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Celebrity Worship, Social Media Use, and Mental Health

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Over the past two decades, social media use has become increasingly popular including its use by celebrities. Related to this, research has indicated that a minority of individuals may develop a psy- chological dependence on celebrities that can lead to obsessions and diminished functioning. Alt- hough research has also shown that worshipping celebrities can have positive consequences, re- search has also shown that there is an association between the pathological aspects of celebrity wor- ship and poor mental health such as high anxiety, increased depression, high stress levels and poor body image. Moreover, there appears to be evidence that pathological celebrity worship has in- creased over the past two decades and one of the primary reasons for this may be increased social media use by both celebrities and their fans.

Monograph in ‘BID’ on data webs and knowledge graphs

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[Versió catalana] [Versión castellana] Miquel Centelles Velilla University of Barcelona miquel.centelles@ub.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1739-4889 EXIT: https://www.directorioexit.info/ficha292   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1344/BID2023.51.12   It has been over twenty years since the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) presented its vision and programme of the semantic web, with the objective of providing automatic systems with automatically processable metadata on the data … Read more

Faculty attitudes toward Open Access publishing: library-led action and outreach

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The authors distributed a survey to faculty in all academic ranks and in all Colleges of Oregon State University (OSU) to learn the extent to which they currently make their research openly available, ascertain their awareness of Open Access (OA), their support for OA and their preferences for achieving it. In total, 261 surveys were completed for a response rate of 10.3%. Most faculty demonstrated at least an introductory awareness of OA, so our subsequent outreach focused on more nuanced issues such as the monopolistic nature of key academic publishers and how rising publishing costs interacted with our institutional goals of sustainability and public good. Additionally, faculty members tended to have a strong grounding in the potential values of OA, but few had a strong sense of our libraries' budget or how much was devoted to subscription costs. Future outreach will address this knowledge gap with a more explicit explanation of our operational reality.

Editors’ letter

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[Versió catalana] [Versión castellana] Miquel Térmens Graells Dean of the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media. University of Barcelona termens@ub.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7305-3424 EXIT: https://www.directorioexit.info/ficha136 Jordi Sánchez-Navarro Director of Information and Communication Sciences Studies. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya jsancheznav@uoc.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0311-1385 EXIT: https://www.directorioexit.info/ficha3815   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1344/BID2023.51.03   Dear colleagues and friends in the academic community, For … Read more

Audiovisual genres in BookTubers’ productions: a quantitative analysis

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Figura 1. Assignació d'etiquetes de gènere audiovisual en els títols dels vídeos

Using Bakhtin's concept of genre (1982), this article presents a quantitative analysis of the most popular genres among the productions of Spanish-speaking BookTubers (Book + YouTubers). Its aim is to determine which discourses are the most dominant discursive forms in their production and the repercussions these audiovisual genres have on their audiences through quantitative indicators of popularity (views, likes/dislikes/comments). We quantify the presence of audiovisual genres in a random sample of videos published in 2017 (n=368) using digital methods, through the informatic script YouTube Data Tools to obtain information about the videos (Title, Description, Number of Views, Comments, Likes and Dislikes). Evidence shows that BookTubers are able to use a great variety of audiovisual genres that come both from other YouTubers (such as vlogs, challenges, hangouts, hauls or unboxings) and from other media (reviews, rankings, lists, interviews). The most prominent in our corpus are the review, the list and the wrap-up, which fit a traditional recommendation function; however, the most popular among their audiences, in terms of views, comments and likes, are those in which the BookTuber performs a thematic selection of several books, such as lists, rankings or wrap-ups. This reinforces the curatorial value of their work as reading mediators.

Storytelling, social media and life stories

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[Versió catalana] [Versió castellana] Gemma San Cornelio Universitat Oberta de Catalunya gsan_cornelio@uoc.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0788-1483 EXIT: https://www.directorioexit.info/ficha6055 Antoni Roig Universitat Oberta de Catalunya aroigt@uoc.edu ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1237-8628 EXIT: https://www.directorioexit.info/ficha348       It may be considered that the narrative forms favored by digital contexts – sometimes in transformation, sometimes in continuity and sometimes in remediation – have … Read more

The Human Library in the Netherlands: A successful exchange of life

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Figure. Statements concerning the impact of The Human Library. Source: Jambor, 2015.

The originally Danish principle of The Human Library has been known in the Netherlands for about six years now. Even during the coronavirus crisis, the organizers managed to reach more than 700 people in over 20 sessions. The high average rating given by the participants is in line with the positive results of previous studies on the impact of The Human Library. A distinction can be made between short-term and long-term effects, effects on voluntary participants versus participants in an edition of The Human Library in a mandatory setting, such as a work situation, and effects achieved in terms of awareness, change in attitude and behavioural change. In almost all of these areas, The Human Library scores high. In the future, more research can be done into the distinction between these different situations, as well as on the effect on the ‘books’ rather than the ‘readers’, on whom almost all research now focuses.

Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy: How an inclusive open strategy process has placed people at the centre

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Figure 1. Scheme of the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy Process organized by phases, subphases, involved actors and the strategy practices in terms of the degree of openness

Objectives: In 2017, the Wikimedia Movement embarked on an open strategy process to decide the scope of action towards the horizon of 2030. Contrary to the development of a traditional strategy, an open strategy process allows numerous people to generate, discuss, and evaluate ideas. This study examines how this open strategy process and its output documents support inclusivity and address people’s needs.

Methodology: Inclusivity practices employed in the different phases of the open strategy process are reviewed — encompassing aspects such as modes of participation, transparency, and decision-making. Through discourse analysis, the aim is to highlight the main characteristics of the strategy product created and how it has been interpreted by the Wikimedia Movement, online communities, and affiliates.

Results: The results of the study are two-fold. Firstly, a wide array of participation modes employed to include the Wikimedia Movement actors have been identified. Secondly, it has been found that the resulting strategy documents place people at the centre of the discourse, not only in the proposed new strategic direction but also in the strategic principles and recommendations that were produced. Thus, this paper extends the understanding of open strategy in large and collaborative environments, showing that inclusivity practices help elaborate proposals of changes that need to be implemented later by relevant stakeholders.

20 years of the encyclopaedia anyone can edit: Wikipedia and the pursuit of knowledge equity

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When referring to collaborative knowledge creation, sharing and curation, Wikipedia stands out as the benchmark. On January 15, 2021 Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary. There are many good things to say about Wikipedia: it has successfully demonstrated that ordinary people, and not just academic elites, can build and produce knowledge – and useful knowledge at that, if we take into account that Wikipedia is consistently one of the top 10 most visited webs on the internet, with more than 20 billion monthly pageviews (Wikimedia statistics, 2021). People don’t have to pay for the content, it is ad-free and independent, hosted by a non-profit organization – the Wikimedia Foundation – that mostly relies on small donations from individuals around the world. It is a unique model – free knowledge by the people for the people – that has held true for two decades by valiantly pursuing an aspirational vision: a world where everyone can have access to the sum of all knowledge.