bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
IS OTT IN INDIA ‘OVER-THE-TOP’? RE-PRESENTATION, REGULATION AND RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS IN INDIAN OTT
Authors: Dutta Anmol
Published: September 2021

The recent OTT regulation measures in India brings Netflix India and Amazon Prime Video, among other subscription based video platforms under the ambit of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Analyzing how negotiations of culture interact with the discourse of ‘protecting sensibilities’ in 21st century India, I argue that the discourse of regulation fabricates “representation” and a ‘global’ Indian identity. Manipulating “the terms of appearance”, these images accused of hurting religious sentiments are ‘framed’ to unwittingly reveal themselves , causing a dent in the post-colonial perception of India being a “country where diverse faiths, languages, and cultures co-exist peacefully within the boundaries of a single peacefully within the boundaries of a single state.” Relaying pre-existing panoptic cultural policing that brings India dangerously close to right-wing nationalist propaganda, I examine the role of “religious sentiments” and the dependence on cultural policing in this precarious political climate. I explore what it would mean to submit or to resist this new reality in the seemingly (in)dependent internet age.
THE IMAGINED INDEPENDENCE OF CANADA’S INTERNET
Authors: Hilstob Kayla
Published: September 2021

Internet scholars are uncovering and connecting military, political and cultural histories of early internets across the globe, including in the US, (Abbate 1999), Chile (Medina 2011) and France (Mailland & Driscoll 2016), respectively. All three approaches inform this history, exploring the Canadian context. On the recommendation of US counterparts at NORAD, a top-secret whitepaper recommended Canada develop a distributed communications network (NORAD 1965), which became SAMSON: Strategic Automatic Message Switching Operational Network. SAMSON developed into an internet, though riddled with a series of setbacks beginning almost immediately, until it was disbanded in 1984. (Canadian Armed Forces 1985). This paper investigates Canada’s internet infrastructural technopolitics through Larkin’s framework of questioning how they “emerge out of and store within them forms of desire and fantasy” (2013, 329). Specifically, it asks how the design, equipment, and network protocols of this Canadian internet embodied the imaginary of Canadian independence from 1965 to 1984, drawing on primary sources from the unpublished documents of the Canadian Armed Forces that have since been declassified. The emergence of the early Canadian internet occurred during a political renewal. At a time of pushback against American and British influence, the Canadian military rejected cooperation with the US, and focused on internal threats over Cold War rivalries (Hatt 1984). By design the Canadian internet was a security apparatus, but the technopolitics embedded in the system dictate who is to be secured against whom. This paper asks how this history persists in Canada’s internet infrastructure today.
WHITE SUPREMACISTS DECEPTIVELY USING SCREENSHOTS AS EVIDENCE: A SOCIAL SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO ANALYSING CONSPIRATORIAL YOUTUBE VIDEOS
Authors: Inwood Olivia
Published: September 2021

YouTube has become notoriously associated with extreme right-wing communities that spread discourses of white supremacy and conspiracy. This study applies a social semiotic approach to analysing conspiratorial YouTube videos created by white supremacists in response to the Notre Dame Fire of 2019. In particular, this study applies a combined legitimation (Van Leeuwen, 2007) and communing affiliation (Zappavigna and Martin, 2018) framework to the verbal and visual content of 15 videos. Communing affiliation refers to how values are positioned as bondable in situation where users don’t interact directly (Zappavigna and Martin, 2018). It is formed from couplings of ideational (what is being evaluated) and attitudinal (how it is evaluated) meaning (Martin and White, 2005), hence forming a value that is bondable. Legitimation (Van Leeuwen, 2007) refers to how discourses establish authority and can be realised textually or visually, with various linguistic strategies. This study will focus on the idea of ‘technological authority’ construed by positive evaluations in the transcripts of screenshots as evidence and the use of screenshots as visual evidence. Overall, this study will show how key values are working in tandem with (de)legitimation strategies, how (de)legitimation can further explain the significance of these values, and how YouTubers artificially create credibility in their videos through these legitimation and affiliation strategies. This raises further questions about the invoked meanings of screenshots as evidence and the ethical dilemmas that screenshots become entangled in, when considering the attention given to false and hateful content that is shared online.
HANDMADE HUSTLE: ETSY, WHITENESS, AND GENDERED PRECARITY
Authors: Johnson Jacqueline Elizabeth
Published: September 2021

Since the e-commerce site’s launch in 2005, Etsy has branded itself
as a platform for individuals to buy and sell unique, handmade, and vintage items. This
project is interested in questions about gender, race, labor, and platforms and seeks to
examine how Etsy articulates new formations of raced and gendered labor directly tied to The
Great Recession. While scholars have analyzed Etsy’s relationship to historic craft
movements (Krugh 2014; Luckman 2013) and to fan handicrafting (Cherry 2016), there is still
relatively little published research on the platform. Situating Etsy within the literature
on postfeminism and media culture (Gill 2007; McRobbie 2004), gender and passionate work
(Duffy 2016; Duffy 2017; McRobbie 2018), and race and digital hustle economies (McMillan
Cottom 2020), I analyze products sold on Etsy that rhetorically engage gendered labor
dynamics and precarity through the language of hustling or entrepreneurship in ways that
center white femininities. Utilizing a cultural studies framing and critical discourse and
textual analysis, I identify three main threads: 1) White women on the platform have
co-opted Black vernacular to address how economic insecurity has pushed them into gig labor
2) These products romanticize precarity by positioning feminized grit and individualized
solutions to macro economic hurdles as female empowerment 3) The products discursively frame
entrepreneurship as aspirational, liberatory, and, most centrally, compatible with white,
domestic femininities. While hustling, and its new, white appearance, is celebrated on Etsy,
we must be mindful of how hustling is always raced, gendered, and precarious.
PRODUCING THE “PROBLEM” OF PARENTAL OVERSHARE
Authors: Kumar Priya C.
Published: September 2021

With the rise of social media, the term overshare has become shorthand for concerns about people, especially parents, disclosing seemingly excessive amounts of information. Prior work shows that the term overshare does not simply describe an action, but reinforces problematic boundaries that marginalize women. In this paper, I examine how social media discourse actively produces oversharing and then instructs parents to self-censor in the name of satisfying their social media audience. I focus on STFU, Parents, a once-popular blog dedicated to mocking parental overshare. I analyze STFU, Parents materials through the framework of governmentality, a Foucauldian-inspired means of examining how authorities intervene in people’s lives. I find that STFU, Parents defines overshare as the posting of gross or overly emotional content on social media. It materializes overshare through the technologies of screenshots, which supply evidence of overshare, and editing software, which anonymizes the people in the post and enables STFU, Parents to distance itself from the consequences of publishing other people’s information. STFU, Parents portrays itself as simply curating a phenomenon—overshare—that exists in the world. However, I argue that STFU, Parents brings overshare into being by pulling information out of context and using it as a reason to judge parents, particularly mothers. Presenting overshare as a problem of individuals not knowing proper social media etiquette enables STFU, Parents to distance itself from its role role in constructing the very problem it claims to critique.
ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE. FRUSTRATION EXPERIENCES WITH NETWORKED MEDIA
AND THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT
Authors: Peil Corinna
Published: September 2021

This proposal investigates experiences of frustration with networked
media from a users’ perspective. It explores how these experiences are resolved and what
role helping friends and family members play in this process. Experiences of frustrations
refer to concrete problems in the use of networked media. The examination of their causes
and elimination helps to better understand the socio-technical logics of commercial media
technologies as well as their impact on everyday life. This study seeks to offer insights
into societal power relations with regard to succeeding in and shaping the ongoing digital
transformation process. It thus contributes to the wider field of digital inequalities
research. Theoretically, my considerations are guided by the concept of media deconvergence
which highlights the disorder and messiness of converging media environments. Furthermore, I
am inspired by the domestication approach and by “broken world thinking" (Jackson 2014),
which takes disruptions and failures as a starting point for analyzing socio-technical
change. Insights into novel forms of expertise and changing constellations of support and
neediness were gained on the basis of a qualitative study consisting of visualizations of
support networks and their written reflection and explanation as well as guided interviews
about expertise and mutual support in media usage.
“THE CREATURE ITSELF IS NASTY, BUT NOTHING REALLY COMPARES TO THE
BUILDING OF DREAD BEFORE YOU EVER GET TO IT”: ONLINE PLAYER AND DEVELOPER COMMENTARY ON
FEMALE MONSTROSITY IN VIDEO GAMES
Authors: Stang Sarah Marie
Published: September 2021

Gender representation in video games has long been a fraught topic of
discussion within online gaming communities. In game scholarship, analysis of the usually
harmful tropes and trends of female representation has resulted in countless studies
demonstrating that video games are often a regressive medium in terms of representation,
privileging heterosexual white male subjectivities and erasing, marginalizing, or even
vilifying anyone outside of that specific demographic. These conversations and scholarly
studies tend to focus on the representation of human women, especially as victimized
damsels-in-distress. Considerably less work has been done to analyse the portrayal of
villainous and monstrous nonhuman women in games, even though countless science fiction,
fantasy, and horror games feature these kinds of characters. Many of these games utilize
harmful tropes and design practices related to female villainy and monstrosity, thereby
reinforcing misogynistic ideologies. With the understanding that gender representations in
games can have deep cultural ramifications, especially as they intersect with
representations of race, sexuality, queerness, body size, disability, mental illness, and
age, this paper examines online player and developer discourse regarding female-coded
monsters from a selection of commercially successful “AAA” video games. The intent of this
project is to contribute to ongoing scholarship on monstrosity in games by looking at how
developers explain and justify their design processes in online interviews and forum posts
and how players/fans articulate their attitudes towards and reception of these monstrous
creatures.
DATA INQUIRY: METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON DATAFICATION IN SOCIAL
RESEARCH
Authors: Zakharova Irina
Published: September 2021

Datafication is widely acknowledged as a process “transforming all
things under the sun into a data format” (van Dijck, 2017, p. 11). As data become both
objects and instruments of social science, many scholars call for attention to the ways
datafication reconfigures scholarly knowledge production, its methodological opportunities,
and challenges (Lomborg et al., 2020). This contribution offers a reflection on the
interdependence between methodological approaches taken to study datafication and concepts
about it, that these approaches provide within the domains of critical data studies and
media studies. Expanding on the concept of methods' performativity (Barad, 2007), I apply
the notion of methods assemblages: “a continuing process of crafting and enacting necessary
boundaries [and relations]" between researchers and all relevant matters (Law, 2004: 144).
The key question in the presented study is what kinds of methods assemblages are being
applied in current datafication research and what concepts of datafication they produce. 32
expert interviews were conducted with scholars who published empirical work on dataficaiton
between 2015 and 2020. Three methods assemblages were developed. Central to distinguishing
between methods assemblages are the ways of associating of the involved actors and things.
In my analysis the questions of (1) what we are talking about when talking about
datafication and (2) kinds of knowledges that researchers were interested in producing can
be understood as such ways of associating. The methods assemblages contribute to critical
data studies by producing accounts about datafication processes that are in concert with the
methods assemblages applied to study these.
AUSTRALIA’S BIG GAMBLE: THE NEWS MEDIA BARGAINING CODE AND THE RESPONSES FROM GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK
Authors: Bruns Axel , Bailo Francesco , Meese James , Hurcombe Edward , Leaver Tama , Barnet Belinda , Angus Daniel
Published: September 2021

Responding rapidly to extraordinary developments in early 2021, this panel examines the background, development, implementation, and consequences of the latest Australian regulatory intervention in the engagement between content platforms and domestic media organisations: the News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC). The Australian federal government envisioned the NMBC as “a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms, specifically Google and Facebook”; following a period of consultation that saw substantial public relations campaigning from Google, Facebook, and other content platforms to question the aims and effectiveness of the proposed code, the NMBC bill was sent to federal Parliament in December 2020. Google and Facebook both threatened to remove their services from Australia, or remove Australian news content from their platforms, if the NMBC passed in its original form. Such threats were regarded by some of the NMBC’s proponents as blatant attempts at “bullying” the Australian government to water down the Code, and in pushing ahead with the debate of the NMBC bill in the Australian Parliament the government essentially sought to call the platforms’ bluff – yet in the morning of 18 February 2021, Facebook followed through on its threats and both removed all content from the Facebook pages of Australian news outlets (and from those of other actors mistakenly classified as providing news), and banned any domestic or international users from publishing or accessing any posts that contained links to Australian news sites. The ban remained in force until 26 February, when urgent negotiations between Facebook and the Australian federal government produced a preliminary solution to the crisis. The Code finally became law on 2 March 2021. This panel reviews these turbulent developments. In combination, the four papers on this panel present a comprehensive and multifaceted picture of the News Media Bargaining Code, its context, and implications.
IN(TER)DEPENDENCE IN PLATFORMED CREATION
Authors: Christin Angele L , Persaud Christopher , Hesmondhalgh David , Siciliano Michael , Baym Nancy , Gillespie Tarleton , Bergmann Rachel , Bhargava Raj , Diaz Fernando , Maris Elena
Published: September 2021

In recent years, a variety of cultural industries have been transformed by platformization – a process in which technology companies serve as intermediaries connecting different parties (most importantly cultural producers and audiences) through websites and applications. From music to book publishing, movie production, and the visual arts, cultural production has undergone massive changes due to platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Goodreads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, etc. In most cultural sectors, creators now have to grapple with the platforms that make their work visible to online audiences. This often means paying close attention to the quantitative infrastructure of platforms, namely their algorithms and analytics, which drive visibility and commercial success. This panel examines what these economic and technological changes imply for the independence of cultural production. Classical studies of culture often emphasized the role that the values of independence and autonomy play in shaping artists’ worldviews and practices. From Bourdieu’s analysis of “fields of cultural production” as “the economic world reversed” to Becker’s theory of “art worlds” where internal dynamics redefine external constraints, or the Frankfurt School’s critical take on the demise of aura through mechanical reproduction, sociological approaches have paid close attention to the threats to independence emerging under modern capitalism. In fact, most classical sociology saw cultural producers in the mass cultural industries as having little independence, often assuming (sometimes without empirical research) that the massification of culture would destroy original and critical art works. Here we revisit the question of independence in the context of platformed creation – a term that embraces all forms of cultural production that are mediated, in part or completely, through digital platforms. By bringing together scholars studying different aspects of platformed creation and reflecting on the concept of independence through diverse disciplinary lenses, we ask: what does independence look like in the context of platformed creation? What are some of the theoretical and methodological tools available to scholars for making sense of cultural, economic, and technological independence in the case of platformed creation? And how do these evolving forms of independence affect the kinds of art works and cultural tropes that circulate online? These different studies aim to put the concept of independence in dialogue with the question of interdependence (among cultural producers, audiences, and platforms) in a mediated digital world.
ANALYZING THE PLATFORM ECONOMY – FEUDALISM, MEDIEVALISM AND COLONIALISM AS USEFUL FRAMEWORKS
Authors: Jensen Jakob Linaa , Brevini Benedetta , Madianou Mirca , Couldry Nick , Mejias Ulises
Published: September 2021

The platform economy challenges existing economic systems, social interactions and participation as well as the very foundation of democracy. As data is replacing labor as the central economic good, economy, society, class structures and democracy might change fundamentally. Or we might experience old wine on new bottles. Karl Marx famously said that history tends to repeat itself, first as comedy, later as tragedy. In this panel we ask, whether history is repeating itself? The panel’s speakers employ different historical perspectives but focus mainly in two periods: medieval times and the age of colonialism. Both periods were characterized by a strong correlation between a certain economic system and the exercise of political power. Structured inequalities in systems of labor, trade and distribution of wealth had significant consequences for the distribution and (re)production of political power. Medieval and colonial societies were each based on logics of exploitation and dominance, ideologically legitimized by references to first God, later the nation, what Marx would have referred to as the superstructures of economic logics. In this systems, individual agency and possibilities were limited compared to today. In medieval society it was hard to change the estate in which you were born, in colonial times it was hard to change your role in the international system. And the fixed structures were basically grounded in economic logics.
THE IN(TER)DEPENDENCIES OF MOBILE ONLINE AND OFFLINE SPACES: REFLECTIONS ON METHODS, PRACTICES, ETHICS
Authors: Kaufmann Katja , Palmberger Monika , Parreiras Carolina , Bussoletti Arianna , Belotti Francesca , Comunello Francesca , Donato Stellamarina , Wagenaar Welmoed , Bermúdez Juan , Schweiger Moritz , Wimmer Jeffrey
Published: September 2021

Mobile media technologies place users in digital (online) as well as physical (offline) spaces in novel ways, opening up new environments of affordances. In everyday life these mobile online and offline spaces are increasingly interdependent and interwoven in manifold ways. Practices, experiences, meanings and expectations are negotiated across these spaces, while at the same time they are bound by the respective logics and limitations, leading to new interrelations and contradictions. The mobile, interlocking but non-converging nature of these spaces involves issues of access and power in struggles over in(ter)dependencies and leads to significant method(odolog)ical, practical and ethical challenges for researchers, to which the current COVID-19 pandemic only adds complexity. Researchers are confronted with questions such as: What are appropriate designs to study mobile online and offline spaces and their intersections? Do interdependent spaces call for likewise interdependent methodological approaches? In what ways can elaborated mixed and multi-method designs capture complexity adequately without the researchers losing sight of the specifics? And what are the ethical and practical implications for the parties involved? Meanwhile, in the methodological literature, the specific challenges associated with researching the intersections of online and offline spaces, especially under mobile conditions, are rarely explicitly addressed. For this reason, the panel presents a thought-provoking range of five examples of research into phenomena at the intersections of mobile online and offline spaces and the associated experiences as well as methodological challenges of researchers in dealing with issues of in(ter)dependence at all levels.
PLATFORMISATION OF RIDE HAILING, FOOD DELIVERY AND DOMESTIC WORK SERVICES IN URBAN INDIA
Authors: Lalvani Simiran , Zia Sarah , Gupta Anushree , Rathi Aayush
Published: September 2021

Working in the digital platform economies has typically been characterised by a corporatised and media fuelled narrative of independence—as a route to financial independence, freedom to determine work schedules, and the positioning of workers as ‘independent contractors’. This terminology suggests a sense of novelty in the nature of jobs and the upending of hierarchies by technological processes. This panel aims at excavating the pre-existing power dynamics between customers, workers and intermediaries. Taxi driving, delivering food and providing domestic care services have long been informal forms of work segregated along lines of caste, religion, class and gender in urban India. What has the platformisation of this work meant for workers, their experiences of work and the opening up of this work? Has the involvement of technological intermediaries led to an opening up and the opening up of this work outside of its parochial considerations of class, caste, gender, religion? The panel is based on qualitative, ethnographic and participatory fieldwork across ride hailing, food delivery and domestic work platforms in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Through 4 presentations, we bring forth the promise of working in the absence of a boss, the restrictions on independence and the functions of interdependence.
DYNAMICS OF DIGITAL MARKETS
Authors: Thorhauge Anne Mette , Yuan Jingyan Elaine , Ørmen Jacob , Gregersen Andreas , Vonderau Patrick
Published: September 2021

The focus of this panel is the material, organizational, and cultural conditions of digital markets. While the notion of economy refers to the more general production, distribution and allocation in society, the idea of markets represents specific contexts of economic exchange typical of capitalist economies (Carruthers & Babb, 2013). A more elaborate understanding of digital markets and their relationships with digital platforms can expand our understanding of the economic implications that specific types of platform architectures have at the level of economic interaction. The discussion takes as a starting point perspectives from economic sociology that emphasize how markets are embedded into broader social and societal structures (Granovetter, 2017) and conditioned upon cultural norms and conventions (Beckert, 2009). In addition, the panel is informed by the way economic sociology and STS have approached the material conditions of markets (Garcia-Parpet, 2007; MacKenzie, 2018) and the way these conditions frame and transform power relations and interaction patterns on specific markets. The panel consists of four papers that approach this issue from a range of perspectives: The relationship between platform architectures, open market strategies and the formation of ‘commodity money’ in the case of Steam, the relationship between platforms, markets, and state regulation in the case of Alibaba, the role of narratives, imagined futures, and collective action that frame patterns of buying and selling in global stock markets in the case of Gamestop shares and, finally, how the online engagement industry is organized in practice in the case of “click farms”.
DIESEL DEATH ZONES IN THE AMAZON EMPIRE: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN ALGORITHMICALLY MEDIATED WORK
Authors: Bergmann Rachel , Solomun Sonja
Published: September 2021

This paper explores and contextualizes recent activism in 2019-2020 around Amazon’s San Bernardino airport warehouse expansion. While California has become a nexus for US debates on the rights of gig labour and tech workers, this coalition focused particularly on intersections of worker rights and environmental justice. The highly polluting air cargo centre, they argued, would worsen air quality and constitute environmental racism in the predominantly Hispanic, working-class San Bernardino. This coalition used creative tactics and data practices informed by place-specific histories of economic and environmental activism, to re-imagine algorithmically mediated work and link it to ongoing struggles. Analyzing primary materials and media coverage of this diverse coalition, we find a strategy unified around economic justice, environmental justice, and community benefits. This case study contributes a framework for worker-centric, site-specific analyses of internet technologies and sustainability. By exploring this intersection, we hope to provide insight into building more equitable internet infrastructures and designing technological systems in solidarity with affected communities, workers, and environments.
TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF FREE SOFTWARE AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
Authors: Couture Stephane , Toupin Sophie , Alejandro Mayoral-Baños
Published: September 2021

Questions of independence and sovereignty have long been present with regards to the Internet. In 1996, for instance, John Perry Barlow published his now well-known “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Twenty-five years later, notions like “digital sovereignty”, “data sovereignty” and “technological sovereignty” are increasingly used in public debates. This presentation will explore “technological sovereignty” but through the lens of Indigenous perspectives as well as those of social movements inspired by free software activism. These two perspectives seem to share what can be called an anti-hegemonic perspective on technological sovereignty. While they may reinforce each other, they also differ on many perspectives. It is noted for instance that the philosophy of information sharing in free and open-source software might foster the usage and misappropriation of knowledge held by Indigenous communities (Christen, 2012; Gida, 2019). This analysis will prolong a previous study by the authors which identified different discursive trends around sovereignty (anonymous reference). Methodologically, our approach is grounded in discourse analysis and reviews of academic and activist literature that has mobilized metaphors of digital sovereignty. What is the role of the metaphor of “sovereignty” in reconfiguring Indigenous and social justice activism, in relation to the Internet? What are the commonalities between these perspectives? How are they reinforcing or contradicting each other? We intend to contribute to the theme of this year’s AOIR conference – Independence – by looking at the critical discourses of Indigenous people and social activists through the lens of the metaphor of digital (technological/data) sovereignty.
INCELS ON REDDIT: A STUDY IN SOCIAL NORMS AND DECENTRALISED MODERATION
Authors: Gillett Rosalie Mary , Suzor Nicolas
Published: September 2021

The social news website Reddit has a long history of hosting communities (‘subreddits’) that advocate or encourage white supremacy (Gillespie 2018), disparagement of minority groups (Topinka 2017), and violence against women (Massanari 2017). As a platform that relies heavily on volunteer moderators to self-govern the subreddits (Matias 2016), Reddit has been criticised for failing to adequately enforce its site-wide rules (Gillespie 2018). Incels—an internet subculture that ascribes to deeply misogynistic beliefs—grew in visibility when they developed subreddits on Reddit. After ongoing criticism and media attention about harmful behaviour of incels both on and off the platform, Reddit imposed escalating sanctions and ultimately banned the most visible of these subreddits over a period of several years. In this paper, we focus on the interaction between formal rules and social norms in incel and related subreddits. This paper aims to improve understanding about how problematic norms are contested in (partially-) decentralised systems of content moderation. We examine discourse about moderation to better understand the role of moderation teams in maintaining and changing social norms in their communities and to examine the interaction between these norms and both sitewide and subreddit-specific rules. Our analysis suggests that the threat of prohibition alone is unlikely to be sufficient to drive cultural change in problematic subreddits. We argue that content moderation is an insufficient frame to understand the regulation of harmful communities; real change requires addressing the underlying cultural norms rather than focusing on individual pieces of content.
AUTHENTIFICATION AT THE EDGE: #”GAMERGATE”-ING THE ASCENT OF THE
VERIFIED INTERNET
Authors: Hewa Nelanthi , Tran Christine H.
Published: September 2021

While platforms may be hard to know, they are increasingly invested
in knowing—and policing— users. From “verified accounts” to “two-factor authentication,”
platform affordances have proffered metrics of “authenticity” as an antidote to the
uncertainties of attention economies, which are ostensibly saturated by fake news,
misinformation, and algorithmic radicalization (Haimson & Hoffman, 2016; Caplan, 2020).
Yet the platformization of realness claims are often weaponized against the most
marginalized, as evidenced by recent events like PornHub’s demonetisation of unverified
accounts. Early hashtag harassment events like #GamerGate foreshadowed the gendered
consequences of digital realness regimes. In the ascent of “verified account” castes and
other digital authenticators, the traditional “black box” conceptualization of platforms
rings increasingly untrue. Rather, we argue, the algorithmic reality for marginalized users
better resembles Wile E. Coyote’s painted tunnels on the side of mountains: vortexes of
selective porosity that invite some roadrunners and flatten others. Through a Critical
Discourse Analysis of #GamerGate coverage from 2014 and 2015, we attend to how ideologies of
“realness” reproduce along gendered and racialized lines. Our paper builds on recent work on
how the ideation of “realness” embeds forms of communicative and audience-managing labour
among networked creators (Abidin 2016; Banet-Weiser, 2012; Duffy, 2017). The ascent of
“authentification-as-safety is historicized within the hashtag harassment event “GamerGate,”
our case study and pivotal moment in the platform veracity ecosystem when influencers and
journalists were exhorted to authenticate their lives or lose their livelihoods. Everyone on
the internet knows you’re a dog. Now what?
SOCIAL MEDIA LOGIC AND HEALTH COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INDEPENDENCE AND CONSTRAINTS: EVIDENCE FROM ITALY DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Authors: Locatelli Elisabetta , Lovari Alessandro
Published: September 2021

This paper presents the results of a study that investigated how local health authorities (LHAs) located in the most impacted areas by Covid-19 of Lombardy (North of Italy) answered to the challenges imposed by the pandemic through their official Facebook pages during the early weeks of the emergency (January-March 2020). The goal is to understand how the logics of social media affected LHAs’ communication, representing an opportunity for health institutions to enter a new phase of information diffusion and relations with stakeholders and layperson, but also a mean of constraints due to their algorithmic logics and limits of access. The originality of the approach is that, in order to understand the relationship between social media and local health authorities, the theoretical framework hybridizes health communication theories and social media studies. Empirical results showed that LHAs’ communication on Facebook was affected by the logics of programmability and popularity, and also that the institutional language was shaped by social media habits, with an intense use of visuals, hashtags and other engagement strategies. Findings highlighted also that Covid-19 related messaged triggered users’ interactions. The study pointed out the relevance of social media for healthcare communication, opening up new reflections and insights about platforms’ role on ordinary and emergency situations like the pandemic. Interdependence and tensions between public health communication and algorithmic and platform logics are critically discussed.
FROM BUZZFEED CREATOR TO (IN)DEPENDENT YOUTUBER - MANAGING PRECARIOUS
LABOUR THROUGH GOSSIP
Authors: Mniestri Aikaterini , Richter Vanessa
Published: September 2021

Several known Buzzfeed Creators have left the company’s toxic culture
by beginning a career as YouTubers. They hoped that their Buzzfeed audience would migrate to
support their company-independent channel. Often represented as a move towards independence
by creators, cultural production research (Nieborg & Poell, 2018; Burgess et al. 2020)
has shown that creators are platform and audience dependent for viability. Therefore, we are
questioning whether being an (in)dependent YouTuber would be more precarious than being an
employed Buzzfeed creator. How does the migration from Buzzfeed to YouTube creator offer
both independence and a host of new contingencies? Situating a content and discourse
analysis of “Why I left Buzzfeed” YouTube videos and comments within academic and popular
discourse, we understand these videos as sources of ‘gossip’ (Bishop, 2018) defined as
“loose, unmethodological talk that is generative” (2590). Gossip can be beneficial to
ex-Buzzfeed creators building on their Buzzfeed association to boost algorithmic visibility.
Additionally, gossip is a valuable form of knowledge exchange for content creators to stay
informed on discourse, support one another, and communicate their perspective on former
Buzzfeed content. Gossip also allows us as researchers to break through the blackbox of
YouTube content creation to better comprehend precarity as multifaceted. We hypothesize that
creators have to balance different aspects of precarity depending on Buzzfeed as employer or
YouTube as distributor. The imaginary of independence is a false friend as both employed and
self-employed creators are dependent on platform governance and their platform public
(Mniestri & Gekker, 2020) for success.
SEARCHING FOR THE FORGOTTEN: EXAMINING THE ONLINE PRESENCE OF VICTIMS OF
POLICE KILLINGS
Authors: Pierre Jennifer , Currie Morgan , Paris Britt , Pasquetto Irene
Published: September 2021

This paper examines the potential role of social media in enhancing
the understanding and perception of victims of police killings and the data collection
surrounding these incidents. Through a series of content analysis and social media mining
exercises, the authors observe the emergence of three distinct types of social media content
offered on victims of police killings: persistence of the deceased’s activity across social
media, sensational commentary on videos and blog postings, and memorials on Facebook,
Twitter, and Tumblr. As part of a larger investigation of the availability and accessibility
of official police homicide data, this paper aims to present social media data as a
potentially powerful source of information to supplement quantitative reports. This process
may be especially useful for the most affected communities, particularly BIPOC
communities.
HOW TO BE ALGORITHMICALLY GOVERNED LIKE THAT: DATA- AND ALGORITHMIC
AGENCY FROM USER PERSPECTIVE
Authors: Pop Stefanija Ana , Pierson Jo
Published: September 2021

If users are being $2 algorithms, and companies and regulators are
proposing ways for $2 algorithms, with this paper we would like to discuss and propose a
third type of governance — one where users have agency, control and governing power(s) over
algorithmic systems and their outputs. Our main research question is how do we enable users
to actively govern algorithms, instead of passively being governed by them? And what do the
users need in order to be algorithmically governed in such a way that will enable more
agency, autonomy and control when interacting with AI systems and their outputs. Instead of
getting insights in an abstract way, to answer this question, we opted for a guided and
supportive process where participants were able to reflect on the process, formulate and
elaborate their insights, thoughts, needs and requirements based on their lived experience,
i.e., after a real interaction with these algorithmic systems. We conducted a participatory
technographic research with 47 participants, through a multi-stage process consisting of a
survey, Subject Access Requests (Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation),
purposeful interaction with the transparency tools of seven chosen platforms and extensive
structured research diaries. A quali-quantitative analysis of the insights enabled us to
formulate the participants’ requirements of $2 and $2 in a way that will enable their
agency, control and autonomy. These requirements are translatable and implementable at a
user-interaction level, via technology design and through regulatory mechanisms
#FAITHANDFITNESSCOLLIDE: SPREADING THE WORD OF MULTILEVEL MARKETING IN
CHRISTIAN WOMEN’S FITNESS INSTAGRAM POSTS
Authors: Prins Kai , Wellman Mariah
Published: September 2021

With the emergence of the coronavirus in 2020 led to the closing of
gyms and churches, along with the “she-cession” in which women disproportionately left the
workforce (Hammer, 2021), Christian women with an interest in fitness increasingly turned to
home-fitness-based multilevel marketing (MLM). MLM companies like Beachbody, for example,
saw a 300% increase in subscribers in 2020 (Haithman, 2020). Although MLMs encourage their
distributors to think of themselves as “independent entrepreneurs,” these companies demand
fealty -- putting Christian women who participate in a double bind: bound to company,
family, and God, they must still position themselves as free agents and strong women in
order to build their “fitness ministry” (Coach 8, 2020) and close the sale. We extend
Sullivan & Delany’s (2017) framework of “evangelical entrepreneurial femininity” by
asking how fitness complicates or shepherds the relationship between the independent
entrepreneur, the MLM, and the patriarchal foundation of her religious practices. Our
initial research suggests that Christian women navigate the potential shame of occupying a
masculine economic role and a muscular body by reframing Beachbody as an opportunity to
fulfill God’s plan, (re)inhabit the home, and encounter the Divine through their uplines.
References: Haithman, D. (2020, May 18). Beachbody sees gains. Retrieved from
https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2020/may/18/beachbody-sees-gains/. Hammer, B. (2021,
January 25). How to fix women's jobs during the covid-19 pandemic. Sullivan, K. R., &
Delaney, H. (2017). A femininity that ‘giveth and taketh away’: The prosperity gospel and
postfeminism in the neoliberal economy. Human Relations, 70(7), 836-859.
CONTEXTUALIZING AI ETHICS IN TIME AND SPACE
Authors: Rivnai Bahir Shira , Kotliar Dan M , Avnoon Netta
Published: September 2021

While the interest in AI ethics has overwhelmingly intensified over
the last decade, and while various initiatives seek its institutionalization, the literature
on algorithmic ethics tends to examine the subject through philosophical, legal, or
technocratic perspectives, largely neglecting the empirical, socio-cultural ones. Moreover,
this literature tends to focus on the United States, and to overlook other tech centers
around the world. This paper aims to fill these gaps by focusing on how Israeli data
scientists understand, interpret, and depict algorithmic ethics. Based on a pragmatist
social analysis, and on 60 semi-structured interviews with Israeli data scientists, we ask:
which ideologies, discourses and world views construct algorithmic ethics? And what cultural
processes affect their creation and implementation? Our findings highlight three
interrelated moral logics: A) ethics as a personal endeavor; B) ethics as hindering
progress; and C) ethics as a commodity. We show that while data science is a nascent
profession, these moral logics originate from the techno-libertarian culture of its
parent-profession – engineering – and that they accordingly prevent the institutionalization
of a wider, agreed-upon moral regime. We further show that these data scientists’ avoidance
from institutionalized algorithmic ethics also stems from specific cultural and national
determinants. Thus, this paper offers to see algorithmic ethics in a contextualized,
culture-specific perspective, one that focuses on how data scientists practically see and
construct their ethics, while considering their professional, organizational, and national
contexts.
SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE AUDIENCE ECONOMY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS
AND CO-DEPENDENCE
Authors: Van der Vlist Fernando , Helmond Anne
Published: September 2021

Social media platforms’ digital advertising revenues depend
considerably on partnerships. Business partnerships are endemic and essential to the
business of platforms, yet their role remains relatively underexplored in the literature on
platformisation and platform power. This paper considers the significance of partnerships in
the social media ecosystem to better understand how industry platforms, and the
infrastructure they build, mediate and shape platform power and governance. We argue that
partners contribute to ‘platformisation’ through their collective development of
business-to-business platform infrastructures. Specifically, we examine how they have
integrated social media platforms with what we call the audience economy – an exceptionally
complex global and interconnected marketplace of intermediaries involved in the creation,
commodification, analysis, and circulation of data audiences for purposes including but not
limited to digital advertising and marketing. We determine which relationships exist, which
are exclusive or shared, and identify key ecosystem partners. Further, we find that partners
build and integrate extensive infrastructures for data-sourcing and media distribution,
surfacing infrastructural and strategic sources and locations, or ‘nodes’, of power in this
ecosystem. The empirical findings thus highlight the significance of partnerships and
partner integrations and call attention to the powerful industry players and intermediaries
that remain largely invisible to us as audiences.
Análisis de las estrategias didácticas para el desarrollo de habilidades creativas en los estudiantes del primer semestre de la Carrera de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad Privada del Valle
Authors: Fernández Amancay
Published: September 2021

El objetivo del presente estudio es analizar las estrategias didácticas que utilizan los docentes universitarios para contribuir con el desarrollo de habilidades creativas en estudiantes de arquitectura de la sede cochabambina de la Universidad Privada del Valle, Bolivia. Según la experiencia docente de la Facultad de Arquitectura y Turismo de UNIVALLE, se observó la necesidad de los estudiantes en formarse creativamente para poder desarrollarse de manera positiva en sus asignaturas. La presente investigación pretendió conocer las estrategias didácticas que usan los docentes de las asignaturas de primer semestre de la carrera de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de UNIVALLE de Cochabamba para ayudar a sus estudiantes a desarrollar habilidades creativas. Para ello se tomó en cuenta los planes analíticos, cuarenta estudiantes y siete docentes de las asignaturas de primer semestre entre las que están: Taller de Arquitectura I; Historia del Hábitat I; Teoría de la Arquitectura I; Construcciones I; Dibujo y Expresión I; Cálculo e Introducción a la Arquitectura.
SKRINING FITOKIMIA DAN ANALISIS KROMATOGRAFI LAPIS TIPIS EKSTRAK ETANOL DAUN JERUJU (HYDROLEA SPINOSA L.)
Authors: Forestryana Dyera , Arnida Arnida
Published: September 2021

Jeruju (Hydrolea spinosa L.) merupakan tumbuhan endemic lahan basah Kalimantan Selatan yang dipercaya masyarakat setempat sebagai tumbuhan berkhasiat obat yang digunakan sebagai penurun demam. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi senyawa kimia yang terkandung pada ekstrak daun jeruju. Ekstraksi dilakukan dengan metode maserasi menggunakan pelarut etanol 96%, kemudian dilakukan skrining fitokimia dan uji penegasan dengan menggunakan kromatografi lapis tipis (KLT) menggunakan fase gerak kloroform : etanol : aquades (20:1:0,5; 25:1:0,5; 27:1:0,5; 15:2:1; 8:2:1 dan 6:2:1) dan n-heksan : etil asetat dengan perbandingan 8:2; 7:3 dan 6:4, penampakan noda dilakukan pada UV 254 nm, 366 nm dan dengan peyemprotan H2SO4 10%. Analisa KLT ekstrak daun Jeruju menunjukkan bahwa ekstrak etanol daun jeruju mengandung tanin, alkaloid, flavonoid, steroid dan saponin.

Kata kunci: Jeruju, Hydrolea spinosa L., maserasi, kromatografi lapis tipis (KLT)