Critical analysis of interactive media with software affordances

Abstract

There is a long standing, and unsettled debate surrounding the ways that technology influences society. There is strong scholarship supporting the social construction perspective, arguing that the effects of technology are wholly socially and politically determined. This paper argues that the social constructivist position needs to be expanded if it can be useful for more than observing the ways technologies are designed and used. We need to develop better ways to talk about software, computer hardware, and networks, so that we can describe the social interpretations of these systems while accounting for their unique characteristics. We suggest using software affordances as a way to understand the semantics of software as interactive systems. Using Facebook privacy concerns as a case study, we argue that software affordances offer a useful lens for considering the social and political implications of interactive software systems, providing us more analytical tools to interpret, and not just describe, new technologies.

Exploring Video-Game Production’s Contingency on Live-Streaming Platforms: The Case of Twitch

“…Second, we attempted to critically analyse the discourse dictated by Twitch: following the tradition of semiotically analysing software affordances (Curinga, 2014) or scripts (Ask et al, 2019), we analysed Twitch's document in order to infer how the platform is shaping up to accommodate game developers not only as streamers but also as customers.…”

Situating Data

“…com/store/apps/details?id=com.sec.android.app.shealth&hl=en&gl=US. systems or layout algorithms for data visualization-in terms of software affordances (Curinga 2014). In media and culture studies, affordances have been defined as a "relational property" (Bucher and Helmond 2018, 235), i.e., as "socio-technical" (248) characteristics of software platforms understood as "environment[s]" (243).…”

“…In media and culture studies, affordances have been defined as a "relational property" (Bucher and Helmond 2018, 235), i.e., as "socio-technical" (248) characteristics of software platforms understood as "environment[s]" (243). Matthew Curinga (2014) expands on that framing by intuitively describing "software as text" (n.p.) but without making explicit how to study the textual properties of software design.…”

Making data playable: A game co-creation method to promote creative data literacy

“…To contribute to the diversification of data practices, this article first compares the material affordances (Curinga, 2014) of selected speculative, arts-based approaches to analyze their creative engagement (Glǎveanu, 2012) with datasets, differences in making data accessible to the senses, as well as their implicit uses of playfulness and forms of scholarly bricolage (Antonijevic & Cahoy, 2018). Play arguably manifests itself already in established forms of data analysis; 1 however, in professional contexts it is often disregarded or marginalized as it is deemed incompatible with the common rhetoric of scientific rigor.…”