bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
PLATFORM PR – THE PUBLIC MODERATION OF PLATFORM VALUES THROUGH TIKTOK FOR GOOD
Authors: Scharlach Rebecca
Published: March 2024

TikTok wants to “inspire creativity” and “spark joy,” Meta aims to “bring the world closer together,” and YouTube aspires to “give everyone a voice and show them to the world.” Platforms claim that they want to do $2 . However, they regularly get international attention for being $2 instead. Social media data scandals are a prominent point of research. Yet initiatives to counterbalance these backlashes, such as YouTube’s Black Voices Fund or TikTok for Good are rarely investigated. Although platform initiatives' content is often not on the top of your For You Page (FYP), such social initiatives can tell much about what values a platform aims to promote. Examining the values promoted through social initiatives of platform companies provides a way to understand what these companies try to center as important or worthwhile. This project investigates the promotion of platform values through “TikTok for Good,” based on an inductive and thematic analysis of TikTok for Good videos (n=180). With this study, I aim to explore how platform values can enhance our understanding of the construction of what a platform counts as $2 , what is worth being visible, and in turn, what is not.
THE VALUE AFFORDANCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT FEATURES
Authors: Scharlach Rebecca , Hallinan Blake
Published: March 2024

Like, Comment, and Share are ubiquitous features and central elements of engagement on social media platforms. Yet the values promoted by such features remain an open question. We propose the concept of value affordances, defined as the set of ethical, aesthetic, and relational principles that emerge from the interaction between different stakeholders and technological infrastructures. We develop a novel method for studying value affordances through focus groups to explore the engagement features of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Across platforms, our participants agreed that engagement features promote expression, care, and community, aligning with how companies promote their platforms. They also agreed that engagement features hinder privacy, mindfulness, peace, and safety, echoing public concerns about the harmful consequences of social media. Their accounts typically downplayed the role of technology, instead emphasizing user agency and responsibility. We discuss how users navigate tradeoffs in the value affordances of social media through creative strategies to negotiate, downplay, or even resolve these tensions. These include using features antagonistically, avoiding using specific features, or using features in more limited contexts like groups or direct messages. Users also negotiate value tradeoffs through how they assign responsibility for promoting or hindering particular values. While our participants consistently emphasized the agency of users, they differentiated responsibility into categories of "us" and "them," identifying with positive actions that promote values and blaming others for negative actions that hinder values.
COMMUNICATING CARE - HEALING, THERAPY AND INFLUENCER PRACTICES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Authors: Schreiber Maria , Hendry Natalie Ann
Published: March 2024

Building on two case studies, this paper will discuss emerging healing, health and therapy cultures on social media and the role of (micro-)influencers within these cultures. While influencer cultures have become an important field of internet research over the last decade (see for example Abidin, 2015), scholars typically focus on commercial influencers in the context of fashion, beauty, travel, lifestyle genres, and adjacent genres. This paper contributes to extending how we imagine and theorise influencer practices and explores influencers and influencer practices that are motivated, arguably, by healing rather than financial or ideological ambitions. Theoretically, we consider how digital affect cultures enable influencers and followers to (re)create narratives about health, relate through resonance and engage with media rituals rather than merely seek information. As influencer practices and cultures continue to expand beyond popular or normative conceptualisations, this paper offers empirical accounts to open up the contexts and theories we use to explore influencer dynamics. Our paper is a starting point to invite conversation at the conference about the diversity of influencers and influencer cultures, how we might theorise their roles, and how care, healing, health and therapy is felt and communicated.
THE GREAT RESET: “COUNTERPOWER” IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDIA CONCENTRATION AND PLATFORM DEPENDENCE
Authors: Seipp Theresa Josephine
Published: March 2024

The growing concentration of power and dependence on few platforms in the media sector necessitate regulatory measures to counter the potential threats to media pluralism and editorial independence stemming from this concentration. While some legal initiatives aim to address the imbalanced power dynamics between platforms and news media, such as the efforts at the EU level through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) to establish a fair playing field in digital markets, it is crucial to empower countervailing forces. This article explores the concept of "counterpower" within the context of media concentration and platform dependence, delving into its theoretical and practical implications. The practical analysis is grounded in 12 semi-structured interviews conducted with news organisations of various sizes in the UK and the Netherlands, revealing a heightened awareness of the necessity to reduce dependences and promote more direct and engaged journalism. The interviews identified specific strategies, albeit with some limitations, highlighting the need for additional support, especially for local news organisations striving for autonomy in reducing dependences. In a nutshell, the article examines the legal prerequisites for news organisations to establish a "counterpower," serving as a complementary piece of the larger puzzle in addressing the broader challenges of media concentration and platform dependence. Finally, alongside the evolving EU regulatory framework, encompassing the DSA, DMA, and EMFA, there is a growing demand for enabling “counterpower” and developing robust media (concentration) laws in Europe, particularly focusing on safeguarding local journalism.
DEPLATFORMING THE SMART CITY: GIVING RESIDENTS CONTROL OVER THEIR PERSONAL DATA
Authors: Shaffer Gwen Lisa
Published: March 2024

Smart city platforms–encompassing mobile apps, cameras, sensors, algorithms, and predictive analytics—function as surveillance tools. Specifically, these Internet-connected devices and services generate troves of data on residents, including real-time geolocation, energy consumption habits, travel patterns, mobile device identifiers, Internet browsing history, phone contacts, credit card numbers, and much more. The proposed project is focused on the City of Long Beach’s vision to use data in ethical ways that avoid reinforcing existing racial biases and discriminatory decision-making. When fully implemented, this digital rights platform will operationalize both privacy and racial equity as priorities for all deployments of smart city technology.

First, the platform will feature text and the open-source iconography that visually conveys how the City of Long Beach uses specific technologies, what data the devices collect and how the City utilizes that data. We plan to strategically deploy these information points across Long Beach, physically adjacent to or digitally embedded within civic technologies, e.g., sensors, cameras, small cells, mobile payment kiosks, and a 311 app. The platform will include a feedback application consisting of access (via QR code or hyperlink) to an online dashboard where users may learn additional details, update data collection preferences, and share comments/concerns with local government officials. The ultimate goal is to develop a backend solution that enables residents to opt-out of data collection.

The platform will provide residents with a clear understanding of how local government applies predictive and diagnostic analytics to personal data, and will also empower community members by granting them agency.
STRATEGIC (IN)VISIBILITY: HOW MARGINALISED CREATORS NAVIGATE THE RISKS AND CONSTRAINTS OF ONLINE VISIBILITY
Authors: Stegeman Hanne Marleen , Are Carolina , Poell Thomas
Published: March 2024

Online creators need their content to be ‘seen’; visibility on platforms can provide financial, social, and representational benefits. A lot of vital research has been done on how creators try to enhance their visibility on platforms and struggle with the threat of invisibility. But, especially for marginalised creators, platformised visibility is not without risks. This paper attends to these risks and creators' tactical use of (in)visibility to manage these. Drawing on 27 interviews with creators - online sex workers, LGBTQ+ activists, sex educators - we outline the harms of hypervisibility and users’ tactics for strategic invisibility. These interviews showcase how hegemonic norms hyper- and invisibilise marginalised groups, and how these dynamics are reproduced and institutionalised on platforms. We find that marginalised creators face serious risks from their platformised hypervisibility, not just their invisibilisation. Yet within the structures of platforms these creators still find ways to manage these risks and engage with strategic invisibility. Tactics of resistance exist across groups of marginalised creators. As such, our analysis shows the need to not just gain insight into how creators maximise visibility, but also into how they seek particular types of visibility, as well as strategic invisibility.
THE CONVENIENCE STORE REVOLUTION: COMPUTER NETWORKS, LOGISTICS, AND THE REINVENTION OF RETAIL IN JAPAN
Authors: Steinberg Marc
Published: March 2024

Convenience stores in their current, most globally popular form were born in the US, reinvented in Japan, and re-exported to Asia and the world. No company better illustrates this transnational trajectory than 7-Eleven. This paper turns to the humble, often-overlooked convenience store as a crucial site for thinking critically, historically, and globally about the discourse of Internet revolutions. In Japanese language business literature and popular descriptions, 7-Eleven Japan’s innovative use of networked computing and logistics from the 1980s onwards led (among other factors) to its immense national and then international success. In this paper I will draw on my archival research into the convenience store in Japan to argue for that this is a key site from which to rethink histories of networked computing and the Internet “revolution” in a non-Western context – furthering the project of “de-Westernizing” or de-colonizing Internet studies. Building on existing research on Internet histories in East Asia, this paper turns to the convenience store industry and 7-Eleven Japan in particular to tell a different story of the Internet itself. Many contemporaneous accounts of 7-Eleven’s practices in the 1980s and 1990s treat its turn to information-gathering, networked computing, logistics, and point of service ordering systems as revolutionary developments. As such the convenience store offers an alternative account of commercial revolutions and networked computing. It also offers a different view of contemporary discourses of “convenience” by retailers such as Amazon, an infrastructural or logistical view of convenience provision, and a new way of narrating Internet history.
THE EMERGENT R/ANTIWORK REVOLUTION AND MANAGERIAL ALLIES
Authors: Stillman Ari
Published: March 2024

The subreddit r/Antiwork and the eponymous movement it launched has introduced phrases like ‘Quiet Quitting’ and ‘Act your Wage’ into the media lexicon and garnered the attention of businesses from Goldman Sachs to Kellogg’s for its threat to labor force participation. Heralded by some as the successor to #OccupyWallSt, Antiwork is the other side of the Great Resignation for those who cannot afford to leave their livelihood. Yet it differs from #OccupyWallSt in its scope, which critiques capitalism as a whole rather than money in politics; its scale, with 2.7M members globally on Reddit alone; its longevity, ongoing for ten years; and its varied demographics whereas Occupy protesters tended to be educated white men. As Occupy sought collective mobilizations at government buildings, Antiwork fosters individual, less public forms of resistance to capitalism. James Scott referred to such ‘infrapolitics’ as weapons of the weak, as the lack of capital of the oppressed in all its forms often precludes more direct forms of protest. In this paper, drawing from digital ethnography and interviews, I examine the potency of r/Antiwork for impacting workplace behaviors among community members who are managers in their professional lives. In doing so, I explore the possibility of a broader class consciousness with an historically unlikely ally that transcends the traditional Marxist proletariat-capitalist binary and portends greater efficacy for the American labor movement than in the past 50 years.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM: PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING AND THE DATAFICATION OF PODCAST AUDIENCES
Authors: Sullivan John L
Published: March 2024

The podcasting landscape has been reshaped in the past several years by acquisitions and mergers among players in the industry. Major platform services like Spotify, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia, Google, and Apple have all attempted to more closely bind consumers to their proprietary services, threatening the open architecture of distribution via RSS. While control and monetization of intellectual property is one key driver of platformization in podcasting, another key institutional shift is being accelerated these changes: the datafication of the audience. In short, datafication involves the quantification of human activity to enable surveillance, prediction, and mass customization of advertising.

In this paper, I explore one significant impact of widescale platformization within podcasting: the emergence of programmatic advertising markets. By essentially “listening in” to these industry discourses about podcast advertising (in podcasts and in the Podcast Upfront presentations from Spring 2022), this essay outlines the importance of platform-to-platform data transactions and highlights the resulting shifts in the podcasting ecosystem: away from the intimate, relationship-driven ethos of the medium and toward a quantitative, surveillance-driven ecosystem.
DIGITAL LABOR UNDER THE STATE/CAPITALIST DUOPOLY: STATE LABOR AND PLAYFUL WORKAHOLICS IN CHINESE DIGITAL SPACE
Authors: Sun Qingyue
Published: March 2024

With the rise of Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), Chinese digital creative industries are no longer a realm of self-entrepreneurship but are dominated by professional service agencies and platforms. At the same time, the Chinese-style market economy and state-led platformization have spawned a unique platform ecology, shaping Chinese digital creative industries and labor subjectivity in its own unique way.

This study contributes to digital entrepreneurship in a non-Western context by exploring the characteristics and risks of Chinese digital laborers amid state-led platformization. Through a qualitative analysis of 203 recruitment advertisements of major MCNs in China, the finding reveals that Chinese digital laborers are trapped in a state/capitalist duopoly. On the surface, recruitment advertisements posted by MCNs create a low-threshold, flexible working environment. But in essence, they reflect the precarious working conditions of contemporary digital laborers under MCNs’ systematic business model. In a crude way, MCNs transformed digital entrepreneurs who previously relied on self-promotion into aesthetic laborers in front of the camera. At the same time, laborers behind the camera are a group of playful workaholics at great risk of being exploited for free. They are compelled to involuntarily internalize the pressures of hyper-productivity and undertake trivial emotional labor. Beyond the risks of the platformed digital economy, I argue that digital laborers of MCNs have become a form of state labor that is expected to contribute to national development agendas while embodying the national character that the state promotes.
TOXICITY AGAINST BRAZILIAN WOMEN DEPUTIES ON TWITTER: A CATEGORIZATION OF DISCURSIVE VIOLENCE
Authors: Tavares Camilla , Recuero Raquel
Published: March 2024

This paper discussed categories of violent discourses and toxicity against Brazilian women deputies on Twitter through a mixed-methods (corpus linguistics approach/discursive analysis) on a dataset of 1400 tweets. Results suggest that toxic discourse in this case is largely based on violence connected to women's behavior and abilities in the political realm, rather than ideology or propositions. Ideological affiliation, while may influence the amount of toxicity created, doesn’t influence the types of toxic discourses.
INFRASTRUCTURAL INSECURITY: GEOPOLITICS IN THE STANDARDIZATION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS
Authors: Ten Oever Niels , Becker Christoph
Published: March 2024

This paper argues that the production of ‘infrastructural insecurity’ is an inherent part of the standardization of information networks. Infrastructural insecurity is the outcome of an intentional process within infrastructural production, standardization, and maintenance that leaves end-users of the infrastructure vulnerable to attacks that benefit a particular actor. We ground this analysis in an interrogation of the responses to the disclosure of three security vulnerabilities in telecommunications networks, namely (1) a security flaw in Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) that allows for the data interception and surveillance, SMS interception and location tracking by third parties, (2) the lack of encryption of permanent identifiers that allowed for the deployment of rogue base stations, which allowed for man-in-the-middle attacks, resulting in interception of all voice and data traffic in a physical signal vicinity, and (3) the lack of forward secrecy between user-equipment and the home network, which allows for the decryption of current encrypted data stream if credentials were obtained in the past. To research the shaping of communication and infrastructure architectures in the face of insecurities, we develop a novel approach to the study of Internet governance and standard-setting processes that leverages web scraping and computer-assisted document set discovery software tools combined with document analysis. We bring these methods into conversation with theoretical approaches from material media studies, science and technology studies, and critical security studies. This is an important contribution because it asks fundamental questions about the adequacy and legitimacy of standardization processes.
EXPLORING THE DARK SIDE OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES ON FACEBOOK AND TELEGRAM: UNCOVERING MEDIA MANIPULATION AND “GET-RICH-QUICK” DECEPTIVE SCHEMES
Authors: Terenzi Massimo
Published: March 2024

The rise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies come with the promise of decentralizing transactions and disrupting the power of market intermediaries. Despite these promises, scholars argue that the risks associated with cryptocurrencies are still unclear.

Some preliminary works investigate the manipulative role played by the circulation of problematic content on platforms such as Reddit, Twitter, Discord, or Telegram. Nonetheless, the research still lacks a clear and comprehensive picture of how widespread the phenomenon is across the whole ecosystem. Despite its prominence, Facebook is understudied in this context. To fill this gap, this work focuses on the role played by Meta’s main platform, as a venue employed to reach a wide audience prone to potential manipulative practices or scams related to cryptocurrencies. As part of a broader investigation on coordinated disinformation in Africa, we have come across a cluster of Facebook groups sharing content related to cryptocurrencies. The links shared by these networks revealed a very prolific cluster of 152 groups dedicated to Airdrop and Bounty initiatives for new cryptocurrencies. We collected a list of recent posts created by these groups between November 2021 and January 2022 (378,513 URLs). A preliminary analysis of these URLs pointed out an overwhelming presence of links to Telegram (47%) that highlights the central role played by this platform in this specific ecosystem. This paper explores the overlap between the cryptocurrency community and social media, analyzing how crypto-related projects are disseminated as a new type of problematic content on Facebook and Telegram.
BLEEDING PURPLE, SEEING PINK: DOMESTIC VISIBILITY, GENDER & SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN THE HOME STUDIOS OF TWITCH.TV
Authors: Tran Christine H
Published: March 2024

From greenscreens in the bedroom to webcams on refrigerators, household surfaces underlie the broadcast of personality on Twitch.tv, Amazon’s $15 billion platform for live video entertainment. This paper examines how homemaking and visibility are co-conceptualized in the labour of gendered and racialized game live streamers. Drawing from a virtual ethnography of Twitch creators’ domestic spaces in North America (n=12), I document the staging of household visibility in relation to Twitch’s affordances of on-demand broadcast and play. Extending feminist and social reproduction theorizations of housework, I discuss how this convergence of house- and sight-making reifies the gaming industry’s historic reliance upon unremunerated spousal support.

How such marginalised Twitch streamers calibrate opacity between their broadcasts and their homes reveals the affinities between platform aggregation and domestic privatisation on local and global scales. The converging geographies of labour, leisure, and living demanded by Twitch represent more than ancillary sites where gameplay(ers) are visually recomposed as “web-ready” for live platform(ization). Rather, the management of a domestic timespace on Twitch represents a struggle for autonomy over the means of cultural production by workers across social media entertainment. This paper reframes “Bleed Purple” as more than Twitch’s company slogan, branded by emojis. Rather, it proffers Twitch as a vital case study on why social reproduction and feminist theories are integral to deepening our understanding of platform work, in and beyond the home.
TESTING THE ROLE OF CATEGORICAL AND RESOURCE INEQUALITIES IN INDIRECT INTERNET USES OF OLDER ADULTS: A PATH ANALYSIS
Authors: Trkman Marina , Reisdorf Bianca C. , Bartol Jošt , Petrovčič Andraž
Published: March 2024

Age-related digital inequalities have been one of the key aspects to understand and enable better ageing in the digitalized world. Although there is a large body of literature on direct forms and determinants of digital engagement among older internet users and non-users, only a few studies have focused on determinants of indirect internet uses among older non-users. To address this gap, this study investigates how the unequal distribution of resources among older non-users affects the availability and activation of supportive relationships, which enable them to ask other internet users to perform internet activities on their behalf—a practice known as use-by-proxy (UBP). Drawing on van Dijk’s (2005) resources and appropriation theory, we build a conceptual model with seven hypotheses. These hypotheses specify sequential pathways between categorical inequalities and differences in social and material resources as determinants of the heterogeneity of UBP availability and activation of networks. In turn, availability and activation affect the breadth of UBP engagement among older non-users. The model is tested on a representative survey sample of 241 respondents aged 65+ from Slovenia. Results from path analysis partly support the model and demonstrate the importance of investigating the sequential paths between social and age-related digital inequalities with respect to indirect forms of internet uses. The results also suggest that interventions aimed at supporting older non-users in their access to online services can be targeted at different levels, from addressing categorical and resource inequalities to providing UBP services.
POTHOLES AND POWER: A MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ‘LOOK AT THIS F*CKIN’ STREET’ ON INSTAGRAM
Authors: Turvy Alex
Published: March 2024

The condition of road infrastructure in New Orleans is recognized among citizens as unacceptably poor. This problem is situated in the context of a long list of problems with the municipal government and city services that have combined to create an atmosphere of distrust and deep frustration. On Instagram, ‘Look At This F*ckin’ Street’ exists to document failing local infrastructure and has nearly 100,000 followers and an active culture of crowdsourced user submissions and regular engagement in comments and reposts. In this paper, I utilize Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to explore all of the relevant discursive modalities seen in the account in order to uncover how they work to challenge and ultimately undermine power. Via an open coding process, I identify three main strategies employed by the anonymous account manager and the participating followers: Shaming, Mocking, and Exposing. Within each of these strategies, I explore the specific techniques observed within these discourses that contribute to the effectiveness of these strategies. I argue that LATFS is an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes, allowing residents to take back the narrative of their city’s infrastructure challenges, diminish and demean the powerful interests responsible, and, ultimately attempt to reclaim the power lost to negligent or even bad-faith municipal authorities in New Orleans.
*EXPLORING NIGERIA`S ENDSARS MOVEMENT THROUGH THE NEXUS OF MEMORY*
Authors: Udenze Silas
Published: March 2024

On 3 October 2020, a 22 years young man, Joshua Ambrose, was shot dead by a team of the Nigerian Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Delta State, Nigeria, on the allegation that he was an Internet fraudster (Dambo et al., 2021). The SARS was established in 1992 to curb crimes. However, the SARS has been accused of gross humanrights violations (Wada, 2021). Joshua's shooting was captured in a video. The audio in the video states that the Police just shot and killed the owner of a Lexus SUV and zoomed off with his car (Agbo, 2021). In a few days, the viral video generated outrage that transformed into vast decentralised street protests in major cities in Nigeria, mainly organised through social media. EndSARS Movement continues to construct memories across time, an area dominated by Western studies (Daphi & Zamponi, 2019). Researchers (Nwakanma, 2022; Dambo et al., 2021; Nwabunnia, 2021; Ajaegbu et al., 2022) have explored the EndSARS Movement from diverse perspectives. Nonetheless, the literature is devoid of studies from the memory study perspective, a critical area in social movement studies (Smit, 2020; Merill & Lindgren, 2020). Besides, considering the online feature of the Movement, the current literature on EndSARS needs to include the novelty and methodological rigour of virtual ethnography. Consequently, this study attempts to understand how protesters use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram Stories (Ephemeral; 24 hours $2 ) to construct a memory of the EndSARS Movement in Nigeria from 2020 until its Anniversaries in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
SUPER-APPIFICATION: CONGLOMERATION IN THE MOBILE ECOSYSTEM
Authors: Van der Vlist Fernando , Helmond Anne , Dieter Michael , Weltevrede Esther
Published: March 2024

“Super apps” are on the rise and gaining popularity worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia, India and Africa. These are “do-everything apps” that offer a wide range of services in a single interface, making them more integrated into people's lives. Super apps thus highlight the organisation, political economy and geopolitics of the platformisation process in the app economy. While most studies on super apps focus on Chinese and Southeast Asian apps, this paper examines super apps from around the world to better understand and discuss the phenomenon. Specifically, it examines and discusses (1) what “super apps” are, (2) by whom they were developed, (3) when they were created or how they evolved over time, and (4) where—in which countries or regions or parts of the world—they emerged. We provide a typology of super-app constellations based on the different characteristics identified in a global collection of 40 super-apps. We discuss the local or regional differences between apps, their historical emergence, modes of capital accumulation and the challenges and implications arising from them for critical research. The rise of super-apps and their integration into people's daily lives in general invites us to delve deeper into the relatedness and situatedness of apps, and focus in particular on the unique conglomeration processes currently taking place in the mobile ecosystem.
BIG AI: THE CLOUD AS MARKETPLACE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Authors: Van der Vlist Fernando N , Helmond Anne , Ferrari Fabian
Published: March 2024

Cloud infrastructure platforms underpin most of today’s internet, functioning as the operating system of the internet and representing the most important source of revenue for Big Tech companies. While most of the current hype around (“generative”) AI is focused on specific successful products and initiatives like OpenAI (ChatGPT, DALL·E 2) and Stability AI (Stable Diffusion), they would not have been possible without the significant infrastructural support and investments from Big Tech companies. This paper critically examines what we call Big AI, or those types and deployments of AI that simply would not be feasible or even possible without the infrastructural support, partnerships, or investments provided by Big Tech companies. To account for this, we articulate the key components of AI and how they are connected. By focusing on Big Tech’s own products and service offerings, third-party applications, and models, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of what Big AI is, or looks like today, and what it may become in the years to come—for which the infrastructure is being made right now. Further, we make a distinction between the cloud platform products and service offerings from Big Tech (i.e. the cloud as an infrastructure for AI) and Big Tech as the host or provided of marketplaces for diverse (AI-based) products and services from third-party businesses and developers (i.e. the cloud as a marketplace for AI). Overall, this research provides the basis for a better understanding of the critical political economy of (Big) AI.
ONE HUNDRED NAZI SCREENS: INTERFACES AND THE STRUCTURE OF U.S. WHITE NATIONALIST DIGITAL NETWORKS ON TELEGRAM
Authors: Van Schenck Reed
Published: March 2024

The “Alt-Right,” a white nationalist online coalition, has collapsed amidst a revolution in digital governance termed the “regulatory turn.” Nevertheless, the regulatory turn remains incomplete because white nationalists utilize graphical user interface (GUI) design to subvert public stewardship. Why have some former Alt-Right platforms collapsed while others have grown despite increased scrutiny? The field’s account is currently limited to social media networks and rooted in positivist methods, lending a static conception of white nationalist networks that is slow to recognize cultural shifts. This paper fills the gap by comparatively critiquing the interfacing affordances of Telegram, an instant messaging app that functions as an "ideological safe harbor" for U.S. white nationalists with content aggregation, blogging, and activist use-cases. I apply interface critique to index how the manipulation of graphical user interfaces allows white nationalists to frame their browsing as a technology of mastery over and against the regulatory turn. I argue that Telegram networks coopt the enclave public, exploiting an ideology of decentralization to mystify the leverage held by white nationalist developers over their users. This occlusion redirects white masculine anxieties against publicity to justify an intensified racist fanaticism and the exportation of violence against racial, religious, and gendered outsiders. White interfacing frames GUI design as a capitalist technology that weaponizes the racist and sexist logic of the “average user” to secure the reproduction of reactionary platforms. This project furthers Internet research by developing a theory of the interface as an ideological mirror of production.
DESIGNING ETHICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) SYSTEMS WITH MEANINGFUL YOUTH PARTICIPATION: IMPLICATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS
Authors: Verma Kanishk , Milosevic Tijana , Davis Brian , Norman James O'higgins
Published: March 2024

While artificial intelligence (AI) enabled systems have shown impressive accuracy in detecting harmful content online, they are still not perfect and do not take into account the perspective of children in their design. The development of AI systems heavily relies on large datasets for training, and creating such datasets involves annotating vast amounts of data. Studies that involve children in dataset development also have their challenges, such as the possibility of re-traumatisation. Therefore, ethical considerations must be taken into account, such as obtaining informed consent, conducting design sessions with children and young people, and addressing implicit and explicit biases in AI filtering, profiling, and surveillance systems. It is crucial to involve children and young people in the design of AI systems that filter content to ensure ethical considerations are met. In this article we discuss the ethical concerns in AI development with children and young people, and also possible techniques that help mitigate such concerns.
THE WEIRD GOVERNANCE OF FACT-CHECKING: FROM WATCHDOGS TO CONTENT MODERATORS
Authors: Vinhas Otavio , Bastos Marco
Published: March 2024

In this work, we chart the multiple conflicts between stakeholders in the pursuit of a common standard for fact-checking outside Western Industrialized Educated Rich and Educated (WEIRD) countries, a problem that sits at the center of the institutional mission of fact-checkers as watchdogs of politicians and enforcers of content moderation. We apply reflexive thematic analysis to a set of interviews with 37 fact-checking experts from 35 organizations in 27 countries to catalogue the methods employed by fact-checkers and the pressures they contend with in non-WEIRD countries. In contrast to the one-size-fits-all approach to community guidelines implemented by social platforms worldwide, our results show that the asymmetric relationship with platform companies compels fact-checkers to adjust their methods and strategies to account for the political and cultural dimensions driving mis- and disinformation in their local contexts. Our findings detail three ways through which social platforms impinge on the scope, values, and institutional mission of non-WEIRD fact-checking organizations. As we argue, the platformization of non-WEIRD fact-checkers entails a convoluted process in which social media platforms gradually nudge fact-checkers into becoming part of the content moderation industry, a shift that runs counter to the democracy-building values underpinning the fact-checking movement. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and recommendations for content moderation both in WEIRD and non-WEIRD contexts.
MINERAL EXPLORATION IN INDIGENOUS LANDS: THE DISCURSIVE NORMALIZATION OF ILLEGAL MINING IN BRAZIL
Authors: Volcan Taiane de Oliveira
Published: March 2024

In 2023, the world faced a humanitarian tragedy in Brazil involving the Yanomami people. In addition to the result of criminal conduct of public policies aimed at indigenous peoples in the last four years, the case highlights a culture of erasure of Brazilian native peoples that permeates society, institutions, and the mainstream press. In this work, we discuss how mining in indigenous lands has been approached discursively in Brazil. For this, we analyze the conversations on Twitter related to #AtoPelaTerra, a protest in defense of the environment and against the bill that authorizes mining in indigenous lands, held in Brasília in March 2022. To understand the conversation dynamics of the publications collected, we performed a network analysis (WASSERMAN & FAUST, 1994) and to analyze the speeches produced by the subjects who participated in the debate, we adopted the Analysis of Connected Concepts (LINDGREEN 2016). Our results demonstrate that the conversation about the indigenous agenda has been polarized and with a strong misinformation content, especially in the field of the extreme right. In addition, the defense of native peoples and environmental preservation has a limited scope to its most active militancy. In the mainstream media, both the environmental agenda and the indigenous agenda are softened by replacing the term “mining” with “mineral exploration”, which ends up normalizing (FOUCAULT, 2003) practices that are harmful to the environment and indigenous peoples, as an effect of a crossing of the economic and supposedly developmentalist debate that prevails in these spaces.
PERCEIVED ENTITLEMENT AND OBLIGATION BETWEEN TIKTOK CREATORS AND AUDIENCES
Authors: Watson TX
Published: March 2024

In 2020 TikTok saw an influx of new users, looking for a sense of relief in the face of overwhelming loneliness, and found some palliative comfort in the sense of intimacy entailed in engaging with the works of microcelebrities. At the same time many new users became creators on TikTok, saw incredible growth, and quickly found themselves navigating a larger scale of demands on their attention and on their affects than they’d ever experienced, or, usually, expected. The purpose of this paper is to examine and describe the specific demands on the affective labor and attention of content creators on TikTok, the ways in which those demands tend to exceed what the creators themselves are comfortable with or capable of sustaining, and the challenges and limitations that prevent creators from setting, communicating, or maintaining boundaries around their labor, relationships, or personal and professional lives. I investigated these questions by participant observation and a series of interviews and explore answers in an ethnographic and autoethnographic framework. Audience members treat the emotional experience of creators as an open resource in two ways: 1) externalization, placing difficult emotional experiences in the creator’s hands with the expectation that the creator will do something about it, and so the audience member doesn’t have to; and 2) extraction, soliciting the public performance of an emotional reaction to material of the audience member’s choice. The dehumanizing experience of being treated as vending machines for intimacy is an ongoing psychological harm that, to some extent, all microcelebrities endure.
TOWARDS ANTICASTE INTERNET: THE OPERATION, CHALLENGES AND ASPIRATIONS OF BAHUJAN PUBLISHERS.
Authors: Yatharth .
Published: March 2024

Communication and technology in India are dominated and hegemonized by elite oppressor castes (Savarnas). The absence of marginalized castes (Bahujans) in mass media systematically erases narratives, histories and opportunities present to them. In this study, we look at alternative digital Bahujan publishing as sites for claiming media representation and how a vision of anticaste internet is emerging through these publishing practices.

We study how despite systemic challenges, Bahujan publication spaces have emerged across digital media as sites of intersectional discourse on caste through new media like blogs, visual art, memes, YouTube channels, infographics, podcasts etc. Further, We look at how this has exposed caste issues under the casteless facade of digital technology through challenges of caste-hate speech, poor moderation, algorithmic bias and inadequate platform governance.

We draw from qualitative interviews with bahujan publishers across digital mediums. Through a critical caste lens, we uncover motivations, infrastructural needs, editorial processes, audience engagement, challenges and the future vision of these publishing projects. We discuss questions of identity, community, hate-speech, platform censorship, mental health and self-care which emerge in online anti-caste publishing.

We conclude that in spite of the historic erasure and marginalization of bahujans from media narratives, bahujan publishing has opened a space for an emerging vision of anti-caste internet which needs to be studied from an infrastructure and platform lens.
WEIZENBAUM'S PERFORMANCE AND THEORY MODES: LESSONS FOR CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL CHATBOTS
Authors: Yang Misti , Salzano Matthew
Published: March 2024

In 1976, Joseph Weizenbaum argued that, because “[t]he achievements of the artificial intelligentsia [were] mainly triumphs of technique,” AI had not “contributed” to theory or “practical problem solving.” Weizenbaum highlighted the celebration of performance without deeper understanding, and in response, he articulated a theory mode for AI that could cultivate human responsibility and judgment. We suggest that, given access to Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots, Weizenbaum’s performance and theory modes offer urgently-needed vocabulary for public discourse about AI. Working from the perspective of digital rhetoric, we explain Weizenbaum’s theorization of each mode and perform a close textual analysis of two case studies of Open AI’s ChatGPT shared on Twitter to illustrate the contemporary relevance of his modes. We conclude by forecasting how theory mode may inform public accountability of AI.
MEMES, MULTIMODALITIES, AND MACHINES: ASSEMBLING MULTIMODAL PATTERNS IN MEME CLASSIFICATION STUDY
Authors: Zhu Guangnan , Chand Kunal , Angus Daniel , Graham Timothy
Published: March 2024

Memes are an important facet of current online communication on social media, with rich social, political, and cultural significance and power. This present work focuses on developing computational frameworks to support textual and visual content analysis of online memes, assisting the profiling of the unique contents and interrelationships of different meme characteristics. The framework focusses on decomposing the multimodal subcomponents of online memes to support accurate sorting and classification of meme exploitable and other rich textual materials. We showcase the development of a multimodal meme classification toolbox with the capability to utilize more abundant information from those multimodal components, with a view towards bolstering and extending existing meme analysis methods for cultural and media studies.
MISOGYNY, SURVIVORSHIP, AND BELIEVABILITY ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS: EMERGING TECHNIQUES OF ABUSE, RADICALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
Authors: Banet-Weiser Sarah , Higgins Kathryn Claire , Hewa Nelanthi , Ging Debbie , Baker Catherine , Andreasen Maja Brandt , Truss Azsaneé
Published: March 2024

On 18th May 2022, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg declared “the death of #MeToo” (Goldberg, 2022). The papers in this panel examine this claim and wrestle with its potential implications. Drawing on case studies and data from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, we evaluate the current state of play in the online push-and-pull between feminist speech about gender-based violence and its attendant misogynistic backlashes. Using a range of different qualitative methods, these papers unpack the orientations towards visibility and transparency that urge survivors into ever-increasing degrees of exposure online; the way that digital media are reconfiguring the gender and racial politics of doubt and believability; the algorithmic pathways through which boys and men are ushered towards increasingly more radical “manosphere” content and communities; and how the problem of “believability” as it relates to testimonies of assault is being complicated and compounded online by networked misogynoir. The result is an ambivalent portrait of the afterlife of #MeToo on the internet, and some important questions for networked feminist activism going forward.
TOWARD A REVOLUTION IN AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN’S DATA AND PRIVACY
Authors: Leaver Tama , Mannell Kate , Bunn Anna , Duffy Gavin , Ng Rebecca , Zhao Andy
Published: March 2024

This panel combines four papers which focus in different ways on the question of children’s data and privacy in the Australian context. All four are framed with children’s right to privacy as a core concern, consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as updated via the General Comment 25 on Child Rights in the Digital Environment. We examine four arenas where children’s data is either extracted or occluded in ways that make it more difficult, if not impossible, for parents, carers and others to make informed choices about the data of very young children. As children begin to articulate their own ideas and privacy preferences, these studies highlight different understandings of privacy, and of trust in both people and technologies. The panel papers are titled: ‘Where Does Children’s Data Go? Mapping the Data Broker Industry’; ‘Data and Privacy as a Social Relation’; ‘Developing a Holistic Framework for Analysing Privacy Policies – A Child’s Rights and Data Justice Perspective’ and ‘Unboxing Data and Privacy Via Young Children’s Wearables’. Collectively, these papers can be read as arguing that we need nothing less than a revolution in the way children and responsible adults are informed about the way children’s data is generated, captured, stored, and owned, as well as explicitly regulating who can profit from children’s data, in which circumstances, and how transparent these processes must be.
IDEOLOGY AND AFFECT IN POLITICAL POLARIZATION AND FANDOM ONLINE
Authors: Svegaard Sebastian , Barnes Renee , Vieira Eloy , Aquino Maria Clara , Ferreira Driele , Blanco Beatriz , Amaral Adriana , Schuch Cassia , Moody Kyle , Rosenberg Allegra , Vilkins Samantha
Published: March 2024

In recent years, scholarly attention has indicated the increased enmeshment of the political and entertainment media spheres, a change that has happened so gradually that it has not been as remarked upon as it should be. This is perhaps most observable in studies of community dynamics around both $2 and $2 . The backdrop of digital surveillance capitalism, and the specific platform affordances on which these communities exist and interact, exacerbates both. Furthermore, beyond these inverse scenarios whose distinctive boundaries grow blurrier by the day, there is a third domain in the overlap, of the exploitation – or compensation – of fans, fandoms, and fan labor for political and financial gain. This, too, exists in a reactive feedback loop with the always-on conditions of our contemporary digital political economy. As consequence, there are prominent recent streams of work explicating what exactly the fields of fan studies and political sociology can offer each other for researching communities online in such contexts.

Responding to both the current landscape and recent exemplary and novel scholarship in the field, our panel presents four papers which each delve into an intersection of identity, community, and their ideological and affective ties. They investigate online affective community practices in reaction to fractured sociopolitical polarization, and contribute to the expanding picture of interdisciplinary frameworks and methodologies available — and increasingly, required — to comprehend the motivations, justifications, and trajectories of community dynamics under such drivers.