Anders kijken naar stemmen
De Correspondent maakt een mooie serie over de achtergrond van verkiezingen in Nederland. Het is een podcast serie, maar alleen de tekst bij de afleveringen lezen levert al hele mooie inzichten op. Aanrader!
Zoom fatigue explained
Here’s an interesting article trying to make an informed guess as to why videoconferencing all day long is so exhausting. The author suggests some reasons:
- being stared at for hours at a time at close range: the faces on your computer screen are within the 60 cm ‘intimate’ space, normally reserved for loved ones and family members, and you’re literally being stared at like giving a speech on a stage.
- overload on sending and receiving non-verbal cues: communicating non-verbally takes more effort, like nodding longer.
- constantly looking in the mirror: standard setting in many video call software is that you see your own video stream, amongst those of the other participants. Your looking in the mirror and previous research has shown that can cause self-evaluation and negative affect.
- video call convention requires sitting still: in order to be visible to the others, centred in your video stream, you are moving less than in other settings. Think about all the things you normally do when calling someone using audio only.
Even though more thorough research needs to be conducted all of the above sounds very plausible to me. So next time someone sends you a zoom (or teams) link, suggest doing a traditional audio call and take a walk outside instead. And when meeting with a group, agree on a new convention that it’s alright to step out of view in you office, not face your screen, or switch off your camera entirely.
On conspirational thinking
If you’re interested in what makes people turn to conspiracies, this episode of You Are Not So Smart is a good starting point.
Leestip: Opnieuw bruggen bouwen
Dit is een antropologische studie naar het Nederlandse coronabeleid. Ginny Mooy deed eerder onderzoek in Sierra Leone, onder andere toen ebola uitbrak. Ze maakte samen met haar twee co-auteurs een interessante analyse waar Nederland steken laat vallen. Zeker de moeite waard om te lezen.
Read: Six literacies to save the world
Earlier this week this article written by Lazar Dzamic crossed my path. A very interesting read. What grabbed my attention was that Dzamic puts archetypal/narrative literacy on number one.
It’s one of the most widely studied arts and crafts in the world, but in the utterly utilitarian way: how to tell strong stories to become famous, make money, or be very good at selling stuff. But we don’t learn how to defend ourselves from strong stories like populism, conspiracies and various sorts of propaganda, whether political or commercial. This literacy is the antidote for almost any of the manipulations unleashed upon us by the digital space, in all its guises. This whole dark theatre of problems has but one common approach: the use of strong emotional, archetypal, narratives.