bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
ОБЪЕКТЫ ИНФОРМАЦИОННО-ПРАВОВОГО ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЯ ЦИФРОВОЙ ЭКОНОМИКИ
Authors: РУСТАМОВ П.А.
Published: February 2025

Цель работы – анализ правового регулирования объектов информационно-правового обеспе- чения цифровой экономики в контексте российской правовой системы и выявление необходимых изменений для улучшения защиты прав на цифровое имущество. В статье применяются методы сравнительного право- ведения и теоретического исследования. Рассматриваются актуальные проблемы, связанные с определением режима виртуальных активов и их правового режима, а также необходимость адаптации российского законода- тельства к международным стандартам. Обсуждаются различные позиции среди исследователей относительно определения и классификации виртуального имущества, включая различия между цифровыми и виртуальными активами. Подчеркивается важность комплексного подхода к правовому регулированию, учитывающего как экономическую, так и правовую природу. Важность работы заключается в необходимости создания четких и прозрачных норм, регулирующих права на виртуальное имущество, технологии искусственного интеллекта, что позволит улучшить защиту интересов пользователей и адаптировать правовую систему к современным вызо- вам цифровой экономики.
ОСОБЕННОСТИ РЕАЛИЗАЦИИ СУДЕБНО-ПРАВОВОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ИМПЕРИИ НА ТЕРРИТОРИИ ЦАРСТВА ПОЛЬСКОГО В ПЕРВОЙ ПОЛОВИНЕ XIX ВЕКА
Authors: ГОЛЬШЕВ И.А.
Published: February 2025

Цель работы – исследование особенностей реализации судебно-правовой политики Россий- ской империи на территории Царства Польского в первой половине XIX века. В исследовании использовались методы исторической периодизации, сравнительного анализа, историко-правовой и формально-юридический. В статье рассмотрены ключевые факторы, имевшие воздействие на формирование законодательства Цар- ства Польского в процессе интеграции в правовую систему Российской империи. Определены проблемы, ока- завшие влияние на формирование судебно-правовой политики руководства Российской империи в Царстве в первой половине XIX века. Выделены два периода интеграции. В рамках первого периода рассмотрена польская конституция 1815 года, дарованная Царству императо- ром Александром I и действовавшая до отмены в 1832 году, проанализированы проблемы судебно-правовой системы, которые послужили причиной, в том числе, восстания 1830–1831 гг. В рамках второго периода рассмотрен органический статут Царства Польского – манифест императора Ни- колая I «О новом порядке управления и образования Царства Польского» от 14 февраля 1832 года. Дан анализ основных изменений относительно предыдущего законодательства, а также определено значение документа в решении задач интеграции Царства Польского в правовую среду Российской империи после восстания. Таким образом, в процессе исследования установлена определенная преемственность событий внутри рассматриваемого периода интеграции, выявлена закономерность в развитии законодательства Царства, рас- смотрены особенности реализации судебно-правовой политики, которые легли в основу изменений законода- тельства. Статья обладает определенной научной ценностью, поскольку в ней рассмотрены особенности реализа- ции судебно-правовой политики Российской империи на территории Царства Польского. В исследовании ис- пользованы источники Государственного архива Российской Федерации.

The study of the peculiarities of the implementation of the judicial and legal policy of the Russian Empire on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland in the first half of the XIX century. The study used methods of historical periodization, comparative analysis, historical-legal and formally legal. The article has a high scientific value, since it examines the problems of implementing the judicial and legal policy of the Russian Empire on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland. The research uses the sources of the State Archive of the Russian Federation.
ПОНЯТИЕ И КРИТЕРИИ ПРОИЗВОЛЬНОГО ЛИШЕНИЯ (ПРЕКРАЩЕНИЯ) СТАТУСА АДВОКАТА
Authors: РАГУЛИН А.В.
Published: February 2025

В статье на основе положений международного права и научных исследований рассматрива- ется вопрос о формулировании понятия и критериев произвольного лишения (прекращения) статуса адвоката.

The article considers the issue of formulating the concept and criteria of arbitrary deprivation (termination) of the status of a lawyer (advocate) on the basis of the provisions of international law and scientific research.
TRACING THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC PATTERNS OF POLARIZATION IN THE FACEBOOK DEBATE ON CLIMATE ACTION
Authors: Arminio Luigi , Rossi Luca
Published: February 2025

This study embarks on a comprehensive exploration of sociolinguistic dynamics within the polarized climate change discourse on Facebook, focusing on the communicational patterns across pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups. Our research objectives mainly focus on (1) understanding the variation in language codes between pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups and (2) inspecting how these linguistic nuances are perceived by the respective audiences. For this goal, we curated a comprehensive list of relevant English-speaking actors, and we collected their most recent Facebook posts relevant to the climate change discourse. After that, the data were analyzed through multiple quantitative language register markers and some engagement-related metrics.

Through the analysis of the data, we identified some distinct language patterns among different sides of the debate, such as the tendency of the pro-climate action groups to resort to more scientific terms in their communication. Furthermore, audience responses to variation in the language register showed significant divergences among the two groups, with the pro-climate audience showing heightened sensitivity to shifts in language register.

Our findings highlight the importance of tailoring communication strategies to promote productive discussions within the polarized climate change debate.
FAMILY PRIVACY, FAMILY AUTONOMY AND COERCION IN DIGITAL HEALTHCARE
Authors: Bessant Claire
Published: February 2025

This paper uses family privacy theory and the dataveillance literature as lenses through which to explore state use of health technologies in the care of unwell children, and the contribution of such technologies to children’s datafication.

Family privacy is an important ideology which informs legal and political understandings of the family, and influences laws governing the family’s relationship with state and society. Respect for family privacy is commonly understood to entail state non-intervention in ordinary family life. Increasingly, however, scholars recognise that family privacy may be more widely understand to entail family autonomy or decision-making and can be understood to afford parental control over how family information, particularly children’s information, is used.

This paper draws upon responses to freedom of information requests received from Integrated Care Boards and Trusts across England as well as information on the NHS Transformation Directorate’s website. This research confirms that a range of telehealth technologies are now being used to support children's health care including virtual wards, apps, wearables and other medical devices which monitor patients’ vital signs. Patients and their parents are, however, rarely told by the NHS how these technologies use patient data. This paper uses the UK General Data Protection Regulation as a framework for exploring what transparent, lawful and fair use of children’s data entails in the context of digitised healthcare. It argues that the NHS could do more to support parents and children to understand these technologies and the implications for children’s privacy.
GENERIC WAR IMAGINARIES: AI-GENERATED IMAGES OF THE ISRAEL-GAZA CONFLICT IN THE ADOBE STOCK CONTROVERSY
Authors: Brilli S`tefano , Gemini Laura , Spaggiari Chiara
Published: February 2025

This paper investigates the changing documentality of AI-generated images and their role in the industrial production of war imaginaries. In doing so, we center our analysis on the paradigmatic case of Adobe Stock selling photorealistic AI images depicting the Israel-Gaza conflict. After the outbreak of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the stock photo service Adobe Stock started to collect of AI-generated images produced by users depicting the conflict. Paying customers were then able to download and publish these images in both online and printed media. A public debate ensued when news media began using pictures from this collection, sparking discussion due to the lack of proper contextualization regarding their AI origin. The primary research question guiding this project is therefore: How does the popularisation and industrialisation of photorealistic AI-generated pictures alter the criteria by which we ascribe documentality to images employed in news reporting? To this end we conducted a mixed method research. In the first phase we collected and analyzed 55 articles related to the Adobe Stock case. The initial content analysis focused on framing of the news, in order to point out key themes and discourses surrounding the controversy. The second phase involves photo-elicitation interviews with photojournalists and photo editors, exploring the documentary and informational value of AI-generated images. Preliminary findings highlight the significance of metadata, the role of illustrative captions, and the aesthetics shaping representations of war and violence.
INSTAGRAM CLOSE FRIEND STORIES FOR MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT AMONG LGBTQ+ YOUNG PEOPLE
Authors: Byron Paul
Published: February 2025

When surveyed and interviewed about digital peer support for mental health, LGBTQ+ young people in Australia, aged 16-25 years, most commonly named Instagram as the most supportive social media platform. Most of the 36 interview participants described how Instagram affords mental health support in varied ways, from regular engagement with supportive friends, to following and engaging with accounts that promote LGBTQ+ mental health. The feature of Close Friend Stories was particularly highlighted as affording easy access to friendship support when needed, and allowed a signaling of support without having to ask for it. Many discussed how Close Friend Stories afforded ‘mental health posting’ – for themselves and/or friends – that allayed concerns about burdening friends with mental health struggles, and offered assurance that only friends with the capacity to offer support could do so. This paper argues that the Close Friends feature operates through friendship’s ‘ambient co-presence’ on Instagram, among young LGBTQ+ users, offering space for vulnerable posting. This paper engages with theories of digital co-presence and intimacy, to consider the intimate logic of vulnerable posting and subsequent support among LGBTQ+ young people who use Instagram.
ENGINEERED INEQUALITY: MUSICAL TAXONOMIES AND STREAMING RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS
Authors: Campos Valverde Raquel
Published: February 2025

In the past five years, the music industry and streaming giants have embraced the success of Latin, Korean and Afrobeats music and heavily promoted their multicultural expertise and international expansion (Spotify 2021a, 2018b; Dredge 2022). However, despite academic efforts to understand streaming classification and recommendation (Seaver 2022; Maasø & Spilker 2022; Hesmondhalgh et al. 2023) it is still unclear which musical taxonomies are used by music streaming platforms. The publication of the DCMS report (2023) in the UK has brought to the fore the importance of understanding streaming software infrastructures, including how music is organised by platforms, and how recommendations and curation are automated. What kind of cultural visions, understandings, and taxonomies of music are currently hardwired into recommender systems? This paper analyses the taxonomies and the metadata standards used to code music catalogue into streaming services to argue that the current industry practices do not contribute to the international vision promoted. Using a mixed methods approach, this paper combines interface analysis of music streaming platforms, discourse analysis over PR industry materials and ethnographic fieldwork at industry conferences, and interviews with industry, public, and start-up stakeholders. In doing so, it contrasts the disparity between industry emphasis on automation, expertise and internationalisation with practices that reveal Western-centric, incoherent and error-prone approaches to catalogue. Following a postcolonial cultural economy framework (Saha 2021), I show how these underdeveloped software infrastructures contribute to the making and reproduction of culture and race, and more widely how they impact music cultures worldwide.
BOYCOTT WOKENESS, SHOP LIKE A PATRIOT: A DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS OF CONSERVATIVE MLM PROMOTION ON INSTAGRAM
Authors: Casteel Diana Michelle
Published: February 2025

Female conservative political influencers are an obscure but growing force within American politics, steadily sewing distrust in public institutions. By exploiting the inadequacies and inequalities in a capitalistic society, these women profit off the fears they cultivate through conspiratorial narratives such as the government poisoning food and indoctrinating children to encourage their Instagram audiences to boycott “woke” corporations by purchasing their household supplies through Patriot Wellness Boxes and other conservative MLMs. Guided by Abidin’s (2021) framework of refracted publics and Cotter’s (2019) concept of “playing the visibility game,” this study seeks to understand the ways that vaguely coded conservative MLMs such as Patriot Wellness Box enable conservative female influencers to circumvent algorithms and sentiment seed more radical conspiracies within lifestyle content. The major findings reveal that these women utilize self-amplification groups to simultaneously to grow their audiences and obscure their connections to the far-right and one another. Second, the MLMs are discussed in ways that mirror sovereign citizen/white militia rhetoric that positions the government as an existential threat they must be prepared to fight. While they are not organizing militias, they are promoting anti-democratic messages, xenophobia, and authoritarian-esque sentiments under the guise of a conservative lifestyle achievable through MLM participation. As the 2024 presidential election looms large, we must analyze the ways that trust in government and public institutions is being undermined through neoliberal conservative MLMs one subscription box ad at a time
DIGITAL DISCONNECTION, THE BROKEN PROMISE OF ATTENTION, AND POTENTIAL FOR CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF THE FOREST
Authors: Chen Meilun
Published: February 2025

At a time when the accessibility of digital media technology at any time enables individuals constantly and permanently exist in the digital connection, the public become more concerned with relationship between digital media, digital attention crisis and technology addiction. This research contributes to the analysis of an emerging branch of mobile app industry that claims to address this issue. Based on the walk-through method and semi-structured interviews with users of one of the most popular app in this industry, the Forest app, this study develops a more nuanced and multifaceted understanding of the "technicity of attention" (Bucher, 2012) that underpins the app and how it mediates users' conceptualization of their experiences and routines of this app. Despite the app’s broken promise of attention, the study observes that users' experience of failure and frustration helps to reveal the app's same logic of attention arrangement shared by attention economy, and creates the conditions for users to reflect on the connectivity paradox and the problematic oppositional relational structure between dependency and agency.
EPISTEMIC-DEMOCRATIC TENSION IN THE BOTTOM-UP GOVERNANCE OF ALGORITHMS
Authors: Cotter Kelley
Published: February 2025

The governance of platform algorithms presents a critical challenge as these technologies increasingly pose threats to privacy, agency, fairness, and equity, often reenacting and mediating existing power systems. Traditional governance models, primarily top-down approaches led by policymakers and private corporations, are essential yet insufficient. This paper argues for the incorporation of "bottom-up governance," focusing on the "epistemic-democratic tension" (Krick, 2022) between inclusive participation and expertise-based decision-making. I argue that to ensure that algorithms function fairly and justly for all, bottom-up governance requires involving and taking seriously “lay” experts. Bottom-up governance extends beyond merely soliciting input from citizens on algorithms; it necessitates recognizing the authority of non-technical knowers and privileging subjugated standpoints.
WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND IT: BRAZILIAN USERS’ ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES OF SPOTIFY WRAPPED
Authors: Dalpizol Valiati Vanessa Amália , Lupinacci Ludmila , Bonow Soares Felipe
Published: February 2025

‘Spotify Wrapped’ is a promotional initiative offered by the music platform consisting of a summary of each user’s yearly listening habits. Although Spotify is generally classified as a streaming service, initiatives such as Wrapped have a clear component of sociability (Hagen & Lüders 2017) – in this case, not only because they are based on the harvesting of users’ behavioural data but also because they are created to be shared on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter/X. Indeed, Spotify Wrapped has acquired its own role in digital popular culture, inciting anticipation and excitement from users worldwide and becoming an 'algorithmic event' (Annabell & Vindum Rasmussen 2023) in and of itself. In this paper, we propose to scrutinise how this algorithmic event is perceived and understood by Brazilian users, whilst also identifying and unpacking the platform affordances and algorithmic imaginaries (Bucher, 2017) that inform those interpretations and their associated performances of taste and identity (Airoldi, 2019, Prey, 2018). We explore in particular how users negotiate the tensions between algorithmic personalisation and individuation and the possibilities for shared experience to emerge during this event. Through a mixed-method approach, we argue that the 'eventness' (Frosh and Pinchevski, 2018) of Spotify Wrapped is distributed, clustered but sparsely connected, and marked by fleeting, fluid and ephemeral feelings of shared experience and recognition rather than by enduring communities, which in turn reflects and extends previous theorisations of affective publics (Papacharissi, 2014) and social media liveness (Lupinacci, 2021)
PERFORMING PREVIVORSHIP ONLINE: EXAMINING IDENTITY MANAGEMENT ON TIKTOK
Authors: Ditchfield Hannah , Vicari Stefania
Published: February 2025

Research exploring identity performance on Tiktok has highlighted a departure from older self-making frameworks - such as the networked self- and a move towards a more ‘algorithmized’ version of self-making online. This departure takes us from a framework that emphasises performance in the Goffmanian sense to a model that emphasises the role of the algorithm in shaping our identity practices. Social media platforms, though, have been established as important spaces for the performance health and illness identities. With this in mind, this paper asks whether and how illness performances occur on Tiktok and further explores the extent to which we are departing from more traditional self-making practices.

To do this, we draw on findings from an ongoing Leverhulme Trust-funded project focused on social media uses relevant to hereditary cancer syndromes. These syndromes mark health conditions linked to known genetic mutations, also called “cancer genes”, that heighten the risk of having cancer from an early age. Carriers of these genetic mutations are often referred to as ‘previvors’: healthy individuals who are coping with the awareness of having a genetic predisposition to cancer. We used computational techniques to access posts about two hereditary cancer syndromes: BRCA 1/2 and Lynch Syndrome published on TikTok followed by a qualitative content analysis. From this, our initial findings show how strong elements of older identity frameworks remain present in content produced by previvors on TikTok with previvors identity performances remaining very much networked, interactive and connected to specific communities.
BETWEEN THE (LIVE) STREAM: CONFIGURATIONS OF/FOR EMBODIMENT, TECHNICITY AND VICARIOUS SPACES
Authors: Durham Charlotte
Published: February 2025

Drawing on iterative, empirical work that investigates the conditions of an everyday hypermediated environment, this paper focuses on experiences of livestreaming from the Disney Parks in order to think about the embodied and the technological in relation to the limits of mobility within this configuration of space(s). Central to the issues I am taking up here is an idea of space which is doubly lived: first, as a physical, tangible space (in thinking about live streamers in the Disney Parks), and second, as a virtual space (such as Internet streaming sites such as YouTube, for example). As such, I am arguing that we can think about these spaces as a vicarious space in which vicarity is underpinned by a sense of mobility and an investment in the embodied. Vicarious space is implicitly configured through the technological in relation to video-sharing platforms and within social, cultural, political, and economic structures and systems which are – ultimately – everyday and mundane. These ideas come to be framed by an overwhelming sense of industry that is threaded through enmeshed within neo-liberal political structures. Yet industry is not often seen here, and instead, these practices and experiences relating to live streaming are understood as centrally relating to pleasure and affect. What I am asking here then is how is vicarity imagined in terms of embodied subjectivity and agency? And how should we understand this in terms of the Internet and opportunities for connectivity?
INDUSTRY INFLUENCE ON CONTENT MODERATION REGULATION: TENSIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS
Authors: Farries Elizabeth Erin , Siapera Eugenia
Published: February 2025

As the EU Digital Services Act increasingly involves civil society organisations (CSOs) in the context of the development and application of its Code of Conduct, CSOs’ role in moderation policies requires further scrutiny. Theoretically, this paper seeks to contribute to platform governance as a complex multi-stakeholder dynamic process with unresolved tensions between different policy actors and their interests. At the European level, we can schematically understand this process to involve a triangle with three sets of actors: EU policy makers, platforms, and CSOs. We see platform governance as a terrain of struggle where no actor can unilaterally impose their will, but where power is exercised asymmetrically. Since CSOs are called upon to represent the interests of their constituencies and especially those communities that are vulnerabilised through harmful contents and current platform content policies, it is important to examine their role in the emerging EU content regulatory field more closely. In particular, this paper poses the following research questions: How do CSOs determine their policies vis-a-vis platforms? How independent are they from platforms and to what extent do they align their views with those of platforms? Empirically, the paper draws on participant ethnographic research in a leading CSO alongside in depth interviews with key informants and document analysis. The findings indicate that notwithstanding the aspirational role of CSOs in upholding fundamental rights and the rights of their constituencies, there are few safeguards against platform influence. This may end up compromising the crucial role that CSOs play in platform governance.
FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL: A STUDY OF OFFLINE-FIRST COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
Authors: Elfen Z
Published: February 2025

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the move from global to local, in relation to FLOSS software projects and their implementation in local communities. The need stems from a gradual ecological collapse which brings about unforeseeable consequences to human civilization and infrastructures. By investigating the process of global development to local infrastructure, more resilient and localized communication solutions can be implemented.

Findings

This paper aims to find the challenges in moving from global software development to a local implementation of open source infrastructure by mapping out the issues offline-first protocols face in reaching a stage of local implementation of their development and the issues communities face in implementing their own communication infrastructures. These findings can support the steps of moving from global software development projects to locally implemented infrastructures.

Method

The method is based on semi-structured interviews with four communities and four protocols with a minimum of 2 interviews with each project and community. At the end of the project an online workshop is hosted enabling collective reflection for the communities and projects, and potential knowledge sharing.

Originality

The research of moving from global to local is extensively explored through the scaling and commercialization of software. By flipping the approach around and looking at global software developments implementation in local communities this paper delves into a relatively unexplored, and necessary, area of research. The research also supports the active implementation of FLOSS projects for real communities striving towards data-sovereignty and local infrastructures.
AMBIVALENT AFFECTIVE LABOUR, DATAFICATION OF QING AND DANMEI WRITERS IN THE CULTURAL INDUSTRY
Authors: Ge Liang
Published: February 2025

Danmei 耽美 culture, which features male-male romance and/or erotica, emerged in mainland China in the late 1990s and has been flourishing since the 2010s across East and Southeast Asia. The dynamic Chinese danmei culture has received significant attention in academia in recent years, either by mapping out the resistant potential against the heteronormativity or by highlighting the escapist route for expressing the women participants’ desires. The danmei culture has evolved into a transmedia landscape, and at the same time, an ever-expanding cultural industry being exploited by the logic of capital. Danmei writers as affective labors living in such a cultural industry have been rarely considered in present danmei studies.

Through exploring the datafication of qing (情, affects and desires) via in-depth interviews with contracted danmei writers on Jinjiang, I examine the distinct feature of danmei writers as ambivalent affective labor. For danmei writers, the datafication and monetization of qing leads to increasingly formulaic writing. By selecting, appropriating and combing the elements in the database of qing, danmei writers are able to swiftly generate a male homoerotic love story that efficiently and effectively invoke the affects and desires of readers for better monetization. Pleasures and pains are both involved in doing the ambivalent affective labor, which further consolidates the precariousness of the affective labour. However, the affects and desires per se cannot be fully manipulated – transformative momentum is embedded in the water-like qing all the time.
BIG TECH SOVEREIGNTY: PLATFORMS AND DISCOURSE OF SOVEREIGNTY-AS-A-SERVICE
Authors: Grohmann Rafael , Barbosa, Alexandre Costa
Published: February 2025

The notion of digital sovereignty has been mobilized by various stakeholders as a response to platform power. In the last decades, the concept of sovereignty has been applied mainly to State responses to exert power over other sectors and organizations. Therefore, the meanings of digital sovereignty have also been used and disputed by social movements, workers and indigenous communities. But the platform companies also entered into disputes about the meanings of this multifaceted notion. As an update of Californian Ideology, platform companies modulate their discourse to say that they are also concerned with issues of sovereignty. Thus, they are reappropriating the meanings of sovereignty through the launch of programs focused on sovereignty. We named this "Big Tech sovereignty", a provocation to mean how platforms have changed the meanings of sovereignty based on their own interests, such as the renewal of discourses in the context of "Silicon Valley dystopianism". Built on analyzes of sovereignty programs of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet/Google, this article argues that "Big Tech sovereignty" is a way of trying to deflate the concept politically, giving it only a commercial and/or personal framework, being more of an expression of the platform power. Through the analysis of these “digital sovereignty” programs, the article demonstrates how companies framed “sovereignty-as-a-service”, especially in terms of digital infrastructures.
FROM BLACK TO WHITE: DISSECTING PROPGAGNDA IN NUCLEAR EMERGENCIES, FINDING AI-ENABLED DISINFORMATION
Authors: Han Seungtae , Kuerbis Brenden
Published: February 2025

Our research delves into the impact of disinformation in emergencies (DiE), specifically within the context of nuclear emergency responses, and the dynamics of the political economy behind it. Key questions guiding our investigation include suitable assessment techniques for DiE detection and evaluation and effective governance responses.

Our research employs established communications theories of propaganda, emphasizing propaganda analysis as a tool for understanding DiE and developing institutional responses. We examine two nuclear emergency cases—the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) disaster and the occupation of the Zaporozhzhian Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine—to uncover the disruptive impact of disinformation on emergency communication.

Through the categorization of propaganda into black, gray, and white types, we analyze tactics employed in DiE, shedding light on strategic intent, transparency, and veracity. Case studies reveal instances of false narratives propagated by governments and media channels, influencing public perception and exacerbating tensions. While our study has not observed significant AI-enabled DiE, we highlight its use in DiE identification. However, state-led counter-disinformation initiatives face challenges, including jurisdictional issues and calls to protect free expression.

We posit the necessity of non-state-led networked governance structures, drawing parallels with successful cybersecurity governance models. These frameworks, informed by interdisciplinary insights and operating independently from states, are primed to address the multifaceted challenges posed by DiE. Addressing participatory, structural, and operational impediments within existing content moderation governance mechanisms emerges as a pivotal imperative for the realization of effective strategies.
SCREENSHOT METHODOLOGIES TO COLLECT AND ANALYSE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM ADVERTISING
Authors: Hayden Lauren , Carah Nicholas , Robards Brady , Dobson Amy
Published: February 2025

This paper presents three projects where we have developed participatory digital research methods designed to extend observability of digital advertising on social media platforms and engage with users’ individual experiences with digital advertising. In each approach, participants collected instances of digital advertising from social media apps by taking screenshots or using a screen-capture mobile app. Participants also assumed active roles in the interpretation and analysis of the collected ads through dialogue with research teams in the form of SMS chats, surveys and interviews. We then critically reflect on the politics and ethics of participatory screen capture as a method that emerges as a response to ‘platform opaqueness’. Because of the lack of platform transparency, one of the only reliable ways for researchers to study advertising in these spaces is to work directly with users to capture what they see. In our projects, the practice of screenshotting facilitated scaffolded consent as participants chose the images to send and discuss with researchers. These approaches also position participants as experts on their own experience with and theories of algorithmic, digital platform advertising. We conclude by considering the significance of collected data: collections of ads that illustrate the relationships between users and digital advertising models. The ads targeted to individual users reflect platform ad models’ attempts to respond and pre-empt user engagement, and in the process, construct digital subjectivities. By co-analysing digital advertising with users, we observe the ways social media platform users and algorithmic advertising models continuously enact and react to each other.
AFFECTIVE TEMPORALITIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA: WORLD YOUTH DAY 2023
Authors: Jorge Ana , Kubrusly Ana
Published: February 2025

Post-secular pilgrimage is increasingly popular, affording communitas (Maddrell & della Dora, 2013) as well as collective effervescence (Serazio, 2013) to pilgrims. Pilgrimage can be augmented by digital media (Maddrell & della Dora, 2013), but pilgrims usually limit their access to habitual devices, people, and digital services during their pilgrimage (Jorge, 2023). This paper focuses on the case of the World Youth Day 2023, hosted in Lisbon, and seeks to explore the role of digital and social media in sustaining pilgrim communities as atmospheres developed through time flows (Hitchen, 2021). To such end, we use the notion of affective temporalities (Nikunen, 2023). We performed a content, multimodal analysis (Bouvier & Rasmussen, 2022) on the material gathered through searching Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Giphy, and maps and apps related to the event.

While Facebook groups allowed for coordination and peer support and advice, TikTok and Instagram afforded gains of visibility through hashtags. Giphy appears as a repository of humorous content from both official and vernacular cultures. As for apps and maps, they seemed to be more focused in the present, as they were helpful tools to navigate and manage the logistics of the event, but did not take on a collaborative mode. Anticipation, coordination and rememorating were shared affective temporalities shared by pilgrims through social media, through which communitas, effervescence and longing were processed.
FOLLOWING LENIN AND STALIN THROUGH INSTAGRAM: VARIETIES OF DISSIMULATIVE PLAY IN LEFT-REVOLUTIONARY MEMES
Authors: Knuutila Aleksi , Arjoranta Jonne
Published: February 2025

Politigram (also Theorygram) is a loose subculture of pseudonymous meme accounts on Instagram, focused on debating political ideologies and theories using memes. Politigram’s memes often feature political positions that are either idiosyncratic (e.g. “Feminist-Monarcho-Primitivism”) or outside the so-called Overton window of publicly acceptable political ideologies (such as Leninism or Stalinism). While a growing amount of research addresses how online spaces such as 4chan produce and popularise memes featuring far-right ideology, memes that depict left-revolutionary themes are relatively understudied. Since some authors have begun to view anonymous or pseudonymous online spaces as inherently problematic, understanding the variety of practices and content in online spaces that focus on fringe politics is important. Our analysis follows memes that feature Lenin and Stalin through a large number of Instagram accounts posting memes. We concentrate on Lenin and Stalin because they represent fringe ideologies that remain indirectly relevant in contemporary political discourse. With a visual dataset from 45,000 accounts from 2021, we study the thematic variations, boundary work and political positioning performed by Lenin and Stalin memes. We describe how requirements of theoretical literacy, militancy as a communicative value and parody of conceptions of communism drive the discussion of fringe political positions on Politigram. We conclude by contrasting memetic logics in this context with established accounts of “dissimulative identity play” in anonymous online spaces.
FROM IA_ARCHIVER TO OPENAI: THE PASTS AND FUTURES OF AUTOMATED DATA SCRAPERS
Authors: Mackinnon Katherine , Maemura Emily
Published: February 2025

Data scraping practices have recently come under scrutiny, as datasets scraped from the web’s social spaces are the basis of new generative AI tools like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. These practices of scrapers and crawlers are based on the conception of the internet as a mountain of data that’s sitting, waiting, available to be acted upon, extracted and put to use. In this paper, we examine the robots.txt exclusion protocol which has been used to govern the behavior of crawlers and is often taken as a proxy for consent in widespread data scraping and web archiving. By addressing the underlying assumptions of the protocol, we aim to counter a recent narrative that “the basic social contract of the web is falling apart” (Pierce, 2024), and instead argue that data extractive infrastructures have always been at work over the past 30 years of the web. Positioning this work within the field of critical data studies, we aim to find new ways for web archives and modes of collection to become unbound from the “capitalist logics of data extraction” upon which they’re currently built (Theilen et al., 2021).
BREADWINNER OR BREADMAKER: CONTRADICTIONS IN TRADWIVES' CREATOR LABOR, RELIGIOUS VERNACULAR, AND AESTHETICS
Authors: Muenster Roxana Mika , Foster Margaret E.
Published: February 2025

First emerging around 2015, tradwives represent a nostalgic yearning for a mythic past and white supremacist utopia. Yet, in recent years, tradwife creators have received increased mainstream attention and notoriety for their display of “traditional” gender roles, 1950s aesthetics, and open anti-feminism. This online prominence has led some of them, paradoxically, to emerge as the breadwinner in their family–a development that seems at odds with their professed belief that women should eschew careers in favor of childrearing and homemaking. In this in-progress, mixed-methods project, we aim to understand the tensions between the traditional gender roles tradwives advocate for and the entrepreneurial nature of their online promotion and monetization of said lifestyle. We conducted a computational text analysis of 25 English-language creators’ websites, as well as a qualitative analysis of the creators’ Instagram Story highlights. Our emerging findings show that tradwives’ solution to the tension between their professed ideology and their entrepreneurial activities lies in the obfuscation thereof: Neither housework nor creator labor are discussed as work. Explicit political discussions remain similarly unspoken, except for occasional expressions of opposition to feminism and reproductive rights. Religion, however, features prominently. The obfuscation of labor and absence of explicit politics represents a strategic move towards palatability that allows the current iteration of the tradwife to find greater mainstream appeal than earlier tradwives. Our results suggest that the tradwife is a particular influencer style or vernacular around a coherent ideological theme, thus emerging as a metapolitical branding strategy.
TRANSIENT-PLATFORM PARADIGMS: NARRATIVES OF BLOCKCHAIN EXPERIMENTS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
Authors: Nagappa Ashwin
Published: February 2025

This paper develops the concept of transient-platform paradigm by closely examining a blockchain technology experiment for a social media platform. To do so, this paper presents partial findings from the platform biography (doctoral thesis) (Burgess & Baym, 2020) of one such BSM, DTube. DTube aspired to provide a fair and transparent alternative creator economy built without the foundations of an advertising revenue model (unlike YouTube). It relied on the critical affordance tokenization or cryptocurrency to overcome the economic challenges. The research was conducted in three phases and followed various ethnographic methods. This research is motivated to articulate the emergent "structures of feeling" or the "social experience which is still in process" (Williams, 1977, p. 132). It aims to comprehend the imaginaries of a future Internet / Web that experiments like DTube are trying to articulate.

DTube represented an emergent system since it introduced "new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships" (p. 123) in a social media system. The discourse of rewarding social interactions was a definitive characteristic in this emergent culture's new meanings and practices. In the process, it shaped a new paradigm that this paper calls a 'transient-platform paradigm', where dispersed initiatives attempt to recreate social media platforms for users by the users.
DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER DNA PLATFORMS & DIGITAL DISPLAYS OF FAMILY
Authors: Newton Giselle
Published: February 2025

The family genealogy industry has seen exponential growth in recent years, in large part due to the rise of direct-to-consumer DNA testing platforms. To some extent, ancestry-oriented DNA platforms function like other social media networks, connecting users in intimate publics. Yet they differ in that rather than ordering users by social relationships such as friendship, individuals are displayed according to how many centimorgans they share. In recent years, digital researchers have extended the sociological concept of ‘family display’ to consider digital displays of family. Yet limited work has considered how DNA platforms may constitute digital displays of family or how DNA data shape the bio-digital identities for affected communities who have limited avenues to familial information. In this presentation, I draw on data from the first empirical study to capture the Australian direct-to-consumer DNA users’ experiences, combining accounts from genealogy enthusiasts with accounts from those affected by adoption and donor conception. Reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews (n=23) derived two key themes: (1) DNA displays of family - how users are connected and ordered on the DNA platform, and (2) Defining the bio-digital self - how identity is shaped by DNA data. This work firstly contributes to understanding digital displays of family, specifically how DNA platforms shape understandings and practices of family. Secondly, this work provides insights into how DNA data (like other biometric data) shape individual identities in complex ways.
UNVEILING TIKTOK'S SHADOW: A TYPOLOGY OF WHITE NATIONALIST NARRATIVES AS EUDAIMONIC ENTERTAINMENT
Authors: Niemann-Lenz Julia , Kleinen-von Königslöw Katharina , Kantenwein Leia , Oelschlägel Leonie , Scherf Hannah
Published: February 2025

In today's social media-dominated landscape, identifying the manifestation of white nationalism on platforms such as TikTok is essential to understanding the spread of extremist content. This research examines the interplay between content and form in TikTok videos, revealing how creators exploit platform-specific features to propagate white nationalist narratives. Rooted in the Identity Approach, which encompasses Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory, the study elucidates how individuals, particularly on social media, define themselves within interchangeable group memberships, giving rise to in-group/out-group distinctions. Applying this framework to digital platforms highlights the role of content in signaling group membership and shaping collective identity.

By analyzing white nationalist content on TikTok through qualitative content analysis (n = 75), the study identifies seven types, including nationalist militarism, traditionalism, AfD edit, stylized political speech/news video, infographic/documentation, demo footage and patriotic self-presentation. Each type uses different strategies, from glorifying militarism to repackaging political figures for TikTok. The typology sheds light on extremists' strategies for narrative dissemination on TikTok, and offers insights for platform moderation and interventions to mitigate the spread of extremist content. In addition, the study examines the emotional appeal and recruitment strategies embedded in extremist narratives and explores the influence of eudaimonic entertainment. Methodological challenges, ethical considerations, and barriers to research, are discussed, providing valuable insights for future research on online extremism.
PLATFORMIZATION OF THE INDUSTRY OF HUMAN SMUGGLING
Authors: Nikunen Kaarina , Valtonen Sanna
Published: February 2025

Due to hardened border practices in EU, migrants and asylum seekers seeking refuge in Europe have to rely on various smuggling services shared on social media platforms and entrepreneurs who advertise services online. Our paper explores the emergence of this dark industry of mobility that operates on social media platforms. Based on interviews with migrants and refugees in Finland, the paper maps digital sites of smuggling and explore the ways in which the migrants, in their highly precarious situation, engaged with smuggling and dealt with the challenges they faced. The aim is to gain a more nuanced understanding of the complications of digital markets around mobility for the people concerned, and most importantly offer insight into the ways in which platform economy shapes migrant mobility and safety of migrants. Moreover we discuss how both platformization and European migration policies are intrinsically connected with the emergence of these markets.
“WANT BOYFRIEND ❌❌❌”: PORN BOTS, AUTHENTICITY AND SOCIAL AUTOMATION ON INSTAGRAM
Authors: Pilipets Elena , Caldeira Sofia , Flores Ana Marta M.
Published: February 2025

Whenever a celebrity posts a photo on Instagram, it is almost inevitable that the first comment on it will be made by a porn bot (Alvarez 2020). Observations of this kind – some focusing on the distorted perception of ‘sexiness’ and social media authenticity (Thing 2020; Salim 2023), others contesting Instagram’s community guidelines prohibiting both nudity and automation (Santos 2023) – have been ubiquitous in online tech reports for years. In academic discussions, scholars usually define porn bots as automated or semi-automated software agents that operate via sexual solicitation to capture attention (Narrang 2019). Twitter porn bots using Not Safe for Work (NSFW) hashtags to advertise commercial links have been addressed in their generic patterns (Paasonen, Jarrett, and Light 2019). Tumblr porn bots have generated significant controversy due to their uninterrupted operation during the platform’s so-called ‘porn ban’ (Pilipets and Paasonen 2020). Within Instagram, as we will show, porn bots continuously intervene in a network of relationships that users forge with the platform, avoiding detection through a range of circumvention tactics. In all these instances, porn bots operate as medium-specific, heterosexually scripted ‘personas’ (Bucher 2014), demonstrating remarkable adaptability to the platforms’ current cultures of use.