Contemporary Considerations
Reflections on the Consequences of Zeroculturality in the Digital Communication Space
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Agnieszka Grzechynka
In today’s digital landscape, the consumer of online content wields significant influence, shaping styles and narrative preferences that content creators must heed. Brands are increasingly personalizing content to align with the variable tastes and needs of their audiences, a practice that introduces several challenges. These include the loss of control over the communication process and the necessity to consider numerous parameters to effectively capture consumer attention. Amid this dynamic environment, critical questions emerge: What are the implications of phenomena such as zeroculturality for communication and marketing strategies? How will the recent trends of selective identification with specific demographic, linguistic, or cultural traits influence the future efficacy of brand communication? This paper highlights a newly observed phenomenon in the public sphere that is poised to significantly impact the mechanisms of political and business communication. The author identified this phenomenon, termed "zeroculturality," during extensive research, the findings of which are detailed in her monograph. Zeroculturality describes a growing trend where traditional cultural boundaries and identifiers become increasingly fluid and fragmented, resulting in a more individualized and less culturally rooted form of identity. The discussion explores how zeroculturality affects contemporary audience analysis and the development of effective communication strategies. By understanding zeroculturality, brands and political entities can enhance their content targeting, ensuring their messages resonate more deeply with increasingly diverse and individualized audiences. This paper presents condensed observations and analyses to provide a foundation for further exploration of this critical phenomenon in digital communication and marketing.
Are You a #globetrotter? : Experiencing Tourism on Social Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emanuela Ammendola
According to the Cambridge Dictionary a globetrotter is a person who often travels to different countries. Even though this word dates to the early 19th century, it has only recently been adopted by social media users with reference to people who travel extensively. New media and technologies are constantly changing socio/cultural panorama in different ways using new different tools for creating and conveying meanings to big audience. Social media communication plays a big role in de/constructing and re/constructing social practices, personal belief and needs affecting people knowledge, awareness and habits. This paper investigates to what extent tourism discourse has changed in relation to new forms of tourism and new platforms of communication like Instagram and TikTok. In the first part of this paper, tourism promotional discourse conducted on social media is examined from a multimodal and multimedial perspective to investigate how sign- and meaning-making processes have changed in the last few years abandoning the single multimodal sphere of printed brochures and maps and the monolingual dimension of written texts. The new ways of discussing and promoting tourism affects tourists’ choices and experiences. This change of course is investigated in the second part of the paper which focuses on social value that new forms of tourism are acquiring in connection with the linguistic and terminological influence that these new forms of promotion and popularization may have on tourists.
Digital Fatigue of Gen Z in Türkiye View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fulya Akbuğa
With the rise of social networking sites as central tools for communication, self-expression, and entertainment, particularly among Generation Z, their widespread use has brought not only benefits but also growing concerns. One such concern is “social media fatigue”—a form of digital exhaustion experienced by users. As screen time continues to rise globally and in Türkiye, this study explores which features of social media and digital tools contribute to this fatigue and how they affect Gen Z users. To investigate this issue, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 university students in Türkiye who actively engage with social media platforms. The findings reveal that although many participants feel overwhelmed and emotionally drained by their online interactions, they are reluctant to disconnect due to the pervasive fear of missing out (FoMo). Moreover, the study finds that frequent exposure to social comparison, information overload, and misinformation significantly intensifies users’ anxiety, deepening the sense of burnout. These insights underscore the importance of examining the psychological toll of social media, especially on digitally immersed younger generations.
