Internet Technologies

The next speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Zane Cooper, whose interest is in the material constitution of big data. Big data make use of earth and labour that do not easily track with its digital manifestations: they generate a long supply chain of physical hardware that supports the big data cloud. There is therefore a need to distinguish between what big data infrastructures are (their constitutional logic) and what they do (their operational logic).

The metaphor of contamination might be valuable here. Contamination is collaboration in the service of ‘precarious survival’; it is a building and a working …

The next ICA 2018 session is on algorithmic culture and starts with Stina Bengtsson, whose focus is on the ethics of algorithmic culture. Apple’s AI assistant Siri is an example for this: it has been made to swear and say inappropriate things, and there are real questions about the ethics of subverting algorithmic culture in this way.

This can be understood through the lens of actor-network theory, which suggests that non-human actors have their own ethics as well: it proposes that technologies are not simply free for humans to use as they see fit; that technologies are not simply tools …

The final speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Elizabeth Dubois, who again highlights the moral panics about the effect of ‘the Internet’ on information flows. But there are many different media and platforms, where users exercise different media use choices. There is a need to better measure media habits, therefore, including their specific diversity, timing, and tactics.

On average, users across the countries surveyed by the Quello Search Project accessed between seven and nine sources for broadly political information (this is per day, I think?). Legacy offline media are still in wide use, alongside search and online news …

The next speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Laleah Fernandez, who begins by highlighting the moral panics around echo chambers, filter bubbles, and ‘fake news’. There is limited evidence that these issues are major concerns, but to the extent that these are genuine problems, key users might be useful in addressing these problems, by nudging vulnerable users towards more sensible behaviours.

Who are the vulnerable, however? They include those who are interested in politics but not skilled in search, and this population could be identified from their responses to the Quello Search Project. (The most vulnerable group ranged from …

The next speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Bibi Reisdorf, whose focus is on the role of algorithms in shaping information flows, and on users’ understandings of the impact of such algorithms. Algorithmic literacy is not yet well researched; it extends beyond digital literacy and is specific to different platforms, too.

The present study examined algorithmic literacy in the U.S. and Germany, to capture user attitudes and practices across very different media and political systems. It captured a range of personal and behavioural variables, and it seems that algorithmic knowledge, amount of use, and search skills strongly affect users’ …

The second day at ICA 2018 starts for me with a panel on the personalisation of search, and the first presenter is Grant Blank. He begins by noting the importance of free-flowing information for society, but of course the media through which such information flows have changed over time, and this has affected media biases. Contemporary media now form a diverse media ecology.

Do online media in their diversity empower citizens to make better-informed decisions, then, or does the personalisation of online media distort the information that citizens encounter? Much of the present discussion is severely undertheorised. There is a …

Also in connection with the AoIR 2017 conference last week, I answered a few questions about the field of Internet research, and the conference, for the University of Tartu magazine. Here is what I had to say:

What are the major challenges in Internet research?

The central challenge is the object of research itself. The nature of the platforms, content, communities, and practices that constitute 'the' Internet is constantly and rapidly in flux – we are dealing with platforms like Snapchat that didn't exist ten years ago, and with practices like 'fake news' that were nowhere near as prominent even …

The second speaker in this AoIR 2017 session is Wolfgang Suetzl, whose focus is on Byung-chul Han, an enormously prolific Korean philosopher working in Germany (he has five books coming out in 2017 alone). Han is influenced by Hegel and Heidegger, but also by Zen Buddhism; he has also drawn on Foucault, Baudrillard, Flusser, and Handke.

Han combines political philosophy, aesthetics, and digital communication; he has argued that digital communication has become the form of power under neoliberalism, and that deliberation is undermined by algorithmic control. In particular, he suggests that digital media in their rapidity remove the time required …

The second keynote at AoIR 2017 is by Marju Lauristin, who is both a professor at the University of Tartu and the rapporteur on e-privacy at the European Parliament, where she also represents Estonia as an MEP; indeed she has been named one of the most influential Estonian women in the world. This week the Parliament voted on new EU privacy regulations which Marju has been instrumental in developing.

Her focus here is on the impact of algorithms on deliberative democracy, and the short summary of the situation is that algorithms will severely affect democracy if the companies that utilise …

The final paper session at ANZCA 2017 starts with Caroline Fisher and Glen Fuller, whose focus is on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conversations about the National Broadband Network project on Twitter. Turnbull was a comparatively early adopter of social media, and one of the big challenges in becoming PM was whether he would continue to use Twitter in the way he had before, or would lapse into a more broadcast-oriented tweeting style.

Turnbull's social media activities can be understood as an attempt at authentic engagement, and he has at times engaged in real conversation with interlocutors on the …