Blog

The final speaker in this AoIR 2015 session is Anja Bechmann, whose focus is on algorithms from the designer's point of view. Often, users are portrayed as the victims of victorious algorithms – but algorithms are only powerful if they have the right data to process.

We assume that algorithms are streamlining and simplifying activities and are sensitive to our wants and needs, and to do so most effectively they need to interact and interoperate with each other; algorithmic identity thus rests not on an essentialist but on a constructivist approach as identity is enacted when databases meet databases through …

The next speaker in this AoIR 2015 session is Annette Markham, who begins by asking about the voice of nonhuman agency. Nonhuman agency has long been recognised in Internet studies, but what is its voice: what are the hidden discourses of algorithmic structures; how do we give voice to technology; how may we represent it?

The key focus here is the rhetorical function of algorithms. Current discourse on algorithm is a theoretical, abstract levels, while it is also important to consider the level of everyday talk and put this into interaction with the theory. This doesn't just operate at the …

The next speaker at AoIR 2015 is Jakob Linaa Jensen, whose approach is to examine algorithms from an actor/structure perspective. In this, we need to avoid the twin fallacies of techno-optimism as well as techno-pessimism, and move beyond such extreme positions. Algorithms are both good and bad, and a perspective which examines the interplay between actors and structures is useful to shed more light on them.

Actors and structures are ultimately inseparable and inherently intertwined. There are three useful perspectives that may be brought to bear here: Goffman on algorithms and socialisation; Foucault on algorithms and knowledge and biopolitics; and …

For the post-lunch session at AoIR 2015, I'm in a session on algorithms, which begins with a paper by Dylan Wittkower. He suggests that social media experience is influenced by algorithms of display and access on both user and system side.

The most important system algorithm is the newsfeed algorithm that determines what posts from their friends and followers a user engages with. This is based often on social presence - on the recency and frequency of interaction between with specific followers - and thus helps to generate stronger ties between specific users, as well as potentially leading to …

The next speaker in this AoIR 2015 session is Linda Kronman, whose interest is in transmedia storytelling. She organised the Re:Dakar Art Festival, which emerged from a scam invitation to an "art festival" in Dakar – Linda and colleagues created fake characters who corresponded to the fake characters created by the scammers, and the interaction between them became a form of transmedia storytelling in its own right. Linda and colleagues created fake Facebook pages for their characters, as well as artworks which incorporated the material created by the interactions.

Transmedia storytelling itself emerged over the past decade or two, driven …

I'm in Daegu, Korea, for this year's AoIR conference. The first paper session I'm in starts with Amy Johnson, who notes that existence on Twitter is manifested by voice – and voice is understood as the linguistic construction of social personae. Popularly, social media platforms are also described as giving people a voice, though this view is heavily disputed.

On Twitter, anyone with an email address and the technological literacy can have a voice, so from that perspective it is a surprisingly permissive environment – people, groups, bots, group of bots can all have a voice, and this makes …

The annual end-of-year conference season is upon us again, and I’ll be heading off tomorrow to the annual Association of Internet Researchers conference – the most important conference in my field. In spite of the considerable troubles AoIR has faced this year – its first conference location, Bangkok, was no longer feasible following the military coup in Thailand, and there still seem to be some teething problems with the replacement location in Daegu, Korea – it will be great to catch up with leading colleagues in the field again.

This year, we’re presenting the first outcomes of our latest big …

The final speaker at CMPM2014 is Stephen Mills, whose interest is in the question of professionalisation in political campaigning. But what is being professionalised here? Individuals, institutions, systems? Does professionalisation occur when a cohort of professionals replace a previous non-professional cohort, or is this a more comprehensive institutional change through which new cultural norms are being adopted?

Since when does such professionalisation happen? Is it already over, is it continuing, or is it yet to happen? Does it happen quickly or slowly, disruptively or in an organised manner? And what is it caused by – exogenous factors such as technological …

The next session at CMPM2014 starts with Murray Goot, who takes us back to the ALP's pre-election study in 1961. The common view is that Labor first conducted a professional opinion poll in South Australia in 1968, and nationally in 1971, but this is incorrect: NSW Labor conducted a survey in the 1940s, and federal Labor did so in 1961, focussing on a selection of seats across the various states. It examined respondents' issues agendas and perceptions of parties, as well as their perceptions of local candidates. Interviews also explored the key issues which drove voters.

This first large-scale piece …