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How do digital media impact the meaning of iconic photographs? Recent studies have suggested that online circulation, especially in a memeified form, might lead to the erosion, fracturing, or collapsing of the original contextual meaning of iconic pictures. Introducing a distant reading methodology to the study of iconic photographs, we apply the Google Cloud Vision Application Programming Interface (GCV API) to retrieve 940,000 online circulations of 26 iconic images between 1995 and 2020. We use document embeddings, a Natural Language Processing technique, to map in what contexts iconic photographs are circulated online. The article demonstrates that constantly changing configurations of contextual imagetexts, self-referential image-texts, and non-referential image/texts shape the online live of iconic photographs: ebbs and flows of slowly disappearing, suddenly resurfacing, and newly found meanings. While iconic photographs might not need captions to speak, this article argues that a large-scale analysis of texts can help us better grasp what they say.

Abstract: In the last weekend of February 2003, between six and ten million people in 60 different countries protested against the imminent Iraq War. Commentators quickly described the worldwide protests as a manifestation of a new form of transnational contention, which would lead to new forms of transnational memory and identity. Building on efforts to connect social movement and memory studies, this article examines if the massive size and transnational nature of the February 2003 anti-war protests resulted in an equally widely shared and transnational form of memory. Following research that describes the crucial role of visual communication for social movements and memory, it approaches this question by studying the size and shape of the online visual memory of the 2003 anti-war protests. Applying the Google Cloud Vision API to retrieve and analyse 1746 online circulations of twenty-five photographs of the 2003 anti-war protests in the period 2003-2019, we find that, compared to other famous images of protest, the online circulation of images of the protests remains limited. This suggests that the massive protests of 2003 did not result in a widely shared and transnational form of memory. Rather than focusing on individual images, this article argues that studying patterns in their online circulation can explain why some movements remain in the public eye, while others quickly disappear from it.

Using self-reported questionnaires, several studies found that social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the level of physical activity (PA) in children and adolescents. Since the objectivity of self-reported PA is limited in several ways, we used modern accelerometers in this study to assess the PA levels of male and female adolescents during the pandemic-related lockdown. Moreover, the association of PA with mental health of the adolescents were analyzed. A total of 136 students (76 girls, mean age of 16.28 ± 0.97 years) from various schools in Iran wore the accelerometer (ActiGraph GT3X-BT) for seven consecutive days. Mental health was measured through the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale-21 of Lovibond and Lovibond (1995). Descriptive statistics and independent t-tests were used to analyze the PA levels of male and female students, and linear regressions were computed to examine whether PA predicts mental health status. On average, the daily time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) was 18.47 min, which is clearly below the WHO guideline of at least 60 min of MVPA per day. Only 4% of adolescents showed MVPA for more than 30 min per day. Male students were significantly more active than their female peers (p = 0.015). As expected, MVPA was negatively associated with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress. However, the majority of adolescents reported symptoms of mild-to-moderate mental health disorders. These results emphasize the need for targeted strategies and offerings geared to young people’s needs and preferences to promote an adequate level of PA and good mental health during and after the ongoing pandemic.

Facets can provide an interesting functionality in digital libraries. However, while some research shows facets are important, other research foundfacets are only moderately used. Therefore, in this exploratory study we compare two search interfaces; one where the facets panel is always visible and one where the facets panel is hidden by default. Our main research question is “Is folding the facets panel in a digital library search interface beneficial to academic users?” By performing an eye tracking study with N=24, we measured search efficiency, distribution of attention and user satisfaction. We found no significant differences in the eye tracking data nor in usability feedback andconclude that collapsing facets is neither beneficial nor detrimental.