bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
PLATFORMED SEX LIVES
Authors: Sundén Jenny , Tiidenberg Katrin , Paasonen Susanna
Published: October 2020

This panel builds on a recently funded research project on the geopolitics of digital sexual cultures in Estonia, Sweden, and Finland (2020-2022) investigating three local online platforms devoted to communities around nudity and kink: iha.ee, darkside.se, and alastonsuomi.com. Our case studies are in a sense “edge cases” which partly move within sexual margins, making space for alternate understandings of platform sociability. Contra to the current de-platforming of sex, our case-studies foreground sex as the dynamics that bind users to the sites and fuel diverse engagements between them. The papers are work in progress and provide initial platform analyses inspired by the walkthrough method (Light et al. 2018) and the notion of platforms as microsystems (van Dijck 2013). We focus on platform affordances and governance in terms of gender and sexuality; acceptable behavior and sexual practices; and public visibility and privacy. This opens up three important discussions with relevance to the AoIR community: (1) how digital platforms shape and constrain sexual expression at a political moment when the sexual dimensions of life are increasingly pushed out of public view; (2) how these local platforms, as notable arenas for sexual expression, contribute to sexual cultures within the Nordic and Baltic region; and (3) how our examples, when understood as social media platforms, can help to push understandings of what social media are, how they operate, and what kind of sociability they allow for. The panel opens up a discussion of how sex matters in social media, how it is valued and communicated.
MEASURED EDUCATION: SENSING, CONFIGURING AND INTERVENING WITH ADVANCED
MEDIA
Authors: Witzenberger Kevin , Gulson Kalervo , Sellar Sam , Williamson Ben , De Freitas Elizabeth
Published: October 2020

Education has long been a space of in which knowledge was created
through data practices. But the ongoing datafication and digitalisation has made new forms
of datafied knowledge production within educational research possible. This new form of
datafied knowledge creation has shifted the sites of expertise and the authority to create
educational knowledge to a more-than-human network. This panel conceptually and empirically
examines the possibilities and implications that arise from the entanglement of education
with advanced media such as ubiquitous sensory environments, APIs, machine learning, and
codes. The panel shows how the idea of measurable and re-configurable bodies of students is
being performed and stabilized through trade shows and academic conferences; it moves
towards a critical analysis of different applications of facial recognition in education and
the role of doubt in machine learning methods; it shows the complex involvement of advanced
learning analytics through a critical examination of interrelated studies in behavioural
genetics and genoeconomics looking for associations between genes and educational outcomes
through bioinformatic methods; and, it examines learning and living spaces that create a
situation of ubiquitous sensation and explores interventions to disrupt the technical
milieu. What connects these papers is more than the spaces, ideas and practices that
surround education. All contributions look at datafied knowledge about human life – whether
in behavioural, physiological, emotional, or genetic form. The panel aims to show what
critical education research has adopted from other disciplines, but also show how it can
contribute to the wider discourse around science, technology and society.
CHUDI (BANGLES), BINDI, AUR HIJAB WILL BRING ALONG INQUILAB	(REVOLUTION): ANTI-PATRIARCHY WITHIN ANTI-FASCIST MOVEMENTS AND THE DESIRE FOR A NEW	POLITICAL IN INDIA
Authors: Basu Maitrayee
Published: October 2020

This paper looks at discursive interventions online and protests against political and social injustices against women in India within wider protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (December 2019 - present). In attempting to classify some modes of publicness on digital media platforms that are prevalent amongst women resisting the oppressions of living under an authoritarian regime that overlaps with patriarchal structures, this paper explores the radical potential of spheres of affect that challenge representative authority and questions “who” has the right to construct the political. Drawing on theoretical approaches from Berlant (2008, 2011) and Fraser (2007, 2020), I discuss discourses emerging around women’s experiences whilst theorising the potential that feminist movements might possess to forge transnational solidarity. This paper employs digital ethnography on Twitter, as well as discourse analysis. Instead of utilising the more popular hashtag-analysis or keyword search methods used to study social movements and online cultures, I conduct a qualitative longitudinal analysis of user-timelines. In contrast to studies that measure the impact of digitally mediated activism, I highlight the work involved in constructing these transnational publics through an accurate prediction or ‘knowing’ of others within affective public spaces, as well as in strategic performances of belonging and citizenship.
'DON'T CREATE AN ONLINE IMAGE THAT YOU CAN'T KEEP UP OUTSIDE':	MEDIATING INVISIBLE COMMUNICATIVE DISABILITIES ON SOCIAL NETWORK SITES
Authors: Bitman Nomy
Published: October 2020

The internet theoretically offers a socially inclusive space for disabled users and new forms of visibility vis-à-vis mediated communication. However, the prevalent perception of the internet as an idyllic space that liberates disabled people reflects an ableist mindset, as it views departure from the disabled body as the source of liberation. This paper challenges this perception by investigating how people with invisible disabilities that are clinically related to communication mediate their disabled life experience in Social Networking Sites (SNS). To this end, the study probed, through thematic analysis, 31 in-depth interviews with high-functioning autistics, stutterers and hard of hearing SNS users and 7 SNS documentation use diaries. The analysis identified a gamut of disability performances online, which varied based on one's perception of the disability and its visibility. For example, while some interviewees crafted a complex online persona that presented their disabilities through a nuanced perspective, others felt compelled to ‘pass’ as able-bodied. Many felt that their self-presentation was inhibited by a sense of social surveillance, imposed by the presence of friends from “the offline world”. The notion of “authenticity” posed another barrier for many interviewees: Sensing an expectation that their communicative style on SNS align with their physical communication led them to ironically adopt a less true-to-self persona by managing the visibility of their disability online to reflect their 'offline' constraints. Rather than providing an accessible and/or liberating sphere, this paper argues that social networking sites reproduce the ableist biases and power structures that underline the physical, “offline” sphere.
VOICES FROM THE LOCKER ROOM: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF VOICE MESSAGES	WITHIN ITALIAN NSFW GROUPS.
Authors: Boccia Artieri Giovanni , Brilli Stefano , Zurovac Elisabetta
Published: October 2020

The growing use of messaging apps group chats is defining a new geography of unsearchable digital conversations. Although these spaces often escape the range of internet research, because of the technical and ethical difficulties in extracting of large-scale data sets, they represent crucial contexts where new communication habits and cultural practices emerge. This paper aims to understand the use of voice messages in NSFW group chats, by looking at Telegram closed groups where pornographic contents are shared and commented. Since NSFW group chats are usually understood as prevalently anonymous contexts, the disclosure afforded by voices messages - particularly in terms of gender recognition - becomes worthy examining. More specifically, we ask: 1) What kind of interactions are enacted by voice messages? 2) What kind of self-disclosure is performed through voice messages? 3) Which challenges emerge in the moderation of voice messages? For this research, we are carrying out a qualitative content analysis of voice messages combined with in-depth interviews with groups' moderators. Preliminary results suggest some circumstances that lead users to prefer using voice messages over text, gifs and static images. Contingent (not being able to text) or literacy-related reasons appear less important than the need to establish affective inclusion and identification through one's own voice.
EXTENDING GAMING DEMAND: SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES OF COGNITIVE,	EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL, AND SOCIAL VIDEOGAMING REQUIREMENTS
Authors: Bowman Nicholas David , Banks Jaime
Published: October 2020

Videogames directly involve players as co-creators of on-screen events, and this interactivity is assumed to be a core source of their attraction as a successful entertainment medium. Although interactivity is an inherent property of the videogame, it is variably perceived by the end user—for some users, perceived as a more demanding process, taxing their already-limited attentional resources. At least four such demands have been explicated in extant literature: cognitive (making sense of game logics/tasks), emotional (affective responses to game events/outcomes), physical (managing controller inputs and interfaces), and social (responding to human/nonhuman in-game others). Past work has reported empirical support of these concepts through validation of closed-ended survey metrics (e.g., Video Game Demand Scale). The current study challenges and extends the demand concept through an analysis of players’ own language when describing videogame demands in short essays about gaming experiences—critical given that people may experience a phenomenon in ways not accounted for in deductive data approaches. A secondary analysis of qualitative data made freely available by VGDS authors revealed both convergence with and divergence from prior work. Comporting with VGDS, cognitive demands are mostly experienced by players as ludic concerns and physical demands are mostly experienced in relation to handheld controller perceptions. Diverging from VGDS, players’ emotional demands represented both basic and complex emotional states, and social demands manifest different depending on whether or not the social “other” is human or non-human: humans are considered demanding on interpersonal terms, whereas non-humans are considered demanding as personified evocative objects.
TOWARDS THEORIES OF DIGITAL WELL-BEING
Authors: Büchi Moritz
Published: October 2020

How can we live a good life both thanks to and despite the constant use of digital media? The presented framework describes the nature of and connections between three relevant phenomena – digital media practices, harms/benefits, and well-being – and creates a blueprint for explanatory theories.
LIFE, CULTURE AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY: THE DISCOURSE	OF “FULL SELFHOOD” AMONG TECH PROFESSIONALS
Authors: Ciccone Vanessa
Published: October 2020

The push for tech companies to incorporate fun and leisure at work as seen in games rooms, health and wellness, and onsite exercise facilities encourages employees in the industry to celebrate work as a core aspect of their subjectivities, and purports to create space for them to bring their “full selves” to professional spaces. Yet, while the individuals I studied were often called to be their “full selves” in the online and offline settings of their places of work and throughout the broader industry, this could be a frustrating discourse, in particular for those who were underrepresented. In the present paper I investigate the industry discourse around “full selfhood” alongside an analysis of how individuals working in the sector negotiated this discourse. I ask how the relation between subjectivity and culture may serve to reproduce or challenge inequities within the sector. Relatedly, I argue that in professional software contexts, performing subjectivity can be an exhaustive process that involves continuous assessment, further complexifying how to perform the “full self.” Additionally, the discourse of “full selfhood” exists within spaces dominated by privileged identities, and in which “ideal” subjectivities often correspond to these positionalities. Thus, the “full selfhood” discourse can lead to tensions surrounding the subjectivities individuals are called to have, and those they are able to take up and sustain, bringing political consequences centered on the self.
SKIPPING DISCOVERY? MUSIC DISCOVERY AND PERSONAL MUSIC COLLECTIONS IN	THE STREAMING ERA
Authors: Ellis Jack Michael
Published: October 2020

In this paper, I use Spotify as a case study to investigate user experiences of music exploration and discovery using streaming services and recommendation algorithms. Following the framing of music discovery as an affective response which allows for the categorization and definition of music, I draw upon qualitative data from Spotify users regarding their ephemeral experiences when exploring music using streaming services. I identify user practices of music archiving and collecting as a strategy to mitigate these transient encounters by slowing down the pace of their music consumption and creating enduring connections between music and their individual histories. In this way, personal music collections were found to support instances of music discovery as they created a listening context and user mindset which was sympathetic the affective definition and categorization of new music content. This investigation of collecting practice also revealed longitudinal perspectives on music discoveries which emerge through sustained listening over time, drawing attention to listener’s social surroundings, friends and online communities as the impetus for choosing to give particular music content time to grow towards being discovered. The paper concludes with implications of the use of algorithmic recommendation systems in the delivery and consumption of music and other cultural forms.
RESEARCHING ONLINE LABOR STRIKE AND PROTEST PREDICTION	TECHNOLOGIES
Authors: Grill Gabriel
Published: October 2020

Efforts to surveil social media platforms at scale using big data techniques have recently manifested in government-funded research to predict protests following the election of President Trump. This work is part of a computer science research field focused on online “civil unrest prediction” dedicated to forecasting protests across the globe (e.g. Indonesia, Brazil and Australia). Researchers draw upon established data science techniques such as event detection/prediction, but also specific approaches for surveilling social movements are conceived. Besides furthering the academic knowledge-base on civil unrest and protests, the works in this field envision to support a variety of stakeholders with different interests such as governments, the military, law enforcement, human rights organizations and industries such as insurance and supply chain management. I analyze the recent history of civil unrest prediction on social media platforms through examining discourses, implicated actors and technological affordances as encountered in publications and other public online artifacts. In this paper I discuss different risk frames employed by researchers, concerning politics of the technology and argue for a needed public debate on the role of online protest surveillance in democratic societies.
THE MANY SIDES OF A COIN: EXPLORING THE COST AND VALUE OF TOKENS IN	CHATURBATE
Authors: Hernandez Antonia
Published: October 2020

On the sexcam platform Chaturbate.com, a ‘token’ is at the same time the name of a unit of made-up currency (‘tokens’) and its descriptor (something issued by an authority that can be exchanged later on). A token stands in for something else. But what else, exactly? As this paper develops, Chaturbate tokens have different uses and meanings for the audience and performers. These differences do not only happen at the users’ level but are sustained by an ecology of associated payment services that deepen the contrast between them. An analysis of the differences in cost and value of tokens, and the environment in which these dissimilarities occur, illustrates the role of tokens as an extractive technology that profits from, and perpetuates, financial discrimination.
THE MORALISATION OF PREDICTIVITY IN THE AGE OF DATA-DRIVEN	SURVEILLANCE
Authors: Hong Sun-ha
Published: October 2020

This paper argues that emerging technologies of datafication are intensifying a moralisation of predictivity. On one hand, this describes the growing pressure to quantify and predict every kind of social problem. Reluctance to adopt emerging technologies of surveillance is construed as abdication of a moral responsibility via negligence to inevitable progress. On the other hand, it describes the corresponding demand that human subjects learn to live in more predictable and machine-readable ways, adapting to the flaws and ambiguities of imperfect technosystems. This argument echoes that of Joseph Weizenbaum (1976), a pioneer of early AI research and the inventor of the ELIZA chatbot: that well in advance of machines fully made in our image, it is the human subjects that are asked to render themselves more compatible and legible to those machines. Drawing from a book-length research project into the public presentation of surveillance technologies, I show how messy data, arbitrary classifications, and other uncertainties become fabricated into the status of reliable predictions. Specifically, the bulk of the presentation will examine the rapid expansion of counter-terrorist surveillance systems in 2010’s America. All in all, the moralisation of predictivity helps suture the many imperfections of data-driven surveillance, and provide justificatory cover for their breakneck expansion across the boundaries of public and private. They perpetuate the normative expectation that what can be predicted must be, and what needs to be predicted surely can be. In the process, spaces for human discretion, informal norms, and sensitivity to human circumstance are being squeezed out.
“I’VE GOTTA DO IT FOR THE BIT”: MEMETIC MEDIA AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY	THROUGH STREAMER PERFORMANCE ON TWITCH
Authors: Jackson Nathan J
Published: October 2020

Videogame livestreamers on the platform Twitch present a carefully curated version of themselves negotiated in part via interactions with their viewers. This persona is encoded not just through their live performance, but also through other platform features including streamer-specific emoticons and audio-visual overlays triggered by stream events such as donations and subscriptions. From these customisable features emerges a complicated feedback loop between the streamer and non-streamer participants that ultimately results in a set of collective values performed and refined by both parties over time. In this paper I interrogate how the incorporation of Internet memes into streaming personas creates accessible avenues for communication with and between members of this collective that contribute significantly to this value system. I do this by defining the term memesis as the cultural process by which Internet users draw upon existing memes in order to create new memetic media. Through two contrasting case studies of Twitch streamers BrownMan and PaladinAmber, I examine how memesis reflects streamer agency and impacts the structure and values of stream collectives. In particular, I draw attention to the relationship between memes and stream collectives as it relates to streamer identity, memetic histories within streams, and the contrasting explicit and latent values within manifestations of particular memes, among others. Further, understanding how memesis renders visible the encoding of meaning and value into manifestations of meme by emphasising the creation process over the memetic product, I argue that the concept has value not just on Twitch, but within broader digital cultural spheres.
ONE DONOR EGG AND “A DOLLOP OF LOVE”: THE BANAL AMBIGUITIES OF EGG	DONATION ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK
Authors: Kant Tanya , Reed Elizabeth
Published: October 2020

Using textual analysis of 28 adverts for egg donation, sharing, and freezing drawn from Facebook’s Ad Library archive, we consider what forms of motherhood, kinship, and sociality are promised through targeted advertisements for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) on Facebook. We seek to understand (1) how egg donation, sharing and freezing adverts by ART providers represent the women they expect to use their services; (2) how the meaning of these representations is changed by their delivery through algorithmically targeted marketing; and (3) what imaginative, genealogical, and relational possibilities are foreclosed or endorsed in the delivery of these adverts to algorithmically anticipated “fertile females”. Through textual analysis we seek to understand the forms of potential “life” that are present in the advertisements. We consider the representations of egg donation, identify a banal ambiguity in promised post-feminist kinship, and identify the selected families-in-making which might be created by ART. We combine this with a critical interrogation of how and why these adverts are targeted and delivered to certain demographics of algorithmically anticipated Facebook users. The opacity and structural rigidity of Facebook’s targeted advertising systems – structural mechanisms that are binaric in back-end databases and yet “lively” at the point of the user interface - require that we interrogate both media text and computational delivery mechanisms to meaningfully understand what forms of “life” are promised by gender-targeted ART. The genealogical possibility offered through ART is represented with banal ambiguity wherein potentially disruptive arrangements of kinship are derisked by an overarching narrative of simplicity and sameness.
COPYRIGHT GOSSIP: EXPLORING COPYRIGHT KNOWLEDGE, SENTIMENT AND	BLACKBOX THEORIES ON YOUTUBE
Authors: Kaye D. Bondy Valdovinos , Gray Joanne E
Published: October 2020

This study investigates copyright discourses on YouTube. Through a qualitative content analysis of approximately 200 YouTube videos, we explore how YouTube creators understand copyright law, and how they navigate a highly technical and dynamic copyright enforcement ecosystem. Our findings offer insights into how digitally situated cultural producers are impacted by and respond to automated content moderation. This is important because increasingly lawmakers around the world are asking digital platforms to implement efficient systems for content moderation and yet there is a lack of good information about the stakeholders most directly impacted by these practices. In this study, we provide a systematic analysis of the opinions and strategies of creators who are affected by YouTube’s copyright enforcement measures.
SURVEILLANCE INFRASTRUCTURES IN AND FOR CRISES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS	OF CHINA AND SOUTH KOREA’S DEVELOPMENT OF QUARANTINE SURVEILLANCE MOBILE APPLICATIONS	DURING COVID-19
Authors: Kim Youngrim , Chen Yuchen , Liang Fan , Hussain Muzammil
Published: October 2020

This article examines China and South Korea’s health surveillance infrastructures that are being developed and deployed during COVID19. To control the outbreak and maintain the state, the Chinese government implemented the "Alipay Health Code” in collaboration with technology giants like Alibaba, while South Korea launched a “self-quarantine safety protection app” to enforce home isolation to suspected carriers and monitor their health statuses. By comparatively analyzing these quarantine surveillance mobile applications that the Chinese and South Korean governments are utilizing in pandemic control, we investigate how these two different governmental regimes - one authoritarian and the other democratic - construct and propagate what their state-of-the-art surveillance technologies can offer to the public in moments of emergency. Through a mixture of walk-through method and situational analysis, this article aims to unpack the processes in which these technologies become developed and examine the politics around their deployment. More broadly, we argue that analyzing them offers new opportunities to investigate the relationship between state surveillance and personal privacy in the context of a national crisis. As surveillance tactics that were deemed oppressive and undemocratic in ordinary times get easily normalized in crisis situations, these moments allow us to reveal the precarious and flexible nature of surveillance and privacy while destabilizing the West-oriented, dichotomic understanding of these concepts. This article tackles this question by observing the relationships among relevant actors – the state officials, industry professionals, and general users – and various contestations/negotiations involved in the processes of designing and deploying these quarantine surveillance apps.
RESEARCH ETHICS PRACTICES IN A CHANGING SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE
Authors: Kinder-Kurlanda Katharina E. , Weller Katrin
Published: October 2020

In our work we study practical approaches to internet research ethics with a logitudinal perspective. We have interviewed more than 40 social media researchers in 2013-2014 using a semi-structured qualitative interview approach. From these interviews we gained insights into the challenges of everyday research practices at the various stages of the research process, as well as into motivations for specific approaches and critical reflections on research design and decision making, particularly concerning research ethics. At the end of 2019 we started re-interviewing the participants in our study and will continue to do so over the next months. In addition to questions about the details of everyday data work and the rationales behind (ethical) decision making, we are asking participants what has changed in the way they conduct research with social media. Based on our interviews as well as the ongoing discussions of Internet Research Ethics in the community, this paper focuses on the ethical dimensions of social media research practices and how they have evolved over the past years. Between our two interview periods, the social media landscape has witnessed several changes, including incidents like the "Cambridge Analytica scandal", which have also created ethical discussions in the broader public. By asking researchers about their everyday work, our research contributes to a look behind the scenes of "life as an internet researcher", as phrased in the list of topics in the call for papers.
VACCINE INFORMATION SEEKING AND SHARING: HOW PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUPS	CONTRIBUTED TO THE ANTI-VACCINE MOVEMENT ONLINE
Authors: Koltai Kolina
Published: October 2020

Although vaccines are supported by decades of research demonstrating their efficacy and safety, many parents still decide not to vaccinate their children due to the perceived risks. One major factor in vaccine dissent is the proliferation of vaccine opposed content online. Online content has become an integral part of how people make health and science-related decisions. This study explores how members of anti-vaccine Facebook groups use the platform to seek and share vaccine information. Using interviews and Facebook posts shared in vaccine opposed groups, this study was able to identify the information seeking and sharing behaviors on Facebook and how Facebook’s platform changes are affecting the vaccine opposed movement. Findings from this study will provide further insights into the relationships among social media use, values, and trust in the vaccine debate. In addition, results may be applicable to other scientific controversies, online misinformation, and the development of public health interventions.
RELIVING MEMORIES (OVER AND OVER AGAIN): GIFS, MOVING PHOTOGRAPHY AND	THE SMARTPHONE ALBUM
Authors: Kopelman Sara , Frosh Paul
Published: October 2020

This paper examines potential changes in the temporal experience of everyday digital media through the smartphone photo album. Smartphone photo albums not only organize and display domestic photographs but also initiate temporally novel photographic formats: for instance, the images taken by users can be used as raw material in the production of new kinds of ‘moving’ or ‘animated’ photographic products, usually formatted as GIF files and characterized by looped time. While the character of these products and the processes of their creation vary across operating systems, both Google’s and Apple’s systems radically disrupt the conventional assumptions of photography theory regarding photography’s relations with time. Pre-digital photography theory postulated a key distinction between a photograph and a movie or video: the photograph is static; the movie is characterized by temporal progression. In contrast, the GIF presents a shift from linear temporality to looped, cyclical time, promoting a present tense made visible not through instantaneous capture (photography) or sequential unfolding (film and video), but through continual recurrence. It eliminates the linearity of past-present-future because of its perpetual looped temporality, constituting a hybrid between photographic still and film or video. As a result, the repetitive movement of the GIF constructs a generalized impression of an event as an $2 , rather than the structured narrative of an event as a temporal unfolding. The emergence of the GIF in the smartphone album thus signals the rise of a new structure of memory and temporal experience in everyday mediated life.
DEFENDING AGAINST SOCIAL MEDIA: HOW PUBLIC CRIMINAL DEFENSE HELPS US	ADDRESS SOCIAL MEDIA GOVERNANCE
Authors: Lane Jeffrey , Ramirez Fanny Anne , Patton Desmond Upton
Published: October 2020

As justice-minded academics, we want to understand the role of social media in civil society with a vested interest in ensuring that social media serves a pluralistic society fairly and equitably. Gillespie (2018) has helped frame this task in terms of both governance of platforms and by platforms, but we also want to know what state governments do with social media (Gorwa, 2019). This paper focuses on how social media companies cooperate with state governments to hold users criminally liable, and the lessons this case bears for understanding and improving the fairness and equity of judicial governance. We draw on interviews with twenty public criminal defenders in NYC in which we asked: 1) where social media appears in their cases and the role it plays; 2) their access to user content and social media companies; and, 3) how they use social media as evidence and defend against it. We identified three problem areas around fair and equal access to the law. First, we heard concerns that the cooperation of social media companies was asymmetrical because companies worked almost exclusively with law enforcement. Second, public defenders were upset about overly broad search warrants that furnished the full contents of a suspect’s social media account. Third, public defenders complained about the use and admission of prejudicial evidence that played to negative, racial stereotypes of their clients. We suggest several reforms for judicial governance, including more nearly equitable cooperation practices, restrictions on search warrants, and admissibility protocols and disclaimers on admitted materials.
ONE APP, TWO VERSIONS: TIKTOK AND THE PLATFORMIZATION FROM	CHINA
Authors: Lin Jian
Published: October 2020

By developing two versions of the same platform, TikTok manages to establish its business in two highly distinctive platform ecosystems. It represents the process of ‘platformization from China’ – the penetration of platform logics developed in the techno-political economy of China into the global society. Domestically the disruptive and infrastructural nature of the platform power is intermingled with and subject to Chinese state power, evidenced by the both restrictive (e.g. censorship) and promotional policies for internet economy. At the same time, the missing agenda to account for user privacy and civil rights in the online spaces also gives legislative immunity to Chinese platforms in advancing techniques of datafication and commodification. This uncanny system of governance fosters a highly innovative and commercialized platform ecology domestically to meet with regulatory requirements of the authorities, the financial interests of the capital and the monetary and expressive expectations of the users. However, these platform logics developed in the Chinese context seem to contradict the governing values of the international platform societies. Although internationally TikTok has adopted a more restrained approach in its affordances, commodification and content moderation, the platform remains susceptible for its potential supposed connection to the Chinese state and the concomitant censorship policy. If platforms developed in the American-centric ecosystem can easily identify themselves as global, then the challenge for Chinese platforms going global lies always on this figurative ‘Chineseness’, which is not necessarily defined by the content and culture, but by the techno-political logics embedded in the affordances and operational mechanisms.
NON-HUMAN HUMANITARIANISM: WHEN AI FOR GOOD TURNS OUT TO BE	BAD
Authors: Madianou Mirca
Published: October 2020

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as predictive analytics, forecasting and chatbots are increasingly proposed as solutions to the complex challenges of humanitarian emergencies. This is part of the broad trend of ‘AI for social good’ as well as the wider developments in ‘digital humanitarianism’. The paper develops an interdisciplinary framework that brings together colonial and decolonial theory, the critical inquiry of humanitarianism and development, critical algorithm studies as well as a sociotechnical understanding of AI. Drawing on a review of current humanitarian AI applications as well as interviews with stakeholders, our analysis suggests that several initiatives fail their own objectives. However, this should not mean that these innovations do not have powerful consequences. Automation reproduces human biases whilst removing human judgement from situations, potentially further marginalizing disadvantaged populations. We observe a transformation of humanitarian work as technology separates officers from the consequences of their actions. At the same time, AI initiatives are cloaked in a discourse of inherent progress and an aura of ‘magic’. Rather than democratizing the relationships between humanitarian providers and suffering subjects, digital technology reaffirms the power asymmetries associated with traditional humanitarianism. The non-human aspects of AI humanitarianism reveal, rework and amplify existing deficiencies of humanitarianism. The hype generated by humanitarian innovation appears to have more direct benefits for commercial stakeholders, rather than affected populations. Ultimately, by turning complex political problems like displacement and hunger into problems with technical solutions, AI depoliticizes humanitarian emergencies.
HEALTH DEBATES ON SOCIAL MEDIA: LINKING DIGITAL HEALTH TO	COMMUNICATION AND AI STUDIES
Authors: Mahnke Martina Skrubbeltrang , Kjær Katrine Meldgaard
Published: October 2020

Drawing on the examples of three current health debates on Twitter revolving around the hashtags #medicalcannabis, #covid19 and #vaccinationervirker (in English: vaccinations work), this paper explores the broader theoretical question how we may expand the notion of ‘health data’ to include health debates and discussions on social media, and further how these can be linked to concepts of digital health data assemblages and communicative others. By combing insights from AI and communication studies and STS, as well as insights into the human-data relationship from digital health studies, the paper theoretically links digital data assemblages with communication theory which provides tools to think about health data as relational and communicative. With this, social media data becomes relevant in a new light, not only for media scientists, but also for understanding health practices in a digital age more generally. The paper discusses issues this theoretical perspective raises for researchers of social media and online health engagement; what challenges and possibilities this provides in relation to studying social media discussions on health; and finally, an overview of analytical strategies and empirical fields from which these perspectives may be studied.
THE GREAT RANDOMIZER: USING VIRTUAL AGENTS FOR AUDITING THE EFFECTS OF	YOUTUBE RECOMMENDATION ALGORITHM ON IDEOLOGICALLY-CHARGED NEWS CONTENT	DISTRIBUTION
Authors: Makhortykh Mykola , Urman Aleksandra
Published: October 2020

In this paper, we examine the effects of the YouTube recommendation algorithm on the distribution of ideologically-charged news content. For that purpose, we develop a research infrastructure and conduct a series of experiments using virtual agents (n=200) in a fully controlled environment. We specifically look at YouTube recommendations for videos related to the far-right terrorist attack in the German city of Halle in 2019 and examine how these recommendations differ depending on the type and political affiliation of videos watched by the agents. We find that YouTube recommendations are highly randomized that leads to fundamentally different recommendation trajectories under the condition of identical agent activity which was also synchronized to isolate the effect of time. We also find significant discrepancies in recommendations generated in browsers, with the recommendations for Firefox being slightly less randomized than those for Chrome. Finally, our observations suggest that the recommendations for the agents starting with right-leaning news videos are marginally more consistent than those for the mainstream and left-leaning videos.
BAD ATTACHMENTS: EMAIL AND QUEER ANTI-CENSORSHIP PROTESTS
Authors: McKinney Cait
Published: October 2020

This paper examines a 1996 U.S. internet censorship protest that encouraged users to email a series of technically “indecent” files as attachments to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich using an online email generator. These attachments were: a list of abortion clinics, a graphic illustration of condom-use instructions, and excerpted sexually explicit scenes from Gingrich’s own novel, 1945. Selecting from a drop-down menu, senders chose their attachments, completed a personalized message, and clicked send, all within a web-based form. By using the platform to inundate the Speaker’s email with attachments, senders cleverly broke the censorship provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), putting themselves at risk to the criminalization of sexual expression online. The “bad attachments” protest grew out of the fact that online information about sexuality was vital to marginalized communities with limited access to other kinds of information channels—including queer and rural youth, and people living with HIV. This paper argues that the protest attachments constitute a queer, material digital practice, attuned to the political demand for ready information access as a means of survival.
RESISTING TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION: THE DIGITAL SECURITY PRACTICES OF	DIASPORA AND EXILED HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS
Authors: Michaelsen Marcus
Published: October 2020

For diaspora activists in transnational networks, digital media play a crucial role to mobilize and advocate against authoritarian regimes in their country of origin. Yet the reliance on these technologies creates multiple points of exposure that state actors exploit to silence and punish dissent from abroad. While research has exposed the technical underpinnings of digital attacks targeting civil society, less is known on how potential targets perceive and respond to these threats. Using more than 50 interviews with exiled human rights defenders and journalists from Egypt, Syria and Iran, this paper investigates risk perceptions and security practices of activists in transnational networks. It shows that rather than on nuanced risk assessment, digital security decisions and behavior are often built on the “imagined affordances” of digital technologies for surveillance and information control. The paper argues that the complexity of digital tools and constantly evolving risks thus only work to aggravate activists’ uncertainty regarding the capabilities of the state actors threatening them, reinforcing the silencing effects of transnational repression. Networks of incident response, support and information sharing, in turn, will help to strengthen the digital resilience of transnational civil society.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE NEW: VIDEO GAME "REMAKES" AND THE LIMITS OF	REFLECTION
Authors: Neill Hoch Indira
Published: October 2020

In this paper I consider comments posted on the official trailers of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Yakuza Kiwami (from the verified Playstation YouTube channel) as iterations of nostalgia within the context of fifth- and sixth-generation digital game “remakes,” where the narrative and characters (Mäyrä’s (2008) “shell”) of the original game have been retained, but the game’s engine and mechanics (Mäyrä’s “core”) have been wholly replaced with modern technology. Using these comments, I attempt to place responses to these games into Garda’s (2013) nostalgia continuum as a way of testing the possibilities and limitations of “nostalgia” as a framework for understanding AAA remakes.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND MINORITY LANGUAGES IN EVERYDAY LIFE: A COMPARATIVE	ANALYSIS OF TWO TWITTER CAMPAIGNS PROMOTING THE IRISH LANGUAGE
Authors: Ní Bhroin Niamh , McMonagle Sarah
Published: October 2020

The Irish language (‘Gaeilge’), although the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, is a minority language in public life. In recent years, social media campaigns have been organised to promote the use of Irish online. In this paper, we analyse two such campaigns (#EDL #Gaeilge; and #TrasnaNadTonnta) and explore how participation in them is connected to everyday practices of media use and meaning making, and how this in turn influences minority language promotion in social media. Drawing on sociolinguistics and media and communication studies, we address the following research question: How can everyday life and media use influence participation in Twitter campaigns that aim to promote the Irish language? We find that the success of each campaign was dependent on the participants identifying connections between the campaigns and their everyday lives. #TrasnaNadTonnta found particular salience among the Irish diaspora, for whom the language is a marker of a unique cultural identity. This Twitter campaign provided a platform for Irish-language users to connect with others across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia – places where the Irish language has not been traditionally spoken. Although the same platform was provided in #EDL2017 #Gaeilge, Irish-language Twitter users did not identify with this campaign to the same extent. We further surmise that the unique hashtag created for #TrasnaNadTonnta, reminiscent of a song sung in childhood, had particular semiotic appeal when compared with the more policy-oriented approach of #EDL2017.
THE 'STUFF’ OF LIFE: MATERIAL PLAY AND PERFORMANCE IN DIGITAL VIDEO	CULTURES AND CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICE
Authors: Nolan Katherine
Published: October 2020

Play and performance with materials and objects can be observed as a trope across digital video cultures. Forms such as slime making tutorials, prank stunts, ASMR and unboxing videos employ different forms of interaction that serve to emphasise material form and sensory qualities. Activities can include pouring viscous glue, crushing tin cans, exploding watermelons, nails tapping on plastic or sinking into sand. Sound, visual and material are employed to create a ‘haptic visuality’ (Marks, 2000) as an affective embodied experience. I will analyse these video cultures as presented in the algorithmic context of YouTube and its claim to user-generated content. Through a DIY culture aesthetic and frame, materials are represented as everyday: the 'stuff’ of life. I will unpack the mimetic representation of ‘reality’ through which these videos function, employing Cowie’s concept of ‘desire for the real’ and Auslander’s discussion of ‘liveness’ in a mediated society (Cowie, 2011; Auslander 1999). I will contextualise this discussion in wider visual culture, drawing parallels with historical and contemporary performance art works. In particular the online practices of David Henry Nobody Jr. and Jan Hakon Erikson, which use play with domestic materials, objects and food to provoke abject, sadistic and absurd voyeuristic pleasures. I will discuss how these works reveal, mobilise, parody and subvert such digital video cultures. In this way, I aim to trace and analyse how this sensory play with material works to ‘hook’ the body of the viewer as a means of harnessing affective labour within the digital economies.
FIRM DISCOURSES AND DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
Authors: O'Neil Mathieu , Muselli Laure , Zacchiroli Stefano , Cai Xiaolan , Pailler Frederic
Published: October 2020

Free and open source software (a.k.a. FOSS or ‘digital infrastructure’) is now fully integrated into commercial ecosystems. IT firms invest in FOSS in order (a) to share with other firms development costs; (b) to help attract prospective employees in a competitive job market where hiring skilled IT professionals is challenging and (c) to shape the governance and technical orientation of projects: firm employees participating in leading in FOSS projects may help IT firms create digital infrastructure more suited to the firmware they develop atop this infrastructure. How does the world of FOSS volunteers connect to the world of commercial ecosystems? Are firms developing policies in relation to open source communities, requesting projects conform to certain technical or behavioral standards, for example? To what extent are these strategies successful? To answer, we present a qualitative analysis of firm discourses collected during three open source conferences. We then analyze the email discussion lists of Linux and Firefox and search for the occurrence of key firm discourse terms in order to ascertain in what way these discourses are being used by FOSS developers. Our in-depth analysis of firm discourses and exploratory analysis of project discussions around these terms show that the FOSS world encompasses a diversity of industrial outlooks. They also highlight the evolution of the role of foundations: whilst foundations used to protect projects from firm interference, some have now wholly been placed in the service of firm efforts to standardize project work, particularly around the key issue of security.