bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Size-resolved particle number emissions in Beijing determined from measured particle size distributions
Authors: Kontkanen Jenni , Deng Chenjuan , Fu Yueyun , Dada Lubna , Zhou Ying , Cai Jing , Daellenbach Kaspar R. , Hakala Simo , Kokkonen Tom V. , Lin Zhuohui , Liu Yongchun , Wang Yonghong , Yan Chao , Petäjä Tuukka , Jiang Jingkun , Kulmala Markku , Paasonen Pauli
Published: October 2020

Abstract. The climate and air quality effects of aerosol particles
depend on the number and size of the particles. In urban
environments, a large fraction of aerosol particles originates from
anthropogenic emissions. To evaluate the effects of different pollution
sources on air quality, knowledge of size distributions of particle number
emissions is needed. Here we introduce a novel method for determining
size-resolved particle number emissions, based on measured particle size
distributions. We apply our method to data measured in Beijing, China, to
determine the number size distribution of emitted particles in a diameter
range from 2 to 1000 nm. The observed particle number emissions are
dominated by emissions of particles smaller than 30 nm. Our results suggest
that traffic is the major source of particle number emissions with the
highest emissions observed for particles around 10 nm during rush hours. At
sizes below 6 nm, clustering of atmospheric vapors contributes to calculated
emissions. The comparison between our calculated emissions and those
estimated with an integrated assessment model GAINS (Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies) shows that our method
yields clearly higher particle emissions at sizes below 60 nm, but at sizes
above that the two methods agree well. Overall, our method is proven to be a
useful tool for gaining new knowledge of the size distributions of particle
number emissions in urban environments and for validating emission
inventories and models. In the future, the method will be developed by
modeling the transport of particles from different sources to obtain more
accurate estimates of particle number emissions.
Comparing forecast systems with multiple correlation decomposition based on partial correlation
Authors: Glowienka-Hense Rita , Hense Andreas , Brune Sebastian , Baehr Johanna
Published: October 2020

Abstract. The multiple correlation and/or regression information that two competing forecast systems have on the same observations is decomposed into four components, adapting the method of multivariate information decomposition of Williams and Beer (2010), Wibral et al. (2015), and Lizier et al. (2018). Their concept is to divide source information about a target into total, (target) redundant or shared, and unique information from each source. It is applied here to the comparison of forecast systems using classic regression. Additionally, non-target redundant or shared information is newly defined that resumes the redundant information of the forecasts which is not observed. This provides views that go beyond classic correlation differences. These five terms share the same units and can be directly compared to put prediction results into perspective. The redundance terms in particular provide a new view. All components are given as maps of explained variance on the observations and for the non-target redundance on the models, respectively. Exerting this concept to lagged damped persistence is shown to be related to directed information entropy. To emphasize the benefit of the toolkit on all timescales, two analysis examples are provided. Firstly, two forecast systems of the German decadal prediction system of “Mittelfristige Klimaprognose”, namely the pre-operational version and a special version using ensemble Kalman filter for the ocean initialization, are compared. The analyses reveal the clear added value of the latter and provide an as yet unseen map of their non-target redundance. Secondly, 4 d lead forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are compared to a simple autoregressive and/or damped persistence model. The analysis of the information partition on this timescale shows that interannual changes in damped persistence, seen as target redundance changes between forecasts and damped persistence models, are balanced by associated changes in the added value of the dynamic forecasts in the extratropics but not in the tropics.
Challenges in flood modeling over data-scarce regions: how to exploit globally available soil moisture products to estimate antecedent soil wetness conditions in Morocco
Authors: El Khalki El Mahdi , Tramblay Yves , Massari Christian , Brocca Luca , Simonneaux Vincent , Gascoin Simon , Saidi Mohamed El Mehdi
Published: October 2020

Abstract. The Mediterranean region is characterized by intense
rainfall events giving rise to devastating floods. In Maghreb countries such
as Morocco, there is a strong need for forecasting systems to reduce the
impacts of floods. The development of such a system in the case of ungauged
catchments is complicated, but remote-sensing products could overcome the
lack of in situ measurements. The soil moisture content can strongly
modulate the magnitude of flood events and consequently is a crucial
parameter to take into account for flood modeling. In this study, different
soil moisture products (European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative, ESA-CCI; Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity, SMOS; Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique and Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, SMOS-IC; Advanced Scatterometer, ASCAT; and
ERA5 reanalysis) are compared to in situ measurements and one continuous
soil-moisture-accounting (SMA) model for basins located in the High Atlas
Mountains, upstream of the city of Marrakech. The results show that the
SMOS-IC satellite product and the ERA5 reanalysis are best correlated with
observed soil moisture and with the SMA model outputs. The different soil
moisture datasets were also compared to estimate the initial soil moisture
condition for an event-based hydrological model based on the Soil
Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN). The ASCAT, SMOS-IC, and ERA5
products performed equally well in validation to simulate floods,
outperforming daily in situ soil moisture measurements that may not be
representative of the whole catchment soil moisture conditions. The results
also indicated that the daily time step may not fully represent the
saturation state before a flood event due to the rapid decay of soil
moisture after rainfall in these semiarid environments. Indeed, at the
hourly time step, ERA5 and in situ measurements were found to better
represent the initial soil moisture conditions of the SCS-CN model by
comparison with the daily time step. The results of this work could be used
to implement efficient flood modeling and forecasting systems in semiarid
regions where soil moisture measurements are lacking.
Integrated land use and transportation modelling and planning: A South African journey
Authors: Waldeck Louis , Holloway Jenny , Van Heerden Quintin
Published: October 2020

Confronted by poverty, income disparities and mounting demands for basic services such as clean water, sanitation and health care, urban planners in developing countries like South Africa, face daunting challenges. This paper explores the role of Integrated land use and  transportation modelling in metropolitan planning processes aimed at improving the spatial efficiency of urban form and ensuring that public sector investments in social and economic infrastructure contribute to economic growth and the reduction of persistent poverty and inequality. The value of such models is not in accurately predicting the future but in providing participants in the (often adversarial) planning process with a better understanding of cause and effect between different components of the urban system and in discovering common ground that could lead to compromise. This paper describes how an Urban Simulation Model was developed by adapting one of the leading microsimulation models (UrbanSim) originating from the developed world to South African conditions and how the requirements for microscopic data about the base year of a simulation were satisfied in a sparse data environment by introducing various typologies. A sample of results from three case studies in the cities of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay between 2013 and 2017 are then presented to illustrate how modelling supports the planning process by adding elements of rational analysis and hypothesis testing to the evaluation of proposed policies.
MEDIATING PRECARITY THROUGH MOBILE APPS
Authors: Glover-Rijkse Ragan , Stone Melissa , Fletcher Megan Alyssa , Eapen Gayas
Published: October 2020

This panel analyzes the use of mobile apps to mediate experiences of precarity—that is threats to life and livelihood itself. While we acknowledge that mobile apps offer opportunities to form networks of resistance, many apps also pose substantial risks to users. To begin to articulate these risks, the presentations in this panel consider case studies of several apps targeted at mediating experiences of precarity. First, we offer an analysis of “safety-oriented mobility” apps, which help users to avoid location-specific instances of harassment and violence. This presentation argues that that these apps can reinforce harmful homogeneity in spaces, enable surveillance of marginalized populations, and provide a false sense of security to users. Following this, we examine apps that have responded to intimate partner violence. In this presentation, we suggest that these mobile apps do very little to protect their users from harm and, instead, provide a short-term distraction from underlying issues. Finally, we look to LBGTQ+ apps aimed at finding romantic partners or coordinating sexual encounters through location sharing. In this presentation, we suggest that these apps pose risks of unwanted exposure and discrimination, particularly due to an uptick in data breaches and leaks. We conclude this panel by offering a collective statement that argues for systemic intervention addressing the inequalities within society but, until that time comes, we argue for measures that secure these mobile apps (and the data contained therein) and protect their users.
TRANSCODING BETWEEN HYPER-ANTAGONISTIC MILIEUS: STUDIES ON THE CROSS-PLATFORM RELATIONS BETWEEN RADICAL POLITICAL WEB SUBCULTURES
Authors: Hagen Sal , Tuters Marc , Peeters Stijn , De Keulenaar Emillie , Wilson Jack , Willaert Tom
Published: October 2020

This panel brings together research into the cross-platform relations between radical Web subcultures and how they are constitutive of “hyper-antagonistic” politics in broader Web discourses. The papers share a concern with vernacular practices of “fringe” platforms favoured by an insurgent far-right movement and their relations to more “mainstream” social media. They engage with the concept of “transcoding between milieus” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 322) as a means to empirically describe multiple transversal processes across different strata of the Web in which “one milieu serves as the basis for another” (313). All papers ground their conceptual analysis in data-driven empirical approaches using historical datasets ranging from “mainstream” platforms like YouTube, to more “fringe” spaces like 4chan. The papers furthermore all use 4chan’s far-right /pol/ board as a reference point for a vernacular “hyper-antagonistic” style that emerged out of this period – a style that has often been related to the “alt-right”. Together, the four papers in this panel offer insights into the apparent insurgency of far-right subcultures within broader online discourse in the Anglo-American context over the course of the last half decade. Each does so with a particular focus, ranging from subcultural conflict between Tumblr and 4chan, the transcoding of the “Kekistan” meme between 4chan and YouTube, the emergence of far-right vernacular in the comments of Breitbart News, and the robustness of hyper-antagonistic discourse after deplatforming measures.
SOCIALIZING THE NETWORKED INDIVIDUAL
Authors: Hartmann Maren , Jimenez Carlos , Coates Jamie , Norum Roger
Published: October 2020

This panel adds the question of emerging and changing socialities to the broader nexus of mobilities and mobile communication studies, using the emerging concept of "mobilie socialities." "Mobile socialities" demarcates a new constellation of media scholarship that seeks to encapsulate human subjectivities of media as they are embedded in human processes, structures and experiences of mobility and sociality. The concept speaks to and critically builds upon notions of ‘networked individualism’ (Rainie & Wellman, 2012), ‘network sociality’ (Wittel 2001) and ‘mediated mobilism’ (Hartmann 2013) to conceptualize productive ways of studying the social lives inherent in digitally mediated structures, subjectivities and practices of mobility. The four ethnographic papers on this panel develop this emerging concept through important topics including migration, experience, temporality, and precarity. In addressing the phenomena of people on the move and the role (or not) of mobile media in everyday instances of mobility and sociality, this panel contributes to a broader understanding of differing types of ‘mobile figures’ in networked times.
IN THE SHADOWS OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY: THE GHOST WORK OF INFRASTRUCTURAL LABOR
Authors: Kaun Anne , Velkova Julia , Laaksonen Salla-Maaria , Delfanti Alessandro , Logsdon Alexis , Stiernstedt Fredrik , Lehtiniemi Tuukka , Ruckenstein Minna
Published: October 2020

What does digital piecework have in common with laboring in the warehouse of a large online shopping platform? How is data cleaning related to digitization work and AI training in prisons? This panel suggests bringing these diverse ways of laboring in the digital economies together by considering these practices as infrastructural labor that takes the shape of shadow work (Illich, 1981) and ghost labor (Gray & Suri, 2019). Work and labor in modern, capitalist society imply power, authority and possibility for resistance, and these dimensions are crucial for understanding why and how infrastructures are realized and how they work. Infrastructure labor is ambiguous. It is both visible and invisible depending on the specific tasks and their inherent power relations (Leigh Star & Strauss, 1999). It includes both manual and cognitive labor. It is geared towards innovation as well as repair, maintenance and servitude. The panel aims to paint the contours of infrastructural labor at the margins of digital economies pointing towards forms of alienation and resistance that have for long been part of labor relations, but that are renegotiated in the context of emerging technologies within digital economies that need human labor to be sustained and further innovated.
ALGORITHMIC PRODUCTION BEYOND SILICON VALLEY
Authors: Kotliar Dan M , Ribak Rivka , Ahmed Shazeda , Roberge Jonathan , Senneville Marius
Published: October 2020

The last years have seen a proliferation of research on the social ramifications of algorithms (Eubanks 2018; Noble 2018) and the power of algorithms was insightfully theorized (Gillespie 2016; Bucher 2018). At the same time, scholars have begun to examine the ties between algorithms and culture (Seaver 2017), describing algorithms as products of complex socio-algorithmic assemblages (Gillespie 2016, 24), with often very local socio-technical histories (Kitchin 2017). However, the spatial trajectories through which algorithms operate, and the specific sociocultural contexts in which they arise have been largely overlooked. Accordingly, research tends to focus on American companies and on the effects their algorithms have on Euro-American users, while, in fact, algorithms are being developed in various geographical locations, and they are being used in diverse socio-cultural contexts. That is, research on algorithms tends to disregard the heterogeneous contexts from which algorithms arise and the effects various cultural settings have on the production of algorithmic systems. This panel aims to fill these gaps by offering four empirical perspectives on algorithmic production in three prominent tech centers: China, Canada, and Israel. We will ask: How do cross-cultural encounters construct notions of privacy? How is algorithmic discrimination understood and acted upon in China? What symbolical and material resources were invested in making Canada’s AI hubs? And how Israeli tech companies use their algorithms to profile their Other? Hence, this panel offers to think beyond the Silicon Valley paradigm, and to aim towards a more diverse, culturally-sensitive approach to the study algorithms.
RESCRIPTING FAILURE: THE REFLEXIVE STORIES THAT FIELDWORK TELLS
Authors: Lammes Sybille , Hjorth Larissa , Richardson Ingrid , Jungnickel Kat , Hickey-Moody Anna
Published: October 2020

Researching everyday media practices is a messy and tricky business fraught with uncertainty. In this panel the authors ask how stories of failure, especially during fieldwork, can be rethought as a meaningful emergent method and approach. How can we productively reframe failure as a core part of the research process that cannot be subsumed into the telos of a success story after the research has been completed? How does does failure work in research? Our approach takes a different stance from dominant stories in the tech industry and geek economy, where failure is often represented in linear, heroic, gendered and individualistic ways, retrospectively rendering mess as instrumental to success. Similarly, within academia there are many research processes in which failure is instrumentalised or obscured—from writing up fieldwork into neatly packaged case-studies, to causal accounts of effective intervention. Progress narratives of knowledge production have been subject to much debate and criticism. What has been less discussed is how failures work as sometimes uncontainable aspects of research praxes—how they are endemic to the process of data collection and analysis, materializing while in the field. In this panel we suggest that these experiences are core to the thickness of fieldwork—they disclose the messiness and dynamics of the social, and should be included in the stories we tell. This panel aims to liberate discussion about failure to render it visible and core to understanding the politics and ethics of fieldwork and the research process. Through a series of stories from our fieldwork, we seek to further critical understanding of methodologies and techniques of failure, and argue for our obligations as researchers to talk about what happens when things go wrong.
DIGITAL CULTURES OF CARE, SAFETY AND WELLBEING
Authors: McCosker Anthony , Maddox Alexia , Albury Kath , Dietzel Christopher , Barratt Monica
Published: October 2020

Practices of self-care and social support have long been identified across social media platforms and apps, as people find new ways of using and adapting digital technologies to mediate and address personal and public health issues. But digital health participation is considerably contested and unevenly experienced, whether through the commodified ‘platformization’ of the health sector, or in the potentially ‘unhealthy’ engagement with dominant social media platforms or dating and hookup apps. Contemporary policy frameworks for participatory, digital-enabled healthcare (e.g., NHS, 2019) assume that we all engage in health or help seeking practices online, but have no answers to associated risks of over-exposure, invasive health surveillance or experiences of discrimination and harassment online, particularly for those at the margins. In our case studies, this is pertinent for transgender, non-binary and female hookup app users, people seeking support for mental ill-health, illicit drug users participating in crypto-markets and dark web communities. In response to this scenario, this panel asks: what are the forms and capacities for collective care in the current digital ecosystem, between social media platforms and dating apps struggling to address harassment or mental wellbeing, within health service-supported online forums, and across the dark web? This panel looks at evidence and answers, as well as research practices and ethics, to understand personal and collective attempts to negotiate, manage, circumvent and otherwise find ways to reinvent cultures of care through digital platforms.
DIGITAL PLACEMAKING
Authors: Wilken Rowan , Humphreys Lee , Polson Erika , Norum Roger , Witteborn Saskia , Halegoua Germaine , Frith Jordan , Richter Jacob
Published: October 2020

This panel introduces and critically examines the concept of "digital
placemaking" as practices that create emotional attachments to place through digital media
use. As populations and the texts they produce become increasingly mobile, such practices
are proliferating, and a striking array of applications and uses have emerged which exploit
the affordances of mobile media to foster an ability to navigate, understand, connect to,
and gain a sense of belonging and familiarity in place. The concept of digital placemaking
is both a theoretical and applied response to the spatial fragmentation, banal physical
environments, and community disintegration thought to have accompanied the speed and scale
of globalization—the implications of which include suggestions that our collective sense of
place has been disrupted, leaving people unsure of their belonging within conditions and
boundaries that seem increasingly fluid. While it is imperative to attend to the shifting
social, economic, and political conditions that give rise to such concerns, it is also
necessary to recognize the many ways people actually use digital media to negotiate
differential mobilities and become placemakers. Papers in this interdisciplinary panel
consider digital placemaking through a range of perspectives investigating lived experiences
of assorted communities with disparate social and economic power to demonstrate how digital
media can facilitate social and geographic boundary crossing while encouraging new ways of
placing ourselves—symbolically, virtually, or through co-located presence.
LAYERS OF “NETWORKED PRIVACY”: CONTEXT COLLAPSES ACROSS RELATIONS,	TECHNOLOGIES, INSTITUTIONS, AND DATA
Authors: Baik Sophia Jeeyun
Published: October 2020

This paper identifies different layers of “networked privacy," expanding the original concept's focus on (1) networked relations (Marwick and boyd, 2014) to further include (2) networked technologies, (3) networked institutions, and (4) networked data. It teases out various moments of “collision of information norms” or “context collapse” (Marwick and boyd, 2014, p. 1054), which complicate privacy and regulations thereof in recent years. As we are at a critical juncture where information norms are being enshrined in different parts of the world including the EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in the U.S., understanding complex layers of context collapses can shed light on the legal grey areas that would need further examination. This study investigated the U.S. news coverage on digital privacy between January 2018 and June 2020 to explore any layers/moments of “context collapses” with regard to privacy. I conducted a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2013), closely examining 300 samples out of 5,874 articles. Rethinking the framework of “networked privacy,” I argue, can help us ensure the "similar minimum levels of privacy" (Regan, 1996) across networked relations, technologies, institutions, and data in the current digital era.
MOVE, EAT, SLEEP, REPEAT: RHYTHMIC STRUGGLES IN PROACTIVE	SELF-TRACKING PRACTICES
Authors: Bergroth Harley , Saariketo Minna
Published: October 2020

In this paper, we trace the rhythmicities of activity tracking by applying the method of technograhical collaborative autoethnography (cf. Bucher, 2012; Chang, Hernandez & Ngunjiri, 2012). The focus is on on proactive self-tracking that has become a proliferating digital media practice involving the gathering of data about the body and one’s everyday patterns of being outside the context of clinical health care. In the paper, we address the gap that still exists in research of exploring the mechanisms by and through which the human-technology attachments operate in practice. Drawing from a new materialist understanding of media technologies combined with Lefebvrian rhytmanalysis, we focus on the rhythmic aspects of self-tracking by asking how specific self-tracking devices and interfaces attract and prescribe repetition, rhythms, beats, pulses, and cycles into everyday lives. In so doing, we elaborate how human bodies and technical systems of self-tracking interact rhythmically. The analysis sheds light on the rhythms and beats that we interpret as illustrations of the ’technological unconscious’ (Thrift & French, 2002). We bring our observations in dialogue with the contemporary critical arguments pointing to the design of products that are made as addictive as possible in the race for ‘hijacking minds’ and capturing attention. Our research contributes empirically to the lack of research that has systematically examined these seductive and yet controlling properties of software, and complements the theory of rhythmanalysis with theorization on the hierarchical organisation of rhythms and related power dynamics in the digital context.
TIKTOK AND THE “ALGORITHMIZED SELF”: A NEW MODEL OF ONLINE	INTERACTION
Authors: Bhandari Aparajita , Bimo Sara
Published: October 2020

Since its release in 2017, the video sharing app TikTok has been downloaded 1.5 billion times. While its popularity has been attributed to the abundance of celebrity users, its interactive features, and its short, palatable video length, it has been the subject of relatively few academic studies. This project employs the walkthrough method to examine TikTok within the context of identity negotiation and self-representation on social media. More specifically, it seeks to understand whether TikTok follows a precedent set by other Social Networking Sites which support users self-representing via sociability “to the network, via the network”; i.e. by interacting within the affordances of the platform, which may include sharing, liking, commenting, etc (Papacharissi, 2013). This model ostensibly offers users a stage where they may display their individuality and curate content that reflects their personal interests. By regularly using the app for a period of a month and collecting extensive field notes, screenshots, and video recordings, we found that TikTok’s version of sociality differs from that offered by other SNSs. While other sites purport to be a tool with which users may represent their identities, TikTok does away with this conceit by engendering a mode of sociality (through its design features and affordances) in which the crux of interaction is not between users and their social network, but between a user and what we call an “algorithmized” version of self. This finding has the potential to enrich and complicate the discourse surrounding online identity formation and sociality.
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY AND DATA PROTECTION: COMPLEMENTARY FOR	DEVELOPING CITIZEN-CENTRIC DIGITAL CITIES?
Authors: Breuer Jonas , Pierson Jo
Published: October 2020

In digital cities, urban space integrates physical and digital worlds. Information and communication technologies, often controlled by private companies, become ubiquitous, not least to capture and process (personal) data. While private governance can reconfigure public values and relations between public institutions and citizens, the question arises who decides what cities become, whose interests they serve. This paper presents ongoing research about the Right to the City (Lefebvre, 1968) and the right to personal data protection, guided by a social constructivist perspective and the methodological framework of actor-network-theory. As part of a four-year research track, we conducted an empirical cross-case analysis of urban data processing projects affected by the GDPR. The aim was to answer the question of how ‘users’ of cities can be represented meaningfully in processes that shape cities by means of those two rights. To do so, we interviewed people directly involved in Belgian ‘smart’ city projects. The main results of this research show that the two rights can be complementary in fostering agency and protecting citizen interests in technologically enhanced, citizen-centric cities. Data protection impacts smart city developments, but true agency of citizens as in the Right to the City remains limited. We will discuss why especially interdisciplinary research is required to further understanding in this complex, cross-domain environment and to lower barriers to citizen inclusion in practice.
PAYING RESPECTS, STREAMING AFFECT: ELECTION DAY 2016 AT SUSAN B.	ANTHONY'S GRAVESITE
Authors: Butkowski Chelsea Paige
Published: October 2020

On U.S. Election Day 2016, thousands of people gathered at Susan B. Anthony’s grave in Rochester, NY. They were there to commemorate Anthony’s women’s suffrage activism over a century prior and to celebrate the presidential candidacy of Hilary Clinton, the first woman nominated by a major U.S. American political party. A thirteen-hour livestream of the gravesite by a local journalist captured the unprecedented crowd at the cemetery and drew a much larger crowd online. In the hours before election results were announced, the livestream gained millions of viewers and thousands of comments. While existing research has begun to examine the complex relationship between personal and collective memory, memorialization, and social media, less attention has been devoted to the ways that history and politics become tools for users and professionals to represent themselves. I examine the gravesite livestream as an illustrative case study of the ways that actors with different levels of access and control over a media event use commemoration as a vehicle for political self-representation. I conducted a textual analysis of the entire livestream, including the video and comment feeds. Through the analysis, I traced how four actors built upon a shared collective vision of U.S. American women’s history and future to contribute to the livestream and find themselves within it, including the city mayor’s office, gravesite visitors, the journalist who captured the stream, and commenters. Ultimately, I suggest that in commemorating women’s historical political action, these self-representational narratives present livestream creators, viewers, and subjects as political actors.
ACTIVIST BROWSER EXTENSIONS AS INTERFACE DÉTOURNEMENT: REMINDING,	COPING, AND INFRASTRUCTURAL ALIGNMENT
Authors: Cao Tiancheng
Published: October 2020

This paper investigates web browser extensions as an under-researched media object for their capacity for activism. “Activist extensions” disrupt a webpage’s intended use and redirect users’ attention to social issues by modifying textual, visual, or auditory elements of the web user interface. The relevance of the study stems from the ubiquity of the web browser as a communication tool and the potential of browser extensions to counter its power in shaping how web content is delivered to users. Based on the notions of transduction and affordance, the critical vocabulary of the Situationist International, and the conceptualization of platform governance through the provision of infrastructural services, this paper asks: Through what mechanism do activist extensions redirect users’ attention to social issues? What are the potential implications for users? And, how can browser platforms affect the creation and distribution of activist extensions? The study adopts a mixed-methods approach that includes discursive interface analysis of the extensions’ modification of the browser interface, critical discourse analysis of user comments on these extensions, and semi-structured interviews with extension developers. Major findings of the study include: 1) the redirection of users’ attention from the webpage to social issues is achieved through the mechanism of $2 , 2) activist extensions function as $2 that provides users with a coping mechanism against certain online rhetoric, and 3) the creation and distribution of activist extensions are conditioned by an $2 imposed by the browser platform on extension developers.
THE UNCERTAIN DECORUM OF ONLINE IDENTIFICATION: A STUDY IN QUALITATIVE	INTERVIEWS
Authors: DiBella Samuel
Published: October 2020

This study explores the ethics and motivations of online identification—how and why people collect and publish identifying information about others online. In seven interviews, activists, Internet users, advocates, and journalists were asked about their investigative practice and how they viewed the ethics of deanonymization. Using ethnographic interviewing techniques and a thematic analysis inspired by grounded theory, I describe respondents’ investigations and compare them to existing theories in surveillance studies, online anonymity, and digital vigilantism. Respondents often struggled with making their work accessible and impactful in an ethical manner. They obfuscated irrelevant information that might incite online harassment and took care in who they collaborated with. The respondents also debated what to do when people misinterpreted their work or thought that they had acted unjustly. The precautions they incorporated into their publications are examples of how people navigate online ethics when there isn’t a clear standard for moral decisions. Ultimately, the interview results did not follow models of digital vigilantism and doxxing, and I caution against using those terms to apply to cases like those described in this study. I also make suggestions for how these results could augment theoretical models of anonymity, particularly how respondents’ investigative techniques and backgrounds lead them to different moral commitments.
WATCHING THE WATCHDOG: ONLINE DISCOURSES ABOUT MEDIA FRAUDS
Authors: Eberwein Tobias
Published: October 2020

Media frauds often lead to lively public discussions about journalism’s professional identity and its social mandate. The paper uses the so-called Relotius case as a starting point for a systematic analysis of the responsibility of narrative journalists in an age of “fake news” and post-truth politics – and the question of how they can be held to account in the online realm. Claas Relotius counted as one of the most talented journalistic storytellers in the German-speaking world. In December 2018, however, the news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that he had fabricated many of his texts, either completely or partly. This revelation developed into one of the biggest German media scandals of the recent years and triggered a massive outcry, also in international media. A multi-method research design allows for a differentiated assessment of the Relotius case in particular and web-based media accountability processes in general: A literature review and problem-centered interviews with senior reporters demonstrate that stylistic devices of fiction have a long history in German narrative journalism – also in Spiegel magazine. A discourse analysis focusing on the public debate following the revelation of the scandal points out that many journalistic commenters, including Spiegel’s editorial board, displayed a clear lack of self-criticism in their discussion of the case, while non-professional watchbloggers broadened the scope of the analysis. The paper reflects the empirical results from a normative perspective, in order to illustrate the potentials and shortcomings of professional journalistic self-observation as opposed to external public control in online discourses.
CRIME INVESTIGATIONS OF ‘CHILD ABUSE MATERIAL’: CHALLENGES AND	OPPORTUNITIES POSED BY DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Authors: Eneman Marie
Published: October 2020

The increased digitalisation of society has profoundly changed the circumstances for people with a sexual interest in children to engage in the production, distribution and consumption of child abuse material. In addition, digital technologies enable contact and communication with other like-minded individuals sharing the same sexual interest in children and also facilitate new forms of getting in contact with children (potential victims). Child abuse material (sometimes also referred to as child pornography) refers to documented material depicting the sexual abuse and/or sexual exploitation of a child (or children). The overall purpose with this study is to explore the practices where crime investigations of child abuse material occur within the Swedish police authority. This research in progress paper will reflect on what challenges and opportunities police officers do encounter when investigating child abuse material in relation to digital technologies? The involved technology will be investigated in relation to technological affordance and empirically the study is based upon qualitative interviews with police officers.
THERE ARE MALE TEARS IN THAT COMMENT SECTION. THE DISCURSIVE NEGOTIATION OF MASCULINITY IN ITALIAN ONLINE MEN'S GROUPS
Authors: Farci Manolo
Published: October 2020

Despite the consolidation of works on the heterogeneous nature of the so-called Manosphere, a lot of these studies consider masculinity as an overall governing force of men’s behaviors. This is has led to overlooking how subject positioning is always negotiated in multiple and contradictory discourses that are not easily captured by structurally oriented frameworks such as hegemonic or toxic masculinity. By focusing on the recent third development in men’s critical studies of masculinity, this work seek to investigates the discursive construction of masculinity in digital environment, in order to identify the various resources, in the form of established repertoires, that men use to position themselves in relation to conventional discourses of the masculine, and how masculinity both impinges upon and is transformed by those practices. Using a qualitative methodology, we analyze the content of two Facebook Pages dedicated to men's rights issues, called Antisessismo (Antisexism) and Diritti Maschili – Equità e Umanità (Men’s rights – Equity and Humanity). Our findings suggest that in these groups, masculinity is rarely negotiated or discussed but it is assumed as a common sense, providing a basis for shared social understandings. However, there is no unitary meaning to this common sense of masculinity, on the contrary, it contains many contradictory or competing arguments. Individuals are positioned by discourses, but, as our data demonstrate, these identity positions are by no means stable and consistent: users can shift between different modes of masculinity and actively re-create positions for themselves, especially in response to “trouble”.
WOMEN IN BLOCKCHAIN: DISCOURSE & PRACTICE IN THE CO-CONSTRUCTION	OF GENDER AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Authors: Frizzo-Barker Julie A.
Published: October 2020

Blockchain is an emerging technology characterized by peer-to-peer value transfer, decentralization, and democratic ideals of consensus. It also has a stark gender problem, with women representing just 14% of those participating in the space. This paper is based on 30 semi-structured interviews with women who work in blockchain, and participant observation at 17 blockchain meetups and conferences. The gendered discourses and practices surrounding blockchain events provide a productive site for examining the social construction of technologies, and more specifically the gendered social shaping of technologies. I use the theoretical lens of technofeminism, which strikes a balance between technophilia and technophobia, to explore the complex ways in which women’s everyday lives and technological change interrelate in the age of digitization. This co-construction approach challenges the prevailing discourses of technologies like blockchain as neutral and value-free. The goal of my study is not to ask or answer questions such as, “why aren’t there more women in blockchain?” or “how can we attract more women into blockchain?” Rather, I examine the gendered sociotechnical relations surrounding blockchain, as exemplified by discourses and practices at meetups and conferences. For instance, ‘by women, for women’ blockchain meetups serve as important spaces of resistance and support, whereas ‘women in blockchain’ panels at blockchain conferences ring hollow as ‘inclusive’ gestures, instead highlighting the exclusive culture at play. My findings explore how women’s identities and experiences are both enabled and constrained, often simultaneously, through participation in the blockchain space.
LIFE AS A NETWORKED FAN
Authors: Garrison Stephanie T , Jacobs Naomi Jane
Published: October 2020

In studying how fans live their lives online, a common lens has been to consider fandom as fan community (e.g. Sullivan, 2019). Modern digital social networks appear to be complicating this picture, with some scholars suggesting that online fandoms are fragmenting (e.g. Coppa, 2014). In this work, we report on a variety of case studies carried out using ethnographic and survey methods. These examine examples of fans whose networks span both online and offline spaces (for example fan tourism to Scotland initiated through membership of Outlander fan Facebook groups), and who may move between different micro-fandoms either consecutively or concurrently (for example Doctor Who fans watching via Twitch). Though this we demonstrate how individuals form networks around themselves which extend into multiple online and offline spaces, creating a multilayered personal interaction space. Building on the work of Rainie and Wellman (2012) we provide an alternative viewpoint of fan-centered rather than community-centered networks, and discuss how activities within a single person’s network may manifest differently depending on the affordances and policies of different digital platforms. We propose that future work should interrogate how policies related to such communal digital spaces, both written and socially constructed, impact upon individual and community behavior online and offline. Coppa, F. (2014). Fuck yeah, Fandom is Beautiful. The Journal of Fandom Studies, 2(1), 73–82. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs.2.1.73_1 Sullivan, J. L. (2019). Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power (Second edition). SAGE. Rainie, H., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. MIT Press.
STOR(Y)ING DESMADRE ON THE INTERNET: THE POLITICS, AFFECT AND ETHICS	OF ONLINE QUEER LATIN AMERICAN CABARET ARCHIVES
Authors: GUZMAN CARINA
Published: October 2020

In this paper I discuss my doctoral research-creation project: the design of an online archive of the community materials of a Mexico City-based queer cabaret collective active between 2006-2012, called Burlesquimeras, which I was a member of. While digital photographs and social media certainly existed in the years Burlesquimeras was active, it was before the two were seamlessly integrated (at least in the Mexican context) through the ubiquity of smartphones and unlimited data. That is, an online search of Burlesquimeras does not yield a significant collection of photographs that can be potentially culled or scrapped from social media. Most of the digital photographs and other ephemera, have been stored by its members in the mess or clutter of the homes and hard drives of the community members. Moreover, I explain a concept I coined: “stor(y)ing”. It is influenced by theoretical structures and praxes that challenge and expand notions of evidence, sources and the possibilities of historic narratives, such as Hartman’s Critical Fabulation (2008, 2019), Cowan’s Cabaret Methods (Forthcoming) and Navarrete Linares’ use of Mesoamerican myth and cosmohistoria (2011, 2018). I propose that the very act of caring for these materials by their queer creators, albeit in a messy way, and precisely because it is in a messy way, is already an act of story-telling. I refer to this practice as stor(y)ing: a storage of materials that itself articulates a story.
THE VIRTUAL CENSUS 2.0: A CONTINUED INVESTIGATION ON THE	REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER, RACE AND AGE IN VIDEOGAMES
Authors: Harrisson Annie , Jones Shawn , Marchessault Jessie , Pedraça Sâmia , Consalvo Mia
Published: October 2020

While many studies suggest media representations of marginalized social groups play a vital role in shaping one’s worldview (Gerbner et al. 1994) or normalizing power imbalances (Harwood and Anderson 2002), videogames continue to privilege characters that are White, adult and male. This paper revisits key questions addressed in Williams, et al.’s “The Virtual Census: Representation of Gender, Race and Age in Videogames” (2009) to examine how representations of gender, race, and age in videogames have changed over the last ten years. The present study analyses the United Kingdom’s top 100 best-selling games of 2017 and looks for changing and continuing trends in the representation of videogame characters compared to the original study. While our sample still shows a preference for White, adult, and male characters, a small but significant increase in the representation of female characters and people of colour offers hope for the future of gaming. By revisiting the 2009 census, we aim to provide empirical evidence that may contribute to further discussions of how gender, race and age are portrayed in videogames, both within academic and industry circles.
EVERY CLICK YOU MAKE: ALGORITHMIC LITERACY AND THE DIGITAL LIVES OF	YOUNG ADULTS
Authors: Henderson Monica Jean , Shade Leslie Regan , Mackinnon Katie
Published: October 2020

Critical digital literacy comprises subsets of medium- and content-related skills necessary for digital privacy and digital citizenship. Frameworks for defining and evaluating digital literacy proliferate in academia and policymaking; however, in a networked climate subsumed by dataveillance, algorithmic bias, political bots, and deep fakes, these frameworks need to be updated. Algorithms may be the greatest determinant in sociopolitical online interactions and information gathering, and without a multivalent literacy of algorithms, nuanced understandings of digital privacy and digital citizenship may be unachievable. We therefore propose ‘algorithmic literacy’ become an essential element for digital literacy in young adult media education. Researchers have highlighted how intersectional aspects of gender, ability, and socioeconomic status are stronger predictors of low digital literacy than age. Following a tradition of participatory (rather than protectionist) research about youth privacy online, our research foregrounds young adults’ practices and perspectives on algorithmic culture in order to co-develop a framework for algorithmic literacy. Our paper shares findings from a participatory project co-designing an algorithmic literacy toolkit with young adults as co-researchers and participants. We created a curriculum focusing on reviewing the current critical scholarly literature, policy, and popular discourse on algorithms. After two weeks of intensive research, our student co-researchers met amongst themselves to devise a sustainable, ‘living-document’ type of toolkit, comprising a website, an Instagram page, and a Medium blog. Reflected in the toolkit's name, The Algorithmic You uses an intersectional lens to facilitate peer-oriented ‘self-discovery’ of how algorithms shape and produce interactions in the everyday lives of young adults.