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Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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Session Title:
- Without Sin: Taboo and Freedom within Digital Media
Presentation Title:
- Untitled
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Chair Person: Donna Leishman
Presenters: Gordon Hush, Sue Golding, Don Ritter, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli & Sheena CalvertFramed by a context of increasing media anxiety over the volume of usage and the nature of social networking websites (Greenfield 2009), this panel will broadly explore the roots of this fear and the role of digital media and social development, specifically interrogating practices of social identity and contemporary experiences of reality/fiction. Following associated fears there has been an increased pressure from the American Medical Association (AMA) for the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to include video game addiction as a sub-type of internet addiction, along with sexual preoccupations and e-mail/text messaging in the upcoming 2012 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the standard diagnostic text used by psychiatrists worldwide. The reality of an un-chartable (dark) Internet, the acknowledged rate of change and the significantly problematic lack of any societal sanction or prohibition (when surfing the Internet) gives ‘us’ more space and opportunity to explore taboo and repression.
Panel papers will explore the notion of the moral economy of human activity and how this is reflected in “moral panics” and the space between subjective experience (consciousness) and the contemporary environment (Hush), stylistics of (sexual) difference (Golding), manipulation within digital identity construction (Ritter), re-exploring The More Knowledgeable Other and social development (Leishman), and role of tactical anonymity within contemporary Net activism (Ravetto-Biagioli).
Questions the panel will raise:- When considering digital media and social development: what are the underlying causes of this new sense of fear?
- How is social identity constructed today / Has our experience of reality/ fiction changed?
- How does the intrinsic variability of media usage affect our sense of self/ consciousness?
- What is authentic and what constitutes healthy when engaging with digital media and the Internet?