed, simultaneous access, which better suits the flexibility demanded of the current generation of students. Significantly, these e-books require no electronic reading device beyond a standard computer with an internet connection. Users simply search for their required reading online and read it via their web browser—the library is operating in a pedagogical culture that assumes that staff and students have ready access to the necessary resources and are happy to read large amounts of text on a screen. Again, gestures towards print culture are minimal, and the e-books in question exist in a completely different distributed electronic environment. Another interesting example is that of mobile phone novels, or “keitai” fiction, popular in Japan. These novels typically consist of a few hundred pages, each of which contains about 500 Japanese characters. They are downloaded to (and read on) cellphones for about ten dollars apiece and can sell in the millions of copies (Katayama). There are many reasons why the keitai novel has achieved such popularity compared to the e-book approaches pursued in the West. The relatively low cost of wireless data in Japan, and the ubiquity of the cellphone are probably factors. But the presence of keitai culture—a set of cultural practices surrounding the mobile phone—suggests that the mobile novel springs not from a print culture, but from somewhere else. Indeed, keitai novels are written (often on the phones themselves) in a manner that lends itself to the constraints of highly portable devices with small screens, and provides new modes of engagement and communication. Their editors attribute the success of keitai novels to how well they fit into the lifestyle of their target demographic, and how they act as community nodes around which readers and writers interact (Hani). Although some will instinctively suggest that long-form narratives are doomed with such an approach, it is worthwhile remembering that, a decade ago, few considered reading long articles using a web browser and the appropriate response to computer-based media was to rewrite material to suit the screen (Nielsen). However, without really noticing the change, the Web became mainstream and users began reading everything on their computers, including much longer pieces of text. Apart from the examples cited, the wider book trade has largely approached e-books by trying to replicate print culture, albeit with an electronic reading device. Until there is a significant cost and convenience benefit for readers, this approach is unlikely to be widely successful. As indicated above, those segments of the market where e-books have succeeded are those whose social practices are driven by different cultural motivations. It may well be that the full-frontal approach attempted to date is doomed to failure, and e-books would achieve more widespread adoption if the book trade took a different approach. The Amazon Kindle has not yet persuaded bookloving readers to abandon print for screen in sufficient numbers to mark a seachange. Indeed, it is unlikely that any device positioned specifically as a book replacement will succeed. Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a mobility culture, as part of the burgeoning range of social activities revolving around a connected, convergent mobile device. Reading should be understood as an activity that doesn’t begin with a particular device, but is done with whatever device is at hand. In much the same way that other media producers make content available for a number of platforms, book publishers should explore the potential of the new mobile devices. Over 45 million smartphones were sold globally in the first three months of 2008 (“Gartner”)—somewhat more than the estimated shipments of e-book reading devices. As well as allowing a range of communications possibilities, these convergent devices are emerging as key elements in the new digital mediascape—one that allows users access to a broad range of media products via a single pocket-sized device. Each of those smartphones makes a perfectly adequate e-book reading device, and it might be useful to pursue a strategy that embeds book reading as one of the key possibilities of this growing mobility culture. The casual gaming market serves as an interesting example. While hardcore gamers cling to their games PCs and consoles, a burgeoning alternative games market has emerged, with a different demographic purchasing less technically challenging games for more informal gaming encounters. This market has slowly shifted to convergent mobile devices, exemplified by Sega’s success in selling 300,000 copies of Super Monkey Ball within 20 days of its release for Apple’s iphone (“Super”). Casual gamers do not necessarily go on to become hardcore games, but they are gamers nonetheless—and today’s casual games (like the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball) are yesterday’s hardcore games of choice. It might be the same for reading. The availability of e-books on mobile platforms may not result in more people embracing longer-form literature. But it will increase the number of people actually reading, and, just as casual gaming has attracted a female demographic (Wallace 8), the instant availability of appropriate reading material might sway some of those men who appear to be reluctant readers (McEwan). Rather than focus on printed books, and book-like reading devices, the industry should re-position e-books as an easily accessible content choice in a digitally converged media environment. This is more a cultural shift than a technological one—for publishers and readers alike. Situating e-books in such a way may alienate a segment of the bookloving community, but such readers are unlikely to respond to anything other than print on paper. Indeed, it may encourage a whole new demographic—unafraid of the flickering screen—to engage with the manifold attractions of “books.” References Arends, Brett. “Can Amazon’s Kindle Save You Money?” The Wall St Journal 24 June 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121431458215899767.html? mod=rss_whats_news_technology>. Auckland, Steve. “The Future of Newspapers.” The Independent 13 Nov. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1963543.ece>. Beecher, Eric. “War of Words.” The Monthly, June 2007: 22–26. 25 June 2008 . “Book Industry Trends 2006 Shows Publishers’ Net Revenues at $34.59 Billion for 2005.” Book Industry Study Group. 22 May 2006 ‹http://www.bisg.org/news/press.php?pressid=35>. DeJean, David, “The Future of e-paper: The Kindle is Only the Beginning.” Computerworld 6 June 2008. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.computerworld.com/action/article .do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9091118>. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. “Frequently Asked Questions about Amazon Kindle.” Amazon.com. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200127480&#whispernet>. “Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Grew 29 Percent in First Quarter 2008.” Gartner. 6 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=688116>. Goggin, Gerard. Cell Phone Cultures. London: Routledge, 2006. Hani, Yoko. “Cellphone Bards Make Bestseller Lists.” Japan Times Online Sep. 2007. 20 June 2008 ‹http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070923x4.html>. “Have you Changed your mind on Ebook Readers?” Slashdot. 25 June 2008 ‹http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/08/2317250>. Hepworth, David. “The Future of Reading or the Sinclair C5.” The Word 17 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/future-reading-or-sinclair-c5>. IPDF (International Digital Publishing Forum) Industry Statistics. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm>. iRex Technologies Press. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.irextechnologies.com/about/press>. Johnson, Bobbie. “Vince Cerf, AKA the Godfather of the Net, Predicts the End of TV as We Know It.” The Guardian 27 Aug. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/27/news.google>. Katayama, Lisa. “Big Books Hit Japan’s Tiny Phones.” Wired Jan. 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/01/72329>. “The Last Lecture.” Amazon.com. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401323251/ref=amb_link_3359852_2? pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_r=07NDSWAK6D4HT181CNXD &pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=385880801&pf_rd_i=549028>.Levy, Steven. The Perfect Thing. London:Ebury Press, 2006. Macquarie University Library Annual Report 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://senate.mq.edu.au/ltagenda/0308/library_report%202007.doc>. Marr, Andrew. “Curling Up with a Good EBook.” The Guardian 11 May 2007. 23 May 2007 ‹http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2077278,00.html>. McEwan, Ian. “Hello, Would you Like a Free Book?” The Guardian 20 Sep. 2005. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/20/fiction.features11>. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962. Mobileread. E-book Reader Matrix, Mobileread Wiki. 30 May 2008 ‹http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix>. Nelson, Sara. “Warming to Kindle.” Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007. 31 Jan. 2008 ‹http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6510861.htm.html>. Nielsen, Jakob. “Concise, Scannable and Objective, How to Write for the Web.” 1997. ‹20 June 2008 ‹http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>. Norman, Don. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1998. Ong, Walter. Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1988. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin, 1986. Proulx, E. Annie. “Books on Top.” The New York Times 26 May 1994. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/23/specials/proulx-top.html>. Randolph, Eleanor. “Reading into the Future.” The New York Times 18 June 2008. 19 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18wed3.html?>. Slocum, Mac. “The Pitfalls of Publishing’s E-Reader Guessing Game.” O’Reilly TOC. June 2006. 24 June 2008 ‹http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/the-pitfalls-of-publishings-er.html>. Sridharan, Vasanth. “Goldman: Amazon Sold up to 50,000 Kindles in Q1.” Silicon Alley Insider 19 May 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/how_many_kindles_sold_last_quarter_>. “Super Monkey Ball iPhone's Super Sales.” Edge OnLine. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.edge-online.com/news/super-monkey-ball-iphones-super-sales>. Thompson, John B. Books in the Digital Age. London: Polity, 2005. Vershbow, Ben. “Self Destructing Books.” if:book. May 2005. 4 Oct. 2006 ‹http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/05/selfdestructing_books.html>. Wallace, Margaret, and Brian Robbins. 2006 Casual Games White Paper. IDGA. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.igda.org/casual/IGDA_CasualGames_Whitepaper_2006.pdf>. 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The L Word: Generation Q is the reboot of The L Word, a long running series about a group of lesbians and bisexuals in Los Angeles in the early 2000s. Both programmes are unique in their positioning of lesbian characters and have been well received by audiences and critics alike. These programmes present a range of characters and narratives, previously excluded from mainstream film and television, bringing a refreshing change from the destructive images typically presented before. We argue that the reboot Generation Q now offers more meaningful representation of the broader lesbian and transgender communities, and discuss its relevance in the changing portrayals of gay representation. Gay visibility has never really been an issue in the movies. Gays have always been visible. It is how they have been visible that has remained offensive for almost a century. (Russo 66) In 2004 The L Word broke new ground as the very first television series written and directed by predominantly queer women. This set it apart from previous representations of lesbians by Hollywood because it portrayed a community rather than an isolated or lone lesbian character, that was extraneous to a cast of heterosexuals (Moore and Schilt). The series brought change, and where Hollywood was more often “reluctant to openly and non-stereotypically engage with gay subjects and gay characters” (Baker 41), the L Word offered an alternative to the norm in media representation. “The L Word’s significance lies in its very existence” according to Chambers (83), and this article serves to consider this significance in conjunction with its 2019 reboot, the L Word: Generation Q, to ascertain if the enhanced visibility and gay representation influences the system of representation that has predominantly been excluding and misrepresentative of gay life. The exclusion of authentic representation of lesbians and gays in Hollywood film is not new. Over time, however, there has been an increased representation of gay characters in film and television. However, beneath the positive veneer remains a morally disapproving undertone (Yang), where lesbians and gays are displayed as the showpiece of the abnormal (Gross, "Out of the Mainstream"). Gross ("Out of the Mainstream") suggests that through the ‘othering’ of lesbians and gays within media, a means of maintaining the moral order is achieved, and where being ‘straight’ results in a happy ending. Lesbians and gays in film thus achieve what Gerbner referred to as symbolic annihilation, purposefully created in a bid to maintain the social inequity. This form of exclusion often saw controversial gay representation, with a history of portraying these characters in a false, excluding, and pejorative way (Russo; Gross, "What Is Wrong"; Hart). The history of gay representation in media had at times been monstrous, playing out the themes of gay sexuality as threatening to heterosexual persons and communities (Juárez). Gay people were incorrectly stereotyped, and gay lives were seen through the slimmest of windows. Walters (15) argued that it was “too often” that film and television images would narrowly portray gays “as either desexualized or over sexualized”, framing their sexuality as the sole identity of the character. She also contested that gay characters were “shown as nonthreatening and campy 'others' or equally comforting and familiar boys (and they are usually boys, not girls) next door” (Walters 15). In Russo’s seminal text, The Celluloid Closet, he demonstrated that gay characters were largely excluded from genuine and thoughtful presentation in film, while the only option given to them was how they died. Gay activists and film makers in the 1980s and beyond built on the momentum of AIDS activism (Streitmatter) to bring films that dealt with gay subject matter more fairly than before, with examples like The Birdcage, Philadelphia, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and In and Out. Walters argues that while “mainstream films like Brokeback Mountain and The Kids are Alright entertain moviegoers with their forthright gay themes and scenes” (12), often the roles have been more of tokenisation, representing the “surprisingly gay characters in a tedious romcom, the coyly queer older man in a star-studded indie hit, the incidentally gay sister of the lead in a serious drama” (Walters 12). This ambivalence towards the gay role model in the media has had real world effects on those who identify themselves as lesbian or gay, creating feelings of self-hatred or of being ‘unacceptable’ citizens of society (Gamson), as media content “is an active component in the cultural process of shaping LGBT identities” (Sarkissian 147). The stigmatisation of gays was further identified by the respondents to a study on media and gay identity, where “the prevailing sentiment in these discussions was a sense of being excluded from traditional society” (Gomillion and Guiliano 343). Exclusion promotes segregation and isolation, and since television media are ever-present via conventional and web-based platforms, their messages are increasingly visible and powerful. The improved portrayal of gay characters was not just confined to the area of film and television however, and many publications produced major stories on bi-sexual chic, lesbian chic, the rise of gay political power and gay families. This process of greater inclusion, however, has not been linear, and in 2013 the media advocacy group known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) mapped the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBT people depicted in films, finding that there was still much work to be done to fairly include gay characters (GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index). In another report made in 2019, which examined cable and streaming media, GLAAD found that of the 879 regular characters expected to appear on broadcast scripted primetime programming, 10.2% were identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and or queer (GLAAD Where Are We on TV). This was the highest number of queer characters recorded since the start of their reporting. In January 2004, Showtime launched The L Word, the first scripted cable television to focus chiefly on lesbians. Over the course of six seasons it explored the deep bonds that linked the members of an evolving lesbian friendship circle. The central themes of the programme were the love and friendship between the women, and it was a television programme structured by its own values and ideologies. The series offered a moral argument against the widespread sexism and anti-gay prejudice that was evident in media. The cast, however, were conventionally beautiful, gender normative, and expensively attired, leading to fears that the programme would appeal more to straight men, and that the sex in the programme would be exploitative and pornographic. The result, however, was that women’s sex and connection were foregrounded, and appeared as a central theme of the drama. This was, however, ground-breaking television. The showrunner of the original L Word, Ilene Chaiken, was aware of the often-damning account of lesbians in Hollywood, and the programme managed to convey an indictment of Hollywood (Mcfadden). The L Word increased lesbian visibility on television and was revolutionary in countering some of the exclusionary and damaging representation that had taken place before. It portrayed variations of lesbians, showing new positive representations in the form of power lesbians, sports lesbians, singles, and couples. Broadly speaking, gay visibility and representation can be marked and measured by levels of their exclusion and inclusion. Sedgwick said that the L Word was particularly important as it created a “lesbian ecology—a visible world in which lesbians exist, go on existing, exist in forms beyond the solitary and the couple, sustain and develop relations among themselves of difference and commonality” (xix). However, as much as this programme challenged the previous representations it also enacted a “Faustian bargain because television is a genre which ultimately caters to the desires and expectations of mainstream audiences” (Wolfe and Roripaugh 76). The producers knew it was difficult to change the problematic and biased representation of queer women within the structures of commercial media and understood the history of queer representation and its effects. Therefore, they had to navigate between the legitimate desire to represent lesbians as well as being able to attract a large enough mainstream audience to keep the show commercially viable. The L Word: Generation Q is the reboot of the popular series, and includes some of the old cast, who have also become the executive producers. These characters include Bette Porter, who in 2019 is running for the office of the Mayor of Los Angeles. Shane McCutchen returns as the fast-talking womanising hairdresser, and Alice Pieszecki in this iteration is a talk show host. When interviewed, Jennifer Beals (executive producer and Bette Porter actor) said that the programme is important, because there have been no new lesbian dramas to follow after the 2004 series ended (Beals, You Tube). Furthermore, the returning cast members believe the reboot is important because of the increased attacks that queer people have been experiencing since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Between the two productions there have been changes in the film and television landscape, with additional queer programmes such as Pose, Orange Is the New Black, Euphoria, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Are You the One, for example. The new L Word, therefore, needed to project a new and modern voice that would reflect contemporary lesbian life. There was also a strong desire to rectify criticism of the former show, by presenting an increased variation of characters in the 2019 series. Ironically, while the L Word had purposefully aimed to remove the negativity of exclusion through the portrayal of a group of lesbians in a more true-to-life account, the limited character tropes inadvertently marginalised other areas of lesbian and queer representation. These excluded characters were for example fully representative trans characters. The 2000s television industry had seemingly returned to a period of little interest in women’s stories generally, and though queer stories seeped into popular culture, there was no dedicated drama with a significant focus on lesbian story lines (Vanity Fair). The first iteration of The L Word was aimed at satisfying lesbian audiences as well as creating mainstream television success. It was not a tacky or pornographic television series playing to male voyeuristic ideals, although some critics believed that it included female-to-female sex scenes to draw in an additional male viewership (Anderson-Minshall; Graham). There was also a great emphasis on processing the concept of being queer. However, in the reboot Generation Q, the decision was made by the showrunner Marja-Lewis Ryan that the series would not be about any forms of ‘coming out stories’, and the characters were simply going about their lives as opposed to the burdensome tropes of transitioning or coming out. This is a significant change from many of the gay storylines in the 1990s that were seemingly all focussed on these themes. The new programme features a wider demographic, too, with younger characters who are comfortable with who they are. Essentially, the importance of the 2019 series is to portray healthy, varied representations of lesbian life, and to encourage accurate inclusion into film and television without the skewed or distorted earlier narratives. The L Word and L Word: Generation Q then carried the additional burden of countering criticisms The L Word received. Roseneil explains that creating both normalcy and belonging for lesbians and gays brings “cultural value and normativity” (218) and removes the psychosocial barriers that cause alienation or segregation. This “accept us” agenda appears through both popular culture and “in the broader national discourse on rights and belongings” (Walters 11), and is thus important because “representations of happy, healthy, well integrated lesbian and gay characters in film or television would create the impression that, in a social, economic, and legal sense, all is well for lesbians and gay men” (Schacter 729). Essentially, these programmes shouldered the burden of representation for the lesbian community, which was a heavy expectation. Critiques of the original L Word focussed on how the original cast looked as if they had all walked out of a high-end salon, for example, but in L Word: Generation Q this has been altered to have a much more DIY look. One of the younger cast members, Finlay, looks like someone cut her hair in the kitchen while others have styles that resemble YouTube tutorials and queer internet celebrities (Vanity Fair). The recognisable stereotypes that were both including and excluding have also altered the representation of the trans characters. Bette Porter’s campaign manager, for example, determines his style through his transition story, unlike Max, the prominent trans character from the first series. The trans characters of 2019 are comfortable in their own skins and supported by the community around them. Another important distinction between the representation of the old and new cast is around their material wealth. The returning cast members have comfortable lives and demonstrate affluence while the younger cast are less comfortable, expressing far more financial anxiety. This may indeed make a storyline that is closer to heterosexual communities. The L Word demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of feminist debates about the visual representation of women and made those debates a critical theme of the programme, and these themes have been expanded further in The L Word: Generation Q. One of the crucial areas that the programme/s have improved upon is to denaturalise the hegemonic straight gaze, drawing attention to the ways, conventions and techniques of reproduction that create sexist, heterosexist, and homophobic ideologies (McFadden). This was achieved through a predominantly female, lesbian cast that dealt with stories amongst their own friend group and relationships, serving to upend the audience position, and encouraging an alternative gaze, a gaze that could be occupied by anyone watching, but positioned the audience as lesbian. In concluding, The L Word in its original iteration set out to create something unique in its representation of lesbians. However, in its mission to create something new, it was also seen as problematic in its representation and in some ways excluding of certain gay and lesbian people. The L Word: Generation Q has therefore focussed on more diversity within a minority group, bringing normality and a sense of ‘realness’ to the previously skewed narratives seen in the media. In so doing, “perhaps these images will induce or confirm” to audiences that “lesbians and gay men are already ‘equal’—accepted, integrated, part of the mainstream” (Schacter 729). 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Juárez, Sergio Fernando. “Creeper Bogeyman: Cultural Narratives of Gay as Monstrous.” At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries 91 (2018): 226–249. McFadden, Margaret. T. The L Word. Wayne State University Press, 2014. Moore, Candace, and Kristin Schilt. “Is She Man Enough? Female Masculinities on The L Word.” Reading Desperate Housewives. Eds. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass. I.B. Tauris, 2006. 159–172. Orange Is the New Black. Dir. Jenji Johan. Web series. Netflix Streaming Services, 2003–. Philadelphia. Directed by Jonathan Demme. Film. Tristar Pictures, 1993. Pose. Dirs. Ryan Murphy, Steven Canals, and Brad Falchuk. Television series. Color Force, 2018. Roseneil, Sasha. “On Missed Encounters: Psychoanalysis, Queer Theory, and the Psychosocial Dynamics of Exclusion.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 20.4 (2019): 214–219. RuPaul’s Drag Race. Directed by Nick Murray. Reality competition. Passion Distribution, 2009–. Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Sarkissian, Raffi. “Queering TV Conventions: LGBT Teen Narratives on Glee.” Queer Youth and Media Cultures. Ed. C. Pullen. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 145–157. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Foreword: The Letter L.” Reading 'The L Word’: Outing Contemporary Television. Reading Desperate Housewives. Eds. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass. I.B. Tauris, 2006. 20–25. Schacter, Jane S. “Skepticism, Culture and the Gay Civil Rights Debate in Post-Civil-Rights Era.” Harvard Law Review 110 (1997): 684–731. Streitmatter, Rodger. Perverts to Fab Five: The Media’s Changing Depiction of Gay Men and Lesbians. New York: Routledge. 2009. The Birdcage. Dir. Mike Nichols. Film. United Artists, 1995. The Kids Are Alright. Dir. Lisa Cholodenko. Film. Focus Features, 2010. The L Word. Created by Ilene Chaiken, Kathy Greenberg, and Michelle Abbott. TV drama. Showtime Networks, 2004–2009. The L Word: Generation Q. Prods. Ilene Chaiken, Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moennig, and Leisha Hailey. TV drama. Showtime Networks, 2019–. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Dir. Beeban Kidron. Film. Universal Pictures, 1995. Walters, Suzanna Danuta. The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality. New York: New York UP, 2014. Yang, Alan. "From Wrongs to Rights: Public Opinion on Gay and Lesbian Americans Moves towards Equality." New York: The Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 1999.

Since the mid-eighties, personality and mood have undergone vigorous surveillance and repair across new populations in the United States. While government and the psy-complexes 1 have always had a stake in promoting citizen health, it is unique that, today, State, industry, and non-governmental organisations recruit consumers to act upon their own mental health. And while citizen behaviours in public spaces have long been fodder for diagnosis, the scope of behaviours and the breadth of the surveyed population has expanded significantly over the past twenty years. How has the notion of behavioural illness been successfully spun to recruit new populations to behavioural diagnosis and repair? Why is it a reasonable proposition that our personalities might be sick, our moods ill? This essay investigates the cultural promotion of a 'script' that assumes sick moods are possible, encourages the self-assessment of risk and self-management of dysfunctional mood, and has thus helped to create a new, adjustable subject. Michel Foucault (1976, 1988) contended that in order for subjects to act upon their selves -- for example, assess themselves via the behavioural health script -- we must view the Self as a construction, a work in progress that is alterable and in need of alteration in order for psychiatric action to seem appropriate. This conception of the self constitutes an extreme theoretical shift from the early modern belief (of Rousseau or Kant) that a core soul inhabited and shaped being, or the moral self.2 Foucault (1976) insisted that subjects are 'not born but made' through formal and informal social discourses that construct knowledge of the 'normal' self. Throughout the 19th century and the modern era, as medical, juridical, and psychiatric institutions gained increasing cultural capital, the normal self became allegedly 'knowable' through science. In turn, the citizen became 'professionalised' (Funicello 1993) -- answerable to these constructed standards, or subject to what Foucault termed biopower. In order to avoid punishments wrested upon the 'deviant' such as being placed in asylum or criminalised, citizens capitulated to social norms, and thus helped the State to achieve social order. 3 While 'technologies of power' or domination determined the conduct of individuals in the premodern era, 'technologies of the self' became prominent in the modern era.4 (Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self') These, explained Foucault, permit individuals to act upon their 'bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct and ways of being' to transform them, to attain happiness, or perfection, among other things (18). Contemporary psychiatric discourses, for example, call upon citizens to transform via self-regulation, and thus lessened the State's disciplinary burden. Since the mid-twentieth century, biopsychiatry has been embraced nationally, and played a key role in propagating self-disciplining citizens. Biopsychiatric logic is viewed culturally as common sense due to a number of occurrences. The dominant media have enthusiastically celebrated so-called biotechnical successes, such as sheep cloning and the development of better drugs to treat Schizophrenia. Hype has also surrounded newer drugs to treat depression (i.e. Prozac) and anxiety (i.e. Paxil), as well as the 'cosmetic' use of antidepressants to allegedly improve personality.5 Citizens, then, are enlisted to trust in psychiatric science to repair mood dysfunction, but also to reveal the 'true' self, occluded by biologically impaired mood. Suggesting that biopsychiatry's 'knowledge' of the human brain has revealed the human condition and can repair sick selves, these discourses have helped to launch the behavioural health script into the national psyche. The successful marketing of the script was also achieved by the diagnostic philosophy encouraged by revisions of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or Mental Disorders(the DSM; these renovations increased the number of affective (mood) and personality diagnoses and broadened diagnostic criteria. The new DSMs 6 institutionalised the pathologisation of common personality and mood distresses as biological or genetic disorders. The texts constitute 'knowledge' of normal personality and behaviour, and press consumers toward biotechnical tools to repair the defunct self. Ian Hacking (1995) suggests that new moral concepts emerge when old ones acquire new connotations, thereby affecting our sense of who we are. The once moral self, known through introspection, is thus transformed via biopsychiatry into a self that is constructed in accordance with scientific 'knowledge'. The State and various private industries have a stake in promoting this Sick Self script. Promoting Diagnosis of the Sick Self Employing the DSM's broad criteria, research by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), contends that a significant percentage of the population is behaviourally ill. The most recent Surgeon General report on Mental Health (from 1999) which also employed broad criteria, argues that a striking 50 million Americans are afflicted with a mental illness each year, most of which were non-major disorders affecting behaviour, personality and mood.7 Additionally, studies suggest that behavioural illness results in lost work days and increases demand for health services, thus constituting a severe financial burden to the State. Such studies consequently provide the State with ample reason to promote behavioural illness. In predicting an epidemic in behavioural illness and a huge increase in mental health service needs, the State has constructed health policy in accordance with the behavioural sickness script. Health policy embraces DSM diagnostic tools that sweep in a wide population by diagnosing risk as illness and links diagnosis with biotechnical recovery methods. Because criteria for these disorders have expanded and diagnoses have become more vague, however, over-diagnosis of the population has become common . 8 Depression, for example, is broadly defined to include moods ranging from the blues to suicidal ideation. Yet, the Sick Self script is ubiquitously embraced by NGO, industry, and State discourses, calling for consumer self-scrutiny and strongly promoting psychopharmaceuticals. These activities has been most successful; to wit: personality disorders were among the most common diagnoses of the 80's, and depression, which was a rare disorder thirty-five years ago, became the most common mental illness in the late 90's (Healy). Consumer Health Groups & Industry Promotions Health institutions and drug industries promote mood illness and market drug remedies as a means of profit maximisation. Broad spectrum diagnoses are, by definition, easy to sell to a wide population and create a vast market for recovery products. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies (each multibillion dollar industries), an expanding variety of self-help industries, consumer health web sites, and an array of psy-complex workers all have a stake in promoting the broad diagnosis of mood and behavioural disorders. 9 In so doing, consumer groups and the health and pharmaceutical industries not only encourage self-discipline (aligning themselves with State productivity goals), but create a vast, ongoing market for recovery products. Promoting Illness and Recovery So strong is the linkage between illness and recovery that pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly sells Prozac by promoting the broad notion of depression, rather than the drug itself. It does so through depression brochures (advertised on TV) and a web page that discusses depression symptoms and offers a depression quiz, instead of product information. Likewise, Psych Central, a typical informational health site, provides consumers standard DSM depression definitions and information (from the biopsychiatric-driven American Psychiatric Association (APA) or the NIMH, and liberal behavioural illness quizzes that typically over-diagnose consumers. 10The Psych Central site also lists a broad range of depression symptoms, while its FAQ link promotes the self-management of mood ailments. For example, the site directs those who believe that they are depressed and want help to contact a physician, obtain a diagnosis, and initiate antidepressant treatment. Such web sites, viewed as a whole, appear to deliver certified knowledge that a 'normal' mood exists, that mood disorders are common, and that abiding citizens should diagnosis and treat their mood ailment. Another essential component of the behavioural script is the suggestion that the modern self's mood is interminably sick. Because common mood distresses are fodder for diagnosis, the self is always at risk of illness, and requires vigilant self-scrutiny. The self is never a finished product. Moreover, mood sickness is insidious and quickly spirals from risk to full-blown disorder. 11 As such, behavioural illness requires on-going self-assessment. Finally, because mood sickness threatens social productivity and State financial solvency, a moral overtone is added to the mix -- good citizens are encouraged to treat their mood dysfunctions promptly, for the common good. The script thus constructs citizenship as a motive for behavioural self-scrutiny; as such, it can naturally recommend that individuals, rather than experts, take charge of the surveillance process. The recommendation of self-determined illness is also a sales feature of the script, appealing to the American ethic of individualism -- even, paradoxically, as the script proposes that science best directs us to our selves. Self-Managed Recovery Health institutions and industries that deploy this script recommend not only self-diagnosis, but also self-managed treatment as the ideal treatment. Health information web sites, for example, tend to displace the expert by encouraging consumers to pre-diagnose their selves (often via on-line quizzes) and to then consult an expert for formal diagnosis and to organise a treatment program. Like governmental heath organisation's web sites, these commonly link consumer-driven, broad-spectrum diagnosis to psycho-pharmaceutical treatment, primarily by listing drugs as the first line of treatment, and linking consumers to drug information. Unsurprisingly, pharmaceutical companies support or own many 'informational' sites. Depression-net.com, for example, is owned by Organon, maker of Remeron, an SSRI in competition with Prozac.12 Still, even sites that receive little or no funding tend to display drugs prominently; for example, Internet Mental Health, which accepts no drug funding lists drugs immediately after diagnosis on the sidebar. This trend illustrates the extent to which drugs are viewed by consumers as a first step in addressing all types of mood sicknesses. Consumer health sites, geared toward Internet users seeking health care information (estimated to be 43% of the 120 million users) promote the illness-recovery link more aggressively. Dr.koop.com, one of the most visited sites on the Internet, describes itself as 'consumer-focused' and 'interactive'. Yet, the homepage of this site tends to include 'news' stories that relay the success of drugs or report on new biopsychiatric studies in depression or mental health. Some consumer sites such as Consumer health sites, geared toward Internet users seeking health care information (estimated to be 43% of the 120 million users) promote the illness-recovery link more aggressively. Dr.koop.com, one of the most visited sites on the Internet, describes itself as 'consumer-focused' and 'interactive'. Yet, the homepage of this site tends to include 'news' stories that relay the success of drugs or report on new biopsychiatric studies in depression or mental health. Some consumer sites such as WebMD prominently display links to drugstores, (such as Drugstore.com), many of which are owned in part or entirely by pharmaceutical companies.13 Similar to the common practices of direct-to-consumer advertising, both informational and consumer sites by-pass the expert, promote recovery via drugs, and direct the consumer to a doctor in search of a prescription, rather than health care advice. State, informational and consumer web sites all help to construct certain populations as at-risk for behavioural sickness. The NIMH information page on depression -- uncanny in its likeness to consumer health and pharmaceutical sites -- utilises the DSM definition of depression and recommends the standard regime of diagnosis and biotechnical treatments (highlighting antidepressants) most appropriate for a diagnosis of major, rather than minor, depression. The site also elaborates the broad approach to mood illness, and recommends that women, children and seniors -- groups deemed at-risk by the broad criteria -- be especially scrutinised for depression. By articulating the broad DSM definition of depression, a generalisable 'self' -- anyone suffering common ailments including sadness, lethargy or weight change -- is deemed at risk of depression or other behavioural illness. At the same time, at-risk groups are constructed as populations in need of more urgent scrutiny, namely society's less powerful individuals, rather than middle-aged males. That is, society's decision-makers--psychiatric researchers, State policy-makers, pharmaceutical CEO's, (etc) are considered least at risk for having defunct selves and productivity functioning. Selling Mood Sickness These brief examples illustrate the standard presentation of behavioural illness information on the Web and from traditional resources such as mailings, brochures, and consumer manuals. Presenting the ideal self as knowable and achievable with the help of bio-psychiatric science, these discourses encourage citizens to self-scrutinise, self-define, and even self-manage the possibility of mood or behavioural dysfunction. Because the individual gathers information, determines her pre-diagnosis, and seeks out a recovery technology, the many choices involved in behavioural scrutiny make it appear to be a free and 'democratic' activity. Additionally, as individuals take on the role of the expert, self-diagnosing via questionnaires, the highly disciplinary nature of the behavioural diagnosis appears unthreatening to individual sovereignty. Thus, this technology of the self solves an age-old problem of capitalist democracy -- how to simultaneously instill citizen's faith in absolute individual liberty (as a source of good government), and, at the same time, the need to achieve the absolute governance of the individual (Miller). Foucault contended that citizens are brought into the social contract of citizenship not simply through social and governmental contracts but by processes of policing that become embedded in our notions of citizenship. The process of self-management recommended by the ubiquitous behavioural script functions smoothly as a technology of surveillance in this era, where the ideal self is known and repaired through biopsychiatric science, the democratic responsibility of a good citizen. The liberal contract has always entailed an exchange of rights for freedoms -- in Rousseau's terms 'making men free by making them subjects.' (Miller xviii) When we make ourselves subjects to ongoing behavioural scrutiny, the resulting Self is not freed, rather it is constrained by a perpetual sickness. Notes 1 This term is used in a Foucaultian sense, to refer to all those who work under and benefit or profit from the dominant biological model of psychiatry dominant since the 1950's in the U.S. 2 For more discussion, see Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul; Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. (1995) 3 In his essay 'Technologies of the Self' (1988) Foucault outlines the four major types of technologies that function as practical reason and entice citizens to behave according to constructed social standards. Among these are technologies of production (that permit us to produce things), technologies of sign systems (permitting us to use symbols), and the technologies of power and self mentioned in the above text. Through these technologies, operations of individuals become highly regulated, some visible and some difficult to perceive. The less visible technologies of the self became essential to the smooth functioning of society in the modern era. 4 'Technologies' is used to refer to mechanisms and actions of institutions or simply social norms and habits, that work, ultimately, to govern the individual, or create behaviour that serves desires of the State and dominant social bodies. 5 Peter Kramer, author of the best-selling book Listening to Prozac (1995) contends that his patients using Prozac often credited the drug with helping their true personalities to surface. 6 The two revisions occurred in 1987 and 1994. 7 Of that group, only five percent of that group suffers a 'severe' form of mental illness (such as schizophrenia, or extreme form of bipolar or obsessive compulsive disorder), while the rest suffer less severe behavioural and mood disorders. Similar research (also based on broad criteria) was published throughout the 90's suggesting an American epidemic of behavioural illness; it was claimed that 17% of the population is neurotic, while 10-15% of the population (and 30-50% of those seeking care) was said to possess a personality disorder. (Hales and Hales, 1995) 8 The most widely assigned diagnoses in this category today are: depression, multiple personality, adjustment disorder, eating disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which have extremely broad criteria, and are easily assigned to a wide segment of the population. 9The quizzes offered at these sites are standard in psychiatry; the difference here is that these are consumer-conducted. Lilly uses the Zung Self-Assessment Tool, which asks 20 broad questions regarding mood, and overdiagnoses individuals with potential depression. By responding to vague questions such as 'Morning is when I feel the best', 'I notice that I am losing weight', and 'I feel downhearted, blue and sad' with the choice of 'sometimes', individuals are thereby pre-diagnosed with potential depression. (https://secure.prozac.com/Main/zung.jsp) Psych central uses the Goldberg Inventory that is similarly broad, consumer-operated, and also tends to overdiagnose. 10 The DSM and other psychiatric texts and consumer manuals commonly suggest that undiagnosed depression will lead, eventually, to full-blown major depression. While a minority of individuals who suffer ongoing episodes of major depression will eventually suffer chronic major depression, it has not been found that minor depression will snowball into major depression or chronic major depression. This in fact, is one of the many suspicions among researchers that is referred to as fact in psychiatric literature and consumer manuals. A similar case in point is the suggestion that depression is a brain disorder, when in fact, research has not determined biochemistry or genetics to be the 'cause' of major depression. 11 Increasingly, Pharmaceutical sites are indistinguishable from consumer sites, as in the case of Bristol-Meyers Squibb's depression page, (http://www.livinglifebetter.com/src/htdo...) offering a layperson's depression definition and, immediately thereafter, information on its antidepressant Serzone. 12 Like the informational and State sites, these also link consumers to depression information (generally NIMH, FDA or APA research), as well as questionnaires. References American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, D.C: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1994. Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization; A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage, 1961. - - - . The Order of Things; An Archaeology of the Human Science., New York: Vintage, 1966. - - - . The History of Sexuality; An Introduction, Volume I. New York: Vintage, 1976. - - - . 'Technologies of the Self', Technologies of the Self; A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Ed. Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. Amherst: University of Amherst Press, 1988. 16-49. Funicello, Theresa. The Tyranny of Kindness; Dismantling the Welfare System to End Poverty in America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993. Hales, Dianne R. and Robert E. Hales. Caring For the Mind: The Comprehensive Guide to Mental Health. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. Healy, David. The Anti-Depressant Era. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997. Kramer, Peter D. Listening to Prozac; A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self. New York: Viking, 1993. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self; Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993. - - - . Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Office of the Surgeon General. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. 1999. <http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/me...> Rose, Nickolas. Governing the Soul; The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge, 1990. Links http://www.drugstore.com http://psychcentral.com/library/depression_faq.htm http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/DSM-IV http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depression.cfm http://www.livinglifebetter.com/src/htdocs/index.asp?keyword=depression_index http://my.webmd.com http://www.mentalhealth.com http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html http://www.prozac.com http://my.webmd.com/ http://www.a-silver-lining.org/BPNDepth/criteria_d.html#MDD http://psychcentral.com/depquiz.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Gardner, Paula. "The Perpetually Sick Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt. Chicago Style Gardner, Paula, "The Perpetually Sick Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Gardner, Paula. (2002) The Perpetually Sick Self. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt ([your date of access]).

When I think, rarely, about the articulation of the set of traces that I am leaving, I have the immediate apprehension that it is not the real me that’s out there on the Web. I know the times when I have censored myself (oh problematic concept!) and when I have performed actions to complement—and frequently to confound—a trace. […] Taken globally, the set of traces that we leave in the world does without doubt add up to something. It is through operations on sets of traces that I understand an event that I take part in. (Bowker 23) Over the past decade, Facebook has become integrated into the everyday lives of many of its 1.28 billion active users to the point that Facebook can no longer be considered “new media.” The site is driven by the “disclosures” (Stutzman, Gross and Acquisti) users make on the site—by uploading photos, writing status updates, commenting on posts made by others, sharing news items, entering biographical details, and so on. These digital traces of life are archived by default, persisting indefinitely as etches in Facebook’s servers around the world. Especially for young users who have grown up using Facebook, significant parts of their social and cultural lives have been played out on the site. As spaces in which the persona is enacted and made visible, social network sites like Facebook also effectively capture growing up stories through a chronicle of mediated, transitional experiences: birthdays, graduations, the beginning (and end) of relationships, first jobs, travel, and so on. For these reasons, Facebook also comes to serve as a site of memorialisation for users who have passed away. To mark its tenth anniversary (2014), Facebook drew attention to the great depth and wealth of experiences users had traced upon its pages through the release of one-minute “look back“ videos, chronicling the life of individual users over their time on Facebook. These videos have become short manifestations of the personas presented on the site, crafted through an algorithmic selection of critical moments in the user’s life (as shared on the site) to tell that user’s story. To turn Bowker’s musings in the above quote into a question, what do these sets of traces that we leave in the world add up to? In this article, I undertake a critical reading of Facebook’s look back videos to argue that they serve as the strongest reminder yet about the function of Facebook as memory archive. I draw on several sources: my own analysis of the structure of the videos themselves, the Facebook corporate blog describing the roll out of the videos, and the public campaign played out on YouTube by John Berlin to have a look back video generated for his deceased son. I argue that Facebook comes to serve two critical functions for users, as both the site upon which life narratives are performed and organised, and also the site through which the variously public and private disclosures that constitute a persona are recalled and reflected upon. In setting out these arguments, I divide this paper into three parts: first, a description and reflection upon my own experience of the look back video; second, a consideration of critical moments selected for inclusion in the look back videos by algorithm as persona; and third, a discussion of death and memorialisation, as a sharp example of the significance of the digital traces we leave behind. The Look Back Video Gentle piano music rises as the “camera” pans across an assortment of photos. The flute joins the piano, and you are reminded that you started your Facebook journey in 2006. Here is your first profile picture—you with your arm around one of your good mates when you were twenty years old. Faster now, and here are “your first moments,” presented as images you have shared: March 2008, some of your closest friends who you met during your undergraduate studies, standing around sharing a drink; April 2008, a photo of a friend eating a biscuit, mid-conversation (she’d hate this one); and one last photo from April 2008, the biscuit-eating friend’s ex-boyfriend looking coy (you no longer speak to him, but he is still on your Friends list). Now enter the violins, seventeen seconds in. Things are getting nostalgic. Here are “your most liked posts”: July 2012, “thesis submitted for examination, yo” (46 likes); November 2012, “Trust me, I’m a Doctor… of Philosophy” (98 likes); February 2013, a mess of text announcing that you’ve found a job and you’ll be leaving your hometown (106 likes). Thirty-five seconds in now, and the pace of the music changes—look how far you have come. Here are some photos you have shared: December 2008, you at a bowling alley with your arm around one of your best friends who now lives overseas; October 2009, friends trying to sleep on your couch, being disturbed by the flash of your camera; June 2010, a family shot at your mother’s birthday. The pace quickens now, as we move into the final quarter of the video: September 2010, you on the beach with friends visiting from overseas; October 2011, you with some people you met in Canada whose names you don’t recall; (images now moving faster and faster) November 2011, ice skating with friends; March 2012, a wedding in Hawaii where you were the best man; December 2012, celebrating the conferral of your PhD with two colleagues; and finally July 2013, farewelling colleagues at a going away party. In the final ten seconds, the music reaches its crescendo and the camera pans backwards to reveal a bigger collage of photos of you and your nearest and dearest. Facebook’s trademark “thumbs up”/like symbol signals the end of the retrospective, looking back on the critical moments from the last eight and a half years of your life. Underneath the video, as if signing off a card accompanying a birthday present, is “Mark” (Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, in a faux hand-written font) “and the Facebook Team.” Facebook is you, the note seems to imply; for our anniversary, we present you back to yourself (see fig. 1). On 4 February 2014, the look back video feature was made available to all Facebook users. Some 200 million watched their videos, and more than 50% shared them with their networks (Spiridonov and Bandaru). In other words, around 100 million Facebook users held up their own individually generated look back videos as a record of the persona they had crafted through the site, and shared that persona retrospective with their networks. The videos work in the same way that television news programs piece together memorial clips for celebrities who have passed away, blending emotive music with visuals that conjure up memories and reflections. The first point of difference is that Facebook’s look back videos were intended for the living (although this function shifted as I will explain in a case study towards the end of this piece) to reflect on their own personas presented through the site, and then (about half the time) shared with their networks. The second difference is the technical, automated process of piecing together, rendering, storing, and streaming these videos on a large scale. Spiridonov and Bandaru, two Facebook engineers writing on the site’s Engineering Blog, described the rapid development and rollout of the videos. They explain the enormous pool of technical resources and human capital that were brought to bear on the project, including thirty teams across the company, in just 25 days. They end their explanatory post with an homage to “the things [they] love about Facebook culture” that the project represented for them, including “helping hundreds of millions of people connect with those who are important to them” (Spiridonov and Bandaru). The look back videos also serve a deeper purpose that isn’t addressed explicitly in any explanatory notes or press releases: to demonstrate the great depth of disclosures users make and are implicated in by others on the site. In a one-minute look back video, these disclosures come to serve as the very digital traces that Bowker was interested in, forming a longitudinal record of the persona. Algorithms and Critical Moments Although the explanatory post by Spiridonov and Bandaru did not go into details, the algorithm that determines which photos and status updates go into the look back videos appears to consider the quantity of likes and (potentially) comments on posts, while also seeking to sample disclosures made across the user’s time on the site. The latter consideration works to reinforce the perception of the longitudinal nature of the site’s memory, and the extent to which the life of the user has become entangled with, enmeshed in, and mediated through Facebook. Through the logic of the look back algorithm, critical moments in the user’s life course—those experiences that mark out narratives of growing up—become measured not in terms of their value for individuals, but instead through a quantitative metric of “likes.” While after the initial release of the look back feature, Facebook did provide users with the functionality to alter their videos with some limited control over which images could be featured, the default was determined by the algorithm. Social network sites have come to serve as spaces for reflexive identity work, for the development of personas for young people (boyd; Livingstone; Hodkinson and Lincoln; Lincoln; Robards). The transition towards adulthood is punctuated and shaped by “critical moments” (Thomson et al.) such as moving out of home, dropping out of school, entering a relationship, learning to drive, a death in the family, going clubbing for the first time, and so on. In Giddens’ terms, the “fateful moment” (from which Thomson et al. borrow in conceptualising the critical moment), is “highly consequential for a person’s destiny” (121), and should be understood as distinct from but certainly affecting the inconsequential goings-on of daily life. When these critical moments are articulated and made visible on social network sites like Facebook, and then subsequently archived by way of the persistent nature of these sites, they become key markers in a mediated growing up story for young people. Livingstone points towards the role of these sites for young people who are “motivated to construct identities, to forge new social groupings, and to negotiate alternatives to given cultural meanings” (4). Sharing, discussing, and remembering these critical moments becomes an important activity on social network sites, and thus the look back video serves to neatly capture critical moments in a one minute retrospective. Facebook has also started prompting users to record critical moments through predetermined, normative categories (see fig. 2) such as romance (a first kiss), health (losing weight and not smoking), purchases (buying a house and a car), and civic duty (voting and military service). These disclosure prompts operate at a deeper level to the logic of sharing whatever you are doing right now, and instead feed into that longitudinal memory of the site. As I have argued elsewhere (see Robards) it is clear that not all critical moments are disclosed equally on social network sites. Users may choose not to disclose some critical moments – such as breakups and periods of depression or anxiety – instead preferring to present an “idealised self.” Goffman explains that idealised presentations are aspirational, and that individuals will perform the best version of themselves (44). This isn’t a fake persona or a deception, but simply a presentation of what the individual regards to be the best qualities and appearances, contingent upon what Goffman described as the standards of the region (110). What constitutes an “authentic” persona on Facebook is clearly subjective, and dependent on those region specific standards. In my earlier research on MySpace, the quantity of friends one had was an indicator of popularity, or a quantitative measure of social capital, but over time and with the shift to Facebook this appeared to change, such that smaller networks became more “authentic” (Robards). Similarly, the kinds of disclosures users make on Facebook will vary depending on the conventions of use they have established within their own networks. Importantly, the look back algorithm challenges the user’s capacity to value their own critical moments, or indeed any moments or disclosures that might mark out a narrative of self, and instead chooses moments for the user. In this scenario, at least initially, the look back algorithm co-constructs the retrospective persona summary for the user. Only with effort, and only to a certain extent, can the user exercise curatorial control over that process. Death and Other Conclusions Although the initial function of the look back videos was for users to reflect on their own personas presented through Facebook, users who had lost loved ones quickly sought look back videos for the deceased. John Berlin, a Facebook user who had lost his son Jesse in 2012, tried to access a look back video for his son but was unsuccessful. He posted his plea to YouTube, which received almost three million views, and was eventually successful, after his request “touched the hearts of everyone who heard it” including Facebook staff (Price and DiSclafani). After receiving numerous similar requests, Facebook established a form where people could make have videos for deceased users rendered. In the words of Facebook staff, this was part of the site’s commitment to “preserve legacies on Facebook” (Price and DiSclafani). There is a growing body of research on the digital traces we leave behind after death. Leaver points out that when social media users die, the “significant value of the media traces a user leaves behind” is highlighted. Certainly, this has been the case with the look back videos, further supporting Leaver’s claim. John Berlin’s plea to have his deceased son’s look back video made available to him was presented as a key factor in Facebook’s decision to make these videos available to loved ones. Although the video’s narrative was unchanged (still pitched to users themselves, rather than their loved ones) John Berlin shared his son’s look back video on YouTube to a much wider network than he or his son may have previously imagined. Indeed, Gibson has argued that “digital remains cannot easily be claimed back into a private possessive sphere of ownership” (214). Although Jesse Berlin’s look back video did not reach the millions of viewers his father’s plea reached, on YouTube it still had some 423,000 views, clearly moving beyond Gibson’s “private possessive sphere” (214) to became a very public memorial. Bowker makes the observation that his friends and acquaintances who died before 1992 are sparsely represented online. In 1992, the first widely adopted web browser Mosaic made the Internet accessible for ordinary people in an everyday context. Bowker goes on to explain that his friends who died post-Mosaic “carry on a rich afterlife [… they] still receive email messages; links to their website rot very slowly; their informal thoughts are often captured on list-serv archives, on comments they have left on a website” (23). For Bowker, the rise of the Internet has brought about a “new regime of memory practices” (34). The implications of this new “paradigm of the trace” for Facebook users are only now becoming clear, multiplied in depth and complexity compared to the forms of digital traces Bowker was discussing. The dead, of course, have always left traces—letters, bureaucratic documents, photographs, and so on. There is nothing particularly new about the social and cultural traces that the dead leave behind, only in the way these traces persist and are circulated as the Berlin case study makes clear. The look back video brings the significance of the digital trace into a new light, challenging concepts of personal histories and the longevity of everyday personas. Now that Facebook has developed the infrastructure and the processes for rolling out these look back features, there is the possibility that we will see more in the future. The site already provides annual summaries of the user’s year on Facebook in December. It is possible that look back videos could mark out other moments, too: birthdays, new relationships, potentially even the deaths of loved ones. Might Facebook look back videos – in future forms and iterations, no doubt distinct from the ten-year anniversary video described here – come to serve as a central mechanism for memory, nostalgia, and memorialisation? I don’t have the same kind of apprehension that Bowker expresses in the quote at the top of this article, where he reflects on whether or not it is the “real” him out there on the web. Through Goffman’s dramaturgical lens, I am convinced that there is no single “authentic” persona, but rather many sides to the personas we present to others and to ourselves. The Facebook look back video figures into that presentation and that reflection, albeit through an algorithm that projects a curated set of critical moments back to us. In this sense, these videos become mirrors through which Facebook users experience the personas they have mediated on the site. Facebook is surely aware of this significance, and will no doubt continue to build the importance and depth of the digital traces users inscribe on the site into their plans for the future. References Bowker, Geoffrey C. “The Past and the Internet.” Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007. 20-36. boyd, danah. “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge, 2011. 39-58. Gibson, Margaret. “Digital Objects of the Dead: Negotiating Electronic Remains.” The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Leen van Brussel and Nico Carpentier. Palgrave, 2014: 212-229. Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Hodkinson, Paul, and Sian Lincoln. “Online Journals as Virtual Bedrooms? Young People, Identity and Personal Space.” Young 16.1 (2008): 27-46. Leaver, Tama. “The Social Media Contradiction: Data Mining and Digital Death.” M/C Journal 16.2 (2013). Lincoln, Siân. Youth Culture and Private Space. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Stutzman, Fred, Robert Capra, and Jamila Thompson. “Factors Mediating Disclosure in Social Network Sites.” Computers in Human Behavior 27.1 (2011): 590-598. Livingstone, Sonia. “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers' Use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy and Self-Expression.” New Media & Society 10.3 (2008): 393-411. Robards, Brady. “Leaving MySpace, Joining Facebook: ‘Growing Up’ on Social Network Sites.” Continuum 26.3 (2012): 385-398. Thomson, Rachel, et al. “Critical Moments: Choice, Chance and Opportunity in Young People's Narratives of Transition.” Sociology 36.2 (2002): 335-354.

The German anatomist and artist Gunther von Hagens’s exhibition Body Worlds has toured Europe, Asia and the US several times, provoking both interest and dismay, fascination and disgust. This “original exhibition of real human bodies” features whole cadavers as well as specific body parts and it is organized thematically around specific bodily functions such as the respiratory system, blood circulation, skeletal materials and brain and nervous system. In each segment of the exhibition these themes are illustrated using parts of the body, presented in glass cases that are associated with each function. Next to these cases are the full body cadavers—the so-called “plastinates”. The Body Worlds exhibition is all about perception-in-motion: it is about circumnavigating bodies, stopping in front of a plastinate and in-corporating it, leaning over an arm or reaching towards a face, pointing towards a discrete blood vessel, drawing an abstract line between two organs. Experiencing here is above all a matter of reaching-towards and incorporeally touching bodies (Manning, Politics of Touch). These bodies are dead, still, motionless, “frozen in time between death and decay” (von Hagens, Body Worlds). Dead and still eerily animate, just as the surface of a freeze-frame photograph would seem to capture spatially a movement in its unfolding becoming, plastinates do not simply appear as dead matter used to represent vitality, but rather [...] as persons who managed to survive together with their bodies. What “inner quality” makes them appear alive? In what way is someone present, when what is conserved is not opinions (in writing), actions (in stories) or voice (on tape) but the body? (Hirschauer 41—42) Through the corporeal transformation—the plastination process—that these bodies have gone through, and the designed space of the exhibition—a space that makes possible both innovative and restrictive movements—these seemingly dead bodies come alive. There is a movement within these bodies, a movement that resonates with-in the exhibition space and mobilises visitors.Two ways of thinking movement in relation to stillness come out of this. The first one is concerned with the ordering and designing of space by means of visual cues, things or texts. This relates to stillness and slowness as suggestive, imposed and enforced upon bodies so that the possibilities of movement are reduced due to the way an environment is designed. Think for example of the way that an escalator moulds movements and speeds, or how signs such as “No walking on the grass” suggest a given pattern of walking. The second one is concerned with how movement is linked up with and implies continuous change. If a body’s movement and exaltation is reduced or slowed down, does the body then become immobile and still? Take ice, water and steam: these states give expression to three different attributes or conditions of what is considered to be one and the same chemical body. But in the transformation from one to the other, there is also an incorporeal transformation related to the possibilities of movement and change—between motion and rest—of what a body can do (Deleuze, Spinoza).Slowing Down Ever since the first exhibition Body Worlds has been under attack from critics, ethicists, journalists and religious groups, who claim that the public exhibition of dead bodies should, for various reasons, be banned. In 2004, in response to such criticism, the Californian Science Centre commissioned an ethical review of the exhibition before taking the decision on whether and how to host Body Worlds. One of the more interesting points in this review was the proposition that “the exhibition is powerful, and guests need time to acclimate themselves” (6). As a consequence, it was suggested that the Science Center arrange an entrance that would “slow people down and foster a reverential and respectful mood” (5). The exhibition space was to be organized in such a way that skeletons, historical contexts and images would be placed in the beginning of the exhibition, the whole body plastinates should only be introduced later in the exhibition. Before my first visit to the exhibition, I wasn’t sure how I would react when confronted with these dead bodies. To be perfectly honest, the moments before entering, I panicked. Crossing the asphalt between the Manchester Museum of Science and the exhibition hall, I felt dizzy; heart pounding in my chest and a sensation of nausea spreading throughout my body. Ascending a staircase that would take me to the entrance, located on the third floor in the exhibition hall, I thought I had detected an odour—rotten flesh or foul meat mixed with chemicals. Upon entering I was greeted by a young man to whom I presented my ticket. Without knowing in advance that this first room had been structured in such a way as to “slow people down”, I immediately felt relieved as I realized that the previously detected smell must have been psychosomatic: the room was perfectly odourless and the atmosphere was calm and tempered. Dimmed lights and pointed spotlights filled the space with an inviting and warm ambience. Images and texts on death and anatomical art were spread over the walls and in the back corners of the room two skeletons had been placed. Two glass cases containing bones and tendons had been placed in the middle of the room and next to these a case with a whole body, positioned upright in ‘anatomically correct’ position with arms, hands and legs down. There was nothing gruesome or spectacular about this room; I had visited anatomical collections, such as that of the Hunterian Museum in London or Medical Museion in Copenhagen, which in comparison far surpassed the alleged gruesomeness and voyeurism. And so I realized that the room had effectively slowed me down as my initial state of exaltation had been altered and stalled by the relative familiarity of images, texts and bare bones, all presented in a tempered and respectful way.Visitors are slowed down, but they are not still. There is no degree zero of movement, only different relations of speeds and slowness. Here I think it is useful to think of movement and change as it is expressed in Henri Bergson’s writings on temporality. Bergson frequently argued that the problem of Western metaphysics had been to spatialise movement, as in the famous example with Zeno’s arrow that—given that we think of movement as spatial—never reaches the tree towards which it has been shot. Bergson however did not refute the importance and practical dimensions of thinking through immobility; rather, immobility is the “prerequisite for our action” (Creative Mind 120). The problem occurs when we think away movement on behalf of that which we think of as still or immobile.We need immobility, and the more we succeed in imagining movement as coinciding with the immobilities of the points of space through which it passes, the better we think we understand it. To tell the truth, there never is real immobility, if we understand by that an absence of movement. Movement is reality itself (Bergson, Creative Mind 119).This notion of movement as primary, and immobility as secondary, gives expression to the proposition that immobility, solids and stillness are not given but have to be achieved. This can be done in several ways: external forces that act upon a body and transform it, as when water crystallizes into ice; certain therapeutic practices—yoga or relaxation exercises—that focus and concentrate attention and perception; spatial and architectural designs such as museums, art galleries or churches that induce and invoke certain moods and slow people down. Obviously there are other kinds of situations when bodies become excited and start moving more rapidly. Such situations could be, to name a few, when water starts to boil; when people use drugs like nicotine or caffeine in order to heighten alertness; or when bodies occupy spaces where movement is amplified by means of increased sensual stimuli, for example in the extreme conditions that characterize a natural catastrophe or a war.Speeding Up After the Body Worlds visitor had been slowed down and acclimatised in and through the first room, the full body plastinates were introduced. These bodies laid bare muscles, tissues, nerves, brain, heart, kidneys, and lungs. Some of these were “exploded views” of the body—in these, the body and its parts have been separated and drawn out from the position that they occupy in the living body, in some cases resulting in two discrete plastinates—e.g. one skeleton and one muscle-plastinate—that come from the same anatomical body. Congruent with the renaissance anatomical art of Vesalius, all plastinates are positioned in lifelike poses (Benthien, Skin). Some are placed inside a protective glass case while others are either standing, lying on the ground or hanging from the ceiling.As the exhibition unfolds, the plastinates themselves wipe away the calmness and stillness intended with the spatial design. Whereas a skeleton seems mute and dumb these plastinates come alive as visitors circle and navigate between them. Most visitors would merely point and whisper, some would reach towards and lean over a plastinate. Others however noticed that jumping up and down created a resonating effect in the plastinates so that a plastinate’s hand, leg or arm moved. At times the rooms were literally filled with hordes of excited and energized school children. Then the exhibition space was overtaken with laughter, loud voices, running feet, comments about the gruesome von Hagens and repeated remarks on the plastinates’ genitalia. The former mood of respectfulness and reverence has been replaced by the fascinating and idiosyncratic presence of animated and still, plastinated bodies. Animated and still? So what is a plastinate?Movement and Form Through plastination, the body undergoes a radical and irreversible transformation which turns the organic body into an “inorganic organism”, a hybrid of plastic and flesh (Hirschauer 36). Before this happens however the living body has to face another phase of transition by which it turns into a dead cadaver. From the point of view of an individual body that lives, breathes and evolves, this transformation implies turning into a decomposing and rotting piece of flesh, tissue and bones. Any corpse will sooner or later turn into something else, ashes, dust or earth. This process can be slowed down using various techniques and chemicals such as mummification or formaldehyde, but this will merely slow down the process of decomposition, and not terminate it.The plastination technique is rather different in several respects. Firstly the specimen is soaked in acetone and the liquids in the corpse—water and fat—are displaced. This displacement prepares the specimen for the next step in the process which is the forced vacuum impregnation. Here the specimen is placed in a polymer mixture with silicone rubber or epoxy resin. This process is undertaken in vacuum which allows for the plastic to enter each and every cell of the specimen, thus replacing the acetone (von Hagens, Body Worlds). Later on, when this transformation has finished, the specimen is modelled according to a concept, a “gestalt plastinate”, such as “the runner”, “the badminton player” or “the skin man”. The concept expresses a dynamic and life-like pose—referred to as the gestalt—that exceeds the individual parts of which it is formed. This would suggest that form is in itself immobility and that perception is what is needed to make form mobile; as gestalt the plastinated body is spatially immobilised, yet it gives birth to a body that comes alive in perception-movement. Once again I think that Bergson could help us to think through this relation, a relation that is conceived here as a difference between form-as-stillness and formation-as-movement:Life is an evolution. We concentrate a period of this evolution in a stable view which we call a form, and, when the change has become considerable enough to overcome the fortunate inertia of our perception, we say that the body has changed its form. But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form; form is only a snapshot view of a transition (Bergson, Creative Evolution 328, emphasis in original).In other words there is a form that is relative to human perception, but there is “underneath” this form nothing but a continuous formation or becoming as Bergson would have it. For our purposes the formation of the gestalt plastinate is an achievement that makes perceptible the possibility of divergent or co-existent durations; the plastinate belongs to a temporal rhythm that even though it coincides with ours is not identical to it.Movement and Trans-formation So what kind of a strange entity is it that emerges out of this transformation, through which organic materials are partly replaced with plastic? Compared with a living body or a mourned cadaver, it is first and foremost an entity that no longer is subject to the continuous evolution of time. In this sense the plastinate is similar to cryogenetical bodies (Doyle, Wetwares), or to Ötzi the ice man (Spindler, Man in the ice)—bodies that resist the temporal logic according to which things are in constant motion. The processes of composition and decomposition that every living organism undergoes at every instant have been radically interrupted.However, plastinates are not forever fixed, motionless and eternally enduring objects. As Walter points out, plastinated cadavers are expected to “remain stable” for approximately 4000 years (606). Thus, the plastinate has become solidified and stabilized according to a different pattern of duration than that of the decaying human body. There is a tension here between permanence and change, between bodies that endure and a body that decomposes. Maybe as when summer, which is full of life and energy, turns into winter, which is still and seemingly without life. It reminds us of Nietzsche's Zarathustra and the winter doctrine: When the water is spanned by planks, when bridges and railings leap over the river, verily those are believed who say, “everything is in flux. . .” But when the winter comes . . . , then verily, not only the blockheads say, “Does not everything stand still?” “At bottom everything stands still.”—that is truly a winter doctrine (Bennett and Connolly 150). So we encounter the paradox of how to accommodate motion within stillness and stillness within motion: if everything is in continuous movement, how can there be stillness and regularity (and vice versa)? An interesting example of such temporal interruption is described by Giorgio Agamben who invokes an example with a tick that was kept alive, in a state of hibernation, for 18 years without nourishment (47). During those years this tick had ceased to exist in time, it existed only in extended space. There are of course differences between the tick and von Hagens’s plastinates—one difference being that the plastinates are not only dead but also plastic and inorganic—but the analogy points us to the idea of producing the conditions of possibility for eternal, timeless (and, by implication, motionless) bodies. If movement and change are thought of as spatial, as in Zeno’s paradox, here they have become temporal: movement happens in and because of time and not in space. The technique of plastination and the plastinates themselves emerge as processes of a-temporalisation and re-spatialisation of the body. The body is displaced—pulled out of time and history—and becomes a Cartesian body located entirely in the coordinates of extended space. As Ian Hacking suggests, plastinates are “Cartesian, extended, occupying space. Plastinated organs and corpses are odourless: like the Cartesian body, they can be seen but not smelt” (15).Interestingly, Body Worlds purports to show the inner workings of the human body. However, what visitors experience is not the working but the being. They do not see what the body does, its activities over time; rather, they see what it is, in space. Conversely, von Hagens wishes to “make us aware of our physical nature, our nature within us” (Kuppers 127), but the nature that we become aware of is not the messy, smelly and fluid nature of bodily interiors. Rather we encounter the still nature of Zarathustra’s winter landscape, a landscape in which the passage of time has come to a halt. As Walter concludes “the Body Worlds experience is primarily visual, spatial, static and odourless” (619).Still in Constant MotionAnd yet...Body Worlds moves us. If not for the fact that these plastinates and their creator strike us as gruesome, horrific and controversial, then because these bodies that we encounter touch us and we them. The sensation of movement, in and through the exhibition, is about this tension between being struck, touched or moved by a body that is radically foreign and yet strangely familiar to us. The resonant and reverberating movement that connects us with it is expressed through that (in)ability to accommodate motion in stillness, and stillness in motion. For whereas the plastinates are immobilised in space, they move in time and in experience. As Nigel Thrift puts it The body is in constant motion. Even at rest, the body is never still. As bodies move they trace out a path from one location to another. These paths constantly intersect with those of others in a complex web of biographies. These others are not just human bodies but also all other objects that can be described as trajectories in time-space: animals, machines, trees, dwellings, and so on (Thrift 8).This understanding of the body as being in constant motion stretches beyond the idea of a body that literally moves in physical space; it stresses the processual intertwining of subjects and objects through space-times that are enduring and evolving. The paradoxical nature of the relation between bodies in motion and bodies at rest is obviously far from exhausted through the brief exemplification that I have tried to provide here. Therefore I must end here and let someone else, better suited for this task, explain what it is that I wish to have said. We are hardly conscious of anything metaphorical when we say of one picture or of a story that it is dead, and of another that it has life. To explain just what we mean when we say this, is not easy. Yet the consciousness that one thing is limp, that another one has the heavy inertness of inanimate things, while another seems to move from within arises spontaneously. There must be something in the object that instigates it (Dewey 182). References Agamben, Giorgio. The Open. Trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2004.Bennett, Jane, and William Connolly. “Contesting Nature/Culture.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24 (2002) 148-163.Benthien, Claudia. Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World. Trans. Thomas Dunlap. New York: Columbia U P, 2002. California Science Center. “Summary of Ethical Review.” 10 Jan. 2009.Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind. Trans. Mabelle Andison. Mineola: Dover, 2007. –––. Creative Evolution. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights, 1988.Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee, 2005.Doyle, Richard. Wetwares. Minnesota: Minnesota U P, 2003.Hacking, Ian. “The Cartesian Body.” Biosocieties 1 (2006) 13-15.Hirschauer, Stefan. “Animated Corpses: Communicating with Post Mortals in an Anatomical Exhibition.” Body & Society 12.4 (2006) 25-52.Kuppers, Petra. “Visions of Anatomy: Exhibitions and Dense Bodies.” differences 15.3 (2004) 123-156.Manning, Erin. Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty. Minnesota: Minnesota UP, 2007. Spindler, Konrad. The Man in the Ice. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994.Thrift, Nigel. Spatial Formations. London: Sage, 1996.Von Hagens, Gunther, and Angelina Whalley. Body Worlds: The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. Heidelberg: Institute for Plastination, 2008.Walter, Tony. “Plastination for Display: A New Way to Dispose of the Dead.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10.3 (2004) 603-627.

Apart from its negative literary connotations, the notion of adaptation generally carries an optimistic connotation in the sense that it is most often associated with an improved outcome in the face of challenging circumstances. However, this is not an inevitable response to an adaptive imperative: there are often indicators of significant failure to adapt. In short, there is often evidence of maladaption. Examples include the spiralling rates of heart disease, obesity and adult-onset diabetes that have characterised richer western populations over the past half-century. Arguably, the West as a whole has failed to adapt to the health opportunities provided by plentiful food supplies. Instead, a growing dietary emphasis upon refined carbohydrates (including simple sugars) and animal-sourced protein (including dairy foods) is harming these populations. This paper applies the metaphors of adaptation and maladaptation to the development of a new sense of self following a diagnosis of heart disease. There is a range of evidence to suggest that newly-diagnosed heart patients resist accepting the implications of lifestyle-related heart disease. Such a lack of acceptance can impact upon short-term health, exercise and diet priorities, as well as upon long-term life expectancy. While this paper does not describe a medical, but a cultural approach to the well-adapted self as heart patient, it is also important to stress that there is a significant range of heart conditions that are not lifestyle related. Counterproductively, the links increasingly made between lifestyle choices and heart disease mean that many heart patients feel “punished” by people with healthy hearts who seem to assume that the patient is to “blame”. Nonetheless, there are few heart patients who cannot positively impact their health and recovery prospects by improving lifestyle choices. Ladwig and his research team argue that the challenge lies in getting heart patients to take their illness seriously without precipitating a traumatically negative view of the experience of illness. Such a negative view may, in itself, facilitate poor outcomes. These perspectives indicate that issues of communication and identity—that is, cultural imperatives—are important determinants of a healthy recovery. This paper records and analyses recent research relating to heart patients who are members of an online support community, HeartNET. HeartNET is an experimental Website funded by two Australian Research Council Linkage Grants (2004-10), with the National Heart Foundation (WA Division) as the industry partner. The authors/researchers speculate that engagement in the HeartNET online community enables the positive adaptation of an individual’s sense of self (rather than the fostering of a maladaptive identity, including a denial of the implications of heart disease that can lead to behaviours which promote morbidity). Early indications are that supportive online interactions can foster the development of a positive persona of a “heart patient“. At the optimistic end of the response-spectrum, a positive heart patient is a person who is keenly motivated to maximise their health and—if possible—halt or reverse (see, for example, Esselstyn) the progress of their disease. Such a response can be constituted and enhanced via supportive online interactions. Insofar as medical commentators theorise about reactions to a life-changing health diagnosis, this tends to be in terms of self-image (see, for example, Petrie et al.) and sometimes includes Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. The results reported here look instead at issues of adapting to a new identity as “heart patient” that potentially involves positive commitment to improved health, partly as a result of giving and receiving social support. The rationale behind this perspective is influenced by significant evidence that compliance with the therapeutic regimes recommended and prescribed by physicians is lacking. It is speculated that patients are enacting a denial of the importance of the health challenges confronting them. For example, Hugtenburg et al. found that “of 232 first-time chronic medicine prescriptions [repeats], 132 were not collected at all (46.1%) or too late (11%).” Noting that 46% of the 232 prescriptions studied were for cardiovascular drugs (353), Hugtenburg et al. conclude that “This kind of non-compliance may result in an increased health risk as well as constituting a waste of a large amount of money” (352). Clearly, more emphasis needs to be placed on communicating constructively with patients and supporting the evolution and reconstitution of an identity that includes positive constructions of self-as-heart-patient and that works to facilitate recovery. The Website that enables the HeartNET community was developed by the National Heart Foundation (WA Branch: NHFWA) and Edith Cowan University (ECU) as part of an ARC-Linkage grant, 2004-6 “Evaluating the effectiveness of online support in building community, promoting healthy behaviours and supporting philanthropy”. The first three months of the Website’s operation (when the tiny number of postings trickled away and then dried up completely) are reported in Bonniface et al. (“Affect”) and graphed below (see Figure 1). They followed on from a careful process of recruitment via databases of existing heart patients that were held by the NHFWA and supportive cardiologists. Participants were approached to gain ethical consent, and would-be Website participants were matched with people who had equivalent heart illness, but who weren’t invited to join the HeartNET community, thus acting as comparisons. Baseline data was collected to compare “before” the HeartNET intervention with the yet-to-be collected “after” data. The idea was to see if there were differences between the online and offline groups that could be attributed to Website activity. Instead, the first version of the supposed-community remained stillborn, and it wasn’t until the Website was thrown open to all comers that it began to thrive. This was a preliminary indication that an invitation to participate in a therapeutic community was not effective, by itself, in encouraging communication with people who shared important health-related experiences. While Website engagement might have fitted comparatively well into a (Kubler-Ross) Bargaining approach to heart patients’ illnesses (“I’ll help others, and they’ll help me”) the default position appeared to be non-engagement, possibly an indication of the patients having become “stuck“ in the first stage of grief, Denial. Even though the initial HeartNET participants were well established as heart patients, and had all been diagnosed some time earlier, it is possible that they preferred to ignore the implications of this for their health. Figure 1 records the patterns of postings made by the 68 people who agreed to join the HeartNET Web community and who signed and returned the ethical consent forms. Of the 68 people recruited, only 53 logged on (despite phone calls to every individual) and of the 53 who logged into the site, only 22 posted (Bonniface et al. “Affect”). The heaviest week’s traffic was 40 postings in Week 4. By Week 12, activity had ceased entirely. The decision to relaunch had been taken a fortnight earlier and the first iteration of the Website was closed down. Figure 1, reprinted from Bonniface et al (“Affect”) The relaunch of the Website made it available for anyone interested in participating, and membership and traffic both grew exponentially. Amongst other innovations were “newbie” icons (to indicate new members to be welcomed and nurtured), guest status (to “try before you buy”), and symbols to indicate whether the member was a heart patient, a family member or supporter, or an administrator. In due course a “ratings system“ was added to indicate the total number of member-postings to date, so that people could gauge an individual’s commitment and contribution to the community. People contributing up to 150 posts to discussion boards were allotted from one to five stars, while Superstar status indicated 1000-plus posts. One of the major differences between the group of heart patients invited to participate in the site’s first iteration, and the group that ultimately launched the Website as a viable and vibrant community, is that the second-stage members were generally recently diagnosed. The research team speculate that they were actively reconstituting their identities as heart patients, and they and their families consequently had many matters and issues they wanted to discuss. In effect, the people who joined the relaunched site were “learning“ to be heart patients. Weis et al., investigating a pharmaceutically-sponsored Website for MS sufferers, argued that “users are diverse” and “communication needs change over time [as the disease progresses]” (146). They found that, of the 943 users who responded to their online survey, indications were that participants used “the website the most during early stages of the disease” (135). However, one area the HeartNET research is investigating is whether a community-member whose persona includes “care and support for my Web community“ will continue to participate even after the first information-seeking phase of their illness is over. Support offered for new heart patients by cardiologists, hospital staff, other specialists and general practitioners is an important part of the enculturation of the self-as-heart-patient, but it leaves unexplored the more personal work of reconstituting the individual’s identity as a person with heart disease (or as a supporter of such a person). It also leaves unaddressed the sense of “aloneness“ that HeartNET members say they feel until they are able to talk regularly with people who understand exactly what they are going through, as a result of having already “been there“ themselves. Although health professionals, family and friends are supportive, that support is only occasionally able to cut through the isolation. Extracts from two (separate) interviews are typical of the kinds of comments made: Murphy: I mean the support from Sandra and the family was all great but—to actually talk to other people who know what you’re feeling and … Yes, nothing against family and friends but they’re [other patients are] going through the same thing, they know what you’re feeling and … you know. Margo: I found friends were pains. It was like “well, okay, but you’re better now, they fixed you.” Well I looked at her and I said, ‘“You’re never fixed, but [it’s] something you live with for the rest of your life that doesn’t go away. …’ The implication is that heart patients have a differential need to communicate with others about their experience of heart disease, and that the communicative imperative is greatest in the first stages of being a heart patient, soon after diagnosis. For the well-established patients invited to contribute to the original HeartNET Website, their status as people-with-heart-disease was no longer problematic. Consequently, they had little to say and very few incentives to revisit the adaptive processes of personal identity construction. People who are used to their status as a heart patient may be theorised as having very different information needs and behaviours compared with the newly diagnosed. There is evidence that at least some of these well established patients were prompted to engage when new patients who needed support joined the site in the second iteration. However, those who are never given the opportunity to interact and learn from others may take longer to reach a level of adaptation. Even worse, they may adopt maladaptive behaviours encompassing issues of denial or self-sabotage—such as rejecting medications or increasing behaviours which progress morbidity, such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Patients’ denial of the implications of heart disease is recognised as a major medical problem. Cooper et al. (234) cite evidence from Petrie et al. that “only a third of eligible patients under 65 years old attended cardiac rehabilitation” while noting that “Ades et al. showed uptake as low as 21% in eligible patients over 62 years”. In another study of patients who did/did not adhere to their pharmacological treatment regime, Horwitz et al. found that “Compared with patients with good adherence, patients with poor adherence were twice as likely to have died within a year of follow-up.” They argue that “adherence may need to be viewed more broadly as encompassing a cluster of health-related behaviours that may influence the outcome of treatment.” The argument advanced in our paper is that such a broader view should also encompass necessary adaptation strategies which introduce positive influences to the formation of patient identity. Compliance with therapeutic and medical regimes has been linked to increased self esteem (Burkhart and Rayens), and the combination of compliance with a positive patient identity may well multiply beneficial health outcomes. Whereas currently a majority of recovering heart patients may be inferred as resisting a revised self-identity that takes their diagnosis and health challenges seriously, the HeartNET Website may offer an effective enticement to positive behavioural change. Bonniface et al. (“Shuffling buddies”) have demonstrated that engagement with HeartNET can influence attitudes to (and involvement in) exercise. The hypothesis regarding identity adaptation is that active HeartNET members, through Website engagement, consistently indicate a willingness to acknowledge their changed health status and work to develop a reconstituted identity as a person with a heart condition who is proactively maximising positive outcomes (and helping others to do so at the same time). This is particularly the case where the online engagement feeds into the offline world: where “shuffling buddies“ have developed mutually supportive walking and exercise regimes, involving social events, consistent with their commitment to health-enhancing activity. Adaptation strategies delivered online offer new ways to counter the maladaptive processes which can follow diagnosis. By using the raw materials of social support and Website engagement, patients can chart new and positive ways in which they progress from denial and bargaining to health-promoting acceptance. For those established patients, online engagement may progress the stages of grief beyond the level of acceptance to the end goal of “support” as they pass on their knowledge, empathy and understanding of illness to the newly diagnosed. References Ades, Philip, M. L. Waldman, W. J. McCann, and S. O. Weaver. “Predictors of Cardiac Rehabilitation Participation in Older Coronary Patients.” Archives of Internal Medicine 152.2 (1992): 1033-5. Bonniface, Leesa, Lelia Green, and Maurice Swanson. “Affect and an Effective Online Therapeutic Community.” M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 22 Apr. 2007 . Bonniface, Leesa, Arshad Omari, and Maurice Swanson. “Shuffling Buddies—How an Online Community Supports Healthier Lifestyle Choices: An Early Indication of Physical Activity and Exercise Outcomes from the HeartNET Intervention.” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication. Eds. F Sudweeks, H Hrachovec and C Ess. Estonia, Tartu: School of Information Technology, Murdoch University, 2006. 90-101. Burkhart, Patricia, and Mary Rayens. “Self-Concept and Health Locus of Control: Factors Related to Children’s Adherence to Recommended Asthma Regimen.” Pediatric Nursing 31.5 (2005): 404-9. Campbell, Colin, and Thomas Campbell. The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books, 2004. Cooper, A., G., Lloyd, J. Weinman, and G. Jackson. “Why Patients Do Not Attend Cardiac Rehabilitation: Role of Intentions and Illness Beliefs.” Heart 82.2 (1999): 234-6. Horwitz, Ralph, Catherine Viscoli, Lisa Berkman, Robert Donaldson, Sarah Horwitz, Carolyn Murray, David Ransohoff, and Jody Sindelar. “Treatment Adherence and Risk of Death after a Myocardial Infarction.” The Lancet 336 (1990): 542-5. Hugtenburg, J. G., A. T. G. Blom, and S. U. Kisoensingh. “Initial Phase of Chronic Medication Use; Patients’ Reasons for Discontinuation.” British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 61.3 (2005): 352-4. Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Ladwig, Karl-Heinz, Andreas Schoefinius, Gerhard Dammann, Reinhold Danner, Rolf Gurtler, and Robert Hermann. “Long-Acting Psychotraumatic Properties of a Cardiac Arrest Experience.” American Journal of Psychiatry 156.6 (1999): 912-9. Esselstyn, C.B. Jr. Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Petrie, Keith, John Weinman, Sharpe Norman, and Judith Buckley. “Role of Patients’ View of Their Illness in Predicting Return to Work and Functioning after Myocardial Infarction: Longitudinal Study.” British Medical Journal 312 (1996): 1191-4. Weis, Robert, Keith Stamm, Craig Smith, Michael Nilan, Fiona Clark, Joan Weis, and Kate Kennedy. “Communities of Care and Caring: The Case of Mswatch.Com.” Journal of Health Psychology 8.1 (2003): 135-48. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia, Leesa Bonniface, and Tami McMahon. "Adapting to a New Identity: Reconstituting the Self as a Heart Patient." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/13-bonnifacegreenmcmahon.php>. APA Style Green, L., L. Bonniface, and T. McMahon. (May 2007) "Adapting to a New Identity: Reconstituting the Self as a Heart Patient," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/13-bonnifacegreenmcmahon.php>.

In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolcock; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. 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