bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“GETTING PAID TO TAKE CARE FOR THE ONES YOU LOVE”: SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCING AS A MEANS FOR PAID SOCIAL REPRODUCTION LABOR
Authors: Lukan Tinca , Čehovih Zajc Jožica
Published: March 2024

Numerous studies have shown digital platforms commodify social reproduction labor. How social media platforms and the influencers’ activities intersect with the field of social reproduction has received scant academic attention. This study explores platform capitalism's expansion to the domestic sphere in the semi-peripheral socio-economic context. Fifty semi-structured interviews with influencers, their business partners, and other stakeholders in Slovenia were conducted. Results show that social media influencing intersects with the social reproduction sphere in two different ways, depending on whether the household is time- or money-poor. Time-poor households employ influencing to find an optimal temporal equilibrium between influencer activities and household responsibilities. Money-poor households employ influencing as a side hustle besides regular employment to have one household expense less. These two groups converge as they all create content "on the go" while completing social reproduction tasks. Influencing is peering into the cracks between work and leisure, creating a novel dimension of time: monetized leisure. Under the traditional 8-8-8 rule (work, leisure, sleep), only 8 hours were paid. With influencing activities on social media, leisure gets monetized, resulting in more hours of work and passive income. Our study shows that influencing activities on social media in Slovenia are less about getting paid to do what you love, as demonstrated by Duffy (2017) and more about getting paid to care for those you love. The study contributes to the varieties of platform capitalism and to the de-westernization of platform and creator studies.
THE POLITICS AND EVOLUTION OF TIKTOK AS PLATFORM TOOL
Authors: Mahetaji Kaushar , Nieborg David
Published: March 2024

A fast-growing international success, ByteDance’s short video platform TikTok is a relevant case study to examine how digital platforms expand infrastructurally and accumulate power. TikTok has achieved popularity comparable to major players, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It now grapples with balancing the diverse interests of its different user groups, chief among which content creators. We interrogate how TikTok manages this challenge via an exploratory study that studies the platform’s evolution through what we dub ‘platform tools,’ or, the software-based instruments for cultural production on social media platforms. Such software-based tools have been previously theorized using the ‘boundary resources’ framework, which emerged from information systems studies. This framework conceptualizes platform tools as interrelated, contextual, and dynamic, changing in response to variables internal and external to the platform ecosystem. Recognizing that platform tools are ever-changing, we conduct a ‘platform historiography’ to periodize three main trends: platform tools (1) have contributed to the formalization and professionalization of platform content; (2) have encouraged the standardization of platform-dependent cultural production; and (3) have furthered the platformization of TikTok both within, as well as outside the cultural industries. Our paper serves as a response to calls from media scholars to view platforms as contingent and ever-evolving, and to further social media historiography. More specifically, we contribute to the literature on platform studies because it focuses on an understudied aspect of platform governance: platform tools.
TECHNO-POLITICAL PROMISES OF PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT: A SITUATION OF APPS AND EXCEL IN PUBLIC HEALTH
Authors: Mann Monique , Heemsbergen Luke , Bennett Catherine , McCosker Anthony
Published: March 2024

This article considers the politics and practicalities of responding to the COVID crisis with ‘an app for that’. It shows how seductive solutionism in times of crisis created political impetus to direct the public health response to contact tracing through Contact Tracing Apps (CTA). Rather than focus on user-based concerns (uptake, privacy, etc.), we’ve investigated how apps interface with complex systems and infrastructures of public health. Our 21 expert informants from five developed nations offered insight into the machinations of contact tracing from ‘the coal face’ up to executive technical and policy decisions including national CTA development and deployment. We learned that beneath the shiny veneer of an app is the messy certitude of Excel and tech-debt, politics, and mundane organizational technique that worked amidst each other to shape public health. Our approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the interfaces of CTA and digital epidemiology than current App narratives allow.

While a healthy and critical literature on digital app interventions into COVID-19 has developed, there has not been critical consideration of these apps informed by insights from those responsible for designing, implementing, and making use of these digital tools. We redress this research imbalance by considering how user-centric narratives of the platformization of public health can gloss over what situational analysis (Clarke et al., 2016) might better uncover. This paints a more nuanced picture of digital epidemiology than current App narratives provide to address the contingent promises and failures related to these digital technologies.
CARE, INC.: HOW BIG TECH RESPONDED TO THE END OF ROE
Authors: Martin Zelly C , Montiel Valle Dominique A , Shorey Samantha
Published: March 2024

After the leak of the Dobbs decision that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade, technology companies made a series of public statements in support of user privacy: Apple released an advertisement showcasing privacy features; Google promised to delete location data of abortion clinic visitors; Meta announced testing of default end-to-end-encryption. Corporations like Meta once worked to convince users that their platforms were morally neutral. Now, they publicly “crack down” on manipulation and speak out for racial justice, despite privately subjecting activists to state surveillance. To bolster their authority and popularity, platforms engage in “commodity activism,” in which corporations take positions on social issues. Ultimately, this enhances corporate capital rather than enacting social change. Care, in its ideal, is opposed to neoliberalism: resisting individuality in favor of community and refusing to reduce humans to capital. Yet, paternalistic care can be a weapon – used to ensnare and to oppress. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis of platforms’ public utterances and policy changes after the Dobbs leak, we find that platforms redefine care in three main ways. For users, care is neoliberal - platforms provide good privacy options, for which users are individually responsible. For employees, care is paternalistic - employees are offered money for healthcare, at the expense of free expression. Finally, ultimate care is for the platform - that company culture is protected, alliance with the state unthreatened, and above all, profit is promoted. Platform decisions are revealed to extend care in some ways, while also maintaining control over users and their data.
FEMINIST QUEEN OR CONSPIRACY THEORIST? FEMALE SPREADERS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH DISINFORMATION
Authors: Martin Zelly C , Trauthig Inga K , Woolley Samuel C
Published: March 2024

Soon after the $2 decision overturned the federal right to abortion in the United States, an investigation revealed a disinformation campaign against birth control, driven by anti-abortion influencers. Disinformation targeting abortion and birth control is partially rooted in conspiracy, particularly the Great Replacement Theory, which plays on fears of white people being “replaced” by people of color. This notion is a long-standing issue of the anti-abortion movement, as early successes in banning abortion were partially motivated by fears of white people having fewer babies than people of color. Studies have shown that Black Americans believe in conspiracy theories about birth control, e.g., that it is deployed by the government as a form of genocide against Black people. Unfortunately, though, these beliefs are not entirely unfounded. This problematizes definitions of conspiracy theories as inherently false and unjustified—Black Americans, for instance, have long undergone inhumane experimentation by the American medical system. This illuminates a troubling connection—that between embodied oppression and conspiracy-believing. We query whether this overlap is weaponized by the anti-abortion community to spread disinformation campaigns. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis of 14 hours of Instagram stories and posts from 154 members of the anti-abortion collected between February 14, 2023 and February 27, 2023, we find that the anti-abortion movement has weaponized feminist knowledge-production and relies on grains of embodied experience to spread disinformation campaigns, which at times snowball into racially-motivated conspiracy theories for political and/or financial gain.
CONSTRUCTING AND MARKETING SEXUAL FANTASY: ANALYZING THE SOCIAL MEDIA OF SEX ROBOTS
Authors: Masterson Annette Marie
Published: March 2024

Since the release of sex robots in 2017 by RealDoll, they have been marketed as companions and sexual fantasies. Social media platforms provide RealDoll and its affiliates the opportunity to justify and celebrate the creation of a responsive sex robot directly to the public and potential consumers. To expand the fourth level of abstraction of mass media within the social construction of technology theory, this paper investigates the Instagram and Twitter pages of the technological segment of RealDoll, Realbotix, and the most prevalent RealDoll affiliate, Brickdollbanger. Framed by Fairclough’s (2012) perspective of critical discourse analysis, I reviewed a combined 1,016 Tweets and Instagram posts to analyze the process of enrollment by key actors in relation to the design of sex robots and the sex robot industry. Results indicate humor and explicit images are utilized to market the sexual capabilities of the sex robots versus ideas of love and companionship. This paper adds to human-machine communication literature on the design of sex robots by exploring the sex-forward messaging not fully present in other marketing materials of Realbotix.
TECHNOLOGICAL PRACTICES OF REFUSAL: RADICAL REIMAGINATION IN M EIFLER’S COMPUTATIONAL PROSTHETICS
Authors: May Emma
Published: March 2024

The essay brings together Black feminist theory, critical disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies together through the concept of technological practices of refusal. The concept of technological practices of refusal describes how disabled people engage in everyday, often communal technological practices as means to challenge normative logics and engage in collective world-making practices toward collective liberation and societal transformation. Technological practices of refusal extends Schalk & Kim’s (2020) feminist-of-color disability studies and Campt's (2017) practices of refusal to highlight the interrelations between ableism and white supremacy and the ways in which systems of domination operate to dehumanize individuals based on deviations from white supremacist configurations of race, class, gender and ability. The concept therefore not only underscores how disabled people reimagine and enact new social formations despite the foreclosure of subjectivity and futurity, but maps out new points of affinity for solidarity and collective action.
VERNACULAR PEDAGOGIES FOR THE SYNTHETIC MEDIA AGE
Authors: McCosker Anthony , Heemsbergen Luke
Published: March 2024

This paper draws on our research into the cultures of production surrounding the development of deepfakes and use of other forms of generative AI across public sites such as GitHub and YouTube, and subsequent reflective classroom experimentation and learning. Expanding on the notion of ‘vernacular pedagogies’ – informal and in situ education and relational literacy work – we propose a set of approaches for widening participation and involvement in AI and its underlying data practices. We reflect on the kinds of public vernacular pedagogy available on YouTube, GitHub and elsewhere online, and the kinds of experimental project work and learning environments that can be created with higher education students that can widen critical forms of AI participation and literacy.
MENTAL HEALTH AND THE DIGITAL CARE ASSEMBLAGE: MODERATION PRACTICES & USER EXPERIENCES
Authors: McCosker Anthony , Farmer Jane , Kamstra Peter
Published: March 2024

This paper examines the socio-technical ecosystems that shape the moderation of mental health content. To explore how care is formulated across and between different actors and automated systems, I focus on the experiences of moderators and users of three peer-based mental health support platforms. The analysis is framed by the notion of the 'digital care assemblage' to delineate the interactions between goal-oriented moderation policies, automated systems, human content moderators or platform managers, and users seeking or giving help in relation to mental ill-health. Each of these actors contribute to the supportive capacity of the platforms for addressing mental health issues in the community.
INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND MORAL ENTREPRENEURS
Authors: McDowell Zachary , Tiidenberg Katrin
Published: March 2024

A growing body of academic work on internet governance focuses on the “deplatforming of sex,” or the removal and suppression of sexual expression from the internet. Often, this is linked to the 2018 passing of FOSTA/SESTA – much-criticized twin bills that make internet intermediaries liable for content that promotes or facilitates prostitution or sex trafficking. We suggest analyzing both internet governance and the deplatforming of sex in conjunction with long-term agendas of conservative lobbying groups. Specifically, we combine media historiography, policy analysis, and thematic and discourse analysis of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media) press releases and media texts to show how conservative moral entrepreneurs weaponize ideas of morality, obscenity, and harm in internet governance. We illustrate how NCOSE has, directly and indirectly, interfered in internet governance, first by lobbying for rigorous enforcement of obscenity laws and then for creating internet-specific obscenity laws (which we argue CDA, COPA, and FOSTA/SESTA all were for NCOSE). We show how NCOSE adjusted their rhetoric to first link pornography to addiction and pedophilia and later to trafficking and exploitation; how they took advantage of the #metoo momentum; mastered legal language, and incorporated an explicit anti-internet stance.
BELIEFS, VALUES AND EMOTIONS IN PRACTITIONERS’ ENGAGEMENTS WITH LEARNING ANALYTICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Authors: Medina Perea Itzelle , Bates Jo , Fratczak Monika , Kennedy Helen , Ochu Erinma
Published: March 2024

Internet entrepreneurs, EdTech companies, AI enthusiasts, and other powerful stakeholders around the world have promoted the idea that big data and learning analytics (LA) have the potential to revolutionise education. LA, defined as the continuous measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their context (Gašević et al., 2015, p. 1), is increasingly being used to track and evaluate what students do in internet-mediated environments. A growing body of literature has questioned the benefits attributed to the use of AI-based solutions and raised a number of concerns about the current developments in the education sector. Despite this growing interest among researchers, we know little about how the beliefs, values and feelings of different groups of educational practitioners shape how they engage with AI-driven learning analytics technologies and influence the evolution of the cultures of practice shaping the adoption of learning analytics. In this paper, we report on research that asks: how do culturally situated beliefs, values and emotions shape practitioners’ engagements with narrow AI in different contexts of practice? The research project as a whole examines these cultures of practice across three contrasting contexts. Here we will discuss early findings from one of these contexts – learning analytics in higher education. With insights from this research, we aim to contribute to empower practitioners in higher education and relevant stakeholders to foster the development of critical and reflective data cultures that are able to exploit the possibilities of learning analytics while being critically responsive to their societal implications and limitations.
#AVERAGEYETCONFIDENTMEN: CHINESE STAND-UP COMEDY AND FEMINIST DISCOURSE ON DOUYIN
Authors: Meng Xingyuan , Literat Ioana
Published: March 2024

With the rise of feminist sentiment and the growing awareness of gender equity in China, social media has become an increasingly central space for Chinese feminist expression. However, the complex dynamics of feminist expression in these online spaces—and the role of popular culture in facilitating such discourse—are still to be fully elucidated. Here, focusing on the understudied social media platform Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), we analyze the online discussion sparked by the stand-up comedy acts of Chinese female comedians. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of Douyin videos and related comments, we demonstrate how users employed the platform’s creative features to challenge everyday sexism by echoing or building upon the stand-up comedians’ gags. At the same time, the analysis also uncovers how Douyin is used to insult and push back against these feminist voices. Our findings shed light on the sophisticated role of Douyin as a platform for digital feminist expression, and the ways in which it can amplify both feminist discourse or, conversely, give voice to misogynistic attacks.
CRUISING TIKTOK: USING ALGORITHMIC FOLK KNOWLEDGE TO EVADE CISHETERONORMATIVE CONTENT MODERATION
Authors: Monea Alexander
Published: March 2024

This paper examines crackdowns on queer content on TikTok and creative responses of content creators to circumvent biased content moderation and cisheteronormative censorship. The first portion of the paper demonstrates TikTok’s recurrent cisheteronormative biases in content moderation decisions and examines select instances of LGBTQ+ content that has been censored on the platform. It also works to situate this within a broader trend of LGBTQ+ censorship across internet platforms. The second portion of the paper examines how LGBTQ+ TikTok users have built up folk knowledges and intuitive understandings of TikTok’s blackboxed algorithms and opaque content moderation policies, situating this discussion within theories of the ‘algorithmic imaginary’. It catalogs the myriad ways that TikTok users work to circumvent LGBTQ+ censorship on the platform (e.g. by tactically obscuring key words in both speech and text and obscuring body parts and scenes). In the final portion of the paper, I draw on the concept of ‘cruising’ and other constitutive silences of LGBTQ+ existence to show how LGBTQ+ users are particularly well suited to producing folk knowledge about blackboxed algorithms. In closing, I examine the affordances and the limitations of LGBTQ+ users’ approach to navigating platform governance – and content moderation practices more specifically – as well as call for more organized and collective action in search of more permanent changes towards LGBTQ+-friendly platforms.
'IF WE LOOK AT IT FROM AN LGBT POINT OF VIEW…’ MOBILIZING LGBTQ+ STAKEHOLDERS TO QUEER ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES
Authors: Myles David , Chartrand Alex , Duguay Stefanie
Published: March 2024

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study that examines the social implications that platform algorithms raise for LGBTQ+ communities. We share the preliminary results of our Phase 2 group interviews, which were conducted with Canadian social media managers of LGBTQ+ non-profit organizations and with Canada-based LGBTQ+ tech workers. Algorithmic controversies relating to LGBTQ+ communities identified in Phase 1 were used as prompts to elicit discussions among participants. In this paper, we pay close attention to how participants queered dominant algorithmic imaginaries. Our preliminary analysis highlights four main findings. First, participants questioned dominant discourses that depict AI technology as being inherently new, instead re-inscribing algorithmic controversies within a long-lasting history of gender and sexual oppression. Second, participants reconfigured the ideal-type user embedded in sociotechnical systems but also identified challenges with effecting sociotechnical change as LGBTQ+ stakeholders. Third, participants subverted the notion of algorithmic resistance by questioning whether effective technological resistance should rely on technological misuse or disuse. Fourth, participants translated algorithmic controversies via their positionality as LGBTQ+ stakeholders to move beyond purely technicist considerations. Finally, we highlight the importance of mobilizing stakeholders from marginalized communities to contest the dominant discourses through which society makes sense of AI technologies.
EVERYDAY MISOGYNY: DISCOURSES ABOUT DEPP V HEARD ON TWITTER
Authors: Nelson Lucinda , Suzor Nicolas
Published: March 2024

This paper examines the manifestation of 'everyday' online misogyny. Social media platforms are often deeply unsafe spaces for women, particularly women who speak publicly about feminist issues. In response to a number of public controversies over the last decade, platforms have introduced a range of different design interventions and policy changes. However, these interventions have predominantly focused on the most extreme, unambiguous manifestations of online misogyny. Current literature on gender-based violence emphasises that ‘everyday’ expressions of misogyny play a significant role in normalising violence against women and reinforcing the beliefs that underpin the more exceptional misogynistic attacks.

This paper presents the initial findings of a case study of everyday misogyny on Twitter in discourses about the $2 trial. It aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how everyday misogyny manifests in ordinary language and debates on social media platforms, as a step towards developing better mechanisms for identifying and responding to online misogyny. Our preliminary findings challenge platforms' traditional reliance on counterspeech-based approaches to addressing the harms of everyday misogyny. Rather than serving as a remedy, this study suggests that online debate about women's experiences of violence can instead, in some circumstances, become a vehicle for oppression, a manifestation of everyday online misogyny.
UNRAVELING DISINFORMATION: EXAMINING THE HUMAN INFRASTRUCTURE OF MISINFORMATION IN BRAZIL THROUGH THE LENS OF HETEROMATION
Authors: Nemer David , Marks William
Published: March 2024

In recent years, major technology companies have taken much of the public blame for this reality, given their algorithms facilitate the sharing of—and sometimes even promote—falsehoods. This, however, misses a key reality; social media, search engines, and messaging services are not fully automated technologies. Rather, they are heteromated: they are reliant on participatory humans to serve their economic goals. Focusing on users, and on the sharing, rather than the origination, of disinformation, we connect theories of heteromation with those surrounding the Human Infrastructure of Misinformation (HIM) with the express purpose of contributing to a more holistic understanding of how and why misinformation is so prevalent online.
PLATFORMS, POWER & ADVERTISING: ANALYSING RELATIONS OF DEPENDENCY IN THE DIGITAL ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM
Authors: Nieborg David , Poell Thomas
Published: March 2024

This paper examines how dominant institutional actors exercise power and control over the digital advertising ecosystem. It pursues this inquiry through a case study on the 2021 introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature—a privacy setting newly integrated in the operating system of iOS mobile devices. Developing this case study, we ask: How do dominant market actors exercise control over the infrastructural layers of the ‘mobile ad stack’ and how do they gain access to end-user data? These questions are addressed through a mix-methods approach that involves (A) analysis of developer documentation provided by Apple, (B) a review of ongoing litigation, and (C) analysis of financial disclosure forms of two ad-driven platforms Meta and Snapchat. This inquiry shows, first, how and why Facebook and Google, each in their own way, have been highly successful in their ability to aggregate both ad inventory and accurate, real-time user data. Second, it demonstrates how ATT blocked the access of advertising platforms to a key part of this real-time user data, while, simultaneously, enabling Apple to gain control over end-users’ mobile data. Thus, the rollout of ATT and its subsequent shifts in revenue and data demonstrate the relational and constantly evolving nature of institutional power in the mobile advertising ecosystem.
PERILS OF PLACE: GEOFENCES AND PREDATORY PLATFORM INTIMACIES
Authors: Noone Rebecca , Jacob Arun
Published: March 2024

For many, mapping platforms are enmeshed in everyday experiences. We navigate, locate, and move through the world with the help of their locative affordances. Consequently, these platforms have an intimate awareness of our movements and location history, and this information is valuable for advertisers. One way that platforms can track and share this information is through geofences, commonly used by companies to send targeted advertisements directly to platforms. Geofences are virtual perimeters established around target locations that act as a digital tripwire, marking who and what crosses its threshold. Digital mapping platforms like Google Maps broker this location data to third-parties (Bui, Chang, & McIlwain, 2022).

This paper examines two applications of geofences as intermediaries of locational data. The first is the use of geofences by the property platform, CIVVL, that applies geofences to facilitate and accelerate the tenant eviction process. The second is Hawk Analytics, a locational data broker that geofences abortion clinics and sells the locational data from the clinic’s clients to anti-choice organizations, in jurisdictions of the United States where such healthcare is illegal. In our analysis of locational data, we apply the concept of platform intimacies (Rambukkana and de Verteuil, 2021; Ley, & Rambukkana, 2021) to understand the techniques through which geofences access private locational details. This paper examines the spatial relations the geofence enforces and how this often-unregulated informational infrastructure can be applied to weaponize location data. We argue that the geofence enables an extractive relationship with intimate platform knowledge while it enforces hegemonic notions of trespass and belonging.
DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF DATAFICATION
Authors: Normark Maria , Hansson Karin , Jacobsson Mattias
Published: March 2024

In this paper, we explore how activists and human rights defenders deal with datafication. This work demonstrates how data can be a valuable resource in activism and campaign planning. In addition, data and lack of data also complicate daily life for people in vulnerable positions, for example, when contacting government agencies, schools, and medical facilities .

Data from four types of human rights activism formed the basis of our analysis. They include volunteers and employees of NGOs dealing with refugee and migrant issues, homelessness, poverty, sexual minorities, and women's shelters. The study was done in Sweden, where the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws limit the handling and storage of personal data.

The following five major themes emerge from the analysis of data from our interview study: Affording personal integrity, Data poverty, Protective data practices, Drawing attention to data, and Systems and data routines.

In addition, this study shows how activists and the organizations that they support are exposed to contradictory aspects of data; on one hand, deliberately exposing data about marginalized/minoritized groups, while on the other, making sure those groups, along with activists themselves, are not exposed. Most important, the data laws and regulations are not adjusted to the needs of the most vulnerable in society, and therefore, actions of civil disobedience are necessary to care for vulnerable populations through data.
WHERE IN SOCIETY WILL AI AGENTS FIT? A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES TOWARD AI OCCUPATIONAL ROLES FROM THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES OF STATUS, IDENTITY, AND ONTOLOGY
Authors: Novozhilova Ekaterina , Kate Mays , Huang Dongpeng , Lee Hongchan , Katz James
Published: March 2024

To better understand what drives the public’s perception and acceptance of AI in different roles, we propose a study that looks at varying AI domains by occupational status and individual differences across ontological perceptions, automation anxiety, perceived status, and identity threat. As a first step, we conducted a representative survey of the US population (N = 1,005) that looked into the public's perceptions of AI replacement of high-status jobs. Results indicate that a majority of participants hold negative attitudes about AI replacement in all domains presented. However, participants were more open to AI replacement in lower-status roles such as journalist and hiring manager compared to higher-status roles of spiritual leader and trial judge. Contrary to our expectations, participants believed that trial judge was a slightly worse idea than AI spiritual advisor. This finding suggests that the associated machine heuristic of the judge role as being a more rational and objective occupation was not triggered in our sample. Our results also suggest that more vulnerable populations are more reluctant to accept AI in the majority of jobs. These findings are in line with previous public opinion surveys and demonstrate that individuals with lower levels of power and status are more likely to be reluctant to accept new technology and potentially perceive it as a threat. Our next step will be to include more occupations that can be potentially automated and look for explanatory mechanisms driving the public’s view of AI integration.
DIMENSIONS OF DATA QUALITY FOR VALUES IN SMART CITIES DATAFICATION PRACTICES
Authors: Okafor Carl Chineme , Ferrer-Conill Raul , Helle Sjovaaj
Published: March 2024

Data quality facilitates data interoperability for optimal decision-making in smart cities datafication. But there are few studies on how technologists (e.g., data scientists), governance people (e.g., municipal workers), and third-party collaborators (e.g., smart city services vendors) assess data quality together in smart cities datafication. This paper offers a response to this knowledge gap, using interviews (n=10) with municipal workers, data scientists and smart city services vendors, and data structure documents (n=8) in a situated case, the Stavanger (Norway) smart city. Implicit the paper’s results is that data quality is a floating signifier – comprising the different articulations of data scientists, municipal workers and services vendors in assessment. This generates friction with implications on data interoperability. This paper therefore posits that assessing data quality in smart cities datafication is ambiguous, but not empty. It fluctuates between the articulations of data scientists, municipal workers, and services vendors, with implications on data interoperability through the friction this generates.

Keywords: data quality, data interoperability, floating signifier, frictions, smart city datafication
RETHINKING THE SOCIAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Authors: Paasonen Susanna , Sundén Jenny , Tiidenberg Katrin , Vihlman Maria
Published: March 2024

This paper makes an argument for the value of including sexual sites in definitions and analyses of social media. Building on interview data (four developer interviews and 56 user interviews) from three North European sexual platforms (Darkside, Alastonsuomi and Libertine.Center) devoted to nudity, sex, and kink, it examines the implications of defining sex platforms as social media and the analytical avenues that the inclusion of sexual sites opens up for understanding forms of sociability within them.

We start by mapping the studied platforms as built infrastructures that shape and constrain sociality, with a particular focus on developer dialogue with the broader social media ecosystem. We then discuss how these built spaces are used and experienced as “socio-sexual silos” with a particular focus on notions of safety. Finally, we consider what this means for sociality on social media and propose “context promiscuity” as a conceptual aid for unpacking this.
ALGOSPEAK AND ALGO-DESIGN IN PLATFORMED BOOK PUBLISHING: REVOLUTIONARY CREATIVE TACTICS IN DIGITAL PARATEXT TO CIRCUMVENT CONTENT MODERATION
Authors: Parnell Claire
Published: March 2024

This paper examines the rise of algo-design in the context of platformed book publishing. Building on conceptualizations of algospeak, a strategy that involves creating code words or phrases to create a brand-safe lexicon, the paper theorizes algo-design as a broader creative strategy used by online creators that involves using and avoiding specific language and visuals to evade content moderation by platforms. Specifically, this research explores the use of algo-design in the paratext of romance and erotica novels by authors of color and LGBTQIA authors who publish their fiction on digital publishing platforms, such as Amazon, and market them on social media platforms. This exploratory reseach is based on a qualitative multi-method research design, including interviews with authors and metadata analysis. In many cases, algo-design may be seen as a revolutionary creative tactic for BIPOC and LGBTQIA authors of romance fiction, who are disproportionately affected by content moderation systems (Monea, 2022) and often have their works flagged as adult material due to the genre’s tendency to include intimate relationships (Parnell, 2021). In this way, the use of algo-design by authors is a clear effort to push back against bluntly imposed content moderation interventions and subvert platform power.
TRACING MEDIA SOLIDARITIES WITH MUSLIMS: CONTESTING ISLAMOPHOBIA ON TWITTER
Authors: Poole Elizabeth , De Quincey Ed , Giraud Eva , Richardson John
Published: March 2024

Solidarity has been cited as a necessary prerequisite for transformational structural change and therefore contains revolutionary potential (Featherstone, 2012). This paper examines the role and evolution of mediated solidarities, which have become increasingly central to an analysis of social movements with the advent of participatory technologies, by drawing on data from a project on anti-Islamophobic counter-narratives.

Online platforms have the affordances to contest Islamophobic hate speech as demonstrated by the dynamics of #stopIslam following the Brussels terror attack, 2016. In this instance, the hashtag gained its prominence through the contestations of users who sought to question, critique and undermine its original message (reference redacted). However, research has also shown the limitations of social media for online activism, in particular for creating meaningful debates or change (Schradie, 2019).

This paper examines data from a large-scale study that used methods of computational, quantitative, and qualitative analysis to examine the dynamics of discourse about Muslims on Twitter in the case of Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack and Covid. We will examine whether the high incidence of solidarity discourses in this dataset are limited to acts of counter-speech (and other acts of weak solidarity) or if they contribute to sustainable counter-narratives that have implications for wider discursive formations related to Islam. Rather than reinforce existing binary arguments regarding the potentials and limitations of Twitter as a platform for solidarity, we wish to demonstrate the contradictory dynamics of the solidarities that arise from the logics of Twitter which relies on and produces these entanglements.
“HERE TO HAVE FUN AND FIGHT ABLEISM”: #AUTISKTOK USER BIOS AS NEUROQUEER MICRO-ACTIVIST PLATFORM AFFORDANCES
Authors: Rauchberg Jessica Sage , Alper Meryl , Simpson Ellen , Guberman Josh , Feinberg Sarah
Published: March 2024

User biography sections on digital social platforms (hereafter described as “user bios” or “bios”) are spaces for account holders to take narrative ownership in communicating their identities to other users and interlocutors. Online platforms, such as social media, are increasingly used as community hubs for disabled groups, and especially for autistic people (Author; Author; Sins Invalid, 2019). We focus on #Autisktok, one of many enclaves for autistic community building and cultural production on TikTok. Through a critical/cultural qualitative thematic analysis of #Autisktok user bios, we assess how the user bio mediates self-advocacy, agency, and autistic-centered knowledges on #Autisktok. To investigate how autistic TikTokers use their profile’s bio section as a space for “restorying” mainstream discourses about autism and agency, we draw upon M. Remi Yergeau’s (2018) work on autism and neuroqueer rhetorics and Arseli Dokumacı’s (2023) theory of micro-activist affordances, extending these frameworks toward the digital. We pose the following research questions: How do autistic youth use the bio section on TikTok to (re)story autism diagnosis? What is the user bio’s role in creating a supportive enclave for other autistic creators, users, and activists on the TikTok platform? Three themes emerged from our analysis: the explicit use of autism in the user bio, autism and intersecting identities, and the bio as a space for asserting agentic autistic selfhood.
HOOK-UP APPS COMPLICATE VISIBILITY FOR RURAL QUEER PEOPLE: RESULTS OF A QUALITATIVE SCOPING STUDY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Authors: Rawlings Richard , Brown Genavee , Coventry Lynne , Thomas Lisa
Published: March 2024

Before the millennium, finding other queer people often involved travelling to a queer venue in a city. Consequently, queer people have been at the forefront of internet technologies such as hook-up apps, namely $2 . Rural hook-up app use is under-researched, and queer visibility may be more carefully negotiated in rural areas than in cities.

We carried out a qualitative study to establish whether location and/or technology use shaped social, sexual and romantic network creation and/or quality. Thirty-eight participants in cities and rural areas across the UK took part.

We found hook-up apps to be the only source of local queer connection for some rural participants. Users speak of being drawn to these technologies when lonely, yet find they can contribute to feelings of isolation. Being visible, which the pictorial logic of some hook-up apps demands, can be difficult in rurality due to partial ‘outness’ about sexuality. Some fear meeting other app users in public in rural areas due to potential homophobia, yet lack access to private spaces. Some users find innovative ways to meet goals of friendship and community beyond the perceived affordances of sexual hook-ups, such as forming friendship and community groups via or beyond apps.

This demonstrates that hook-up apps are inadequately-tailored tools for participants’ queerness, which extends beyond visible sexuality to negotiated communities and relationships of trust. This contributes to wider understanding of technology’s role in shaping social cohesion across diverse geographies and groups and the demands of visibility of such technologies on users.
"YOUTUBE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT CREATORS": HOW YOUTUBERS USE THE PLATFORM TO PROMOTE ACCOUNTABILITY
Authors: Reynolds CJ , Hallinan Blake
Published: March 2024

Unsatisfied with the black-boxing of algorithmic governance and platform governance on YouTube more generally, creators have begun to seek accountability through other means, deploying their skills, audiences, and situated knowledge to investigate the platform’s operations. This paper examines a phenomenon we term $2 , or the use of publicity via content creation to reveal failures, oversights, or harmful policies on a platform. We analyzed 250 videos featuring issues of platform accountability following a grounded theory approach. Our results revealed that most videos calling out the platform took the form of vlogs that were negative in tone towards YouTube, or a mix of negative and positive. YouTube itself was the actor most targeted for accountability, but automated systems, other creators, YouTube employees, and even former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki were all prominently cited. Most complaints were aimed at YouTube’s policies, lack of communication, or perceived bias against creators of certain demographics or who made undesirable types of content. Claims of censorship were also prominent, as were frustrations with YouTube’s appeals process and the cultural disconnect between YouTube users and YouTube corporate. Publicizing problems with the platform in a way that draws attention from audiences, news media, and fellow creators represents one of the most important ways YouTubers can participate in platform governance. Our study outlines the primary methods they use to do so and the reasons that motivate them to engage in user-generated accountability.
THE POLITICS OF PLATFORM IMAGINARIES
Authors: Richter Vanessa , Poell Thomas
Published: March 2024

Examining the competing images, values, and purposes attached to digital health tracking platforms, this paper analyzes how platform imaginaries are constructed and negotiated in complex intersectional realities. It pursues this inquiry through a case study on how Fitbit and Apple Health have become involved in recent societal negotiations over female digital health tracking in the US. Female health tracking has a well-documented history of negotiation and contestation. Developing this case study, we build on and rethink the concept of socio-technical imaginaries. We propose to consider the articulation of platform imaginaries not as a one-sided sense-making process, but as negotiations between multiple stakeholders of which platforms are but one. This conceptual perspective allows us to analyze the construction of imaginaries as a dynamic process, open to constant renegotiation, shaped by power differences between stakeholders, and affected by the intersectional positioning of user groups within platforms. The research is operationalised through a combination of critical discourse analysis of user and platform content and walkthroughs of Fitbit and Apple Health. The analysis highlights how digital health tracking platforms have become centrally imbricated in crucial societal issues, such as female bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. And it shows how quickly platform imaginaries of female self-determination and autonomy, associated with health-tracking apps, can be overthrown and reversed.
SOCIAL MEDIA GOVERNANCE VIA AN “ANEMIC” POLICY REGIME? HOW BOUNDARY SPANNING, COMPETING ISSUE DEFINITIONS, LACK OF COHESION, AND ADMINISTRATIVE FRAGMENTATION IMPEDE REGULATORY REFORM
Authors: Rochefort Alexander
Published: March 2024

Across the globe, lawmakers have enacted a range of reforms targeting the operation of large digital platforms. Within the United States, however, the push to regulate platform companies—specifically, social media—has faltered. Neither standard interest group politics, nor partisan deadlock, nor the clash of liberal versus conservative ideologies adequately account for this situation. Drawing upon historical sources, an examination of political-ideational foundations, and an empirical analysis of recent Congressional hearings, this paper argues that an “anemic” policy regime has emerged for governance of the social media sector in the United States over the past two decades. Key attributes of this regime—its boundary-spanning nature, competing issue definitions, lack of policy cohesion, and administrative fragmentation—combine to impede the capability for problem-solving on the topic of regulatory reform.
THE IMPACT OF TIKTOK POLICIES ON INFORMATION FLOWS DURING TIMES OF WAR: EVIDENCE OF ‘SPLINTERNET’ AND ‘SHADOW-PROMOTION’ IN RUSSIA
Authors: Romano Salvatore , Kerby Natalie , Schüler Miazia , Beraldo Davide , Rama Ilir
Published: March 2024

This research discusses how TikTok’s adaptation to Russian war censorship laws after the invasion of Ukraine affected content accessibility and prioritization on the platform. The study uses a combination of scraping and sock-puppet algorithmic audits to understand the impact of platform policy on information flows during times of war. The first test found that TikTok restricted access to non-Russian content in Russia, resulting in a 95% reduction of available content in the country. The second test revealed that TikTok unevenly applied its content policies, allowing pro-war content to proliferate in Russia despite its claim of enforcing a ban on new content uploads in the country. The third test highlighted a case of “shadow-promotion,” i.e., the prioritization of content supposed to be banned. The study's findings emphasize the need to monitor the platform's policy decisions during times of conflict, as they can contribute to the creation of a 'Splinternet.' The study also underscores the significant power that social media companies wield in shaping information flows during times of war and highlights the need to closely monitor platform policy decisions during such times. The article also provides recommendations for implementing the DSA in the EU context, which could help avoid problems such as those encountered while monitoring the platform in Russia.
MAPPING TUMBLR THROUGH FANNISH HOMOPHILIES
Authors: Rouse Lauren , Stanfill Mel
Published: March 2024

Using survey data from a 2022 survey of fans that was distributed on Tumblr between February 22 and March 21, 2022, this paper speculatively maps the network of Tumblr. Tumblr is home to fandoms of all kinds, acting as a space where fans can gather, discuss theories, produce fan texts and media, and interact with fanworks, making them one of the key distinctive communities that use the site and a suitable community to investigate the shape of the network. First, we analyze the prevalence of particular demographic answers from the survey over time to find points at which a large number of responses have similar identities. Second, we use the baseline probability of any given answer within our data set to examine times when it becomes disproportionately prevalent compared to elsewhere in the data. Through looking at these correlations between time and probability in specific demographic answers, we can identify moments when the survey was traveling through a homophilic network within the platform, and therefore extract information about how homophily works on this platform. By mapping Tumblr through these survey homophiles, we can gain a greater understanding of how people gather and interact on the platform. This has implications both for questions of community and subcultural belonging, but also issues like the spread of mis- and disinformation.