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1
Bounegru, Liliana, and Jonathan Gray, eds. The Data Journalism Handbook. NL Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789462989511.
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The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a "behind the scenes" look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on "doing issues with data," "assembling data," "working with data," "experiencing data," "investigating data, platforms and algorithms," "organizing data journalism," "learning data journalism together" and "situating data journalism."
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Sloot, Bart, and Aviva Groot, eds. The Handbook of Privacy Studies. NL Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/9789462988095.
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The Handbook of Privacy Studies is the first book in the world that brings together several disciplinary perspectives on privacy, such as the legal, ethical, medical, informatics and anthropological perspective. Privacy is in the news almost every day: mass surveillance by intelligence agencies, the use of social media data for commercial profit and political microtargeting, password hacks and identity theft, new data protection regimes, questionable reuse of medical data, and concerns about how algorithms shape the way we think and decide. This book offers interdisciplinary background information about these developments and explains how to understand and properly evaluate them. The book is set up for use in interdisciplinary educational programmes. Each chapter provides a structured analysis of the role of privacy within that discipline, its characteristics, themes and debates, as well as current challenges. Disciplinary approaches are presented in such a way that students and researchers from every scientific background can follow the argumentation and enrich their own understanding of privacy issues.
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Stumpp, Stefan, Daniel Michelis, and Thomas Schildhauer, eds. Social Media Handbuch. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783748907466.
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The Social Media Handbook provides guidance on long-term developments in the ever-changing social media sector and explains fundamental interrelationships in this field. It describes a strategy model for the development of one’s own solutions, summarises the theories, methods and models of leading authors and shows their practical application, while also highlighting current developments and dealing with the topic of data processing in social media. An examination of the platform economy with its economic functions facilitates the classification of business models in social media. The book also shows how platforms and their algorithms can influence our actions and shape our opinions. With contributions by Prof. Karin Bjerregaard Schlüter, Andrea Braun, Franziska Geue, Tobias Knopf, Markus Korbien, Prof. Dr. Daniel Michelis, Stefan Pfaff, Thanh H. Pham, Tom Reichstein, Prof. Dr. Anna Riedel, Michael Sarbacher, Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Schildhauer, Prof. Dr. Hendrik Send, Dr. Stefan Stumpp, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Volkmann, Jan-Benedikt Weber, Julia Weißhaupt, Norman Wiebach und Prof. Dr. Christian Wissing.
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Matei, Sorin Adam, Elisa Bertino, and Martha G. Russell. Transparency in Social Media: Tools, Methods and Algorithms for Mediating Online Interactions. Springer, 2016.
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Matei, Sorin Adam, Elisa Bertino, and Martha G. Russell. Transparency in Social Media: Tools, Methods and Algorithms for Mediating Online Interactions. Springer, 2015.
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7
Bucher, Taina. Affective Landscapes. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190493028.003.0005.
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Given the centrality of algorithms in the media landscape, how do they affect people’s everyday lives? Drawing on 35 interviews with social media users about their encounters with algorithms online, the chapter considers the barely perceived transitions in power that occur when algorithms and people meet. When do people encounter algorithms, and what responses and imaginations do these encounters generate? Analyzing specific situations in which users notice algorithmic mechanisms at work and start reflecting and talking about them, the chapter shows how the algorithmic output of social media becomes culturally meaningful, as seen in the ways that people form opinions about specific systems and act strategically around them. The notion of the algorithmic imaginary is put forward to suggest that it might not always matter what the algorithm is but rather how and when people imagine and perceive algorithms as this is what shapes their orientations toward platforms.
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Katz, James E., and Kate K. Mays, eds. Journalism and Truth in an Age of Social Media. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190900250.001.0001.
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This edited volume examines how the growth of social media and ancillary computer systems is affecting the relationship between journalism and the pursuit of truth. Experts explore how news is perceived and identified, presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. They consider social media’s effect on the craft of journalism as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content production regimes. The volume’s aim is to confront these issues in a way that will be of enduring relevance; the discussions about contemporary journalism inform current students and help scholars in the future. Chapters reflect on questions such as what is different and what remains the same in journalism’s pursuit of truth now that social media has become such a prominent force in news gathering, dissemination, and reinterpretation? How has reader participation and responses changed? What are the implications for journalistic information gathering and truth claims? What is different now about the social roles of journalists and media institutions? How does interaction between journalists and social media affect democratic practices? The chapters offer a mix of empirical and critical work that reflects on journalism’s past, present, and future roles in our lives and in society. An interdisciplinary work, this volume brings together leading scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies, philosophy, and the social sciences to explore how we should understand journalism’s changing landscape as it relates to fundamental questions about the role of truth and information in society.
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Bucher, Taina. If...Then. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190493028.001.0001.
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IF … THEN provides an account of power and politics in the algorithmic media landscape that pays attention to the multiple realities of algorithms, and how these relate and coexist. The argument is made that algorithms do not merely have power and politics; they help to produce certain forms of acting and knowing in the world. In processing, classifying, sorting, and ranking data, algorithms are political in that they help to make the world appear in certain ways rather than others. Analyzing Facebook’s news feed, social media user’s everyday encounters with algorithmic systems, and the discourses and work practices of news professionals, the book makes a case for going beyond the narrow, technical definition of algorithms as step-by-step procedures for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. Drawing on a process-relational theoretical framework and empirical data from field observations and fifty-five interviews, the author demonstrates how algorithms exist in multiple ways beyond code. The analysis is concerned with the world-making capacities of algorithms, questioning how algorithmic systems shape encounters and orientations of different kinds, and how these systems are endowed with diffused personhood and relational agency. IF … THEN argues that algorithmic power and politics is neither about algorithms determining how the social world is fabricated nor about what algorithms do per se. Rather it is about how and when different aspects of algorithms and the algorithmic become available to specific actors, under what circumstance, and who or what gets to be part of how algorithms are defined.
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Timcke, Scott. Algorithms and the End of Politics. Policy Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529215311.001.0001.
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As the United States contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this book considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country's politics and society. The book provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. It looks at the impact of these new platforms and technologies on their users who have made them among the most valuable firms in the world. The book is concerned with unfreedom and class rule in contemporary American capitalism as seen in the digital realm. Class struggle is the first and last force shaping developments in communication. The book looks at the response of the ruling class to an organic crisis in the United States, and it traces how digital media instruments are used by different factions within the capitalist ruling class to capture and maintain the commanding heights of the American social structure. The book moves on to examine the role of data and whiteness in American social life. It traces the evolving intersection of capital, security and technology to examine the broad trajectory of unfreedom. The book concludes that digital society requires significant restructuring if it is to facilitate greater democratization. Offering bold, new thinking across data politics and digital and economic sociology, this is a powerful demonstration of how algorithms have come to shape everyday life and political legitimacy in the United States and beyond.
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Bucher, Taina. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190493028.003.0001.
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Algorithms and software are starting to catch the interest of social scientists and humanities scholars, having become somewhat of a buzzword in media and communication studies during the past years. Yet we are only at the beginning of understanding how algorithms and computation more broadly are affecting social life and the production and dissemination of knowledge as we know it. The introductory chapter sketches the contours of an algorithmic media landscape as it is currently unfolding by focusing on the ways in which Facebook friendships are programmatically organized and shaped through algorithmic systems. The chapter introduces the concept of “programmed sociality” to draw attention to software and computational infrastructure as conditions of possibility for sociality in digital media.
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We are data: Algorithms and the making of our digital selves. New York University Press, 2017.
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Bucher, Taina. Life at the Top. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190493028.003.0004.
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Algorithms play a fundamental role in governing the conditions of the intelligible and the sensible online. If users provide the data, the techniques, and procedures to make sense of it, to navigate, assemble, and make meaningful connections among individual pieces of data is increasingly being delegated to various forms of algorithms. In the case of the world’s biggest and most used social media platform, Facebook, algorithmic mechanisms shape the concerted distribution of people, information, actions, and ways of seeing and being seen. The chapter investigates how this kind of algorithmic intervention into people’s information-sharing practices takes place and what are the principles and logics of Facebook’s algorithmic governance. Through an analysis of the algorithmic logics structuring the flow of information and communication on Facebook’s news feed, the argument is made that the regime of visibility constructed imposes a perceived threat of invisibility on the part of the participatory subject.
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Gates, Michael. Instagram Marketing Algorithms 10,000/Month Guide on How to Grow Your Business, Make Money Online, Become an Social Media Influencer, Personal Branding and Advertising. Draft2Digital, 2020.
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15
Woolley, Samuel C., and Philip N. Howard. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190931407.003.0001.
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Computational propaganda is an emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the Internet. The term describes the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and big data tasked with manipulating public opinion. Our research shows that this new mode of interrupting and influencing communication is on the rise around the globe. Advances in computing technology, especially around social automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, mean that computational propaganda is becoming more sophisticated and harder to track. This introduction explores the foundations of computational propaganda. It describes the key role of automated manipulation of algorithms in recent efforts to control political communication worldwide. We discuss the social data science of political communication and build upon the argument that algorithms and other computational tools now play an important political role in news consumption, issue awareness, and cultural understanding. We unpack key findings of the nine country case studies that follow—exploring the role of computational propaganda during events from local and national elections in Brazil to the ongoing security crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Our methodology in this work has been purposefully mixed, using quantitative analysis of data from several social media platforms and qualitative work that includes interviews with the people who design and deploy political bots and disinformation campaigns. Finally, we highlight original evidence about how this manipulation and amplification of disinformation is produced, managed, and circulated by political operatives and governments, and describe paths for both democratic intervention and future research in this space.
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Woolley, Samuel C., and Philip N. Howard, eds. Computational Propaganda. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190931407.001.0001.
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Computational propaganda is an emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the Internet. The term describes the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and big data tasked with the manipulation of public opinion. Our research shows that this new mode of interrupting and influencing communication is on the rise around the globe. Advances in computing technology, especially around social automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence mean that computational propaganda is becoming more sophisticated and harder to track at an alarming rate. This introduction explores the foundations of computational propaganda. It describes the key role that automated manipulation of algorithms plays in recent efforts to control political communication worldwide. We discuss the social data science of political communication and build upon the argument that algorithms and other computational tools now play an important political role in areas like news consumption, issue awareness, and cultural understanding. We unpack the key findings of the nine country case studies that follow—exploring the role of computational propaganda during events from local and national elections in Brazil to the ongoing security crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Our methodology in this work has been purposefully mixed, we make use of quantitative analysis of data from several social media platforms and qualitative work that includes interviews with the people who design and deploy political bots and disinformation campaigns. Finally, we highlight original evidence about how this manipulation and amplification of disinformation is produced, managed, and circulated by political operatives and governments and describe paths for both democratic intervention and future research in this space.
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Neudert, Lisa-Maria N. Germany. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190931407.003.0008.
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As concerns over misinformation, political bots, and the impact of social media on public discourse manifest in Germany, this chapter explores the role of computational propaganda in and around German politics. The research sheds light on how algorithms, automation, and big data are leveraged to manipulate the German public, presenting real-time social media data and rich evidence from interviews with a wide range of German Internet experts—bot developers, policymakers, cyberwarfare specialists, victims of automated attacks, and social media moderators. In addition, the chapter examines how the ongoing public debate surrounding the threats of right-wing political currents and foreign election interference in the Federal Election 2017 has created sentiments of concern and fear. Imposed regulation, multi-stakeholder actionism, and sustained media attention remain unsubstantiated by empirical findings of computational propaganda. The chapter provides an in-depth analysis of social media discourse during the German parliamentary election 2016. Pioneering the methodological assessment of the magnitude of automation and junk news, the author finds limited evidence of computational propaganda in Germany. The author concludes that the impact of computational propaganda, nonetheless, is substantial in Germany, promoting a dispersed civic debate, political vigilance, and restrictive countermeasures that leave a deep imprint on the freedom and openness of the public discourse in Germany.
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Benkler, Yochai, Robert Farris, and Hal Roberts. Network Propaganda. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190923624.001.0001.
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This book examines the shape, composition, and practices of the United States political media landscape. It explores the roots of the current epistemic crisis in political communication with a focus on the remarkable 2016 U.S. president election culminating in the victory of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. The authors present a detailed map of the American political media landscape based on the analysis of millions of stories and social media posts, revealing a highly polarized and asymmetric media ecosystem. Detailed case studies track the emergence and propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere that took advantage of structural weaknesses in the media institutions across the political spectrum. This book describes how the conservative faction led by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer was able to inject opposition research into the mainstream media agenda that left an unsubstantiated but indelible stain of corruption on the Clinton campaign. The authors also document how Fox News deflects negative coverage of President Trump and has promoted a series of exaggerated and fabricated counter narratives to defend the president against the damaging news coming out of the Mueller investigation. Based on an analysis of the actors that sought to influence political public discourse, this book argues that the current problems of media and democracy are not the result of Russian interference, behavioral microtargeting and algorithms on social media, political clickbait, hackers, sockpuppets, or trolls, but of asymmetric media structures decades in the making. The crisis is political, not technological.
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Gorwa, Robert. Poland. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190931407.003.0005.
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This chapter provides the first overview of political bots, fake accounts, and other false amplifiers in Poland. Based on extensive interviews with political campaign managers, journalists, activists, employees of social media marketing firms, and civil society groups, the chapter outlines the emergence of Polish digital politics, covering the energetic and hyper-partisan “troll wars,” the interaction of hate speech with modern platform algorithms, and the recent effects of “fake news” and various sources of apparent Russian disinformation. The chapter then explores the production and management of artificial identities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks—an industry confirmed to be active in Poland—and assesses how they can be deployed for both political and commercial purposes. Overall, the chapter provides evidence for a rich array of digital tools that are increasingly being used by various actors to exert influence over Polish politics and public life.
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Ohlin, Jens David, and Duncan B. Hollis, eds. Defending Democracies. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197556979.001.0001.
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Evidence of election interference by foreign states or their proxies has become a regular feature of national elections and is likely to get worse in the near future. Information and communication technologies afford those who would interfere with new tools that can operate in ways previously unimaginable: Twitter bots, Facebook advertisements, closed social media platforms, algorithms that prioritize extreme views, disinformation, misinformation, and malware that steals secret campaign communications. Defending Democracies: Combating Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age tackles the problem through an interdisciplinary lens and focuses on: (1) defining the problem of foreign election interference; (2) exploring the solutions that international law might bring to bear; and (3) considering alternative regulatory frameworks for understanding and addressing the problem. The result is a deeply urgent examination of an old problem on social media steroids, one that implicates the most central institution of liberal democracy: elections. This volume seeks to bring domestic and international perspectives on elections and election law into conversation with other disciplinary frameworks, escaping the typical biases of lawyers by preferring international legal solutions for issues of international relations. Taken together, the chapters in this volume represent a more faithful representation of the broad array of solutions that might be deployed, including international and domestic, legal and extralegal, ambitious and cautious.
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Levin, Ines, and Betsy Sinclair. Causal Inference with Complex Survey Designs. Edited by Lonna Rae Atkeson and R. Michael Alvarez. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190213299.013.4.
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This article discusses methods that combine survey weighting and propensity score matching to estimate population average treatment effects. Beginning with an overview of causal inference techniques that incorporate data from complex surveys and the usefulness of survey weights, it then considers approaches for incorporating survey weights into three matching algorithms, along with their respective methodologies: nearest-neighbor matching, subclassification matching, and propensity score weighting. It also presents the results of a Monte Carlo simulation study that illustrates the benefits of incorporating survey weights into propensity score matching procedures, as well as the problems that arise when survey weights are ignored. Finally, it explores the differences between population-based inferences and sample-based inferences using real-world data from the 2012 panel of The American Panel Survey (TAPS). The article highlights the impact of social media usage on political participation, when such impact is not actually apparent in the target population.
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Schäfer, Andreas, and David Meiering, eds. (Ent-)Politisierung? Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783748904076.
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Contradictory trends of depoliticisation and (re-)politicisation seem to characterise current democratic society. Protest movements and populism polarise opinions on both the streets and social media, while anonymous algorithms or scientific expertise threaten to technocratise political decision-making. At the same time, these phenomena raise the question of democratic theoretical standards of evaluation. This special volume provides a conceptual framework for the analysis and interpretation of these processes and relates previously unconnected fields of research. Theoretical perspectives and empirical findings thus form a debate on the understanding as well as the manifestations and dynamics of politics in the 21st century. With contributions by Priska Daphi, Beth Gharrity Gardner, Anna Geis, Samuel Greef, Simon Hegelich, Eva Her-schinger, Fabienne Marco, David Meiering,Michael Neuber, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Friedbert W. Rüb, Linda Sauer, Andreas Schäfer, Wolfgang Schroeder, Hanna Schwander, Grit Straßenberger, Jennifer Ten Elsen, Lena Ulbricht and Claudia Wiesner.
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Macnish, Kevin, and Jai Galliott, eds. Big Data and Democracy. Edinburgh University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474463522.001.0001.
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This edited collection tackles subjects that have arisen as a result of new capabilities to collect, analyse and use vast quantities of data using complex algorithms. Questions tackled include what is wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns, whether echo chambers really are a matter of genuine concern, what is the impact of data collection through social media and other platforms on questions of trust in society and is there a problem of opacity as decision-making becomes increasingly automated? The contributors consider potential solutions to these challenges and discuss whether an ethical compass is available or even feasible in an ever more digitized and monitored world. The editors bring together original research on the philosophy of big data and democracy from leading international authors, with recent examples and case references – including the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the Leveson Inquiry and the Edward Snowden leaks – and combine them in one authoritative volume at time of great political turmoil.
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Benkler, Yochai, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. Epistemic Crisis. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190923624.003.0001.
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This chapter describes the contours of the epistemic crisis in media and politics that threatens the integrity of democratic processes, erodes trust in public institutions, and exacerbates social divisions. It lays out the centrality of partisanship, asymmetric polarization, and political radicalization in understanding the current maladies of political media. It investigates the main actors who used the asymmetric media ecosystem to influence the formation of beliefs and the propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere, and to manipulate political coverage during the election and the first year of the Trump presidency, , including “fake news” entrepreneurs/political clickbait fabricators; Russian hackers, bots, and sockpuppets; the Facebook algorithm and online echo chambers; and Cambridge Analytica. The chapter also provides definitions of propaganda and related concepts, as well as a brief intellectual history of the study of propaganda.
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Fuchs, Christian, and Klaus Unterberger, eds. The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto. University of Westminster Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.16997/book60.
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This book presents the collectively authored Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto and accompanying materials.The Internet and the media landscape are broken. The dominant commercial Internet platforms endanger democracy. They have created a communications landscape overwhelmed by surveillance, advertising, fake news, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and algorithmic politics. Commercial Internet platforms have harmed citizens, users, everyday life, and society. Democracy and digital democracy require Public Service Media. A democracy-enhancing Internet requires Public Service Media becoming Public Service Internet platforms – an Internet of the public, by the public, and for the public; an Internet that advances instead of threatens democracy and the public sphere. The Public Service Internet is based on Internet platforms operated by a variety of Public Service Media, taking the public service remit into the digital age. The Public Service Internet provides opportunities for public debate, participation, and the advancement of social cohesion. Accompanying the Manifesto are materials that informed its creation: Christian Fuchs’ report of the results of the Public Service Media/Internet Survey, the written version of Graham Murdock’s online talk on public service media today, and a summary of an ecomitee.com discussion of the Manifesto’s foundations. The Manifesto can be signed by visiting http://bit.ly/signPSManifesto
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Schneider, Florian. The User-Generated Nation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190876791.003.0007.
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Chapter 7 turns to user-generated content, social media, and ‘Web 2.0’ technologies in digital China’s message boards and comment sections. The cases of the Nanjing Massacre and the Diaoyu Islands then show that online commentaries often provide a nuanced picture of how to make sense of Sino-Japanese relations, and yet the overarching discursive patterns combine with digital mechanisms such as ‘likes’ and algorithmic popularity rankings to push the discussion into nationalist media scripts. In contrast, China’s microblogging spheres at first sight offer a different story: discussions on Weibo or Weixin are diverse, dynamic, and can have impressive reach. Yet the nature of such social networks ultimately either skews them in favour of a few influential users or moves discussions into the walled gardens of small social groups, making nationalist discourse reverberate through the echo chambers of digital China and contributing to a visceral sense of a shared nationhood.
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Pinchevski, Amit. Transmitted Wounds. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190625580.001.0001.
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In Transmitted Wounds, Amit Pinchevski explores the ways media technology and logic shape the social life of trauma both clinically and culturally. Bringing media theory to bear on trauma theory, Pinchevski reveals the technical operations that inform the conception and experience of traumatic impact and memory. He offers a bold thesis about the deep association of media and trauma: media bear witness to the human failure to bear witness, making the traumatic technologically transmissible and reproducible. Taking up a number of case studies--the radio broadcasts of the Eichmann trial; the videotaping of Holocaust testimonies; recent psychiatric debates about trauma through media following the 9/11 attacks; current controversy surrounding drone operators' post-trauma; and digital platforms of algorithmic-holographic witnessing and virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD--Pinchevski demonstrates how the technological mediation of trauma feeds into the traumatic condition itself. The result is a novel understanding of media as constituting the material conditions for trauma to appear as something that cannot be fully approached and yet somehow must be. While drawing on contemporary materialist media theory, especially the work of Friedrich Kittler and his followers, Pinchevski goes beyond the anti-humanistic tendency characterizing the materialist approach, discovering media as bearing out the human vulnerability epitomized in trauma, and finding therein a basis for moral concern in the face of violence and atrocity. Transmitted Wounds unfolds the ethical and political stakes involved in the technological transmission of mental wounds across clinical, literary, and cultural contexts.
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Maasen, Sabine, and Jan-Hendrik Passoth, eds. Soziologie des Digitalen - Digitale Soziologie? Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783845295008.
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About ten years ago, we were still able to justify the reservations of sociology with regard to digitisation as a healthy caution against the hype of the ‘virtual world’ and ‘cyberspace’; today, the situation looks different: beyond the usual rhetoric of media revolutions, new forms of practice, organisation and order have emerged around digital technologies in more or less all fields, posing tangible challenges to sociological theory-building, methods development and empirical social research. Are our theories based on action, communication or practice suitable for describing the contribution of algorithms? Are our methods for dealing with language, images and printed text suitable for analysing the automatic modification of texts, images and videos by filter technologies? How do we deal with increasing competition in data analysis and evaluation? These are the questions that this special volume of the journal ‘Soziale Welt’ (ISSN 0038-6073) explores. With contributions by Dirk Baecker, Sascha Dickel, Tobias Wolbring, Barbara Sutter, Sabine Maasen, Elke Wagner, Niklas Barth, Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda, Roger Häußling, Udo Thiedeke, Josef Wehner, Nicole Zillien, Bernadette Kneidinger-Müller, Heike Greschke, Jagoda Motowidlo, René König, Patrik Sumpf, Christian Stegbauer, Alexander Mehler, Oliver Nachtwey, Philipp Staab, Andreas Boes, Tobias Kämpf, Alexander Zielger, Sabine Pfeiffer, Anne Suphan, Uli Meyer, Uwe Matzat, Erik van Ingen, Christian Papsdorf, Tanja Carstensen, Jeffrey Wimmer, John Postill, Victor Lasa, Ge Zhang, Evelyn Ruppert
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Gray, Joanne Elizabeth. Google Rules. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190072070.001.0001.
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Google Rules traces the rise of Google through its legal, commercial, and political negotiations over copyright. The first part of the book shows how the public interest suffers in a digital copyright policy debate dominated by powerful industry stakeholders. The second part explores Google’s contributions to digital copyright and the copyright policies that Google enforces across its own platforms. Increasingly, Google self-regulates and negotiates with media and entertainment companies to privately devise copyright rules. Google then deploys algorithmic regulatory technologies to enforce those rules. Google’s private copyright rule-making and algorithmic enforcement limits transparency and accountability in digital copyright governance and privileges private interest and values over the public interest. Today, Google reigns over a technological and economic order that features empowered private actors and rapidly changing technological conditions. How to effectively regulate Google—in an evolving technological environment and in order to achieve public interest outcomes—is one of the most pressing policy questions of our time. Google Rules provides several strategies for taking up this challenge. While the parameters may be narrowly set upon one firm and one area of intellectual property law, ultimately, the book is a contribution to a much broader conversation about a new generation of monopolistic companies, born from the technological developments of the digital age, and the social, political, and economic influence they have acquired in contemporary society.
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Mpedi, Letlhokwa George, ed. Santa Claus: Law, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Decolonisation and Covid-19. African Sun Media, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/9781928314837.
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The origins of Santa Claus, or so I am told, is that the young Bishop Nicholas secretly delivered three bags of gold as dowries for three young girls to their indebted father to save them from a life of prostitution. Armed with immortality, a factory of elves and a fleet of reindeer, his has been a lasting legacy, inextricably linked to Christmas. Of course, this Christmas looks a little different. Amidst a global pandemic, shimmying down the chimneys of strangers certainly does not adhere to social distancing guidelines. Some borders remain closed, and in some instances, the quarantine period is far too long. After all, he only has 24 hours to spread cheer across the world. As with the rest of us, Santa Claus is likely to get the remote working treatment. The reindeers this year are likely to be self-driving, reminiscent of an Amazon swarm of technology, and the naughty and nice lists are likely to be based on algorithms derived from social media accounts. In the age of the fourth industrial revolution, it is difficult to imagine that letters suffice anymore. How many posts were verified as real before shared? Enough to get you a drone. Fake news? Here is a lump of coal. Will we see elves in personal protective equipment (PPE) and will Santa Claus, high risk because of age and his likely comorbidities from the copious amount of cookies, have to self-isolate in the North Pole? In fact, will there be any toys at all this year? Surely production has been stalled with the restrictions on imports and exports into the North Pole. Perhaps, there is a view to outsourcing, or perhaps, there is a shift towards local production and supply chains. More importantly, as we have done in many instances in this period, maybe we should pause to reflect on the current structures in place. The sanctification of a figure so clearly dismissive of the Global South and to be critical, quite classist must be called into question. From some of the keenest minds, the contributions in this book make a strong case against this holly jolly man. We traverse important topics such as, is the constitution too lenient with a clear intruder who has conveniently branded himself a Good Samaritan? Allegations of child labour under the guise of elves, blatant animal cruelty, constant surveillance in stark contrast to many democratic ideals and his possible threat to national security come to the fore. Nevertheless, as the song goes, he is aware when you are asleep, and he knows when you are awake. Is feminism a farce to this beloved man – what role does Mrs Claus play and why are there inherent gender norms in his toys? Then is the worry of closed borders and just how accurate his COVID-19 tests are. Of course, this brings his ethics into question. While there is an agreement that transparency, justice and fairness, nonmaleficence, responsibility, and privacy are the core ethical principles, the meaning of these principles differs, particularly across countries and cultures. Why are we subject to Santa Claus’ notions of good and evil when he is so far removed from our context? As Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein would tell you, this is fundamentally a nudge from Santa Claus for children to fit into his ideals. A nudge, coined by Thaler, is a choice that predictably changes people’s behaviour without forbidding any options or substantially changing their economic incentives. Even with pinched cheeks and an air of holiday cheer, Santa Claus has to come under scrutiny. In the process of decolonising knowledge and looking at various epistemologies, does Santa still make the cut?